cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Models and mosaics: Investigating cross-cultural differences in risk perception and risk preference

In this article, we describe a multistudy project designed to explain observed cross-national differences in risk taking between respondents from the People’s Republic of China and the United States. Using this example, we develop the following recommendations for cross-cultural investigations. First, like all psychological research, cross-cultural studies should be model based. Investigators should commit themselves to a model of the behavior under study that explicitly specifies possible causal constructs or variables hypothesized to influence the behavior, as well as the relationship between those variables, and allows for individual, group, or cultural differences in the value of these variables or in the relationship between them. This moves the focus from a simple demonstration of cross-national differences toward a prediction of the behavior, including its cross-national variation. Ideally, the causal construct hypothesized and shown to differ between cultures should be demonstrated to serve as a moderator or a mediator between culture and observed behavioral differences. Second, investigators should look for converging evidence for hypothesized cultural effects on behavior by looking at multiple dependent variables and using multiple methodological approaches. Thus, the data collection that will allow for the establishment of conclusive causal connections between a cultural variable and some target behavior can be compared with the creation of a mosaic.
The Impact of Worldwide Military Spending Cuts on Developing Countries

Abstract This paper investigates the economic impact of a coordinated worldwide reduction in military expenditures of 20 percent on developing countries. Simulation results indicate that the present value of cumulative increases in civilian economic activity is equivalent to 46 percent of 1992 GDP, compared to military expenditures cuts equivalent to 33 percent of 1992 GDP. The gains reflect both the release of domestic resources and a positive international economic externality due to enhanced trade and lower world interest rates. The gains to net debtor developing countries are estimated to exceed those of industrial countries. Examination of the impact of cutting military expenditures on individual developing countries confirms the significance of external trade on the pattern and level of these economic benefits.
Following Lower-Court Precedent

This Article examines the role of lower-court precedent in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisionmaking. The Supreme Court is rarely the first court to consider a legal question, and therefore the Court has the opportunity to be informed by and perhaps even persuaded by the views of the various lower courts that have previously addressed the issue. This Article considers whether the Court should give weight to lower-court precedent as a matter of normative theory and whether the Court in fact does so as a matter of practice. To answer the normative question, the Article analyzes and evaluates a variety of potential reasons to give weight to lower-court precedent, including reasons related to stability, constraint, and the wisdom of crowds. To address the descriptive question, the Article examines the current Justices’ voting behavior and reasoning, over a period of several recent years, in cases in which the Court resolves splits in the lower courts. The conclusions shed light on broader debates over interpretive methodology and the Supreme Court’s role as the manager of a large judicial system.
Causes, benefits, and risks of business tax incentives

This paper provides an updated overview of tax incentives for business investment. It argues that tax competition is likely to be a major force driving countries’ tax reforms, and discusses tax incentives as a possible response to this. This is complemented by more detailed arguments for and against tax incentives, and by an illustrative analysis of different incentives using effective tax rates. Findings from the empirical literature on tax incentives are also presented. Based on the overview of theoretical and empirical findings, the paper then suggests a matrix of criteria to determine the usefulness of different tax incentives depending on a country’s circumstances.
Environmental Contraction for America: or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the EPA

With the Repblican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, environmental advocates were particularly afraid of the policies that had been espoused in Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. However, a closer analysis of the proposals reveal that with an executive branch controlled by the Democrats, that the EPA could blunt many of the potential impacts through its juducious use of administrative law.
Playing with other people's money: Contributions to public goods by trustees

Abstract Decisions about public goods in the real world are frequently made by trustees—individuals responsible for managing pools of contributed funds—rather than by the contributors themselves. We conduct a laboratory experiment to compare contributions made by trustees who play with other trustees using their group's resources, with contributions made from their own endowment. We examine the decisions made by subjects in the two voluntary contribution public goods games, distinguishing between altruistic and reciprocal actions, and unpacking the heterogeneity of other-regarding preferences. Subjects contribute more when acting as trustees than when playing with their own money. Consistent with theories of other-regarding preferences, subjects free-ride less when they serve as trustees. They also more frequently conditionally contribute amounts greater than the unconditional contributions of other trustees in the group, while also unconditionally contributing more than they expect from others.
The Rise and Fall of Discipline: Economic Globalization, Administrative Reform, and the Financial Crisis

Throughout the era of economic liberalization (1978–2007), a significant amount of governmental power was transferred to technocrat-guardians who were carefully buffered from elected officials. Democratic processes, it was said, had to be disciplined through such reforms if nations were to thrive in a globalized economy. This way of thinking about reform was already under assault before the financial crisis, and it was even more widely questioned during the crisis, as critics doubted the quality of technocratic decision making. This mode of reform—characterized as a “logic of discipline”—will survive the crisis, but it is unlikely to have the influence that it enjoyed during the era of liberalization.
What’s New in the Network Neutrality Debate

INTRODUCTION 739 I. CONVERGING TECHNOLOGIES AND MARKETS ADD NEW CHALLENGES 743 A. Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Safeguards 745 B. Can the Internet Ecosystem Self-Regulate? 746 1. CDN-Retail ISP Conflicts 754 2. Recurring Litigation and Uncertainty 757 II. CURRENT STRESS POINTS AND DISPUTES 764 A. Internet Protocol Television and OTT Applications Trigger Vast Increases in Downstream Traffic 766 B. Increasing Content and Delivery Costs Result in More Interconnection and Compensation Disputes and Creative Solutions 768 C. Scope and Timetable for FCC Remedies Under § 706 of the Communications Act 771 D. New Disruptors 775 1. Aereo and Questions About Cloud-Based Content Access 776 2. Other Types of Disintermediation 783 III. IS THERE A WAY FORWARD? 785
FROM SUEZ TO TEQUILA: THE IMF AS CRISIS MANAGER*

The IMF was established in 1944 in part to ‘give confidence to members by making [its] resources ... available to them under adequate safeguards.’ Although the intention was that the availability of the Fund's resources should prevent financial crises, in practice the institution often has found itself helping countries cope with crises after they occur. This paper examines how the role of the IMF as crisis manager has evolved, from its earliest loans to the exchange crisis that hit Mexico in December 1994. It argues that the defining moment for this role was the international debt crisis of 1982.
Covert Costs of Privatization: Lessons from the Closure of Three Public Chronic Care Hospitals in Massachusetts

This article analyzes the process of applying cost/benefit analysis to decisions about privatizing public services. This process is examined in the context of a decision by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to save costs by closing three of its seven public chronic hospitals. A postaudit of the outcomes from the closure showed that the realized cost savings were less than those projected in the original proposal. This shortfall could be traced to a failure to include certain relevant costs in the original proposal. Based on the findings, the article concludes with a discussion of policy recommendations for better analyses of similar decisions.
Competitive Strategy for Open Source Software

Commercial open source software (COSS) products---privately developed software based on publicly available source code---represent a rapidly growing, multibillion-dollar market. A unique aspect of competition in the COSS market is that many open source licenses require firms to make certain enhancements public, creating an incentive for firms to free ride on the contributions of others. This practice raises a number of puzzling issues. First, why should a firm further develop a product if competitors can freely appropriate these contributions? Second, how does a market based on free riding produce high-quality products? Third, from a public policy perspective, does the mandatory sharing of enhancements raise or lower consumer surplus and industry profits? We develop a two-sided model of competition between COSS firms to address these issues. Our model consists of (1) two firms competing in a vertically differentiated market, in which product quality is a mix of public and private components, and (2) a market for developers that firms hire after observing signals of their contributions to open source. We demonstrate that free-riding behavior is supported in equilibrium, that a mandatory sharing setting can result in high-quality products, and that free riding can actually increase profits and consumer surplus.
MINDING MORE THAN OUR OWN BUSINESS: EDUCATING ENTREPRENEURIAL LAWYERS THROUGH LAW SCHOOL-BUSINESS SCHOOL COLLABORATIONS

Business clients often view lawyers as obstructionists who do little more than tell them they cannot do what they want to do. These perceptions are particularly prevalent among creative, energetic entrepreneurs who have crafted an innovative product or service to satisfy a market need and are anxious to commercialize their inventions. The most effective business lawyers understand that they must do more than report impediments. They recognize the need to consider the client's underlying goals and business plans and, when they identify a legal obstacle, to be prepared to suggest and explore reasonable alternatives that can be accomplished in compliance with the law. This article reports on developments in the education of business-oriented law students that have occurred in recent years at several U.S. law schools, explores law school-business school collaborations in particular, and offers suggestions that might be of value to others seeking to use interdisciplinary initiatives to augment the training of students desirous of becoming effective business lawyers. It identifies obstacles to law school involvement in interdisciplinary collaboration and discusses course offerings at schools that have overcome these obstacles in implementing innovative programs in both regular classroom and clinical curricula. Finally, the article presents a case study of efforts to develop a comprehensive Entrepreneurial Lawyering Program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, with special focus on a law school-business school collaborative course in Entrepreneurship & New Venture Creation which involves team teaching to law students, MBA students and engineering students. The article concludes that the benefits to faculty and students of this type of collaboration far outweigh the costs of addressing the associated challenges.
Buried Treasure or Buried Hope? The Status of Mexico-U.S. Transboundary Aquifers under International Law

Transboundary aquifers found along the 2,000 mile-long border between Mexico and the United States are not governed by any treaty. Yet, these aquifers are the primary source of water for many of the twelve million people who live in this parched region. The region’s groundwater, however, is being overexploited and contaminated, which is threatening the very life that it currently sustains. As populations continue to expand and current rates of haphazard development persist, the absence of an agreement for the management and allocation of this critical resource could lead to bi-national economic, social and environmental tragedies. This study reviews groundwater resources along the Mexico-United States border and considers the obstacles to the development of an international agreement. It also looks at existing sources of law at the local, regional, national, and international levels of governance. The article offers recommendations that may lead to an amicable arrangement between the two nations.
Social protection in Europe: A European trade union perspective

Governments and social partners in the European Union (EU) look for ways and means to adapt welfare systems to new needs, to keep expenditure under control, and to find alternative and supplementary financial resources in order to cope with future financial commitments. The EU is actively involved in the search for solutions to these common problems. It becomes more and more evident that only an active economic, budgetary, taxation and social policy mix can provide a solid base for safeguarding social systems. The author presents the most recent figures relating to actual and future social protection expenditure in the EU, disaggregated according to function and showing significant differences between gross and net figures. Attention is also paid to coverage and replacement rates of social benefits and to the availability of social infrastructures. The article then shows the shifts in implicit tax rates on labour in comparison with the rate on other factors. The conclusion outlines a European trade union view on the future of social protection in Europe and suggests possible issues for social benchmarking.
Energy Star: A Competitive Advantage?

Voluntary government programs such as ENERGY STAR have been created to promote energy efficiency within different organizations and businesses, and this study is dedicated to discovering whether or not businesses that become certified building partners with ENERGY STAR obtain a competitive advantage. Through two different methods of analysis, an observational analysis and a test of means, data on profitability ratios from twenty-five ENERGY STAR partners are examined to determine if partnering with ENERGY STAR results in a competitive advantage.
EXPRES. II. Searching for Planets around Active Stars: A Case Study of HD 101501

By controlling instrumental errors to below 10 cm/s, the EXtreme PREcision Spectrograph (EXPRES) allows for a more insightful study of photospheric velocities that can mask weak Keplerian signals. Gaussian Processes (GP) have become a standard tool for modeling correlated noise in radial velocity datasets. While GPs are constrained and motivated by physical properties of the star, in some cases they are still flexible enough to absorb unresolved Keplerian signals. We apply GP regression to EXPRES radial velocity measurements of the 3.5 Gyr old chromospherically active Sun-like star, HD 101501. We obtain tight constraints on the stellar rotation period and the evolution of spot distributions using 28 seasons of ground-based photometry, as well as recent $TESS$ data. Light curve inversion was carried out on both photometry datasets to reveal the spot distribution and spot evolution timescales on the star. We find that the $> 5$ m/s rms radial velocity variations in HD 101501 are well-modeled with a GP stellar activity model without planets, yielding a residual rms scatter of 45 cm/s. We carry out simulations, injecting and recovering signals with the GP framework, to demonstrate that high-cadence observations are required to use GPs most efficiently to detect low-mass planets around active stars like HD 101501. Sparse sampling prevents GPs from learning the correlated noise structure and can allow it to absorb prospective Keplerian signals. We quantify the moderate to high-cadence monitoring that provides the necessary information to disentangle photospheric features using GPs and to detect planets around active stars.
Can advanced markets help diversify risks in frontier stock markets? Evidence from Gulf Arab stock markets

Abstract This study examines global diversification benefits from the perspective of local investors in the frontier markets in the Gulf Cooperation Council using two diversification measures: the correlation index and return dispersion. The findings suggest a strong link between market volatility and both diversification measures in all markets, with the exception of Bahrain, indicating that investors in these frontier markets will face significant challenges achieving desired levels of diversification using domestic stocks only. However, I also find that significant amount of market risk in these countries can be eliminated by supplementing domestic portfolios with positions in advanced markets. Finally, I show that risk minimization strategies using foreign traded assets also lead to favorable risk adjusted returns for investors in these markets, stressing the potential benefits of financial liberalization in developing markets.
Government Policies toward Information and Communication Technologies: A Historical Perspective

The development of what one might call ‘modern’ systems of information and communication began with the Gutenberg printing press in the fifteenth century, and progressed through the pre-paid postal...
Why Protect Private Arms Possession? Nine Theories of the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Until recently, federal courts adopted a "collective-right" interpretation of the Amendment. According to this interpretation, the Second Amendment's scope is limited by its prefatory clause: the people have a right to bear arms only insofar as it contributes to a "well regulated Militia." Furthermore, the term "Militia" refers to organized state militias, whose only modern equivalent is the National Guard. Under the collective-right interpretation, the Second Amendment protects the interests of state governments, not individuals. For this reason, only regulations of firearms that impair states' abilities to arm their militias can be unconstitutional. No challenged regulation has ever come close to this threshold.
Reciprocity and Reasonable Disagreement: From Liberal to Democratic Legitimacy

At the center of Rawls’s work post-1980 is the question of how legitimate coercive state action is possible in a liberal democracy under conditions of reasonable disagreement. And at the heart of Rawls’s answer to this question is his liberal principle of legitimacy. In this paper I argue that once we attend carefully to the depth and range of reasonable disagreement, Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy turns out to be either wildly utopian or simply toothless, depending on how one reads the ideal of reciprocity it is meant to embody. To remedy this defect in Rawls’s theory, I␣undertake to develop the outlines of a democratic conception of legitimacy, drawing first on Rawls’s generic conception of legitimacy in The Law of Peoples and second on a revised understanding of reciprocity between free and equal citizens. On this revised understanding, what free and equal citizens owe one another is not reciprocity in judgment, but reciprocity of interests.
What (if anything) is Wrong With Human Enhancement? What (if anything) is Right with It?

Should human enhancement be prohibited? Subsidized? Mandated? Taxed? This article is part of a symposium honoring one of my wonderful mentors: Einer Elhauge. It focuses on human enhancement. With advances in reproductive technologies, genetic screening, and concomitant calls for regulation of these things in America the time for discussing these issues has never been better.Part I offers a reconstructive taxonomy as to different kinds of enhancements, including incorporating one distinction (as to absolute and positional goods and positive and negative externalities) that has been the focus of Elhauge’s own thinking. That said, one leitmotif of this Part is that “enhancement” as a category may not be particularly useful, especially if we accept there are not morally relevant differences in the biological vs. non-biological and treatment vs. enhancement distinctions, such that something like tutoring falls into the category of “enhancement.” Part II offers a taxonomy of legal/regulatory interventions. Part III attempts to sketch and interrogate the major arguments offered against human enhancement, including by mapping these arguments onto the taxonomies developed in Parts I and II and showing to which kinds of enhancements they apply and what kinds of legal/regulatory interventions can accommodate some of the concerns they raise. Finally, Part IV focuses on a question that has received surprisingly scant attention: why enhancement is sought. I will argue that one key reason offered for enhancement, to improve the life of the enhanced in the case of enhancement through reproduction, cannot be sustained for reasons that mirror points I have made elsewhere on the opposite issue, the justification for preventing parents from reproducing in ways that “harm” their offspring.
Phasing out the GSEs

We develop a new model of the mortgage market where both borrowers and lenders can default. Risk tolerant savers act as intermediaries between risk averse depositors and impatient borrowers. The government plays a crucial role by providing both mortgage guarantees and deposit insurance. Underpriced government mortgage guarantees lead to more and riskier mortgage originations as well as to high financial sector leverage. Mortgage crises occasionally turn into financial crises and government bailouts due to the fragility of the intermediaries’ balance sheets. Increasing the price of the mortgage guarantee “crowds in” the private sector, reduces financial fragility, leads to fewer but safer mortgages, lowers house prices, and raises mortgage and risk-free interest rates. Due to a more robust financial sector, consumption smoothing improves and aggregate welfare increases. While borrowers are nearly indifferent to a world with or without mortgage guarantees, savers are substantially better off. While aggregate welfare increases, so does wealth inequality. JEL: G12, G15, F31.
Dual Agency Representation: Incentive Conflicts or Efficiencies?

This study is the first to examine dual agency sales over the listing contract between seller and listing agent. We test hypotheses about the timing of dual agency and its effects on sales price an...
A BIT goes a long way: Bilateral investment treaties and cross-border mergers

Abstract We examine whether bilateral investment treaties (BITs), an external governance mechanism, stimulate cross-border mergers by protecting the property rights of foreign acquirers. Exploiting the staggered adoption and bilateral nature of the treaties, we find that BITs have a large positive effect on cross-border mergers. The probability and dollar volume of mergers between two given countries more than doubles after the signing of a BIT. The increase is driven by deals flowing from developed economies to developing economies and is concentrated in target countries with medium levels of political risk. The results suggest BITs are effective in expanding the global market for corporate control, particularly in the developing world.
Using Simulation to Study, Design and Invent Organizations

Over the past 50 years, computational modeling and simulation have had enormous impact on the advancement of knowledge in fields such as physics, chemistry, and subsequently, biology. After simulation models had been validated in these fields, they were rapidly adopted as powerful new tools to enhance and extend engineering practice. Might social science and management practice be following a similar trajectory? This article argues that progressively validated, calibrated, and refined computational simulation models of organizations are rapidly evolving into: (a) powerful new kinds of organizational analysis tools to support organization design by predicting the performance of specific organizational configurations for a given task and environment; (b) flexible new kinds of organizational theorem provers for validating extant organization theory and developing new theory; and (c) organizational test benches that can be used to explore the efficacy of hypothetical organizational configurations that can address the unprecedented demands of new and emerging work processes in the presence of high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity.
Innovation Strategies Under Uncertain Regulatory Circumstances: Argentinean ICT MSMEs

The purpose of this article is to identify the business strategies of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the telecommunications sector in Argentina, considering the economic and technical uncertainties and the regulatory constraints they face. We focus on MSMEs because, even though these small businesses provide critical access to infrastructure in remote communities, there is little research about them. Departing from Michael Porter’s identification of strategies, we find that economic and political uncertainties lead to significant differences in strategies. Through content analysis of company interviews, we were able to identify strategies that prevail under suboptimal regulatory conditions. These are 1) survival, 2) slow modernization, 3) infrastructure capitalization, and 4) diversification and customization. We find that these are reactive and suboptimal business strategies that impede companies’ growth and constrain them to vulnerable niche markets.
Bank liquidity regulation and the lender of last resort

Abstract Banks can make suboptimal liquidity choices and gamble for lender of last resort (LOLR) support. Endogenous bailout rents are driven by the need to preserve bankers' incentives under uncertain net worth. In equilibrium, banks can herd in risk management, choosing suboptimal liquidity when they expect others to do so. Optimal liquidity can be restored by quantitative requirements, but such regulation is costly. An LOLR policy incorporating bank capital information can reduce distorting rents and allow for a more efficient solution, but may only be possible in transparent economies.
The Impact of Materiality Decisions on Financial Ratios: A Computer Simulation:

This study examines the extent to which immaterial uncorrected errors may combine to affect specific financial ratios. A simulation is performed in which three balance sheet accounts and three related income statement accounts are seeded with immaterial errors. The magnitudes of the errors are controlled so the financial statement account balances are materially correct both individually and in the aggregate. The study examines six materiality heuristics for each of three industry classifications and three different error distribution patterns. For each heuristic/industry combination and error distribution pattern, a 95 percent confidence interval is generated for nine financial ratios.Results indicate that immaterial errors may combine to create substantial variances in some ratios. Profitability ratios based on income statement accounts display wide confidence intervals, while solvency ratios based on balance sheet accounts display relatively narrow intervals. Comparison between a standard normal distri...
Pragmatism, Feminism, and the Problem of Bad Coherence

Professor Radin' bases Reinterpreting Property on her wellknown and justly admired articles on property law and theory. It is a rich repository of original insight, lucid analysis, and sharp debate. None of the essays that it includes is entirely new.2 What is new is a long and substantive introduction that analyzes her ten-year project on property law in terms of the insights and methodological commitments of philosophical pragmatism (pp. 1-34). This manner of developing a theory beginning with substantive positions and only later articulating the method that spawns them is a very pragmatic and remarkably useful way to proceed. Radin begins with the struggle to say something useful about standard issues in property law. As she pursues this project, she begins to reflect on the nature of the method and techniques she is using. These reflections are themselves very interesting and provocative both as they shed light on the nature of Radin's own contributions to property law and as an independent contribution to the more philosophical literature on legal method.
Trade Secret Fair Use

Trade secret law arose to help companies protect confidential information (e.g., the Coca-Cola formula) from competitors seeking to copy their innovative efforts. But companies increasingly use trade secret law to block a wide swath of information from the scrutinizing eyes of consumers, public watchdog groups, and potential improvers. Companies can do this, in part, because trade secret law lacks clear limiting doctrines that consider the social benefits of unauthorized use. For example, trade secret law makes no allowance for the departing employee that uses proprietary information to create a substantially improved product or disclose public health risks. This Article argues that trade secret law’s indifference to the social benefits of unauthorized use stands in contrast to other intellectual property doctrines, like patent and copyright. Copyright law incorporates the affirmative defense of “fair use,” which aims to protect a variety of unauthorized but socially beneficial uses of another’s copyrighted work (e.g., educational uses). To a lesser extent, patent law’s reverse doctrine of equivalents and remedies analysis direct courts to consider the social benefits of a defendant’s technological improvement. Such limiting doctrines act as safety valves to reconcile intellectual property rights with competing cumulative innovation and First Amendment interests. This Article demonstrates the merits of a similar safety valve in trade secret law and argues that courts should adopt a multi-factor “trade secret fair use” analysis to better address these competing concerns.
Accounting Conservatism and the Efficiency of Debt Contracts

In this paper we examine how accounting conservatism affects the efficiency of debt contracting. We develop the statistical and informational properties of accounting reports under varying degrees of conditional and unconditional accounting conservatism, consistent with Basu's [1997] description of differ ential verifiability standards. Optimal debt covenants and interest rates on debt are derived from a natural tension between debt holders and equity claimants. We show how optimal covenants vary with the degree of conservatism and de rive an efficiency metric that depends on the degree of conservatism. We find that accounting conservatism actually decreases the efficiency of debt contracts, contrary to the suggestions of Watts [2003] and contrary to the hypothesis in numerous empirical studies.
Sequential innovation, patents, and imitation

How could such industries as software, semiconductors, and computers have been so innovative despite historically weak patent protection? We argue that if innovation is both sequential and complementary—as it certainly has been in those industries—competition can increase firms' future profits thus offsetting short-term dissipation of rents. A simple model also shows that in such a dynamic industry, patent protection may reduce overall innovation and social welfare. The natural experiment that occurred when patent protection was extended to software in the 1980's provides a test of this model. Standard arguments would predict that R&D intensity and productivity should have increased among patenting firms. Consistent with our model, however, these increases did not occur. Other evidence supporting our model includes a distinctive pattern of cross-licensing in these industries and a positive relationship between rates of innovation and firm entry.
Not Quite "Them", Not Quite "Us": Why it's Difficult for Former Deans to Go Home Again

N an earlier issue of this annual symposium, I wrote about my swift transition from faculty colleague to administrator. Now, after eight years as a dean—two years at the University of Nebraska College of Law and six years at the University of Houston Law Center—I’m returning to my roots as a law professor. I’ve been an academic since 1991, but what with having been an associate dean as well as a dean twice over, I’ve worked in administration for ten out of the last sixteen years. It’s time to go home. And yet I can’t truly go home again. I’ve learned too many things about myself and about the relationship between a faculty and its administration to resume my pre-administrator mindset. The lessons that I learned as a dean have changed me in some fundamental ways. I’m not one of “them” (an administrator) anymore. But I also can’t be among those of “us” (professors) who view shared governance either as a nuisance that gets in the way of their teaching and research or as an entitlement to ride their particular hobbyhorses in public. I’m returning to a very specific category of colleagues: those who were always there when the dean needed them, happy (or at least content) to pitch in when needed—those who understood that the best institution was a shared enterprise, rather than a loose collection of independent contractors. I’ve seen
Regulation and financial disclosure: The impact of plain English

In October 1998, the SEC implemented a rule requiring firms to use plain English in their prospectus filings. In addition to the rule, the SEC encouraged the use of plain English in all filings and communication with shareholders. Did the SEC rule significantly impact managers’ disclosure style? And, more interestingly, did the SEC’s recommendations lead managers to change their disclosure style in filings not under the plain English mandate? Our textual analysis of Form 424, IPO prospectus, and 10-K filings over 1994–2009 finds that the SEC’s implementation of the plain English rule substantively impacted managerial behavior. When we focus on 10-K filings, we find that after the 1998 rule, firms are more likely to improve the stylistic components of their filing before an equity issuance and firms with better corporate governance policies are more likely to comply with the rule.
Financial policies and the prevention of financial crises in emerging market economies

The author defines a financial crisis as a disruption in financial markets in which adverse selection and moral hazard problems become much worse, so that financial markets are unable to efficiently channel funds to those who have the most productive investment opportunities. As financial markets become unable to function efficiently, economic activity sharply contracts. Factors that promote financial crises include, mainly, a deterioration in financial sector balance sheets, increases in interest rates and in uncertainty, and deterioration in nonfinancial balance sheets because of changes in asset prices. Financial policies in 12 areas could help make financial crises less likely in emerging market economies, says the author. He discusses: Prudential supervision. Accounting and disclosure requirements. Legal and judicial systems. Market-based discipline. Entry of foreign banks. Capital controls. Reduction of the role of state-owned financial institutions. Restrictions on foreign-dominated debt. The elimination of too-big-to-fail practices in the corporate sector. The proper sequencing of financial liberalization. Monetary policy and price stability. Exchange rate regimes and foreign exchange reserves. If the political will to adopt sound policies in these areas grows in emerging market economies, their financial systems should become healthier, with substantial gains both from greater economic growth and smaller economic fluctuations.
Loan loss reporting, early disclosure, and investor reactions

Several prior studies present evidence that bank loan-loss announcements have a significant impact on shareholder wealth. There is no satisfactory explanation, however, as to why these announcements should change share prices. This paper examines loan-loss announcements in the context of the early disclosure literature. We find banks that publicly announce losses before releasing their quarterly earnings report have a significant increase in shareholder wealth following the loan-loss announcement. Banks that choose to publicly announce loan-loss increases with the release of quarterly-earnings report experience a significant decrease in shareholder wealth prior to the loan-loss announcement. Our results support the notion that the timing of the loan-loss announcement provides information to investors.
Longstanding Agency Interpretations

How much deference — or what kind — should courts give to longstanding agency interpretations of statutes? Surprisingly, courts and scholars lack a coherent answer to this question. Legal scholars long have assumed that longstanding agency statutory interpretations are treated with heightened deference on judicial review, and federal courts sometimes have made statements suggesting that this is the case. But in practice, federal court review of longstanding agency interpretations — at both the Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court levels — turns out to be surprisingly erratic. Reviewing courts sometimes note the longevity of an agency’s statutory interpretation as a plus factor in their deference analysis, but at other times completely ignore or dismiss an agency interpretation’s longevity. Moreover, judicial rhetoric about the relevance of longevity in the review of agency statutory interpretations is inconsistent from case to case. What makes this doctrinal incoherence particularly remarkable is that courts usually care much more about the predictability of statutory interpretations and about upsetting settled institutional practices. In fact, in two analogous contexts — judicial interpretations of statutes and historical executive branch practice in the constitutional arena — courts accord strong precedential effect, or a presumption of correctness, to established legal constructions. This Article provides the first detailed study of federal court treatment of longstanding agency statutory interpretations — illuminating doctrinal inconsistencies and examining longevity-related factors that both favor and disfavor deference. The Article also compares federal courts’ chaotic treatment of longstanding agency statutory interpretations with the precedential effect that courts give to longstanding judicial interpretations of statutes and the historical “gloss” effect that courts give to past executive practice in constitutional interpretation. Ultimately, the Article argues that longstanding agency interpretations of statutes are at least as deserving of heightened judicial deference and that, at a minimum, federal courts’ disparate treatment of such interpretations — without acknowledging or justifying the distinction — is troubling. The Article advocates that longstanding agency interpretations should be entitled to precedential effect by reviewing courts and outlines how such an approach might work.
Strategy or Process - Closing the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda

Critique of international political approach to winding down the ad hoc international criminal tribunals.
An empirical examination of Austrian business cycle theory

A ustrian capital theory (Mises 1949, 1980, 1998; Hayek 1931; subsequently developed by Hayek 1941, 1996, 1969) is used to construct and interpret a vector error-correction model estimated with U.S. macroeconomic data. Using 1959-2003 monthly data, the relationship between Yeal consumable output and the interest rate term spread is examined. The term spread used is the ten-year constant maturity Treasury bond rate minus the three-month l reasury bill secondary market rate. This spread is often used as a measure of the real interest rate (Kceler 2001). When the term spread decreases, the structure of production becomes less roundabout as entrepreneurial managers reallocate resources away from producers' goods toward consumers' goods. Whenever interest rates rise, higher rates of return in production are necessary to compete with financial instruments, such as relatively higher-yielding government bonds. This is manifested in a shifting of resources away from early stages of production to later stages, and can be shown as a shortening of the base of the Hayekian triangle (Figure 1) (Hayek 1931, p. 39). This paper explicitly tests the main assertion of Austrian business cycle theory, that lowering the interest rate below sustainable market levels raises real consumable
The Inexorable and Mysterious Tradeoff Between Inflation and Unemployment

This paper discusses the short-run tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. Although this tradeoff remains a necessary building block of business cycle theory, economists have yet to provide a completely satisfactory explanation for it. According to the consensus view among central bankers and monetary economists, a contractionary monetary shock raises unemployment, at least temporarily, and leads to a delayed and gradual fall in inflation. Standard dynamic models of price adjustment, however, cannot explain this pattern of responses. Reconciling the consensus view about the effects of monetary policy with models of price adjustment remains an outstanding puzzle for business cycle theorists. Several years ago I gave myself a peculiar assignment: I decided to try to summarise all of economics in ten simply stated principles. The purpose of this task was to introduce students to the economic way of thinking in the first chapter of my textbook Principles of Economics. I figured if God could boil all of moral philosophy down to ten commandments, I should be able to do much the same with economic science. Most of the ten principles I chose were microeconomic and hard to argue with. They involved the importance of tradeoffs, marginal analysis, the benefits of trade, market efficiency, market failure, and so on. I allocated the last three principles to macroeconomics. The first of these was 'A country's standard of living depends on its ability to produce goods and services', which I viewed as the foundation of all growth theory. The second was, 'Prices rise when the government prints too much money', which I took to be the essence of classical monetary theory. The last of my ten principles is the subject of today's lecture: 'Society faces a short-run tradeoff between inflation and unemployment'. Perhaps not surprisingly, this statement turned out to be controversial. When my publisher sent out the manuscript for review, a few readers objected
Plantation Lullabies: How Fourth Amendment Policing Violates the Fourteenth Amendment Right of African Americans to Parent

This right to raise children with healthy self-esteem is a sacred right of parenthood. This right especially matters for African-American parents because they must raise children with healthy self-esteem and a willingness to resist injustice in a world in which numerous micro-aggressions repeatedly broadcast messages of black inferiority and impotence. Parents have no guarantee that they can successfully rebut these messages. When African-American children are harassed by race-based policing or see their parents so harassed, however, such state reinforcement of an oppressive symbolic universe is just what happens, leaving both parent and child obviously impotent to resist. Under such circumstances, therefore, the fundamental right to parent is breached. This Article argues that, ideally, these harmful symbolic impacts should render race-based and related abusive forms of policing "unreasonable" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, but recognizes that that result is unlikely to obtain under current case law. Consequently, the Article counsels relying on a freestanding Fourteenth Amendment claim for invasion of the fundamental right to parent, discussing Jackson v. Griffin, in which African-American parents have made just such a claim in a Section 1983 civil rights suit against the police, in which the parents there were "made powerless to protect their son from wrongful, discriminatory conduct" inflicted by the police. Although the suit does not thoroughly develop the history and theory underlying the claim in the way that the Article does, the suit demonstrates the practical application of the Article’s novel approach.
Subclinical hypothyroidism in coronary bypass surgery: Clinically significant? Or subclinical after all?

In this issue, Zhao et al. investigate the effects of subclinical hypothyroidism in coronary bypass grafting particularly with respect to the incidence of atrial fibrillation. While not the first of its kind, the authors analyze this controversial topic in a well powered, statistically comprehensive manner that furthers our understanding of the effects of SCH in CABG patients.
Optimal and Quantized Mechanism Design for Fresh Data Acquisition

The proliferation of real-time applications has spurred much interest in data freshness, captured by the age-of-information (AoI) metric. When strategic data sources have private market information, a fundamental economic challenge is how to incentivize them to acquire fresh data and optimize the age-related performance. In this work, we consider an information update system in which a destination acquires, and pays for, fresh data updates from multiple sources. The destination incurs an age-related cost, modeled as a general increasing function of the AoI. Each source is strategic and incurs a sampling cost, which is its private information and may not be truthfully reported to the destination. The destination decides on the price of updates, when to get them, and who should generate them, based on the sources’ reported sampling costs. We show that a benchmark that naively trusts the sources’ reports can lead to an arbitrarily bad outcome compared to the case where sources truthfully report. To tackle this issue, we design an optimal (economic) mechanism for timely information acquisition following Myerson’s seminal work. To this end, our proposed optimal mechanism minimizes the sum of the destination’s age-related cost and its payment to the sources, while ensuring that the sources truthfully report their private information and will voluntarily participate in the mechanism. However, finding the optimal mechanisms may suffer from prohibitively expensive computational overheads as it involves solving a nonlinear infinite-dimensional optimization problem. We further propose a quantized version of the optimal mechanism that achieves asymptotic optimality, maintains the other economic properties, and enables one to tradeoff between optimality and computational overheads. Our analytical and numerical studies show that (i) both the optimal and quantized mechanisms can lead to an unbounded benefit under some distributions of the source costs compared against a benchmark; (ii) the optimal and quantized mechanisms are most beneficial when there are few sources with heterogeneous sampling costs.