cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Government by Blog Post

During the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama repeatedly turned to this all-too-familiar pattern of executive action. First, the impact of the Affordable Care Act made certain groups worse off. Second, as a result, Congress was pressured to modify the law to alleviate these negative externalities from the law. However, Democrats feared that Republicans would seize the opportunity to unravel other portions of the law. This halted any possible bipartisan support for legislative amendments. Third, in the face of this gridlock, President Obama turned to executive action to alter the ACA’s onerous mandates. Specifically, he delayed and suspended the individual and employer mandates, as well as modified provisions affecting benefits for Congressional employees and coverage in the U.S. territories.Each of these executive actions — implemented through formal notice-and-comment rulemaking or informal social-media blogging — came as a complete surprise. Each change posed risks to the long-term sustainability of the law. Each change relied on tenuous readings of the statute, and dubious assertions of executive authority to accomplish ends entirely at odds with what Congress designed. Each action was contested in court by states and private parties. However, because the executive actions had the effect of lifting burdens, rather than imposing any injuries, the government vigorously contested that no one had standing to bring suit. As a result, the ultimate legality of these moves was decided not by the courts, but by the President, who desperately acted alone to salvage his signature law.One of the more disconcerting aspects of the law’s implementation, beyond the numerous delays and waivers, has been the cavalier approach by which the government announced these changes. It soon became a painful pastime of ferreting through these massive document dumps and attempting to find the actual basis for the rule previously announced in the blog post. And invariably, the policy, as stated in the blog post, doesn’t quite match up what is in the rule. This was no longer a government of law, but a government by blog post.This article was part of a symposium on the separation of powers hosted by the Florida International University Law Review.
Selection of Non-Regular Fractional Factorial Designs When Some Two-Factor Interactions are Important

Non-regular two-level fractional factorial designs, such as Plackett–Burman designs, are becoming popular choices in many areas of scientific investigation due to their run size economy and flexibility. The run size of nonregular two-level factorial designs is a multiple of 4. They fill the gaps left by the regular twolevel fractional factorial designs whose run size is always a power of 2 (4, 8, 16, 32, ...). In nonregular factorial designs each main effect is partially confounded with all the two-factor interactions not involving itself. Because of this complex aliasing structure, non-regular factorial designs had not received sufficient attention
Infringement as nuisance: intellectual property rights and The Problem of Social Cost

Ronald Coase was a story-teller and his essay, The Problem of Social Cost (1960) contains narrative examples on nearly every page that vividly illustrate his thesis that economic efficiency does no...
Earnings Quality and Ownership Structure: The Role of Private Equity Sponsors

ABSTRACT: This study explores how firms' ownership structures affect their earnings quality and long‐term performance. Focusing on a unique sample of private firms for which there is financial data available in the years before and after their initial public offering (IPO), I differentiate between those that have private equity sponsorship (PE‐backed firms) and those that do not (non‐PE‐backed firms). The findings indicate that PE‐backed firms generally have higher earnings quality than those that do not have PE sponsorship, engage less in earnings management, and report more conservatively both before and after the IPO. Further, PE‐backed firms that are majority‐owned by PE sponsors exhibit superior long‐term stock price performance after they go public. These results stem from the professional ownership, tighter monitoring, and reputational considerations exhibited by PE sponsors.
NONNESTED PROCEDURES IN ECONOMETRIC TESTS OF ASSET PRICING THEORIES

In this paper nonnested tests are used to contrast the performance of the capital asset pricing (CAPM) and consumption capital asset pricing (CCAPM) theories in describing the U.S. stock market. The procedures employed include the N-test, the NT-test, the W-test, the J-test, and the Encompassing test. The tests are carried out using data on firms as well as portfolios based on beta, capitalization, and Standard Industrial Classification codes. The findings indicate that although during 1973–82 the CAPM dominates the CCAPM, during 1978–87 the results are mixed, and during 1983–92 the CCAPM dominates. The finding in favor of the CCAPM in 1983–92 conflicts with much of the existing literature, which favors the CAPM.
Imperfect memory and the preference for increasing payments

We show how imperfect memory can imply a preference for increasing payments. We model an agent making a decision regarding effort in two periods. Before the first decision, the agent receives a signal related to the cost of effort, which is subsequently forgotten. Before the second decision, the agent makes an inference regarding the signal based on the publicly available information: the action taken and the wage paid. A preference for increasing payments naturally emerges. We show that this preference will only occur when the wage payments are neither very likely nor very unlikely to cover the cost of effort.
Ladder Safety: Disclosure of Corporate Client Confidences

This Essay demonstrates that the theory underlying ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.13(c), granting lawyers the option to reveal certain client confidences on a discretionary basis, doesn’t work. Despite some compelling reasons for permitting disclosure of clients’ “bad” behavior, economics dictate that it should be a rare case in which a lawyer will actually disclose. The Essay utilizes the facts of a recent case involving in-house certified public accountants who revealed to state tax authorities that their employer had not been compliant with state tax laws, and were fired from their jobs. In thinking about whether similarly situated attorneys could be fired or would violate their professional ethical duties if they engaged in the same acts, the Essay reviews and reflects upon the existing commentary on organizational/corporate lawyers’ duties of confidentiality and the Model Rules’ up-the-ladder reporting requirements. The conclusion: Even if the Rules permit disclosure in some circumstances, the real possibilities of being fired or tagged as a lawyer who can’t be trusted with a secret are simply too great for even well-intentioned lawyers. The rule, then, is unlikely to encourage lawyers to disclose.The argument is made through a brief Essay rather than a longer analytical piece for two reasons. First, there exists ample and excellent literature filled with good and comprehensive analyses of the rules. What is lacking is an examination of how theory plays out in the real world. Second, the Essay is meant to provoke thought both among scholars, who function primarily in the realm of theory, and practitioners, who reside in the world of practice.
Regulating credit default swaps as insurance: a law and economics perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze a recent proposal by the State of New York that would subject a large portion of the credit default swap (CDS) market to state‐based insurance regulatory oversight.Design/methodology/approach – Using the collapse of AIG as an example of the systemic risk inherent in unregulated CDS transacting, the Coase Theorem is then applied to determine the optimal level of CDS regulatory oversight.Findings – Although CDSs resemble insurance contracts in many respects, they are also uniquely complex financial instruments that are continually changing and thus not well suited for the antiquated state‐based model of insurance regulation. Furthermore, the external forces that influence state‐based regulatory decision‐making are likely to produce inefficient regulation.Practical implications – The Coase Theorem states that the optimal level of regulatory oversight is the one that causes market participants to internalize the risk inherent in transacting and does so at the ...
Measuring Collective Cognition in Online Collaboration Venues

By monitoring online conversations, organizations can receive value from the intellectual activity of their most interested constituents as they engage in problem solving and ideation. However, since intergroup dynamics often hinders people from optimizing collaboration, it should be measured and monitored for quality. Current metrics assess collaborative value solely from the number of collaborators, assuming that differences between individuals can be ignored. This study found that assumption to be wrong by identifying three distinct collaborator segments that strongly differ in the timing of their participation and in the variety of ideas they introduce. Therefore, a new metric is proposed that takes into account the diverse value individuals add. This new measure is correlated with existing measures only in those infrequent situations when collaboration productivity is maximized.
The Expiration of IPO Share Lockups

We examine 1,948 share lockup agreements that prevent insiders from selling their shares in the period immediately after the IPO (typically 180 days). While lockups are in effect, there is little selling by insiders. When lockups expire, we find a permanent 40 percent increase in average trading volume, and a statistically prominent three-day abnormal return of - 1.5 percent. The abnormal return and volume are much larger when the firm is financed by venture capital, and we find that venture capitalists sell more aggressively than executives and other shareholders. We find limited support for several hypotheses that may explain the abnormal return, but no complete explanation. MOST IPOS FEATURE SHARE LOCKUP AGREEMENTS, which prohibit insiders and other pre-IPO shareholders from selling any of their shares for a specified period. The typical lockup lasts for 180 days, and covers most of the shares that are not sold in the IPO. The terms of the lockup, including the expiration or "unlock" date, are disclosed in the IPO prospectus. Lockups serve several purposes. They reassure the market that key employees will continue to exert themselves for at least a few months; they provide a credible signal that insiders are not attempting to cash out in advance of imminent bad news; and they may aid the underwriters' price support efforts by temporarily constraining the supply of shares. While the lockup is in effect, trading in the IPO firm is distinctly different from trading in established firms. Only a fraction (typically about one-third) of the outstanding shares can trade, and there is little selling by employees, executives, or other preIPO shareholders. On the unlock day, insiders are suddenly allowed to sell up to the volume limits of Rule 144,1 potentially tripling the public float and increasing the information asymmetry between traders.
Reaping relational rewards from corporate social responsibility: The role of competitive positioning

Abstract This research examines the moderating influence of the extent to which a brand's social initiatives are integrated into its competitive positioning (i.e., a CSR positioning) on consumer reactions to CSR. We find that positive CSR beliefs held by consumers are associated not only with greater purchase likelihood but also with longer-term loyalty and advocacy behaviors. More importantly, we find that not all CSR initiatives are created equal: a brand that positions itself on CSR, integrating its CSR strategy with its core business strategy, is more likely than brands that merely engage in CSR to reap a range of CSR-specific benefits in the consumer domain.
Who Owns "Hillary.Com"? Political Speech and the First Amendment in Cyberspace

In the lead-up to the next presidential election, it will be important for candidates both to maintain an online presence and to exercise control over bad faith uses of domain names and web content related to their campaigns. What are the legal implications for the domain name system? Although, for example, Senator Hillary Clinton now owns ‘hillaryclinton.com’, the more generic ‘hillary.com’ is registered to a software firm, Hillary Software, Inc. What about ‘hillary2008.com’? It is registered to someone outside the Clinton campaign and is not currently in active use. This article examines the large gaps and inconsistencies in current domain name law and policy as to domain name use in the political context. Current domain name policy is focused on protecting trademark uses of domain names against bad faith commercial ‘cybersquatters’. It does not deal with protecting important uses of domain names as part of the political process. This article identifies the current problems with Internet domain name policy in the political context and makes recommendations for developing clearer guidelines for uses of political domain names. In so doing, it creates a new categorization system for different problems confronting the political process in cyberspace, including: (a) socially and economically wasteful political ‘cybersquatting’; (b) politicial ‘cyberfraud’ which might involve conduct such as registering a politician’s name as a domain name to promulgate a misleading message about the politician; and, (c) competition between politicians’ names and competing trademark interests.
Anthropogenic grasslands in Southeast Asia: Sociology of knowledge and implications for agroforestry

Anthropogenic grasslands, meaning grasslands that have been influenced and modified by humans, are one of the most important land covers of the tropics, but their management is dominated by conflicted and contested views, which is reflected in the problematic record of grassland development intervention. This chapter analyzes the his-toric, cultural, political, and institutional factors that affect the way grasslands are viewed, drawing largely on data from Southeast Asia. These data suggest that perceptions of grasslands are colored in part by the marginal place that they occupy in the cosmology of western industrialized societies, which idealize forest covers. Consequently, national and international agencies view grasslands not as a common land cover but as a development problem. The agendas of government and development agencies are often not grounded in a proper understanding of the local human and bio-physical ecology of grasslands or of successful local agroforestry practices; and research on many of the most important dimensions of grassland management is poorly conducted and/or utilized. The recent rise in scientific interest in indigenous knowledge, environmental history, and non-equilibrium systems, has opened up new possibilities for the study of grasslands. Agroforestry, given its inherent bridging of nature and culture, is ideally suited to benefit from these possibilities, by focusing research attention on the bio-social factors that determine the appearance, disappearance, and maintenance of anthropogenic grasslands.
"The Essential Characteristic": Enumerated Powers and the Bank of the United States

The idea that Congress can legislate only on the basis of its enumerated powers is an orthodox proposition of constitutional law, one that is generally supposed to have been recognized as essential ever since the Founding. The idea that that proposition has always been fundamental is reinforced by a conventional understanding of several episodes in constitutional history. But reality of many of those events is more complicated. Consider the 1791 debate over creating the Bank of the United States, in which Madison famously argued against the Bank on enumerated-powers grounds. The conventional memory of the Bank episode reinforces the sense that the orthodox view of enumerated powers has been fundamental, and agreed upon, from the beginning. But in 1791, Members of the First Congress disagreed about whether Congress needed to point to some specific enumerated power in order to create the Bank. Moreover, Madison’s enumerated-powers argument against the Bank seems to have involved two rethinkings of Congress’s enumerated powers, one about the importance of enumeration in general and one about the enumeration’s specific application to the Bank. At the general level, Madison in the Bank debate elevated the supposed importance of the enumerated-powers framework: in 1787 he had been skeptical that enumerating congressional powers could be valuable, but in the Bank debate he described the enumerated-powers framework as essential to the Constitution. At the particular level, Madison’s enumerated-powers argument against the Bank seems to have been an act of last-minute creativity in which he took constitutional objections which sounded naturally in the register of affirmative prohibitions, but which the Constitution’s text did not clearly support, and gave them a textual home by translating them into the register of enumerated powers. Madison’s move may have set a paradigm for enumerated-powers arguments at later moments in constitutional history: subsequent enumerated-powers arguments down to those against the Affordable Care Act might be best understood as translations of constitutional objections best expressed in terms of affirmative prohibitions, forced into the register of enumerated powers because the relevant prohibitions are not found in the Constitution.
Analysis of Mortgage Default Clients and Mortgage Default Counseling at a Housing Counseling Agency

The purposes of the study were to create a profile of the mortgage default clientele and to examine how clientele were utilizing the counseling services at a housing counseling center. Aspects considered were loan type, time of delinquency when clients sought counseling, referrals of clients, and the point in counseling when an outcome was achieved (keeping the home or losing the home to foreclosure). Descriptive statistics were used to create a profile of clients, and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was used to examine the utilization of services. In the context of survival analysis, clients were divided into three groups: survival (kept the home), foreclosure/bankruptcy (lost the home), and lost-to-follow up. Findings indicate that the role of the housing counselor might evolve according to the outcome of the default as well as the type of loan.
The institutional dimension of election design

The traditional approach to election design focuses solely on the best method to aggregate the preferences of the voters. But elections are run by institutions, and the interests of the institution may not be reflected in the preferences of the voter. In this comment I discuss how institutional considerations come into play in election design in three areas: political representation, corporate voting, and judging in competitions. As an illustration of this institutional approach I appraise the method by which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences selects the nominees and winners of the Oscars.
Training, adverse selection and appropriate technology: Development and growth in a small open economy

Abstract Recent diffusion models cannot explain why the success of technology diffusion depends so critically on developing countries’ human capital levels. This paper examines three main issues. First, we endogenize both appropriate technologies and human capital formation. Second, we refine the human capital accumulation process by introducing uncertainty about worker quality and training efficiency. Finally, we allow for international diffusion of technology as a function of the host country’s endogenous ability to absorb technological spillovers. The resulting model is one of uneven growth where trade amplifies worker quality problems in laggard countries. In contrast, technology spillovers are shown to generate additional incentives to accumulate human capital in the laggard country, since this allows for faster adoption and diffusion of foreign technology in the future.
Communication and Competence for Self-Representation

In Indiana v. Edwards, the U.S. Supreme Court held that states may impose a higher competency standard for self-representation than to stand trial in criminal cases. While the Court articulated a number of interests relevant to representational competence, it left to states the difficult task of formulating an actual competence standard. This Article offers the first examination and assessment of the constitutionality of state standards post-Edwards. It reveals that seven states have endorsed a representational competence standard with a communication component. Additionally, twenty states have embraced vague, capacious standards that could consider communication skills. States have applied these standards to deny self-representation on grounds of stuttering, strong foreign accent, and low level of education, even when defendants have intact decision-making abilities. However, the extent to which the Sixth Amendment permits denial of self-representation on the basis of inadequate communication skills is dubious. Edwards indicates the relevance of expressive abilities to representational competence, yet Faretta v. California warns that trial courts should not expect strong advocacy skills from pro se litigants. Moreover, McKaskle v. Wiggins construes self-representation as a bundle of distinct rights of control and performance, suggesting that a court should permit a decisionally competent defendant to control his case even if he requires assistance to perform it. This Article reconciles these three cases and proposes a normative theory to balance the competing concerns of autonomy, fairness, and accuracy that are implicated when defendants proceed pro se. It identifies four categories of communication impairment of varying constitutional significance and subjects them to this normative theory to discern the extent to which they should constitute cognizable grounds for representational incompetence. The conclusions reveal that existing state competency standards are constitutionally suspect. The Article suggests substantive revisions to state standards and offers a model, two-pronged competence standard for self-representation that would withstand constitutional scrutiny and ensure that a defendant has the necessary capacities both to control and to conduct his defense.
Is efficient copyright a reasonable goal

If we could create an economically efficient copyright law, would we want to do so? That is the question I attempt to answer in this Essay.1 Even though economists typically argue in favor of efficiency—and I am as guilty of this as most—my answer here is that society should not favor an economically efficient copyright law. Efficiency would lead to disparate and inferior treatment for the creators of copyrighted works compared to workers in other types of industries. My concern is rooted in the very basic concept of “fairness” that arises when, in the name of economic efficiency or social welfare maximization, a particular market would need to treat its labor component differently than other markets treat their labor components.2 At my peril, my purpose here is to discuss issues that do not relate solely to economic efficiency.3 As this Essay describes below, a social welfare-maximizing copyright law amounts to an attempt to restrict the economic profit (rents) going to
The Dividend-Price Ratio and Expectations of Future Dividends and Discount Factors

A dividend-ratio model is introduced here that makes the log of the dividend-price ratio on a stock linear in optimallyforecastfuture one-period real discount rates andfuture one-period growth rates of real dividends. If expost discount rates are observable, this model can be tested by using vector autoregressive methods. Four versions of the linearized model, differing in the measure of discount rates, are tested for U.S. time series 1871-1986 and 1926-1986: a version that imposes constant real discount rates, and versions that measure discount rates from real interest rate data, aggregate real consumption data, and return variance data. The results yield a metric to judge the relatve importance of real dividend growth, measured real discount rates, and unexplained factors in determining the dividend-price ratio.
Public Use in a Post-Kelo World

The aftermath of Kelo gives rise to urgent land use issues, both theoretical and historical. On the former, I argue that the analysts should be aware of the close and positive connection between restrictive land use policies on the one hand and local governments’ willingness to condemn parcels for private development on the other. The inability to overcome local opposition to private development forces developers to get, in essence, pre-acquisition approval through public condemnation. One way, therefore, to ease the pressure on public use is to retreat from aggressive land use regulation to a scheme that more closely approximates that of the common law rules on nuisance and restrictive covenants. However, this outcome will be hard to achieve since local systems of voting give little weight to the interest of potential buyers who live outside the governance area. Historically, this opportunity was lost when the United States Supreme Court in Berman v. Parker distanced itself from the thoughtful decision o...
Surfing the Waves of Globalization: Asia and Financial Globalization in the Context of the Trilemma

Using the “trilemma indexes” developed by Aizenman et al. (2010) that measure the extent of achievement in each of the three policy goals in the trilemma—monetary independence, exchange rate stability, and financial openness—we examine how policy configurations affect macroeconomic performances, with focus on the Asian economies. We find that the three policy choices matter for output volatility and the medium-term level of inflation. Greater monetary independence is associated with lower output volatility while greater exchange rate stability implies greater output volatility, which can be mitigated if a country holds international reserves (IR) at a level higher than a threshold (about 20% of GDP). Greater monetary autonomy is associated with a higher level of inflation while greater exchange rate stability and greater financial openness could lower the inflation rate. We find that trilemma policy configurations affect output volatility through the investment or trade channel depending on the openness of the economies. Our results indicate that policy makers in a more open economy would prefer pursuing greater exchange rate stability while holding a massive amount of IR. Asian emerging market economies are found to be equipped with macroeconomic policy configurations that help the economies to dampen the volatility of the real exchange rate. These economies’ sizeable amount of IR holding appears to enhance the stabilizing effect of the trilemma policy choices, and this may help explain the recent phenomenal buildup of IR in the region.
Stock Market Anomalies: What Can We Learn from Repurchases and Insider Trading?

We examine whether managers’ trading decisions (both at a firm and personal level) are correlated with trading strategies suggested by the operating accruals and the post-earnings announcement drift (SUE) anomalies. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of the use of managerial trading activity to infer managers’ private valuation about their own securities. Our results provide corroborative evidence for the accruals anomaly, i.e., managers’ repurchase and insider trading behavior varies consistently with the information underlying the operating accruals trading strategy. On the other hand, we do not find corroborative evidence for the SUE anomaly.
Boom and Bust Patterns in the Adoption of Financial Innovations

We develop a dynamic model of the adoption of financial innovations. Each period, firms decide whether or not to adopt an innovation of uncertain value, and the profitability of each period's adoptions reveals information about the innovation's value. We show that characteristics of financial innovation waves cited by critics as evidence of irrational excess are, in fact, consistent with fully rational behavior. We also show that social welfare is enhanced when more firms adopt innovations of questionable value and that financial intermediaries base an incentive to encourage such adoption. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.
The Diffusion of Doctrinal Innovations in Tort Law

This article examines the diffusion of “innovations” — new ideas — in tort law. Drawing from a larger body of research into the spread of new products and ideas, this study charts and evaluates the adoption patterns associated with “successful” common-law doctrinal innovations in the law of torts. This analysis reveals recurring influences upon and tendencies within the spread of novel tort doctrines across the states, and explores the interactive qualities of the diffusion process. Furthermore, these diffusion patterns document a trend toward common-law doctrinal “stabilization” over the past quarter-century. As detailed herein, this stabilization owes in part to altered diffusion dynamics associated with the ongoing diminution and fragmentation of the common-law tort dockets entertained by state supreme courts. The structural character of these influences will make it difficult, this article concludes, for even well-received common-law doctrinal innovations of the future to match the rapid diffusion rates associated with innovations in tort law that spread during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Public versus Private Investment in Determining Child Health Outcomes: Evidence from India

AbstractThis article examines the relationship among access to drinking water, sanitation facilities and health outcomes for children in India. We use the NFHS 2005–2006 household-level survey data...
Cooperation and Capacity? Exploring the Sources and Limits of City-Region Governance Partnerships

Scholarship abounds on the importance of city-regions to regional and national prosperity, and to the wider global economy. But little is known about their capacity to function as effective, legitimate and robust policy actors. This article begins to address the important question of what determines the governance capacity of city-regions by unpacking the concepts at the core of this research. It focuses on sources of horizontal capacity as a function of the strength of intermunicipal partnerships. Research suggests a variety of determinants of the strength of inter municipal partnerships, from rational choice to institutional perspectives. This article acknowledges the contribution of these approaches, but argues that none of the approaches presented to date can alone explain observed variations in the strength and capacity of city-regional partnerships. Instead the article presents an alternative theoretical framework that reimagines and combines existing approaches, and introduces the concept of civic capital as a critical determinant of governance capacity. Resume De nombreux travaux de recherches soulignent combien les regions metropolitaines sont importantes pour la prosperite regionale et nationale, et pour l'economie mondiale en general. Pourtant, on en sait peu sur leur capacitea operer comme acteurs efficaces, legitimes et solides des politiques publiques. En revenant sur les concepts fondamentaux de ces etudes, l'article traite d'abord un point important: les facteurs determinants de la capacite de gouvernance des regions metropolitaines. Il s'attache aux sources de capacite horizontale en fonction de la solidite des partenariats intercommunaux. Les etudes suggerent tout un eventail de facteurs de cette solidite, allant du choix rationnel aux perspectives institutionnelles. Toutes les approches presentees a ce jour contribuent au debat general, mais aucune ne peut expliquer a elle seule les variations observees dans la solidite et la capacite des partenariats des regions metropolitaines. Un cadre theorique alternatif est presente dans cet article, permettant de reimaginer et de combiner les approches existantes, tout en introduisant le concept de capital civique comme facteur essentiel de la capacite de gouvernance.
Linnik’s theorem for Sato-Tate laws on elliptic curves with complex multiplication

Let \(E/\mathbb {Q}\) be an elliptic curve with complex multiplication (CM), and for each prime p of good reduction, let \(a_{E}(p) = p + 1 - \#E(\mathbb {F}_{p})\) denote the trace of Frobenius. By the Hasse bound, \(a_{E}(p) = 2\sqrt {p} \cos \theta _{p}\) for a unique θp∈ [0,π]. In this paper, we prove that the least prime p such that θp∈ [α,β]⊂ [0,π] satisfies $$ p \ll \left(\frac{N_{E}}{\beta - \alpha}\right)^{A}, $$ where NE is the conductor of E and the implied constant and exponent A>2 are absolute and effectively computable. Our result is an analogue for CM elliptic curves of Linnik’s Theorem for arithmetic progressions, which states that the least prime p≡a (mod q) for (a,q)=1 satisfies p≪qL for an absolute constant L>0.
Principles-Based Standards and Earnings Attributes

This study examines the relation between principles-based standards and earnings attributes. We create a firm-year-specific variable that measures the extent to which firms' financial reporting is affected by principles-based standards. We find that firms' earnings are more informative and persistent and have a larger positive association with future cash flows, on average, when firms' standards are more principles based. We also find evidence that managers use the added discretion provided by principles-based standards to manage earnings when firms are near bankruptcy, issuing equity, or experiencing high growth, and if earnings are near prominent earnings benchmarks. Overall, our evidence is consistent with managers using the discretion provided by principles-based standards to communicate better the economic substance of transactions, on average, but also with some managers using the added discretion strategically when managerial incentives exist to increase reported earnings. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2465 . This paper was accepted by Mary Barth, accounting.
The Decline of Formal Marriage: Inevitable or Reversible?

All over the industrialized world, marriage is in decline. Cohabitation, which has waxed as marriage has waned, is a much less stable relational form. In the United States, half of all cohabiting relationships dissolve within eighteen months;1 in both North America and Europe, children born to cohabiting parents are two to four times more likely to experience their parents' separation than are children born to married parents.2 Cohabitation is also a more variable relational form than marriage.
Deviations from Put-Call Parity and Stock Return Predictability

Deviations from put-call parity contain information about future stock returns. Using the difference in implied volatility between pairs of call and put options to measure these deviations we find that stocks with relatively expensive calls outperform stocks with relatively expensive puts by 50 basis points per week. We find both positive abnormal performance in stocks with relatively expensive calls and negative abnormal performance in stocks with relatively expensive puts, which cannot be explained by short sales constraints. Rebate rates from the stock lending market confirm directly that our findings are not driven by stocks that are hard to borrow. The degree of predictability is larger when option liquidity is high and stock liquidity low, while there is little predictability when the opposite is true. Controlling for size, option prices are more likely to deviate from strict put-call parity when underlying stocks face more information risk. The degree of predictability decreases over the sample period. Our results are consistent with mispricing during the earlier years of the study, with a gradual reduction of the mispricing over time.
An Exclusive Right to Evoke

Ten years ago, in White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a robot violated Valuta White's publicity rights. Since Mite, the tendency to equate evocation with infringement in trademark and right of publicity cases has only grown. In contrast to this expansionist trend in trademark and right of publicity law, however, courts in recent copyright cases have arguably backed away from a strong right to evoke. This Article identifies these trends and suggests some reasons for concern over an exclusive right to evoke. The author argues that if we wish to preserve a rich commons and avoid significantly chilling free expression, courts should at least cabin the right to evoke and ensure that, when utilized, it serves the law's normative goals.'
Speaker Discrimination: The Next Frontier of Free Speech

Citizens United v. FEC articulated a pillar of free speech doctrine that is independent from the well-known controversies about corporate personhood and the role of money in elections. For the first time, the Supreme Court clearly said that discrimination on the basis of the identity of the speaker offends the First Amendment. Previously, the focus of free speech doctrine had been on the content and forum of speech, not on the identity of the speaker. It is possible that protection from speaker identity discrimination had long been implicit in free speech case law, but has now been given more full-throated articulation. Or it is possible that the Court has actually introduced a conceptually new free speech doctrine. Either way, Citizens United has the potential to reshape free speech law far beyond the corporate speech and campaign finance contexts. This Article explores the basis of the speaker discrimination doctrine and points to potential implications. It shows that while the speaker discrimination principle had not been previously articulated clearly, it is a convincing explanation for much earlier First Amendment cases and thus should not be understood as an entirely new development. The speaker discrimination principle holds considerable potential to clarify otherwise confused areas of free speech jurisprudence. In particular, the bar against identity discrimination should operate as a limiting principle on forum-based speech restrictions. To illustrate this potential, this Article examines the potential application of speaker discrimination to school speech cases, especially those involving off-campus speech. At the same time, the Court’s embrace of speaker discrimination raises important questions in critical legal theory about why the identity of a speaker might matter in addition to the substance of what a person chooses to say.
What Would the Delegates Talk About? A Rough Agenda for a Constitutional Convention

This short article outlines a possible agenda for a California Constitutional Convention. The goal is not to achieve originality in the substance of each proposal so much as to propose reasonable compromises that might ameliorate California’s chronic fiscal woes. At the moment, the prospects for such a convention have dimmed considerably, but the compromises outlined below could still be reached through legislative action and/or voter referenda. The proposals, in brief, are:Proposal 1: More Local Control and Likely Greater Resources but Accepting More Disparity in Resources.Proposal 2: Split the Property Tax Roll and Impose (Gradually) a Statewide Tax on Commercial Property Based on Market Values, but Eliminate (Gradually) the Corporate Income Tax.Proposal 3: Expand the Current Sales Tax to Services but Lower Its Rate and Allow Deficit Spending.Proposal 4: Retain the Tax on Capital Gains, but Place A Large Percentage of Resulting Revenues in the Rainy Day Fund. Proposal 5. Enable More State Borrowing But Require Commitment of New Revenues to All Borrowing.Proposal 6: Make it Easier to Raise Tax Rates, but Restrain Spending in Some Other Way.Proposal 7: Ease Residential Property Tax Limitations, but Institute Aggressive Circuit Breakers.
The foundations of statistics with black swans

Abstract We extend the foundation of statistics to integrate rare events that are potentially catastrophic, called black swans.These include natural hazards, regime change in complex systems, market crashes, catastrophic climate change and major episodes of species extinction. Classic statistics and physics treat such events as ‘outliers’ and often disregard them. We propose a new axiomatization of subjective probability requiring equal treatment for rare and frequent events, and characterize the likelihoods or subjective probabilities that the axioms imply. These coincide with countably additive measures and yield normal distributions when the sample has no black swans. When the sample includes black swans, the new likelihoods are represented by a combination of countable and finitely additive measures with both parts present. The axioms were introduced in Chichilnisky, 2000 , Chichilnisky, 2002 ; they extend the axiomatic foundations of Savage (1954) , Villegas (1964) and Arrow (1971) and they are valid for bounded and unbounded samples ( Chichilnisky, 1996b ). The finitely additive measures assign more weight to rare events than do standard distributions and in that sense explain the persistent observation of power laws and ‘heavy tails’ that eludes classic theory.
Investment in Hierarchical Human Capital

Advanced human capital requires “basic” human capital as an input. Physical capital does not, in general, have such hierarchical structure. This paper models optimal investment in hierarchical human capital as well as nonhierarchical physical capital. The authors analyze the steady state, transition dynamics, and endogenous growth properties of the system. The optimal program exhibits non-monotonicities in human capital stocks. This result has important implications for the optimal timing of investment in hierarchical human capital. The analysis also addresses the debate regarding the distribution of education expenditures and the divergence between ex-post and ex-ante rates of return to education.
The Uncertain Effects of Senate Confirmation Delays in the Agencies

As Professor Anne O’Connell has effectively documented, the delay in Senate confirmations has resulted in many vacant offices in the most senior levels of agencies, with potentially harmful consequences to agency implementation of statutory programs. This symposium contribution considers some of those consequences, as well as whether confirmation delays could conceivably have benefits for agencies. I note that confirmation delays are focused in the middle layer of political appointments—at the assistant secretary level, rather than at the cabinet head—so that formal functions and political oversight are unlikely to be halted altogether. Further, regulatory policy making and even agenda setting can depend more critically on the work of career civil servants than on the political leadership of an assistant secretary, further reducing the cost of midlevel vacancies. The Article then suggests that confirmation delays can have positive effects, although the list is short. Senior civil servants, serving as acting officials, can offer valuable expertise on regulatory decisions, and their expertise with respect to core implementation and enforcement issues may exceed that of more generalist political appointees. Additionally, confirmation delays may prompt both increased leadership by longtime civil servants and reduced turnover in their ranks, with benefits to overall agency function. On the other hand, confirmation delays surely cause significant problems by reducing resources to agencies and increasing turnover in management. Missing confirmed appointees also may contribute to slower White Copyright © 2015 Nina A. Mendelson. Noncommercial copying of this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, as long as the licensee notes the author’s name, title, and the work’s first publication in the Duke Law Journal. † Joseph L. Sax Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. Thanks for excellent conversation and feedback to participants in the Duke Law Journal’s 45th Annual Administrative Law Symposium, the University of Michigan’s Governance Workshop and Research Lunch Series, and a faculty workshop at the University of Chicago Law School. Especial thanks to David Lewis for serving as a commenter on the piece, to Kate Andrias, Michael Barr, Sam Bagenstos, Riyaz Kanji, Jennifer Nou, and Biz Scott for valuable conversations, and to Joseph Celentino for outstanding research assistance. Finally, I appreciate the generous research support of the University of Michigan Law School’s Cook Fund. MENDELSON IN PRINTER FINAL (COMPLETE) (DO NOT DELETE) 5/15/2015 1:57 AM 1572 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 64:1571 House regulatory review. More research is needed, but at a minimum, thinking about confirmation delays presents another opportunity to reflect on whether we should thin the layer of political management in agencies and on the relative importance, to administrative agency legitimacy and function, of specific expertise, compared with political accountability.
Scalia & Garner's Reading Law: A Civil Law for the Age of Statutes?

In Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and American legal lexicographer Bryan A. Garner challenge Americans to start over in dealing with statutes in the Age of Statutes. They propose “textualism,” i.e., “that the words of a governing text are of paramount concern, and what they convey in their context is what the text means.” Textualism is to remedy American lack of “a generally agreed-on approach to the interpretation of legal texts.” That deficiency makes American law unpredictable, unequal, undemocratic and political. In the book’s Foreword Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook calls the book “a great event in American legal culture.” It is a remarkable book because it challenges common law traditions. This review essay shows how Scalia and Garner challenge common law and summarizes the content
The Lost History of the Political Question Doctrine

This Article challenges the conventional narrative about the political question doctrine. Scholars commonly assert that the doctrine, which instructs that certain constitutional questions are “committed” to Congress or to the executive branch, has been part of our constitutional system since the early nineteenth century. Furthermore, scholars argue that the doctrine is at odds with the current Supreme Court’s view of itself as the “supreme expositor” of all constitutional questions. This Article calls into question both claims. The Article demonstrates, first, that the current political question doctrine does not have the historical pedigree that scholars attribute to it. In the nineteenth century, “political questions” were not constitutional questions but instead were factual determinations made by the political branches that courts treated as conclusive in the course of deciding cases. Second, when the current doctrine was finally created in the mid-twentieth century, the Supreme Court used it to entrench, rather than to undermine, the Court’s emerging supremacy over constitutional law. Under the current doctrine, the Court asserts for itself the power to decide which institution decides any constitutional question. With control over that first-order question, the Court can conclude not only that an issue is textually committed to a political branch but also that an issue is committed to the Court itself. This analysis turns on its head the assumption of scholars that the current doctrine is at odds with judicial supremacy. The modern political question doctrine is a species of—not a limitation on—judicial supremacy.