cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Elder abuse detection in nursing facilities: using paid clinical competence to address the nation's shame.

Each year, five million senior citizens are the victims of abuse in our country-and that figure is a likely underestimate. In California alone, it is estimated that over 225,000 seniors are abused annually. Nursing home residents are particularly vulnerable to abuse, with one-fifth to one-third of these institutions cited for abusive activities that result in actual harm. Regular violations of minimum care regulations by nursing homes have been documented in every state. Despite legal protections, as a practical matter, the review, assessment, and investigation of nursing home care and potential senior abuse is the primary responsibility of voluntary ombudsmen. These volunteers are responsible for regular visits and determination of nursing home quality and resident treatment. This Article contends that, despite their commitment to the cause, voluntary ombudsmen are not a sufficient cure for the scourge of elder abuse. Rather, clinically-trained personnel with legal knowledge must assume the role that lay volunteer ombudsmen are inappropriately expected to play. Use of clinical case managers, who have expertise in assessing clinical factors and can be trained in legal matters, offers significant potential to assist in the detection, and, further, reporting and prosecution of elder abuse. The author concludes that only through use of those with appropriate training and knowledge can the epidemic of elder abuse be effectively addressed. Language: en
A TIME SERIES TEST OF INNOVATION‐DRIVEN ENDOGENOUS GROWTH

This article finds evidence that ideas and innovation are a key force explaining postwar growth in the U.S. economy. Utilizing data on patents issued since 1851, I construct a measure of the growth rate of knowledge. Capital stock estimates, human capital estimates, and real gross domestic product per worker growth rates are combined with the knowledge growth series to construct a time series test of endogenous innovation growth models. The results support the endogenous innovation approach but suggest that the accumulation of the per worker capital stock and changes in average human capital per worker are at least as important. (JEL 030, C32)
Research needs in forecasting

Abstract The demand for research on forecasting is strong. This conclusion is based on the high number of citations to papers published about research on forecasting, and upon the number of subscriptions for journals devoted to forecasting. The supply of research papers is also large, following a rapid growth in the 1960s and 1970s. This research has produced important findings. Despite this, a comparison of published research versus the needs expressed in two surveys of academics and practitioners showed that numerous gaps still exist. A review of the literature also supported this conclusion that the research being produced does not match up well against the research desired. Suggestions are made as to what research is needed and how it should be conducted.
Toward a Theory of a Right to Health: Capability and Incompletely Theorized Agreements.

One would be hard pressed to find a more controversial or nebulous human right than the “right to health”—a right that stems primarily, although not exclusively, from Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and requires governments to recognize “the right of everyone to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”1 While activists, nongovernmental organizations, and scholars have made significant progress in promoting a human rights approach to health and the field of health and human rights more generally,2 the question of a philosophical and conceptual foundation—a theory—for the right to health has fallen through the cracks that emerge from an interdisciplinary intersection of medical ethics, international relations, international human rights law,
On the Productivity of Public Forests: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis of Mississippi School Trust Timber Production

This paper presents the results of a stochastic frontier analysis on the technical efficiency of school trust timber production in Mississippi. The state of Mississippi has a 200-year history of managing public trust lands designated to generate funds for public schools. Local school boards became the trustees of sixteenth section lands in the 1970s and have since supervised substantial increases in timber receipts. The majority of the timber management services are contracted to the Mississippi Forestry Commission (MFC)—a state agency responsible for, among other things, overseeing sixteenth section timber management. The school districts and the MFC are legally required to maximize revenue from these lands. However, school districts are also legally permitted to outsource forestry services to private vendors and do so on a regular basis by recommendation from the MFC. This paper finds that the average technical efficiency of the sixteenth section lands is 46%, and there is a positive and statistically significant increase in total timber receipts when a higher proportion of management services are outsourced. Le present article presente les resultats d'une analyse frontiere stochastique de l'efficacite technique de la production de matieres ligneuses sur les lots reserves aux ecoles publiques dans l'Etat du Mississippi. Cet Etat possede deux cents ans d'histoire en gestion de terres publiques destinees au financement des ecoles publiques. Les conseils scolaires locaux sont devenus les administrateurs des lots numero 16 dans les annees 1970 et gerent depuis des augmentations substantielles de revenus tires de la foret. La majorite des services de gestion des matieres ligneuses sont confies a la Mississippi Forestry Commission (MFC), agence d'Etat chargee, entre autres, de la gestion de la matiere ligneuse des lots numero 16. Les arrondissements scolaires et la MFC sont legalement tenus de maximiser les revenus de ces lots. Les arrondissements scolaires peuvent, en vertu de la loi, confier les services forestiers a des entreprises privees, ce qu'ils font regulierement sur recommandation de la MFC. Les resultats du present article ont montre une efficacite technique moyenne des lots numero 16 de 46% et une augmentation statistiquement significative et positive des revenus totaux tires de la foret lorsqu'une grande partie des services de gestion etaient impartis.
Roberts, Kennedy, and the Subtle Differences that Matter in Obergefell

By upholding a nationwide right to marry for same-sex couples in Obergefell v. Hodges,1 the Supreme Court’s enormously significant decision resolves a major civil rights question that has percolated through our legal system and coursed through our culture for some time. The ruling was not an unforeseen outcome, but it brings welcome clarity by ensuring marriage rights for same-sex couples throughout all fifty states. Building on United States v. Windsor2—a 2013 decision striking down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prevented gay and lesbian married couples from receiving federal benefits—Obergefell is an important and fitting capstone to prior cases about the constitutional rights of samesex couples.3 Obergefell and Windsor feature an especially vibrant debate between Justice Kennedy and Chief Justice Roberts, two Justices whose overlapping judicial philosophies lead them to agree on most legal outcomes.4 Both Justices value respectfulness of political process, yet both are, as a matter of principle, prepared to intercede when there are especially strong reasons for doing so. Both Justices are largely committed to the views of the more traditionally conservative wing of the Court, yet both have been willing to move to the middle to preserve certain democracy-reinforcing values, as witnessed by their mutual votes in the 2014–2015 Term to uphold portions of the Affordable Care Act in King v. Burwell.5
Distinguishing Between Rationales for Short‐Horizon Predictability of Stock Returns

In this paper, we shed light on short-horizon return reversals. We show theoretically that a risk-based rationale for reversals implies a relation between returns and past order flow, whereas a reversion in beliefs of biased agents does not do so. The empirical results indicate that returns are more strongly related to own-return lags than to lagged order imbalances. Thus, the evidence suggests that monthly reversals are not completely captured by inventory effects and may be driven, in part, by belief reversion. We do find that returns are cross-sectionally related to lagged imbalance innovations at horizons longer than a month.
Top VC IPO underpricing

Abstract Before the IPO bubble burst, the first day return for IPOs backed by top VC firms was double that of non-top VC IPOs. Top VC IPOs were also twice as likely to receive all-star analyst coverage and suffered twice as large negative returns upon lockup expiration. We argue that this was not a coincidence. Underwriters benefited from underpricing vis-a-vis allocation strategies whereas VCs gain from information momentum which allows them to cash-out at higher prices at lockup expiration. All-stars are a scarce resource underwriters allocate to their best clients (top VCs) who bring them repeat business. Post-bubble, regulatory shocks restricted preferential IPO allocations and reduced the value of all-star coverage. Consequently, these relations disappeared indicating that regulatory changes likely had the desired effect.
The impact of prenatal exposure to cocaine on newborn costs and length of stay.

OBJECTIVE: Our intention is to determine newborn costs and lengths of stay attributable to prenatal exposure to cocaine and other illicit drugs. DATA SOURCES AND STUDY SETTING: All parturients who delivered at a large municipal hospital in New York City between November 18, 1991 and April 11, 1992. STUDY DESIGN: A cross-sectional analysis used multivariate, loglinear regressions to analyze differences in costs and length of stay between infants exposed and unexposed prenatally to cocaine and other illicit drugs, adjusting for maternal race, age, prenatal care, tobacco, parity, type of delivery, birth weight, prematurity, and newborn infection. DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION METHODS: Urine specimens, with linked obstetric sheets and discharge abstracts, provided information on exposure, prenatal behaviors, costs, length of stay, and discharge disposition. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Infants exposed to cocaine or some other illicit drug stay approximately seven days longer at a cost of $7,731 more than infants unexposed. Approximately 60 percent of these costs are indirect, the result of adverse birth outcomes and newborn infection. Hospital screening as recorded on discharge abstracts substantially underestimates prevalence at delivery, but overestimates its impact on costs.
The performance of banks around the receipt and repayment of TARP funds: Over-achievers versus under-achievers

Abstract In this paper, we look at how the pre-crisis health of banks is related to the probability of receiving and repaying TARP capital. We find that financial performance characteristics that are related to the probability of receiving TARP funds differ for the healthiest (“over-achiever”) versus the least healthy (“under-achiever”) banks. We find that TARP under-achievers have some, but not consistent, weaknesses in income production. These banks also are experiencing liquidity issues as customers, shut out of public debt markets, get bank loans through drawdowns of loan commitments. Unlike TARP under-achievers, TARP over-achievers’ loans are performing well. Yet, liquidity issues (from low levels of liquid assets and core deposits and drawdowns of loan commitments) hurt the abilities of these banks to continue their lending. Differences between under-achiever and over-achiever banks are also found for repayment and deadbeat TARP banks.
Why Do States Join Some Universal Treaties but Not Others? An Analysis of Treaty Commitment Preferences

Preferences are crucial to the analysis of many key questions regarding international institutions. This article analyzes the key predictors of states’ preferences over universal treaties. It does so by using a spatial-modeling approach that conceptualizes a treaty commitment preference space that includes agreements across multiple policy areas. I analyze the treaty commitment preference space in order to better understand the key dimensions of these preferences. I find that economics, and particularly trade, is the clearest and most consistent predictor of treaty commitment preferences, including with respect to many treaties in noneconomic policy areas.
The No-Reading Problem in Consumer Contract Law

Instead of attempting to promote informed consumer assent through quixotic attempts to have consumers read ever-expanding disclosures, this Article argues that consumer protection law should focus on “term optimism” – situations in which consumers expect more favorable terms than they actually receive. We propose a system under which mass market sellers are required periodically to engage in a process of “term substantiation” through which sellers would learn whether their consumers held accurate beliefs about the terms of their agreement. Terms that meet or exceed the median consumer’s expectation would be enforceable even if buried or only available on request. But sellers could enforce unexpected, unfavorable terms only if they are disclosed in a “warning box” that has a government-provided standard border. To prevent overuse of the box, sellers would need (i) to exclude terms from the box that meet or exceed consumer expectations and (ii) to order terms in the box in descending order of consumer importance. Such a system of term substantiation coupled with targeted warnings about unexpected terms jettisons as unworkable the duty to read ideal. It instead economizes on consumer scarce attention by increasing the salience of those terms that are most likely to inhibit informed consent. Term substantiation lets the representative consumer determine what sellers disclose and thus democratizes the content of form contracts. We report on the results of an original term substantiation field experiment documenting user expectations concerning unread Facebook EULA provisions. Consistent with our analysis, we find that users can correctly evaluate many of these provisions. Importantly, we find that term optimism exists: there are a few unexpectedly, unfavorable terms that, under our proposal, would be presumptively unenforceable unless subject to heightened disclosure.
mANAgINg thE DESIgN Of pErfOrmANcE mEASurES the role of Agencies

How to design measures that are technically sound and politically acceptable has puzzled researchers and practitioners alike. This article presents two main research questions: How are performance measures selected, and does the process by which performance measures are selected make a difference in achieving high measurement quality? By triangulating data collected through interviews and surveys, this paper examines the implications of an agency- centered bottom-up measurement-design process. This examination identifies various ways in which measures are selected and calls for an active approach involving agencies, external professionals, and the central budget office to improve measurement quality.
Minimum Asset Requirements and Compulsory Liability Insurance As Solutions to the Judgment-Proof Problem

Minimum asset and liability insurance requirements must often be met in order for parties to participate in potentially harmful activities. Such financial responsibility requirements may improve parties’ decisions whether to engage in harmful activities and, if so, their efforts to reduce risk. However, the requirements may undesirably prevent some parties with low assets from engaging in activities. Liability insurance requirements tend to improve incentives to reduce risk when insurers can observe levels of care but dilute incentives when they cannot observe levels of care. In the latter case, compulsory liability insurance may be inferior to asset requirements.
Economists' Odd Stand on the Positive-Normative Distinction: A Behavioral Economics View

This chapter examines economists' indefensible attachment to the positive-normative distinction, and suggests a behavioral economics explanation of their behavior on the subject. It reviews the origins of the distinction in Hume's guillotine and logical positivism, and shows how they form the basis for Robbins' understanding of value neutrality. It connects philosophers' rejection of logical positivism to their rejection of the positive-normative distinction, explains and modifies Putnam's view of fact-value entanglement, and identifies four main ethical value judgments that contemporary economists employ. The behavioral explanation of economists' denial of these value judgments emphasizes loss aversion and economists' social identity as economists.
Firm market power and the earnings distribution

Abstract Using the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics (LEHD) data from the United States Census Bureau, I compute firm-level measures of labor market (monopsony) power. To generate these measures, I extend the empirical strategy of Manning (2003) and estimate the labor supply elasticity facing each private non-farm firm in the U.S. While a link between monopsony power and earnings has traditionally been assumed, I provide the first direct evidence of the positive relationship between a firm's labor supply elasticity and the earnings of its workers. I also contrast the dynamic model strategy with the more traditional use of concentration ratios to measure a firm's labor market power. In addition, I provide several alternative measures of labor market power which account for potential threats to identification such as endogenous mobility. Finally, I construct a counterfactual earnings distribution which allows the effects of firm market power to vary across the earnings distribution. I estimate the average labor supply elasticity to the firm to be 1.08, however my findings suggest that there is significant variability in the distribution of firm market power across U.S. firms, and that dynamic monopsony models are superior to the use of concentration ratios in evaluating a firm's labor market power. I find that a one-unit increase in the labor supply elasticity to the firm is associated with earnings gains of between 5 and 16%. While nontrivial, these estimates imply that firms do not fully exercise their labor market power over their workers. Furthermore, I find that the negative earnings impact of a firm's market power is strongest in the lower half of the earnings distribution, and that a one standard deviation increase in the labor supply elasticity to the firm reduces the variance of the earnings distribution by 9%.
The Revolutionary Power of Peripheral Agencies Explaining Radical Policy Innovation in Finland and Israel

This article challenges the long-standing emphasis in the developmental state literature on the powerful pilot agency as an essential component of industrialization. Although a pilot agency may be ...
The Centrality of Organization Design

I am excited about this new journal focused on the subject of organization design. In my view, organization design is a central issue in the field of management. Designing an organization requires an understanding of strategy, as we pointed out some time ago (Miles & Snow, 1978). For example, if you want to be a prospector (a first-mover strategy), you have to design your firm to move quickly in new directions, which is likely to require that it be arranged so that various kinds of teams can interact across organizational units and levels. Designing an organization to follow a first-mover strategy also requires both an understanding of leadership and a commitment to the free flow of information throughout the organization. Leaders must understand how cross-functional teams pursue ideas and opportunities, and they must facilitate collaborative knowledge sharing to drive innovations that help the firm operate entrepreneurially. Because an organization is a complex, dynamic system, perhaps no other single topic is so deeply implanted at the core of management, organization theory, and organizational behavior as organization design. Moreover, organization design once was, and could be again, the topic of an ongoing dialogue between managers and academics focused on business organizations.
Creating the Law of Environmentally Sustainable Economic Development

This article argues that a key to sustainability is redirecting the law of economic development. From a historical perspective, sustainable development is an effort to integrate environmental protection and restoration with development. As a result, it is not possible to fully understand sustainable development unless we understand what development means. While that term is reasonably well understood at the international level, our closest analogue in the United States is not development in general but rather economic development. A great many recently enacted laws that move the United States toward sustainability can be understood as economic development laws. This article describes seven types of such laws. Each type is explained, and examples are provided. By better understanding these laws and their common characteristics, the article argues, we may better understand how to move more rapidly and effectively toward sustainability.
An Essay on the Spirit of Liberty in the Fog of War

This article previews the Supreme Court's decision in the Guantanamo prisoners' cases, arguing they should be dismissed for failure of jurisdiction. The worst possible outcome for civil liberties in wartime would be a decision to adjudicate the rights of the prisoners under an anemic view of individual rights and judicial jurisdiction. It is evident that the Court will not apply a robust conception of due process to these cases, in light of the inevitable pressures of national security in wartime. But faint-hearted judicial review, the likely result, will foster the political illusion that business as normal for our constitutional system is being carried on here, when nothing could be farther from the truth. It is better to admit the stark realities of presidential power in wartime than to pretend otherwise.
The incidence of Medicare

Abstract The Medicare program transfers nearly $300 billion annually from taxpayers to beneficiaries. This paper considers the incidence of such transfers in the context of a life cycle model with uncertainty about future health care expenditures. We find the distributional consequences of the Medicare program are roughly neutral in dollar terms; households living in high income neighborhoods pay more in taxes, but they also receive more in benefits. These dollar flows, however, ignore the insurance value of the Medicare system. Given the incomplete insurance coverage of lower income elderly households prior to the Medicare program, the money-metric benefits to lower income groups exceed the dollar flows, suggesting that Medicare redistributes more than a simple accounting exercise would suggest.
Ubercalibration of the Deep Lens Survey

We describe the internal photometric calibration of the Deep Lens Survey, which consists of five widely separated fields observed by two different observatories. Adopting the global linear least-squares (‘ubercal’) approach developed for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we derive flat-field corrections for all observing runs, which indicate that the original sky flats were non-uniform by up to 0.13 mag peak-to-valley in z band, and by up to half of that amount in BVR. We show that the application of these corrections reduces spatial non-uniformities in corrected exposures to the 0.01–0.02 mag level. We conclude with some lessons learned in applying ubercal to a survey structured very differently from SDSS, with isolated fields, multiple observatories and shift-and-stare rather than drift-scan imaging. Although the size of the error caused by using sky or dome flats is instrument and wavelength dependent, users of wide-field cameras should not assume that it is small. Pipeline developers should facilitate routine application of this procedure, and surveys should include it in their plans from the outset.
Stockholder tax rates and firm attributes

Abstract This paper develops a rigorous theoretical model to assess when investor clienteles may be empirically identified using ex dividend day data and what firm attributes these clienteles should respond to. It then presents empirical results for the period 1963–1977 suggesting that (1) tax-based investor clienteles do exist, and are reasonably stable over time; and (2) these clienteles are strongly influenced by the dividend-price ratio, but insignificantly by direct measures of risk and other firm characteristics.
Covenants Not to Compete in a Knowledge Economy: Balancing Innovation from Employee Mobility against Legal Protection for Human Capital Investment

This Article examines a specific policy issue that goes to the heart of the larger debate surrounding the changing employment relationship: How should the law of covenants not to compete adapt to the changing landscape of the U.S. labor market and to the increasing importance of a knowledge-based economy? The author first argues that noncompete policy is of great importance to fostering economic growth and labor markets, and then discusses various theoretical approaches to noncompete enforcement in a knowledge economy. The preferred approach, the author contends, is a hybrid model of selective enforcement that differentiates among workers as “creative” or “service” employees, thereby enhancing the positive spillovers gained from policies at the extremes of the enforcement spectrum.
Civil conflict domestic violence and intra-household bargaining in post-genocide Rwanda.

Abstract This paper examines the long-term impact of civil conflict on domestic violence and intra-household bargaining using data from Rwanda. Women who married after the 1994 genocide experienced significantly increased domestic violence and reduced decision-making power relative to women who married before, with a greater effect for women in localities with high genocide intensity. Additionally, exposure to genocide reduced the household education expenditure in families of women who were of marriageable age after the genocide relative to families of older women. Part of the effect of the genocide on domestic violence was driven by changes in the marriage market sex ratios across localities and over time, which were mainly induced by the conflict. Through changes in intra-household bargaining, civil conflicts may impair the well-being of women and children in the long-term.
Arbitration's Summer Soldiers: An Empirical Study of Arbitration Clauses in Consumer and Nonconsumer Contracts

We provide the first study of varying use of arbitration clauses across contracts within the same firms. Using a sample of 26 consumer contracts and 164 nonconsumer contracts from large public corporations, we compared arbitration clause use in consumer contracts with their use in the same firms’ nonconsumer contracts. Over three-quarters of the consumer agreements provided for mandatory arbitration but less than 10% of the firms’ material nonconsumer, nonemployment contracts included arbitration clauses. The absence of arbitration provisions in nearly all material contracts suggests that, ex ante, many firms value, even prefer, litigation over arbitration to resolve disputes with peers. The frequent use of arbitration clauses in the same firms’ consumer contracts appears to be an effort to preclude aggregate consumer action rather than, as often claimed, an effort to promote fair and efficient dispute resolution. Other common features of civil litigation reform discussion, avoidance of juries and loser-pays attorney fee rules, find little support in the pattern of contractual terms we observe.
The Harmful Side Effects of Drug Prohibition

Some drugs make people feel good. That is why some people use them. Some of these drugs are alleged to have side effects so destructive that many advise against their use. The same may be said about statutes that attempt to prohibit the manufacture, sale, and use of drugs. Advocating drug prohibition makes some people feel good because they think they are “doing something” about what they believe to be a serious social problem. Others who support these laws are not so altruistically motivated. Employees of law enforcement bureaus and academics who receive government grants to study drug use, for example, may gain financially from drug prohibition. But as with using drugs, using drug laws can have moral and practical side effects so destructive that they argue against ever using legal institutions in this manner. One might even say—and not altogether metaphorically—that some people become psychologically or economically addicted to drug laws. That is, some people continue to support these statutes despite the massive and unavoidable ill
Counting distinctions: on the conceptual foundations of Shannon's information theory

Categorical logic has shown that modern logic is essentially the logic of subsets (or "subobjects"). Partitions are dual to subsets so there is a dual logic of partitions where a "distinction" [an ordered pair of distinct elements (u,u′) from the universe U ] is dual to an "element". An element being in a subset is analogous to a partition π on U making a distinction, i.e., if u and u′ were in different blocks of π. Subset logic leads to finite probability theory by taking the (Laplacian) probability as the normalized size of each subset-event of a finite universe. The analogous step in the logic of partitions is to assign to a partition the number of distinctions made by a partition normalized by the total number of ordered pairs |U|² from the finite universe. That yields a notion of "logical entropy" for partitions and a "logical information theory." The logical theory directly counts the (normalized) number of distinctions in a partition while Shannon's theory gives the average number of binary partitions needed to make those same distinctions. Thus the logical theory is seen as providing a conceptual underpinning for Shannon's theory based on the logical notion of "distinctions."
Earnings Momentum and Earnings Management

This paper provides evidence on firms that report long “strings” of consecutive increases in earnings per share (EPS). First, we find 746 firms that report earnings strings of at least twenty quart...
Incentive-compatible elicitation of quantiles

Incorporation of expert information in inference or decision settings is often important, especially in cases where data are unavailable, costly or unreliable. One approach is to elicit prior quantiles from an expert and then to fit these to a statistical distribution and proceed according to Bayes rule. An incentive-compatible elicitation method using an external randomization is available.
The Emotional Juror.

More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle observed that the most persuasive arguments are often those that appeal, at least in part, to the audience’s emotions.2 In the eyes of Aristotle, his teacher Plato, and countless numbers of their successors, however, emotions’ persuasive power was hardly cause for celebration.3 The Western philosophical tradition long insisted that emotions and reason were antithetical to one another: the more one could free oneself from emotional influences, the more rational one would be.4 In other words, although an advocate might take advantage of other people’s susceptibility to emotional appeals, those wishing to make the most reasonable decisions were strongly advised to try to push their emotions far to the side. The belief that emotions undercut rational decision making is widely shared today,5 particularly within the American legal community.6 Rule
Is Stern Review on Climate Change Alarmist

This paper is concerned with the conclusion of the Stern Review that the cost of climate change could be as much as 20% of the global GDP. In this paper, I identify two major sources of variation in the estimates of the aggregate cost of climate change. One is the disagreement among the AOGCM models on the magnitude of climate change, and the other is the divergence among the economic models on how harmful these changes will be to the economy. The main conclusion of this paper is that only under the alarmist approach—which assumes both the most severe climate change and the most extreme estimate of climate change damage to the economy—we can be convinced that the cost of climate change is close to 20% of the global GDP in 2100. In most other cases, the cost will be under 1% of the global GDP.
American School Finance Litigation and the Right to Education in South Africa

This paper addresses the South African Constitution's invitation to the Constitutional Court to 'consider foreign law' when interpreting its provisions. Focusing on the education provisions found in section 29 of the Constitution, I make two claims. Firstly, contrary to the developing consensus, American state supreme court jurisprudence in school funding cases makes a poor resource to aid the interpretation of the basic South African right to education, regardless of the quantum of education that the Constitutional Court decides is encompassed by the word 'basic'. Secondly, however, certain aspects of these same American decisions, particularly the space they provide for a fiduciary theory of socioeconomic duties, could provide the Constitutional Court with a principled theory to undergird its ongoing rights-protective project that seeks to operationalise socioeconomic rights while also respecting institutional boundaries.
Nonprofit housing and neighborhood spillovers

Nonprofit organizations play a critical role in U.S. housing policy, a role typically justified by the claim that their housing investments produce significant neighbor-hood spillover benefits. However, little work has actually been done to measure these impacts on neighborhoods. This paper compares the neighborhood spillover effects of city-supported rehabilitation of rental housing undertaken by nonprofit and for-profit developers, using data from New York City. To measure these benefits, we use increases in neighboring property values, estimated from a difference-in-difference specification of a hedonic regression model. We study the impacts of about 43,000 units of city-supported housing completed during the 1980s and 1990s, and our sample of property transactions includes nearly 300,000 individual sales. We find that both nonprofit and for-profit projects generate significant, positive spillover effects. This finding in itself is significant, given the widespread skepticism about the impact of subsidized housing on neighborhoods. We also find some differences across sectors. First, the impact of nonprofit housing remains stable over time, whereas the effect of for-profit housing declines slightly with time. Second, while large for-profit and nonprofit developments deliver similar benefits, in the case of small projects, for-profit developments generate greater impacts than their nonprofit counterparts. These differences are consistent with theoretical predictions. In particular, in the presence of information asymmetries with respect to housing quality, the non-distribution constraint should lead nonprofits to invest more than for-profits in developing and maintaining features that benefit the broader community. Meanwhile, the fact that scale makes a difference to nonprofit impacts may reflect the capacity constraints often faced by smaller nonprofits. ©2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management
Lower Courts and Constitutional Comparativism

The issue of constitutional comparativism has been a topic of significant commentary in recent years. Given that there are literally thousands of articles on the subject, one would have expected this subject matter to be exhausted.1 Despite extensive analysis, there is one aspect of this subject that has been almost completely ignored by scholars: the reception, or lack thereof, of constitutional comparativism by state and lower federal courts. In Roper v. Simmons, the U.S. Supreme Court warmly embraced the use of international and foreign sources in interpreting the Constitution.2 The Court concluded that “[t]he opinion of the world community, while not controlling our outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions.”3 If such opinions purportedly provide respected and significant confirmation, it could logically be expected that state and federal courts would follow the Supreme Court’s lead and share in the embrace. However, they most decidedly have not. In fact, if one were to identify the single most important development in constitutional comparativism since Roper was decided on March 1, 2005, it would be the story of what has not happened; the story of over three years of neglect, indifference, and detachment. This essay briefly summarizes the unappreciated tale of how state and federal courts have declined the Supreme Court’s invitation to rely on international and comparative material to decide constitutional cases. The response of lower courts to
Private Versus Socially Optimal Provision of Ex Ante Legal Advice

This article considers whether the demand for legal advice about potential liability for future acts is socially excessive. using the standard model of accidents, we find that the answer depends on the type of advice and the form of liability. When advice provides information about properly determined liability, the demand for advice is socially optimal under strict liability but is socially excessive under the negligence rule. When advice identifies errors the legal system is expected to make, the demand for advice is socially excessive under both liability rules.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Empirical Decision Rules for Improving the Uncertainty Reporting of Small Sample System Usability Scale Scores

The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a short, survey-based approach used to determine the usability of a system from an end-user perspective once a prototype is available for assessment. Individual ...
Reciprocity in Free Trade Agreements

The author uses detailed trade, tariff, and income data for countries involved in 91 trade agreements negotiated since 1980 to test for reciprocity in free trade agreements. The results offer strong evidence of reciprocity in North-North and South-South free trade agreements, but there is little empirical support for reciprocity in North-South trade agreements. In particular, after controlling for other determinants of trade preferences, the results suggest that a one percent increase in preferences offered leads to about a one-half of a percent increase in preferences received in North-North and South-South trade agreements. Freund also finds evidence that large countries extract greater trade concessions from small countries. This leads to a modified form of reciprocity in North-South agreements. A large increase in access to a developing country market leads to only a small increase in access to a rich country market. The results imply that there are incentives for countries to maintain protection in order to extract more concessions from trade partners. But in general, such perverse incentives should be less of a concern in developing countries involved in North-South agreements because the value of a developing country tariff preference in terms of its effect on trade preferences from a rich country is quite small. The gains from unilateral liberalization are likely to far outweigh potential gains from using protection as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations. The evidence is consistent with a repeated game model of trade liberalization. The model presented shows that trade preferences granted are increasing in trade preferences received. This implies that countries can extract greater concessions from trade agreement members if they have higher external trade barriers. However, if a country's trade barriers are very large then the gains from reneging on the agreement in the short run will be high, making the agreement unenforceable despite offering long-term gains. So, there is a reciprocity-credibility tradeoff. High tariffs may allow countries to extract more concessions from potential trade agreement partners, but they also make the country less credible in actually implementing agreed tariff concessions. If a country's external tariff is very high relative to other countries, then it will not be able to commit credibly to any free trade agreement.
Mode of foreign entry, technology transfer, and FDI policy

Abstract Foreign direct investment (FDI) can take place either through the direct entry of foreign firms or the acquisition of existing domestic firms. The preferences of a foreign firm and a welfare-maximizing host country government over these two modes of FDI are examined in the presence of costly technology transfer. The trade-off between technology transfer and market competition emerges as a key determinant of preferences. The clash between the foreign firm's equilibrium choice and the local government's ranking of the two modes of entry can provide a rationale for some frequently observed FDI restrictions.
Information relevance, reliability and disclosure

This paper examines the relation between information’s properties, such as reliability and relevance, and public disclosure policy. It shows that the optimal accounting system often involves a carefully balanced combination of mandatory and voluntary disclosure, with mandatory reporting focused on more reliable information. The emphasis on reliability causes the welfare-maximizing mandatory report to consistently lag behind the financial market in incorporating value-relevant information.
The ‘New Regionalism’: Integration as a Commitment Device for Developing Countries

Increasingly, developing countries embrace foreign direct investment (FDI) and simultaneously pursue economic integration with developed countries. Foreign investment is subject to sovereign risk and free trade agreements may serve as a commitment mechanism in order to achieve higher sustainable levels of FDI. This paper shows that such agreements, by inducing sunk investments in expanding export sectors, can indeed increase the level of self-enforcing FDI. While one might expect FDI from any source to increase, the analysis shows that this need not be true for FDI originating in non-partner countries even though exportplatform type FDI will rise. The reason is the offsetting effect from trade diversion, which diminishes the ability to retaliate should a host country renege on its ex ante commitment to a foreign investor. The choice of partner is thus crucial for a country’s ability to attract FDI through economic integration.
A Portfolio View of Consumer Credit

Abstract To compute risk-adjusted returns and gauge the volatility of their portfolios, lenders need to know the covariances of their loans’ returns with aggregate returns. We use unique credit bureau data to measure individuals’ ‘covariance risk’, i.e., the covariance of their default risk with aggregate consumer default rates, and more generally to analyze the distribution of credit, including the effects of credit scores. We find significant heterogeneity in covariance risk across consumers. Also, the amount of credit they obtain significantly increases with their credit scores, and decreases with their covariance risk (especially revolving credit), though the effect of covariance risk is smaller.
The Currency Reform as the Last Stage of Economic and Monetary Union: Some Policy Questions

The paper discusses the policy problems of a project aimed at substituting several national currencies with one single currency. While these problems are of general interest, the analysis is motivated by the plan for Economic and Monetary Union among the members of the European Community. The issues discussed include the choice of conversion rates and the effects of exchange-rate devaluations at the time of the monetary reform.
The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height

Taller workers receive a wage premium. Net of differences in family background, the disparity is similar in magnitude to the race and gender gaps. We exploit variation in an individual’s height over time to explore how height affects wages. Controlling for teen height essentially eliminates the effect of adult height on wages for white men. The teen height premium is not explained by differences in resources or endowments. The teen height premium is partially mediated through participation in high school sports and clubs. We estimate the monetary benefits of a medical treatment for children that increases height.
Stock market driven acquisitions

Abstract We present a model of mergers and acquisitions based on stock market misvaluations of the combining firms. The key ingredients of the model are the relative valuations of the merging firms and the market's perception of the synergies from the combination. The model explains who acquires whom, the choice of the medium of payment, the valuation consequences of mergers, and merger waves. The model is consistent with available empirical findings about characteristics and returns of merging firms, and yields new predictions as well.
Valuing Life-Detection Missions.

Recent discoveries imply that Early Mars was habitable for life-as-we-know-it; that Enceladus might be habitable; and that many stars have Earth-sized exoplanets whose insolation favors surface liquid water. These exciting discoveries make it more likely that spacecraft now under construction - Mars 2020, ExoMars rover, JWST, Europa Clipper - will find habitable, or formerly habitable, environments. Did these environments see life? Given finite resources (\$10bn/decade for the US ), how could we best test the hypothesis of a second origin of life? Here, we first state the case for and against flying life detection missions soon. Next, we assume that life detection missions will happen soon, and propose a framework for comparing the value of different life detection missions: Scientific value = (Reach x grasp x certainty x payoff) / \$ After discussing each term in this framework, we conclude that scientific value is maximized if life detection missions are flown as hypothesis tests. With hypothesis testing, even a nondetection is scientifically valuable.
Asset Growth and Stock Market Returns: A Time-Series Analysis

I find that aggregate asset growth constructed from bottom-up data negatively predicts future market returns both in and out-of-sample and this result is robust across G7 countries. I further show that aggregate asset growth contains information about future market returns not captured by traditional macroeconomic variables and other measures of investment or growth. The forecasting ability of asset growth is strongly correlated with its propensity to predict more optimistic analyst forecasts and subsequent downward revisions, earnings surprise, and systematic errors in investors’ expectations. The time-varying risk premium also appears key in explaining the documented return predictability.
Neuronized Priors for Bayesian Sparse Linear Regression

Although Bayesian variable selection methods have been intensively studied, their routine use in practice has not caught up with their non-Bayesian counterparts such as Lasso, likely due to difficu...
Breaking the Law to Enforce It: Undercover Police Participation in Crime

* Visiting Professor of Law, Stanford Law School; Professor of Law, University of California, at Davis (eejoh@ucdavis.edu). Thanks to Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, Floyd Feeney, George Fisher, Gary Marx, Charles Reichmann, Robert Weisberg, the participants in the 2008 Hixon-Riggs Forum for Science and Technology, the U.C. Davis Law Faculty Workshop and the Stanford Law Faculty Workshop for their helpful comments and conversations; to the staff of the Stanford Law Review for their editorial assistance; to the staff of the Mabie Law Library at U.C. Davis School of Law, Erin Murphy, Jacob Storms, and Andrew Zee for their research assistance; to former Dean Rex Perschbacher and current Dean Kevin Johnson of the U.C. Davis School of Law for their support.