cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Transcriptome analysis of human induced excitatory neurons supports a strong effect of clozapine on cholesterol biosynthesis.

Abstract Antipsychotics are known to modulate dopamine and other neurotransmitters which is often thought to be the mechanism underlying their therapeutic effects. Nevertheless, other less studied consequences of antipsychotics on neuronal function may contribute to their efficacy. Revealing the complete picture behind their action is of paramount importance for precision medicine and accurate drug selection. Progress in cell engineering allows the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and their differentiation to a variety of neuronal types, providing new tools to study antipsychotics. Here we use excitatory cortical neurons derived from iPSCs to explore their response to therapeutic levels of Clozapine as measured by their transcriptomic output, a proxy for neuronal homeostasis. To our surprise, but in agreement with the results of many investigators studying glial-like cells, Clozapine had a very strong effect on cholesterol metabolism. More than a quarter (12) of all annotated cholesterol genes (46) in the genome were significantly changed at FDR
Marketwide Private Information in Stocks: Forecasting Currency Returns

We present a model of equity trading with informed and uninformed investors where informed investors trade on firm-specific and marketwide private information. The model is used to identify the component of order flow due to marketwide private information. Estimated trades driven by marketwide private information display little or no correlation with the first principal component in order flow. Indeed, we find that co-movement in order flow captures variation mostly in liquidity trades. Marketwide private information obtained from equity market data forecasts industry stock returns, and also currency returns. MARKETS AGGREGATE DISPERSED INFORMATION from economic agents and impound it into prices. This information originates from public sources, such as company reports and official statistics, or from the proprietary models, expertise, and insider knowledge of private investors. Its content is either asset-specific or aggregate. By definition, marketwide private information is useful for trading across a variety of assets. In the context of stock trading, marketwide private information can be informative about future firm cash flows that fluctuate with industry or economy-wide business conditions, or about discount rates that move with the economy’s riskless interest rate and aggregate risk premium. In contrast, firm-specific private information is idiosyncratic and useless for the valuation of other stocks or assets. While much has been written about firm-specific private information, not much is known about marketwide private information. This paper contributes to the study of marketwide private information in two ways. First, we construct a model of stock trading with informed and uninformed investors to structurally identify marketwide private information from firm-specific private information and from liquidity trades. The model generalizes Easley et al. (hereafter EKOP (1996)) by allowing for trading in multiple
The Prodigal Illegal: Christian Love and Immigration Reform

Despite the impasse around immigration reform, most everyone believes the United States’ immigration system is broken. And most agree that the key issue is what to do with the eleven million or so undocumented persons currently residing in the United States. As a Christian immigration law teacher, I have been interested in the debate among the churches as to what such reform should look like. In this Article, I use Professor Jeffrie Murphy’s conception of agapic love as a lens through which to examine reform proposals. I then evaluate the two positions Christian churches have seemed to embrace — permanent legal status on the one hand, full citizenship on the other — from both a gospel and legal perspective. To aid my analysis from the Christian perspective, I turn to Dr. Timothy Keller’s interpretation of the Parable of the Prodigal Son; from the legal perspective, I examine the lived experiences of those subject to our current deportation laws. I argue that a thick conception of agapic, neighborly love requires embracing a pathway to citizenship as the only available reform option.This Article explores what agapic love might look like in the context of formulating immigration policy regarding the undocumented. Despite what appear to be the strict borders of law that create categories of immigrant status and belonging, the Christian tradition of sacrificial love suggests a willingness to promote equality and reject subordination — in a sense, to set captives free.
Long-run productivity risk: A new hope for production-based asset pricing?

Abstract The examination of the intertemporal distribution of US productivity risk suggests that the conditional mean of productivity growth is an important determinant of macro quantities and asset prices. After establishing this empirical link, I rationalize it in a production economy featuring long-run productivity risk, Epstein and Zin (1989) preferences, and investment frictions. Both convex capital adjustment costs and convex reallocation costs across consumption and investment produce an annual equity premium as sizeable as in the data.
The determinants of firm performance: unions, works councils, and employee involvement/high performance work practices

Drawing on evidence from the United States and Germany, this paper offers a survey of the effects of worker representation (in unions and works councils) and innovative work practices on firm performance. The focus is on the growing links between these two historically separate literatures. The interaction between worker representation and high-performance work practices provides a practical means of peering inside the black box of collective voice, even if there is as yet no well-determined hierarchy for productivity performance and certainly no blueprint for the future of unions.
Market Investigations for Digital Platforms: Panacea or Complement?

There is a growing international consensus that standard competition law is inadequate for addressing the panoply of competition problems arising in digital platform markets. Alongside a proposal for ex ante regulation in this arena, the European Commission is considering the introduction of a â€˜New Competition Toolâ€™ which is broadly modelled on the UK Market Investigation instrument. This paper abstracts from the specifics of the EU situation and considers the pros and cons of market investigations in the context of the UK regime. It concludes that the tool is a valuable addition to the standard competition law toolkit, and that this is likely to be true also at EU level, both for digital platforms and more widely. However, because the tool is potentially so powerful and flexible, it merits strong procedural checks and balances, to guard against confirmation bias or politicisation. The tool also has important limitations and thus should not be viewed as a full solution to the issues raised by digital platforms, but rather as a valuable complementary tool alongside new ex ante regulation. Interoperability is discussed as one example where the tools could valuably be used alongside each other
“Offsetting” Crisis? – Climate Change Cap and Trade Need Not Contribute to Another Financial Meltdown

Much of the fear of a cap and trade system to control greenhouse gases concerns the financial instruments that will be created in such a system and the concern that they will lead to another financial crisis. This belief may have been a major contributor to the defeat of cap and trade in the U.S. Senate. However, greenhouse gas cap and trade systems can be structured to avoid the problem of toxic assets that led to the financial crisis while still retaining real greenhouse gas control with an efficient market. Given that cap and trade still exists in many greenhouse gas control systems and still seems the most likely probability for greenhouse gas mitigation in the United States and internationally, it is important to understand how to structure the market correctly to avoid problems of toxic assets. This article explains how a key component of a greenhouse gas cap and trade system, offsets, could be problematic in a market context, but how offsets can be regulated in such a way to provide genuine greenhouse gas reductions and be part of an efficient cap and trade market without risk of another financial meltdown. ∗ Tom and Elizabeth Taft Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law and Director of the Center for Law, Environment, Adaptation and Resources, UNC School of Law; Distinguished Scholar of Carbon Markets and Carbon Trading, Global Energy Management Institute, University of Houston Bauer College of Business. I would like to thank Colin Shive for his research assistance. I would also like to thank Craig Pirrong. Praveen Kumar, Michael Gerrard, and Jonas Monast for their review of the article and discussions on the topic; and the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Staff2010.
Parthenolide Destabilizes Microtubules by Covalently Modifying Tubulin.

Summary Detyrosination of the α-tubulin C-terminal tail is a post-translational modification (PTM) of microtubules that is key for many biological processes.1 Although detyrosination is the oldest known microtubule PTM,2–7 the carboxypeptidase responsible for this modification, VASH1/2-SVBP, was identified only 3 years ago,8,9 precluding genetic approaches to prevent detyrosination. Studies examining the cellular functions of detyrosination have therefore relied on a natural product, parthenolide, which is widely believed to block detyrosination of α-tubulin in cells, presumably by inhibiting the activity of the relevant carboxypeptidase(s).10 Parthenolide is a sesquiterpene lactone that forms covalent linkages predominantly with exposed thiol groups; e.g., on cysteine residues.11–13 Using mass spectrometry, we show that parthenolide forms adducts on both cysteine and histidine residues on tubulin itself, in vitro and in cells. Parthenolide causes tubulin protein aggregation and prevents the formation of microtubules. In contrast to epoY, an epoxide inhibitor of VASH1/2-SVBP,9 parthenolide does not block VASH1-SVBP activity in vitro. Lastly, we show that epoY is an efficacious inhibitor of microtubule detyrosination in cells, providing an alternative chemical means to block detyrosination. Collectively, our work supports the notion that parthenolide is a promiscuous inhibitor of many cellular processes and suggests that its ability to block detyrosination may be an indirect consequence of reducing the polymerization-competent pool of tubulin in cells.
Estimating Dynamic State Preferences from United Nations Voting Data

United Nations (UN) General Assembly votes have become the standard data source for measures of states preferences over foreign policy. Most papers use dyadic indicators of voting similarity between states. We propose a dynamic ordinal spatial model to estimate state ideal points from 1946 to 2012 on a single dimension that reflects state positions toward the US-led liberal order. We use information about the content of the UN’s agenda to make estimates comparable across time. Compared to existing measures, our estimates better separate signal from noise in identifying foreign policy shifts, have greater face validity, allow for better intertemporal comparisons, are less sensitive to shifts in the UN’ agenda, and are strongly correlated with measures of liberalism. We show that the choice of preference measures affects conclusions about the democratic peace.
Is There a Term Structure of Futures Volatilities? Reevaluating the Samuelson Hypothesis

The Samuelson hypothesis claims that the volatility of futures prices increases as the contract delivery date approaches. The authors argue that the Samuelson hypothesis holds only when investors expect that changes in the price of the underlying commodity will be reversed in the future. These expected price reversals feed into futures price volatility through changes in the commodity’s perceived cost of carry, which the authors argue will be the case only for futures contracts based on “real” commodities. The authors present empirical evidence demonstrating that the Samuelson hypothesis does not hold for contracts based on Treasury bonds or the S&P 500 Index.
The Effects of Goodwill Tax Deductions on the Market for Corporate Acquisitions

We analyze the effect of the tax deduction for goodwill amortization provided by the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (OBRA) on the market for corporate acquisitions. We analyze a sample of taxable corporate acquisitions, including acquisitions of subsidiaries, private firms, and public firms, occurring over the period 1990 through 1996. We assess the impact of the goodwill legislation by (1) quantifying the frequency and size of qualifying acquisitions and comparing these acquisitions to nonqualifying acquisitions pre‐ and post‐OBRA and (2) investigating if and how the goodwill amortization deduction influenced the premium paid for qualifying corporate acquisitions. We estimate a regression of acquisition premiums on target‐firm characteristics including a proxy for purchased goodwill. We find that acquisitions qualifying for goodwill amortization comprise less than 17 percent of sample taxable corporate acquisitions before OBRA, and this percentage does not increase after the enactment of OBRA....
You Help Me, He Helps You: Dispute Systems Design in the Sharing Economy

Kulp and Kool discuss the potential for dispute resolution schemes in a sharing economy, one they argue involves a more efficient use of resources. The sharing economy is at the nexus of fast-paced technology that connects people to previously inaccessible resources to increase local consumption. Kulp and Kool argue that such sharing economies maximize the benefits of ownership by leveraging goods and services into a resource generator allowing increased access to goods and services at a lower-than-market rate. This unique market structure requires a distinct set of laws to address the unique relationships involved, and this Article explores how attorneys can best assist in managing conflicts in a sharing economy.
Wireless Telecommunications, Infrastructure Security, and the Nimby Problem

This article explores the clash between federal policies encouraging wireless communications services and the application of local land use regulations to the siting of telecommunications towers. It concludes that Congress’s effort to strike a balance in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 between local concerns on one hand and national commerce and homeland security on the other has proved vague in content and susceptible to procedural thickets that might make local parochialism impervious to challenge. The article suggests statutory changes, including time limitations and the creation of presumptions and safe harbor rules, that might better ba lance infrastructure development needs with local autonomy.
Do Changes in Democracy Affect the Political Budget Cycle? Evidence from Mexico

The previous empirical literature in opportunistic election cycles attempts to identify whether there is a significant impact of the election calendar on economic policy. The econometric analysis implemented in this paper goes a step further, seeking to test whether a country’s time-varying degree of democracy affects the way in which economic policy is chosen as elections approach. A simple econometric model is estimated for the case of Mexico’s fiscal policy between 1957 and 1997. The estimation reveals the government’s strong systematic use of public spending in infrastructure and current transfers as a means to earn votes. Most importantly, we show that the magnitude of the election cycle has been exacerbated during the country’s most democratic episodes.
Legal Transitions and the Problem of Reliance

This article analyzes the literature on legal transitions. The principal focus is taxation, but the analysis generalizes to other areas. I argue that the theoretical apparatus developed by scholars active in the transitions area suffers from significant conceptual shortcomings. These shortcomings include the unwarranted assimilation of legal to factual change, the naturalization of conventional arrangements, and the unfounded disregard of the distinction between making law and finding it. As a consequence, the recent literature offers an analysis that is unable either to explain actual transitions or to provide an adequate theory of how legal change should take place. In the end, the older view of legal transitions is more capable than the newer one of providing an adequate normative and positive framework for understanding legal transitions.
Role of Management Accounting Systems in the Development and Efficacy of Transactive Memory Systems

ABSTRACT: In-depth understanding of the factors that facilitate group learning and group performance is critical for firms given the preponderance of group-based work in modern organizations. A firm's management accounting system (MAS) can play a critical role in the development of group learning. This paper discusses the role of MAS on an important driver of group learning; i.e., the group's transactive memory system (TMS). TMS refers to a shared memory system whereby group members obtain mutual awareness of relative expertise of individual group members based on interactions between members. Significant extant research reveals positive effects of TMS on team performance. We posit that MAS can influence the development of TMS; for example, MAS can facilitate encoding, storing, and retrieving information for TMS development (the information effect). MAS can also assist in increasing employee motivation to effectively contribute to and utilize TMS (the motivation effect). We discuss these two effects of MA...
Genes, Race, and Population: Avoiding a Collision of Categories

A wide array of federal mandates have a profound impact on the use of racial and ethnic categories in biomedical research, clinical practice, product development, and health policy. Current discussions over the appropriate use of racial and ethnic categories in biomedical contexts have largely focused on the practices of individual researchers. By contrast, our discussion focuses on relations between the daily practices of biomedical professionals and federal regulatory mandates. It draws upon the legal doctrine of equal protection to move beyond such debates and to propose guidelines to address the structural forces imposed by federal regulations that mandate how data about race and ethnicity are used in biomedical research. It offers a framework to manage the tension involved in using existing federally mandated categories of race and ethnicity alongside new scientific findings about human genetic variation.
The hang-up with HACCP: the resistance to translating science into food safety law.

Foodborne illness strikes millions every year and thousands die. HACCP could prevent much of that illness; however, it remains underutilized. HACCP's slow adoption correlates with imperfect information on the safety of food both before and after purchase. Consequently, the market is inefficient at rewarding firms that implement improved food safety measures and rewards firms that externalize certain food safety risks. This market inefficiency creates an underproduction of the level of food safety that consumers desire. The author proposes applying this understanding of market inefficiency to construct a food safety system that adjusts for the current imbalance.
Radical contingency in sharing behavior and its consequences

The data of Henrich et al., when combined with other research, suggest that sharing behavior probably varies systematically across cultures, situations, and individuals. Economic policies founded on recognition of this "radical contingency" would, I argue, nurture economic pluralism rather than attempting to bring the world under one system.
Liquidation Values and the Credibility of Financial Contract Renegotiation: Evidence from U.S. Airlines

How do liquidation values affect financial contract renegotiation? While the "incomplete-contracting" theory of financial contracting predicts that liquidation values determine the allocation of bargaining power between creditors and debtors, there is little empirical evidence on financial contract renegotiations and the role asset values play in such bargaining. This paper attempts to fill this gap. We develop an incomplete-contracting model of financial contract renegotiation and estimate it using data on the airline industry in the United States. We find that airlines successfully renegotiate their lease obligations downward when their financial position is sufficiently poor and when the liquidation value of their fieet is low. Our results show that strategic renegotiation is common in the airline industry. Moreover, the results emphasize the importance of the incomplete contracting perspective to real-world financial contract renegotiation.
Deciphering Tax Avoidance: Evidence from Credit Rating Disagreements

This study investigates the role of tax avoidance in the credit-rating process and whether differences exist in how rating agencies account for the risk relevance of tax avoidance. Using a sample of initial credit ratings assigned to public debt issuances during 1994–2013, our evidence is consistent with Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's assessing the costs and benefits associated with tax avoidance differently from one another, resulting in more frequent and pronounced rating agency disagreement. Rating agency disagreement over tax avoidance is most evident when it is accompanied by relatively high levels of uncertain tax positions, foreign activities, research and development activities, or tax footnote opacity. We also find evidence that decreases (increases) in tax avoidance or tax footnote disclosure opacity are positively (negatively) associated with the convergence of split ratings. This suggests that firms can exacerbate or mitigate rating agency disagreement subsequent to bond issuance. Our study complements prior research by examining why sophisticated information intermediaries disagree about the risk relevance of tax avoidance. It also sheds light on how firms can influence rating agencies’ understanding of tax avoidance.
Tapping and resolving consumer concerns about health care.

Consumer concerns about their health care have attracted intense attention as more Americans get care through prepaid managed care plans. A recent poll sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that over half of Americans believe that managed care has decreased the quality of their health care. Journalistic reports and widely publicized court decisions involving coverage denials for gravely ill people have fueled consumer concerns as well. Consumer protection and access to high quality health care is an issue that resonates deeply with the American public, and reforms are in order.
AGGREGATE EMPLOYMENT FLUCTUATIONS WITH MICROECONOMIC ASYMMETRIES

NBER WO~G PAPER SERIESAGGREGATE EMPLOYMENT FLUCTUATIONSWITH MICROECONOMIC ASYMMETRIESJeffreyR. CampbellJonasD. M. FisherWorking Paper5767NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH1050 MassachusettsAvenueCambridge,MA 02138September 1996We thankHugo Hopenhayn for helpful conversations. The comments of seminarparticipantsatCarnegie-Mellon, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and the Impulses and PropagationMechanisms group meeting atthe 1996 NBER SummerInstitutearealso appreciated. Partof thework for this paper was completed while we were visiting the Institute for EmpiricalMacroeconomics andwe thanktheInstitutefor itshospitalityduringthistime, FisherthankstheSocial Sciences and HumanitiesResearchCouncil for financialsupport. Any opinions expressedare those of the authorsand not necessarilythose of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, theFederal Reserve System, or the National Bureauof Economic Research. This paper is part ofNBER’s researchprograminEconomic FluctuationsandGrowth.01996 by Jefiey R. CampbellandJonasD. M. Fisher. All rightsreserved. Shortsections of text,notto exceed two paragraphs,maybe quoted withoutexplicit permissionprovided thatfull credit,including Q notice, is given to thesource,
Asymptotic Distributions of Instrumental Variables Statistics with Many Instruments

This paper extends Staiger and Stock’s (1997) weak instrument asymptotic approximations to the case of many weak instruments by modeling the number of instruments as increasing slowly with the number of observations. It is shown that the resulting “many weak instrument” approximations can be calculated sequentially by letting first the sample size, and then the number of instruments, tend to infinity. The resulting distributions are given for k-class estimators and test statistics.
Random matrices in 2D, Laplacian growth and operator theory

Since it was first applied to the study of nuclear interactions by Wigner and Dyson, almost 60 years ago, random matrix theory (RMT) has developed into a field of its own within applied mathematics, and is now essential to many parts of theoretical physics, from condensed matter to high energy. The fundamental results obtained so far rely mostly on the theory of random matrices in one dimension (the dimensionality of the spectrum or equilibrium probability density). In the last few years, this theory has been extended to the case where the spectrum is two dimensional, or even fractal, with dimensions between 1 and 2. In this paper, we review these recent developments and indicate some physical problems where the theory can be applied.
Zoning and segregation in urban economic history

Abstract Recent work has argued that zoning is responsible for racial segregation, disparities in public goods provision, growing regional inequality, and exploding housing costs in productive areas. However, the slow-moving nature of land regulation’s effects suggests a crucial need for historical perspective to understand how zoning has shaped cities over the long term. This essay places the introduction of zoning in the broader context of urban development in the early twentieth century, with a focus on how the demand for separation of racial groups influenced some of the earliest zoning ordinances in American cities. We also discuss the long-run impact of zoning on the development of cities and highlight the key gaps in our understanding of the role of urban and suburban zoning in fostering segregation within cities and across metropolitan areas. A key lesson from our work in this area is that racial dimensions are important when studying land use regulations, even when the policies in question are ostensibly race neutral.
Relevant but Delayed Information in Negotiated Audit Fees

SUMMARY: Audit fee negotiations conclude with the signing of an engagement letter, typically the first quarter of the year under audit. Yet investors do not learn the audit fee paid until disclosed...
Business strategy and firm reorganization under changing market conditions

This study is framed against the increasingly stringent environmental demands on the pulp and paper industry since the late-1980s to reduce water and air pollution, and the global economic slowdown of the early-1990s. The primary focus of this paper is an observation-based analysis conducted by visiting selected paper mills in Finland, the U.S., Germany and Sweden. I find interesting differences and similarities in the firms’ strategies in terms of how they responded to these changes in market conditions. Some of the observed differences lie in their focus on achieving (incremental) cost-efficiency gains from better management of the production processes, inventories, supply-chain, product distribution, and timing of modernization investments, including ICT. The second part of the paper presents evidence on firms’ productivity paths, and the heterogeneity in productivity among relatively similar firms. I also present selected evidence of these firms’ investments in specific areas and how they affected their productivity. The observation of important intra-industry differences across relatively similar firms lends credence to the insights provided by Denrell, Fang and Winter (2003) and Zott (2003), among others. The findings have implications for the study of organizational behavior and business strategies employed by firms to improve their performance and productivity under changing market conditions. We end with some comments on how to assess innovative activity in traditional industries such as pulp and paper.
Does Information Risk Really Matter? An Analysis of the Determinants and Economic Consequences of Financial Reporting Quality

Controlling for firm-specific characteristics determining financial reporting quality, this paper finds evidence of a negative association between firms' total risk and financial reporting quality. While the results imply that firms providing financial information of higher quality do not necessarily enjoy a lower cost of equity capital, a significant negative relation is documented between reporting quality and idiosyncratic risk. This suggests that the quality of accounting information is not an additional systematic priced risk factor as suggested in recent studies. The evidence reported demonstrates the importance of explicitly controlling for the determinants of financial reporting quality when investigating the associated economic consequences.
Political Stability Under Uncertainty: Applying Bounded Rationality to the Study of Governance and Civil Conflict

Acentral puzzle in the comparative politics literature has been why certain societies are able to achieve political stability while others suffer from strife, repression and authoritarian rule. This article applies the solution concept of quantal response equilibrium (QRE) to Weingast's Sovereign-Constituency Co-ordination Game in order to show how our understanding of political stability can be enhanced when uncertainty and limited rationality are explicitly modelled. Comparative statics results first confirm the intuitive logic that civil conflict is unlikely when regimes threaten penalties for revolt that are much more severe than current living conditions and when the benefits to a successful revolt are not sufficiently enticing. In addition, our analysis provides a logic for the outbreak of civil conflict, noting that it is most likely when key payoffs are in their intermediate regions and far from critical ‘thresholds’, resulting in ambiguous and counterintuitive decision making by leaders and citizen opposition groups.
Data-Based Automatic Discretization of Nonparametric Distributions

Although using non-Gaussian distributions in economic models has become increasingly popular, currently there is no systematic way for calibrating a discrete distribution from the data without imposing parametric assumptions. This paper proposes a simple nonparametric calibration method based on the Golub-Welsch algorithm (Golub and Welsch in Math Comput 23(106): 221–230, 1969. https://doi.org/10.1090/S0025-5718-69-99647-1 ) for Gaussian quadrature. Applications to an asset pricing model and an optimal portfolio problem suggest that assuming normal instead of nonparametric shocks leads to up to 8% reduction in the equity premium and 17% overweighting in the stock portfolio because the investor underestimates the probability of crashes.
Trading on Private Information: Evidence from Members of Congress

I examine the stock trades of members of Congress and find that over 2004–2010 the buy‐minus‐sell portfolios of powerful Republicans have the highest abnormal returns, exceeding 35% on an annual basis under a one‐week holding period. Among powerful Republicans, the abnormal returns are mostly concentrated in the portfolios of those with less trading experience. I also find that the positive abnormal returns disappear after the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act was passed in 2012. My results imply that the STOCK Act affected politicians' incentives to trade on private information, which they acquired through their power and party membership.
Institutional shareholders and SEO market timing

Pecking order and market timing theories assume that corporate financing decisions are made in the interests of existing shareholders. We find that existing institutional investors, on average, significantly increase their share ownership at the time of the SEO, including SEOs that would be classified as overpriced based on ex-ante measures of mispricing, such as pre-issue returns and market-to-book ratios. We further find that higher pre-existing institutional shareholdings lead to less SEO timing. Overall, the results question whether firms engage in equity timing to benefit existing shareholders at the expense of investors buying shares in the SEOs.
Trademark Harmonization: Norms, Names & Nonsense

The old territorial understandings of jurisdiction need to be reconsidered when attempting to arrive at an international standard for trademark protection. Because goods flow in a market, which has become truly international, the laws that protect the indications of source or origin used on or in connection with the sale of these goods and services is also international. Truly, as long as the world community slavishly adheres to territorial justifications for sovereignty and jurisdiction, "harmonization" of trademark laws will be impossible. In fact, the universality of markets for trademark bearing goods was one of the original objectives relied upon in the creation of the Lanham Act soon after World War II. The argument made then was that because goods traveled in one national marketplace, a unified system of trademark laws was necessary to avoid inefficiencies that would be passed on to consumers as manufacturers tried to compete in 50 different jurisdictions under 50 separate trademark laws. Current worldwide initiatives to harmonize trademark laws are perfectly analogous to the arguments made to create one, nation wide system of trademark law in the United States in 1947. Therefore, I offer the following comments not necessarily as a completely contrary point of view, but rather as a friendly Comment that modestly attempts to provide another view on the important issue of trademark law harmonization.
Antidiscrimination and Accommodation

The canonical idea of “antidiscrimination” in the United States condemns the differential treatment of otherwise similarly situated individuals on the basis of race, sex, national origin, or other protected characteristics. Starting from this perspective, legal requirements that actors take affirmative steps to “accommodate” the special, distinctive needs of particular groups, such as individuals with disabilities, by providing additional benefits or allowances to them strike many observers as fundamentally distinct from, broader than, and often less legitimate than legal requirements within the canonical “antidiscrimination” category. On this ground, observers sharply contrast Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other older civil rights enactments, said to be “antidiscrimination” laws, with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), said to be “accommodation” laws. On these observers’ view, “antidiscrimination” focuses on “equal” treatment, while “accommodation” focuses on “special” treatment. The goal of this paper is to intervene in two respects in this longstanding discussion over the relationship between antidiscrimination and accommodation. The first point it makes is that, in a broader respect than has generally bee appreciated, some aspects of antidiscrimination law−in particular of its disparate impact branch−are in fact requirements of accommodation. In such instances it is hard to resist the conclusion that antidiscrimination and accommodation are overlapping rather than fundamentally distinct notions, despite the frequent claims of commentators to the contrary. The overlap between the two concepts, I suggest, also sheds light on the question of Congress’s power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to enact laws (such as the FMLA) that expressly mandate the provision of particular employment benefits directed toward specific groups of employees. The second point the paper makes is that even those aspects of antidiscrimination law that are not in fact accommodation requirements in the sense just described are similar to accommodation requirements in respects that have not previously been understood. The point is clearest−and has been recognized previously−in situations in which antidiscrimination law prohibits employer behavior based on customer or coworker dislike of a particular group; here antidiscrimination law fairly obviously operates to require employers to ignore undeniable financial costs associated with the disfavored group of employees, and thus in a real sense to “accommodate” these employees. But, as I describe, the parallel between antidiscrimination and accommodation is broader and embraces additional aspects of antidiscrimination law as
Horizon‐Dependent Underreaction in Financial Analysts' Earnings Forecasts*

This paper provides empirical evidence that underreaction in financial analysts' earnings forecasts increases with the forecast horizon, and offers a rational economic explanation for this result. The empirical portion of the paper evaluates analysts' responses to earnings-surprise and other earnings-related information. Our empirical evidence suggests that analysts' earnings forecasts underreact to both types of information, and the underreaction increases with the forecast horizon. The paper also develops a theoretical model that explains this horizon-dependent analyst underreaction as a rational response to an asymmetric loss function. The model assumes that, for a given level of inaccuracy, analysts' reputations suffer more (less) when subsequent information causes a revision in investor expectations in the opposite (same) direction as the analyst's prior earnings-forecast revision. Given this asymmetric loss function, underreaction increases with the risk of subsequent disconfirming information and with the disproportionate cost associated with revision reversal. Assuming that market frictions prevent prices from immediately unraveling these analyst underreac-tion tactics, investors buying (selling) stock on the basis of analysts' positive (negative) earnings-forecast revisions also benefit from analyst underreaction. Therefore, the asymmetric cost of forecast inaccuracy could arise from rational investor incentives consistent with a preference for analyst underreaction. Our incentives-based explanation for underreaction provides an alternative to psychology-based explanations and suggests avenues for further research.
And Now a Word against Our Sponsor: Extending the FCC's Fairness Doctrine to Advertising

This article considers the extension of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) fairness doctrine to commercial advertising. Under the fairness doctrine, although an advertiser may express a view on a public issue in the course of a sales pitch, the FCC has rarely considered the content of commercial messages in determining whether licensees were meeting their obligation to present a balanced coverage of conflicting views. A number of recent complaints and court decisions have forced the FCC to reconsider its position on commercial messages, however. This article focuses on the issues that should be involved in this reconsideration. It briefly reviews the principles underlying the fairness doctrine and describes the FCC's application of these principles to commercials. Then it suggests how the FCC should deal with three possible categories of commercial announcements, and discusses the complainant's difficulties in obtaining a quantity or quality of reply time comparable to that of the original announcements, a fairness problem that is especially difficult to resolve when the doctrine is applied to commercials. Finally, it examines the financial impact an extension of the fairness doctrine to commercial announcements may have upon licensees. It concludes that limiting the doctrine to non-commercial content is arbitrary and unjustified under the statutory public interest standard, is unnecessary to protect the FCC from undue administrative burdens, and cannot be supported as necessary to maintain the financial base of radio and television.
Banking crises in the US: the response of top income shares in a historical perspective

This paper examines the response of income concentration in the US to the occurrence of major systemic banking crises since the beginning of the twentieth century. In doing so, the paper analyzes the shape of the upper income tail as well as the national income shares accruing to different groups within the richest decile. The findings suggest that systemic banking crises reduce income concentration within the top decile of the US pre–tax and transfers income distribution, and more generally, that the effect is highly heterogeneous across different top income groups. While the richest income group loses ground, the lower half of the top decile appears to gain in relative terms. However, evidence suggests that the estimated short-term effect of market forces stemming from banking crises can be relatively small in magnitude and even temporary in nature, as it may be quickly reabsorbed. These findings lend indirect support to the idea that only substantial changes in government policies and institutional frameworks can bring about radical changes in income distribution.
Market Forces and CEO Pay: Shocks to CEO Demand Induced by IPO Waves

I develop a simple competitive equilibrium model and derive the prediction that CEO pay-size elasticity increases when more firms compete for an inelastic supply of managers. Using industry-level IPO waves as a proxy for increased competition for CEOs, I find that pay-size elasticity increases by 6% with a one-standard-deviation increase in IPO activity. This effect is stronger in specialized industries. In addition, increased IPO activity leads to a greater likelihood of executive transitions between firms. These findings indicate that market forces play a key role in the determination of CEO pay.Received August 6, 2015; editorial decision September 24, 2016 by Editor Francesca Cornelli.
The Influence of Documentation Specificity and Priming on Auditors' Fraud Risk Assessments and Evidence Evaluation Decisions

ABSTRACT: The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) recently suggested that auditors' lack of specific fraud planning documentation has led auditors to devote insufficient attention to ...
An Empirical Study of Mutual Fund Excessive Fee Litigation: Do the Merits Matter?

Building on the US Supreme Court’s recent decision in Jones v. Harris Associates, this article presents the first comprehensive empirical study of mutual fund excessive fee liability under Section 36(b) of the Investment Company Act. We use a hand-collected data set of nearly all excessive fee complaints filed between 2000 and 2009 to investigate several topics, including the relationship between fee levels and the odds that funds would be targeted by excessive fee suits, the relationship between fee levels and suit outcomes, the relationship between excessive fee suits and subsequent fee changes, and the relationship between excessive fee suits and subsequent asset flows. Our most basic finding is that although fees had some ability to predict which funds would be targeted, the strongest predictor of targeting was family size: funds in larger families were much more likely to be targeted than funds in smaller families. (JEL G18, G2, K22, K23)
Instrumentalism at the Federal Circuit

In the last nine years, the Supreme Court has taken an increased interest in patent law, and in each case it decided between 2002–2010, it reversed the Federal Circuit’s patent-related decision. In addition, the Supreme Court has at times been vocally critical of the Federal Circuit’s failure to follow Supreme Court precedent. How has the Federal Circuit responded to this intervention? This Article asserts that the Supreme Court’s increased attention has changed the Federal Circuit’s rhetoric, but not its actions. While the Federal Circuit has responded by discussing Supreme Court precedent in its recent patent decisions, a critical analysis reveals that the Federal Circuit hyper-interprets that precedent to appear to require the Federal Circuit’s policy-driven outcome, when in reality the precedent is not so confining. The Federal Circuit hyperinterprets Supreme Court precedent out of a desire for certainty and relatively outcome-determinative rules. Yet, rather than discuss its desire for certainty and the effects of its decisions, the Federal Circuit has minimized policy discussion. The Federal Circuit’s hyper-interpretation of precedent leads to opinions that lack full legitimacy and its reticence toward policy discussion increases the chances that the tests it adopts are sub-optimal. * Assistant Professor, Campbell University School of Law. Thanks to David Adelman, Oren Bracha, Chester Chuang, Chris Cotropia, Rochelle Dreyfuss, Timothy Holbrook, Will Hubbard, Jay Kesan, Ed Lee, Mark Lemley, Lisa Lukasik, Sarah Luddington, Lee Petherbridge, and Greg Vetter for their willingness to review and comment. Thanks also to the participants at the 2011 IP Scholars Roundtable at Drake Law School and the 2011 Junior Scholars-in-Intellectual Property Workshop at Michigan State Law School for valuable insights. SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW 420 SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 56:419
Sovereign debt signals

Abstract This paper develops a theory of sovereign borrowing, where the interaction between the asymmetry of information and the lack of commitment for repayment leads to a novel signaling motive for the issuance of sovereign debt. If the government is more informed than foreign investors about a fundamental of the domestic economy, then debt provides the government an option to credibly signal good news in the future by repaying. Thus, the government has an incentive to issue debt, even in the absence of the traditional consumption smoothing or tilting motives.
Financial Statement Quality and Debt Contracting: Evidence from a Survey of Commercial Lenders

We survey commercial bank lenders to better understand how they evaluate and react to variation in financial statement quality and how they view recent changes in accounting standards. A unique aspect of this study is that our respondents focus on medium-size loans to private companies. In fact, more than 90 percent of the survey respondents primarily make credit decisions on loans between $250 thousand and $50 million. This is in contrast to prior archival research, which focuses primarily on very large loans to public firms or very small loans to private firms. We find that lenders in our sample distinguish among financial statements in terms of quality, including conservatism, primarily on the basis of accrual patterns and restatements. While this general result holds throughout our sample, financial statement quality is substantially more important for lenders making larger loans (over $10 million) as compared to very small loans (under $1 million). In addition, bank lenders are much more likely to respond to low-quality reporting with collateral and guarantee requirements than with an increase in the interest rate charged. This finding is consistent for lenders making both larger and smaller loans. Finally, despite concerns in the academic literature, bank lenders in our sample actually hold a neutral-to-positive view of recent changes in accounting standards. In addition, most do not support current efforts to exempt private companies from some accounting standards. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.