cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Sustainability, Distribution, and the Macroeconomic Analysis of Law

Legal economic analysis has traditionally focused on the application of microeconomic theory to questions of legal import. Scholars have generally regarded macroeconomic effects of legal rules as lying beyond the purview of the legal decisiomnaker's jurisdiction. This Article argues that such exclusion of macroeconomic subject matter from legal analysis may rest on a scientifically erroneous view of the economic process. The conventional understanding of the economic process presumes an unlimited supply of material inputs and an infinite natural capacity to absorb waste outputs. Fundamental scientific principles suggest that this understanding is flawed. The economic process must necessarily be limited in scale by the capacity of the ecological superstructure to sustain it. Thus, in addition td the efficient allocation of resources, legal economic analysis also should be concerned with the sustainable maintenance of scale. Consideration of scale effects by legal decisionmakers cannot be safely ignored in the way that distributive effects have been, given that no political mechanism analogous to the tax and transfer system exists to regulate the scale of
Office Size of Big 4 Auditors and Client Restatements

Francis and Yu (2009) and Choi, Kim, Kim, and Zang (2010) report evidence that Big 4 audits are of higher quality when the engagement office is of larger size. Specifically, client earnings quality is higher and auditors in larger offices are more likely to issue going-concern audit reports. We extend this line of research to test if larger Big 4 offices have fewer client restatements. A client restatement provides more direct evidence of a low-quality audit than earnings quality metrics or going-concern reports, because a restatement indicates the client's auditor did not effectively enforce the correct application of GAAP at the time the original financial statements were issued. We analyze 2,557 firm-year restatements in a sample of 23,190 financial statements originally issued by U.S. firms from 2003 to 2008. We find that Big 4 office size is associated with fewer client restatements after controlling for innate client characteristics that may affect restatements (client size, financial performance, industry membership, nonfinancial measures, off-balance sheet activities, and market-related measures), and a set of controls for other auditor factors such as fees and industry expertise. The study raises important questions about the ability of smaller offices to deliver high-quality audits for SEC registrants.
Rethinking Professional Fees in Chapter 11 Cases

This article discusses the many ways in which professional fees can spiral out of control in chapter 11 bankruptcy cases and evaluates the possible ways to monitor and control those fees.
The Effect of Third-Party Funding of Plaintiffs on Settlement †

A significant policy concern about the emerging plaintiff legal funding industry is that loans will undermine settlement. When the plaintiff has private information about damages, we find that the optimal ( plaintiff-funder) loan induces all plaintiff types to make the same demand, resulting in full settlement; implementation may entail a very high repayment amount. Plaintiffs’ attorneys with contingent-fee compensation benefit from such financing, as it eliminates trial costs. When the defendant has private information about his likelihood of being found liable, we find that the likelihood of settlement is unaffected. In both settings the defendant’s incentive for care-taking is unaffected. (JEL D82, K41, L84) Since the late twentieth century the financing of lawsuits, wherein third parties provide direct financial support to tort plaintiffs, has developed into an emerging industry in the United States (and worldwide 1 ) with a potentially substantial effect on the efficiency of the legal system. Such financial support takes the form of a “nonrecourse” loan; that is, the litigation funder advances payment to the plaintiff, and repayment occurs only if the plaintiff is successful (either in settlement or at trial), and then only up to the plaintiff’s recovery (net of attorney fees, which are generally a percentage of the plaintiff’s received transfer from the defendant). Focusing on the nonrecourse aspect, some courts and commentators have bemoaned such loans, arguing that they will necessarily lead to increased failure of settlement negotiations and interference in the attorney-client relationship. 2 In this paper we use a signaling model to analyze the effect of such third-party loans to plaintiffs on settlement bargaining when a plaintiff has private information 1 For discussions of litigation funding outside the United States, see Hodges, Vogenauer, and Tulibacka (2010); Chen (2012); and Abrams and Chen (2013).
Choice and Fraud in Racial Identification: The Dilemma of Policing Race in Affirmative Action, the Census, and a Color-Blind Society

The article addresses the tension between views of racial identity that are premised on its inherent subjectivity (personal choice) and those that assume its objective (and verifiable) nature (fraud). The fraud perspective arises out of the administrative necessities for accurate racial classification in federal anti-discrimination laws and other programs that consider race. The personal choice perspective is a consequence of efforts to disassociate racial identity from the oppressive uses of race and recast it as a matter of personal autonomy. It has been championed most vigorously in the context of the Decennial Census. Unfortunately, both approaches have had significant deficiencies. Even though self-identification allows the individual with the most complete information to make the racial classification, it also creates opportunities for manipulation and abuse. In contrast, third-party determination of race deals poorly with its socially constructed nature and is tainted by its historical association with the oppression and exploitation of various racial minority groups. Neither approach manages to address the contingency of racial identity over time and in different social contexts. I argue that a functional approach that distinguishes between physically descriptive, expressive affiliative, and social/regulatory conclusive meanings would avoid the deficiencies of the choice and fraud frameworks. I apply this framework to race conscious and remedial programs, the Census, and a select number of instances that arise in non-governmental settings.
Culture Talk or Culture War in Federal Indian Law

In this article, I ask whether in the area of Native American cultural and religious rights federal law is more inclined towards “culture talk” meaning accommodations and compromises, or whether the attitude is more one of “culture war,” meaning geared towards confrontation and intolerance. I answer the question by focusing on how the law has treated Native American rights in four areas: use of peyote and controlled substances, possession of eagle feathers, implementation of the Native American Graves Protection Act, and protection of sacred sites. Not surprisingly, I conclude that there are both culture talks and culture wars going on. On the other hand, perhaps surprisingly, I find that among the three branches of the federal government, the courts have been the least willing to accommodate Native cultural and religious interests.
The impact of office automation on the organization: some implications for research and practice

Computer technology has recently been applied to the automation of office tasks and procedures. Much of the technology is aimed not at improving the efficiency of current office procedures, but at altering the nature of office work altogether. The development of automated office systems raises a number of issues for the organization. How will this technology be received by organization members? How will it affect the definition of traditional office work? What will be its impact on individuals, work groups, and the structure of the organization? This paper presents a descriptive model and propositions concerning the potential impacts of office automation on the organization and it stresses the need, when implementing automated office systems, to take a broad perspective of their potential positive and negative effects on the organization. The need for further research examining the potential effects of office automation is emphasized.
A Convenient Scapegoat: Fair Value Accounting by Commercial Banks during the Financial Crisis

ABSTRACT: Critics argue that fair value provisions in U.S. accounting rules exacerbated the recent financial crisis by depleting banks' regulatory capital, which curtailed lending and triggered asset sales, leading to further economic turmoil. Defenders counter-argue that the fair value provisions were insufficient to lead to the pro-cyclical effects alleged by the critics. Our evidence indicates that these provisions did not affect the commercial banking industry in the ways commonly alleged by critics. First, we show that fair value accounting losses had minimal effect on regulatory capital. Then, we examine sales of securities during the crisis, finding mixed evidence that banks sold securities in response to capital-depleting charges. However, the sales that potentially resulted from the charges appear to be economically insignificant, as there was no industry- or firm-level increase in sales of securities during the crisis. JEL Classifications: M41; M42; M44. Data Availability: Data are available fro...
50+ Years of Diversification Announcements

This paper studies announcement returns from 4,764 mergers over 57 years to shed light on several controversies concerning corporate diversification. One prominent view is that diversification destroys value because of agency problems or internal investment distortions, but we find that combined (acquirer plus target) announcement returns are significantly positive for diversifying mergers throughout the period, and no lower than the returns for related mergers. The returns from diversifying acquisitions fell after 1980, and investors rewarded mergers involving financially constrained firms before but not after 1980, consistent with the idea that the value of internal capital markets declined over time.
Civil Marriage: Threat to Democracy

This article argues that civil marriage and democracy are inherently incompatible, whether they are assessed from a trans-cultural perspective that reduces them to their most universal aspects, or from a culturally situated perspective that accounts for their uniquely American elaborations. Across virtually all cultures, civil marriage privileges sexual partners by offering them exclusive access to highly desirable government benefits, while democracy presupposes liberty and equality. When governments privilege sexual partners, they effectively deprive their citizens of liberty by encouraging them to enter sexual partnerships rather than self-determining based on their own preferences; they effectively deprive their citizens of equality by establishing an insidious status hierarchy. While some deprivations of liberty and equality are justified – for example, those that promote social welfare – this article argues that those resulting from civil marriage are emphatically unjustified. The incompatibility that exists on a trans-cultural level is magnified when one considers civil marriage and democracy in their American elaborations. American civil marriage privileges not only sexual partners but also religious, patriarchal, and heterosexist ideologies, while American democracy presupposes respect for the Due Process, Equal Protection, Establishment, and Free Speech Clauses. Even if American civil marriage could be stripped of its religious, patriarchal, and heterosexist aspects, it would remain an essentially undemocratic institution due to its inherent privileging of sexual partners. Inasmuch as American civil marriage cannot be democratized, this article argues that it should be abolished. It does not, however, propose (as some have) that American civil marriage be replaced by a relatively analogous “civil union” regime. It instead proposes that states remove themselves entirely from the business of affirming sexual partnerships. It explains that abolishing civil marriage would not only enhance American democracy, but also enable states to reallocate their resources away from sexual partners and toward individual providers. While sexual partners do not necessarily deserve government benefits, individuals who provide for dependents do – yet they are often denied such benefits under our current system. It should be emphasized that this article applies only to civil marriage, and does not propose to limit the ability of sexual partners to celebrate their commitments through private ceremonies or to dissolve their relationships according to the terms of private contracts.
Energy partnership: China and the Gulf States

One of the most significant developments in the global energy market in the last several years has been China's skyrocketing demand for energy. In 1993, China became a net oil importer for the first time in its history and in 2003 replaced Japan as the world's second-largest oil importer (after the United States). The country needs more energy to maintain its spectacular economic performance. This study examines China's attempts to satisfy its growing needs for oil and natural gas by increasing imports from Russia and Central Asia/Caspian Sea region. The analysis suggests that despite growing cooperation between the two sides, the Gulf region is likely to satisfy most of China's hydrocarbons needs. Energy partnership between China and the Gulf has already started and is likely to be consolidated over the next few decades. The study also argues that this growing partnership between China and the Gulf should not be seen as a threat to any third party. The global energy market is well-integrated. Energy policy should not be seen in zero-sum terms. A China-Gulf partnership will benefit both sides and contribute to the stability of global energy markets.
Spillovers Inside Conglomerates: Incentives and Capital

Using hand-collected data on divisional managers at S&P 1500 firms, we study how changes in one divisional manager’s compensation affect the compensation of other divisional managers inside the same conglomerate. An increase in a manager’s pay driven by an industry shock generates large positive intrafirm spillovers on the pay of other divisional managers. These spillovers operate only within firm boundaries and are non-existent for the same industry pairs in standalone firms. The intra-firm spillovers are stronger when managers share social networks, suggesting that informal interactions facilitate peer effects. The intra-firm convergence in executive pay is associated with weaker governance and lower firm value. Overall, we provide evidence on corporate socialism in executive pay.
International coordination in the design of macroeconomic policy rules

Abstract The paper examines international issues that arise in the design and evaluation of macroeconomic policy rules. It begins with a theoretical investigation of the effects of fiscal and monetary policy in a two-country rational expectations model with staggered wage and price setting and with perfect capital mobility. The results indicate that with the appropriate choice of policies and with flexible exchange rates, demand shocks need not give rise to international externalities or coordination issues. Price shocks, however, do create an externality, and this is the focus of the empirical part of the paper. Using a simple seven-country model — consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States — optimal cooperative and non-cooperative (Nash) policy rules to minimize the variance of output and inflation in each country are calculated. The cooperative policies are computed using standard dynamic stochastic programming techniques and the non-cooperative policies are computed using an algorithm developed by Finn Kydland. The central result is that the cooperative policy rules for these countries are more accommodative to inflation than the non-cooperative policy rules.
Common Interests or Common Polities? Reinterpreting the Democratic Peace

A long series of empirical papers has found evidence of a democratic peace. In this paper, we reexamine the data that support this consensus Using standard sources, we find that it is only during the Cold War that violent disputes between democracies are relatively rare events. Before World War I, polity type and war are not significantly related, and less serious military disputes are marginally more likely between democracies. We investigate two explanations of these patterns In the first, variation in patterns of common and conflicting interests between democratic states across time plays the critical role In the second, evolution of democracies over time is the determining factor. Because we find stronger support for the first than for the second explanation, we suggest that it is common interests or their absence, not common polities, that explain dispute patterns.
Do union wealth concessions explain takeover premiums?: The evidence on contract wages

Abstract This paper investigates whether union wealth concessions caused by changes in real wage growth following takeovers explain target-firm share-price premiums. Point estimates imply that union wealth changes in the six years following the acquisition account for 1% to 2% of shareholder premiums. This figure rises to 5% over 18 years. For hostile takeovers, union wealth increases by roughly 3% and 10% of shareholder gains over 6- and 18-year periods. The 95% confidence interval for wage changes implies that unions may lose up to a quarter, or gain up to a fifth, of what target shareholders gain.
The Impact of Religion on Financial Reporting Irregularities

ABSTRACT: This study examines the impact of religion on financial reporting. We predict that firms in religious areas are less likely to engage in financial reporting irregularities because prior r...
Reforming corporate governance post Enron: Shareholders' Board of Trustees and the auditor

Abstract One potentially positive outcome of Enron's demise could be improving the process by which auditors are selected, retained and compensated. A proposal to reform this aspect of corporate governance is outlined in this essay. In addition, this editorial accomplishes two goals: (a) identification of the problem of audit independence as an outcome of vesting the authority to make auditor-related decisions with corporate boards of directors, and (b) proposing a structure to allow shareholders a direct path for deciding on auditor choice and compensation. This structure calls for establishing a Shareholders' Board of Trustees (SBT) independent of the Board of Directors and vest it with the responsibility of selecting, retaining and compensating external auditors. As a side benefit, allowing SBT to participate in the choice of corporate audit committee members could only enhance that committee's independence and effectiveness. To function as an independent agent of shareholders, administering the election process for the SBT has to lie outside the corporation; it could be, for example, administered by the stock exchange for a fee. It is evident that the administrative and procedural matters of implementation need to be developed and need not be binding to give this concept serious consideration.
Research Universities and Regional High-Tech Firm Start-up and Exit

If localized knowledge spillovers are present in the university setting, higher rates of both start-up and/or survival would be observed in areas that are geographically proximate to the university. Using a detailed industry data set for Texas for 1999:3–2005:2, we analyze start-up and exit rates for high-tech firms. Based on a Poisson quasi-maximum likelihood estimation, we find evidence that the level of R&D and proximity of a research institution positively affects the likelihood of technology start-ups. However, using both the Cox proportional hazards model and Kaplan–Meier approach, our results suggest that geographic proximity to knowledge centers does not reduce hazard rates. (JEL R12, R53, O18)
On the Popular Support for Progressive Taxation

The “popular support for progressive taxation theorem” (Marhuenda and Ortuno-Ortin, 1995) provides an important formalization of the intuition that a majority of relatively poor voters over rich ones leads to progressive income taxation. Yet the theorem does not provide an equilibrium outcome. In addition, it assumes an overly restrictive domain of tax schedules and no incentive effects of income taxation. This paper shows that none of these assumptions of the theorem can be relaxed completely. Most notably, it is shown that a majority of poor voters does not imply progressive taxation in a more general policy space and that a regressive tax schedule may obtain a majority over a progressive one when individuals' income is endogenous.
Challenging “Resistance to Change”

This article examines the origins of one of the most widely accepted mental models that drives organizational behavior: the idea that there is resistance to change and that managers must overcome it. This mental model, held by employees at all levels, interferes with successful change implementation. The authors trace the emergence of the term resistance to change and show how it became received truth. Kurt Lewin introduced the term as a systems concept, as a force affecting managers and employees equally. Because the terminology, but not the context, was carried forward, later uses increasingly cast the problem as a psychological concept, personalizing the issue as employees versus managers. Acceptance of this model confuses an understanding of change dynamics. Letting go of the term—and the model it has come to embody—will make way for more useful models of change dynamics. The authors conclude with a discussion of alternatives to resistance to change.
Measuring the Diversity of Facebook Reactions to Research

Online and in the real world, communities are bonded together by emotional consensus around core issues. Emotional responses to scientific findings often play a pivotal role in these core issues. When there is too much diversity of opinion on topics of science, emotions flare up and give rise to conflict. This conflict threatens positive outcomes for research. Emotions have the power to shape how people process new information. They can color the public's understanding of science, motivate policy positions, even change lives. And yet little work has been done to evaluate the public's emotional response to science using quantitative methods. In this paper, we use a dataset of responses to scholarly articles on Facebook to analyze the dynamics of emotional valence, intensity, and diversity. We present a novel way of weighting click-based reactions that increases their comprehensibility, and use these weighted reactions to develop new metrics of aggregate emotional responses. We use our metrics along with LDA topic models and statistical testing to investigate how users' emotional responses differ from one scientific topic to another. We find that research articles related to gender, genetics, or agricultural/environmental sciences elicit significantly different emotional responses from users than other research topics. We also find that there is generally a positive response to scientific research on Facebook, and that articles generating a positive emotional response are more likely to be widely shared---a conclusion that contradicts previous studies of other social media platforms.
The right of publicity in the digital age – Doctrinal tensions, common law theories and proposals for solutions

Abstract In the fall of 2007, a federal appeals court ruled that the use of the names and records of Major League Baseball players without license or permission by an Internet fantasy sports website was protected speech and trumped the property rights of the players. The ruling by the U.S. federal appeals court in CBC v. MLBAM marks the latest skirmish in the long-simmering tension between the scope of the “Right of Publicity,” a common-law based doctrine that has expanded over the last half-century and the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. This issue of where free speech ends and proprietary protection begins is the subject of a long line of cases – with conflicting rulings, different doctrines and a haphazard state-by-state approach. With the evolution of the Internet as a marketing and commerce tool, the economic implications of digital rights have increased the problem. This article tracks the development of the right of publicity tort, discusses the leading cases and proposes solutions.
Using long-run consumption-return correlations to test asset pricing models

Abstract This paper examines a new set of implications for existing asset pricing models regarding the correlation between returns and consumption growth over both the short run and the long run. The findings suggest that external habit formation models face a challenge in producing two robust facts in aggregate data, namely, that stock market returns lead consumption growth, and that the correlation between returns and consumption growth is higher at low frequencies. To reconcile these facts with a consumption-based model, I demonstrate the need for focusing on models that contain a forward-looking consumption component, i.e., models that allow for both trend and cyclical fluctuations in consumption, and that link returns to cyclical fluctuations in consumption. Long-run risk models provide examples of models that contain this consumption component.
Judicial Activism and the Interpretation of the Voting Rights Act

Talk of “judicial activism” is all the rage in modern American politics. On the eve of his nomination of Elena Kagan to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court, President Barack Obama joined the debate and offered the following view: Well, I mean, here’s what I will say. It used to be that the notion of an activist judge was somebody who ignored the will of Congress, ignored democratic processes, and tried to impose judicial solutions on problems instead of letting the process work itself through politically. And in the ’60s and ’70s, the feeling was, is that liberals were guilty of that kind of approach.
Toward a True Elements Test: Taylor and the Categorical Analysis of Crimes in Immigration Law

The U.S. Supreme Court has cautioned against “shoehorning” criminal convictions into grounds of deportation where they do “not fit.” When deportation depends on the existence of a conviction, the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) and federal courts broadly agree that the role of the judge or other adjudicator is limited to determining the legal effect of the conviction under immigration law. Adjudicators cannot decide questions of fact regarding the underlying circumstances of the offense. This limitation is commonly expressed in the maxim that adjudicators may not redetermine, or determine in the first instance, the guilt or innocence of the noncitizen. Without exception, appellate courts and
How should we measure bank capital adequacy for triggering Prompt Corrective Action? A (simple) proposal

In this study, we test the predictive power of several alternative measures of bank capital adequacy in identifying U.S. bank failures during the recent crisis period. We find that an unconventional ratio – the non-performing asset coverage ratio (NPACR) – significantly outperforms Basel-based ratios including the Tier 1 ratio, the Total Capital Ratio, and the Leverage ratio – throughout the crisis period. It also outperforms in predicting failures among “well-capitalized” banks (as defined by the current Prompt Corrective Action guidelines). Based on our results, we argue that NPACR outperforms other ratios in at least five aspects: (i) it aligns capital and credit risks – the two primary risks of bank failures – in one measure; (ii) it is easier to calculate than the Tier 1 and Total Capital ratios, as it requires calculation of no complex risk weights; (iii) it allows one to account for various time period and cross-country provisioning rules and regimes, including episodes of regulatory forbearance and cross-country differences; (iv) it removes the incentives of both banks and regulators to mask capital deficiencies by creating/requiring insufficient loan-loss reserves; and (v) it outperforms all other commonly used capital ratios in predicting bank failures. We believe that all the above features of proposed measure promise its effective use in the prompt corrective actions by bank regulators. We also expect that this single and informative measure of bank risk can be efficiently used in empirical banking studies. The results of this study also shed light on regulatory forbearance during the recent banking crisis.
Equations and Algorithms for Mixed-frame Flux-limited Diffusion Radiation Hydrodynamics

We analyze the mixed-frame equations of radiation hydrodynamics under the approximations of flux-limited diffusion and a thermal radiation field and derive the minimal set of evolution equations that includes all terms that are of leading order in any regime of nonrelativistic radiation hydrodynamics. Our equations are accurate to first order in v/c in the static diffusion regime. In contrast, we show that previous lower order derivations of these equations omit leading terms in at least some regimes. In comparison to comoving-frame formulations of radiation hydrodynamics, our equations have the advantage that they manifestly conserve total energy, making them very well suited to numerical simulations, particularly with adaptive meshes. For systems in the static diffusion regime, our analysis also suggests an algorithm that is both simpler and faster than earlier comoving-frame methods. We implement this algorithm in the Orion adaptive mesh refinement code and show that it performs well in a range of test problems.
What is Philosophy of Criminal Law

What is philosophy of criminal law? The seventeen essays in this book, as a whole, provide an excellent place to start in answering that question. Editors John Deigh and David Dolinko state that they put together this volume of ‘‘seventeen original essays by leading thinkers in the philosophy of the criminal law’’ in order to create ‘‘an authoritative handbook’’ representing ‘‘the state of current research on the major topics in the field that arise from issues in the substantive criminal law’’ (p. v). So what is the field, and what are its major topics? There are many ways to organize this field, but I would start by observing that we can divide the world of philosophy of criminal law into two different types of theorizing: state-centered and individual-centered. The state-centered theory focuses on the proper limits of the state’s power to criminalize and punish, while the individual-centered theory focuses on questions of innocence and culpability. This division is, of course, somewhat artificial. Both approaches can and do coexist, often within the same piece of scholarly work, but the two approaches are distinctive, and keeping both theories in mind is helpful in making sense of the field. The existence of the state-centered approach is in some ways more obvious and easier to justify than the individual-centered approach. Because much scholarly work in philosophy of criminal law speaks in terms of wrongdoing, justification, and excuse, which are familiar concepts from moral philosophy, it may appear that philosophy of criminal law is nothing more than a type of moral philosophy. However, setting aside the possibility of defining political philosophy as a special type of moral philosophy—that is, a type of moral philosophy that focuses on what the state is or is not morally permitted to do—it is a mistake to view philosophy of criminal law as a kind of moral philosophy and nothing more. It is, after all, philosophy of criminal law, and criminal law is, at bottom, an exercise of state power. Any comprehensive philosophical account of criminal law must, therefore, explain and justify the role of the state, and much work done in the field of philosophy of criminal law focuses on it.
Perception of waiting time at signalized intersections

Perceived waiting time at signalized intersections differs from the actual waiting time and varies with signal design. The onerousness of delay depends on the conditions under which it is experienced. Using weighted travel time may contribute to optimal signal control if it can improve on the assumption that all time is weighted equally by users. This research explores the perception of waiting time at signalized intersections on the basis of the results of an online virtual experience stated preference survey. This survey directly collected the perceived waiting times and the user ratings of the signal designs of each intersection on an arterial that included three intersections. Statistically analyzing the survey data suggests that the perception of waiting time is a function of the actual time, and a quadratic model describes the relationship. The survey also indicates that there exists a trade-off between total waiting time and individual waiting time at each intersection. Drivers prefer to split the total waiting time across multiple intersections at the price of a longer total wait if the difference in the total waiting time of two signal designs is within 30 s. Survey data show that the perceived waiting time, instead of the actual waiting time, better explains how users rate the individual signal designs for intersections and arterials, including multiple intersections.
The fusion of presidentialism and parliamentarism

No question of constitutional design is more intensely debated than whether emerging democracies should adopt presidential or parliamentary systems. This is an important debate but it misses a critical point about constitutional design - namely that the structural differences between presidentialism and parliamentarism conceal much more than they reveal. In this Article, I demonstrate precisely how conventional accounts of the structural differences between presidentialism and parliamentarism actually obscure their functional similarities.
The Academic Tournament over Executive Compensation

In their new book, Pay without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation, Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried describe in detail the performance insensitivity of today's executive incentive compensation packages. The authors assert that managers possess and effectively wield power, assuring that so-called incentive pay comes on easy terms. Kevin Murphy and Michael Jensen, who together provided crucial academic impetus for the 1990s movement to equity based compensation, along with other economists, respond in defense of prevailing practice. This review of Pay without Performance reports on the state of play in this academic tournament. It finds that even as both sides score points, significant concessions have been accreting on the defensive side. The result is a clear victory for Bebchuk and Fried. They win the match when the defense acknowledges that management power matters. The concession changes the terms of discourse in a field that expunged the concept of power from its positive account more than two decades ago. With power back in the positive account, the burden of persuasion shifts from the critics to the defenders of prevailing practices. The question then turns to whether prevailing pay practice can be improved materially. When the answer turns out to be yes, the debate ends in favor of Bebchuk and Fried.
Bank loan supply responses to Federal Reserve emergency liquidity facilities

Abstract The Federal Reserve injected unprecedented liquidity into banks during the recent crisis through the discount window and Term Auction Facility. We examine the use and effectiveness of these facilities. We find that recipient banks increased their lending overall, both short- and long-term, and in most loan categories. The facilities resulted in enhanced lending at expanding banks and reduced declines at contracting banks. Small banks increased small business lending and large banks increased large business lending. There were no significant changes in loan quality or loan contract terms by either large or small banks.
Financial accounting and corporate governance: a discussion

Abstract Bushman and Smith (2001, this issue) provide a useful review of research on the role of accounting in management compensation contracts and an appealing future research agenda that builds on recent research using a cross-country approach. This paper rounds out their discussion by highlighting some limitations of their research agenda, providing a critical review of the contributions of accounting scholars to governance research and highlighting research opportunities on the role of financial accounting in governance mechanisms other than managerial incentive contracts.
Incentives for Anticompetitive Behavior by Public Enterprises

We examine the competitive behavior of a public enterprise thatdoes not seek solely to maximize its profit. We find that despite a reduced focus on profit, a publicenterprise may have stronger incentives to pursue anticompetitive activities than does a private,profit-maximizing firm. These activities include setting prices below marginal cost, raising theoperating costs of existing rivals, erecting entry barriers to preclude the operation of new competitors,and circumventing regulations designed to foster competition.
ETF Short Shares: The Next Stage in the Evolution of REIT Ownership

Executive Summary. This study introduces a new publicly traded real estate security known as an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) short share. In addition to examining the return, correlation, autocorrelation, partial-order autocorrelation, stationarity, and Granger Causality characteristics of this new investment vehicle, we demonstrate that REITs warrant inclusion in mixed asset portfolios to varying degrees regardless of which direction the investor feels the REIT market is headed.
Evidence on Structural Instability in Macroeconomic Time Series Relations

An experiment is performed to assess the prevalence of instability in univariate and bivariate macroeconomic time series relations and to ascertain whether various adaptive forecasting techniques successfully handle any such instability. Formal tests for instability and out-of-sample forecasts from 16 different models are computed using a sample of 76 representative U.S. monthly postwar macroeconomic time series, constituting 5,700 bivariate forecasting relations. The tests for instability and the forecast comparisons suggest that there is substantial instability in a significant fraction of the univariate and bivariate autoregressive models.
Secularization, Anti-Minority Sentiment, and Cultural Norms in the German Circumcision Controversy

After an appellate court made circumcision of minors effectively illegal in the absence of a medical justification, the German Parliament passed a statute that restored, with some limitations, the right of parents to seek ritual circumcisions for their sons. Between these events, a fierce controversy broke out in Germany involving Jews, Muslims, and other Germans. Whereas circumcision without medical indication is rare among most Germans, it is a common religious practice in Jewish and Muslim communities in Germany. The debate tapped into ongoing discussions of German cultural norms, German secularization, and a long history of anti-Semitism and a much shorter history of anti-Muslim sentiment in Germany. It also tapped into the religious and traditional practices - sometimes converging, sometimes diverging - of Jews and Muslims.This Article discusses the range of opinions on religious circumcision among Germans and other Europeans. It disentangles the social factors at work in the debate and analyzes the court decision and the new statute. It also examines some recent decisions under the new statute and explores problems with the statute's application. Given that roughly 700 million boys worldwide have undergone ritual circumcision, the German controversy has global implications.This Article shows that at day's end, the debate turns on issues of toleration and multiculturalism. It is scarcely possible to resolve this - debate without asking, "What is a child?" If a child is a proto-member of his parents' religious community and has only a weak right to bodily integrity, or if the risk-benefit ratio favors circumcision and the parents have a broad scope of consent, then circumcision without medical indication might be legally and morally permissible. Parents might then have discretion to place on his body a permanent physical symbol of his expected or hoped for religious affiliation as an adult. Yet if a child has a strong right to bodily integrity, and circumcision is not medically indicated, then the permanent physical modification of his body with a symbol of Jewish or Muslim identity might be problematic, and circumcising him for aesthetic or other nonreligious reasons might likewise be problematic.
Trespass Torts and Self-Help for an Electronic Age

Liability for trespass to chattels (or personal property) ensnares one who intentionally takes or inter-meddles with chattel in the possession of another. The past decade or so has witnessed the re-emergence of the tort in a new guise, as a sword against electronic intrusions over the Internet. Trespass to chattels is distinct from trespass to land in that it requires proof of actual damage. Self-help is an adequate remedy for protection against “harmless” inter-meddlings with personal property, but not in the case of land. The significance of the self-help remedy in trepass to chattels sheds light on an inherent limitation of the classic Calabresi-Melamed framework of entitlements protected by legal rules. Self-help is the “missing” third remedy. Self-help is conventionally understood as either a privilege to do something that would otherwise be legally actionable in order to prevent or cure a legal wrong or else a variety of prophylactic measures that one might take to protect one’s property that do not infringe upon anyone else’s legal rights. In this article, written for a symposium celebrating the work of Richard Epstein, I invoke self-help as a prerequisite to invoke legal process. While not uncommon in real property law, conditioning one’s entitlement to legal remedies on the exercise of self-help is exceedingly rare in tort law but is justified on different grounds. First, the victim might be the “cheapest cost avoider” of the injury, such that it is efficient to place the burden upon the victim to take self-help measures that could, in some cases, mitigate or avoid the injury altogether. Second, a “live and let live” philosophy may govern minor injuries and inconveniences; self-help serves as a “sincerity index” for establishing the weightiness of the legally protected interest. Third, and especially relevant in cyberspace, the boundaries between public and private property are contestible. Self-help can serve as a way in which someone can “mark” his property as private - or exclude it from the public commons. The Internet trespass to chattels cases provide an opportunity to explore this conception of conditional self-help.
A Quality of Growth Index for Developing Countries: A Proposal

This paper proposes a new quality of growth index for developing countries. The index encompasses both the intrinsic nature and social dimensions of growth, and is computed for over 90 countries for the period 1990–2011. The approach is premised on the fact that not all growth is created equal in terms of social outcomes, and that it does matter how one reaches from one level of income to another for various theoretical and empirical reasons. The paper finds that the quality of growth has been improving in the vast majority of developing countries over the past two decades, although the rate of convergence is relatively slow. At the same time, there are considerable cross-country variations across income levels and regions. Finally, empirical investigations point to the fact that main factors of the quality of growth are political stability, public pro-poor spending, macroeconomic stability, financial development, institutional quality and external factors such as FDI.
Replication Timing Networks: A Novel Class of Gene Regulatory Networks

DNA replication occurs in a defined temporal order known as the replication-timing (RT) program and is regulated during development, coordinated with 3D genome organization and transcriptional activity. Here, we exploit genome-wide RT profiles from 15 human cell types and intermediate differentiation stages derived from human embryonic stem cells to construct different types of RT regulatory networks. First, we constructed networks based on the coordinated RT changes during cell fate commitment to create RT networks composed of specific functional sub-network communities. We also constructed directional regulatory networks based on the order of RT changes within cell lineages and identified master regulators of differentiation pathways. Finally, we explored relationships between RT networks and transcriptional regulatory networks (TRNs), by combining them into more complex circuitries of composite and bipartite networks. Our findings show that RT networks can be exploited to dissect the cellular mechanisms that regulate lineage specification and cellular identity maintenance.
The History of an Idea

Owen M. Fiss* Today we mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Against Settlement,1 although in truth it has a longer history. The essay was published in May 1984, but the animating idea—that the purpose of adjudication is justice, not peace—can be traced to the civil rights era and the 1960s. In 1960, I was studying philosophy at Oxford and grew increasingly restless with the inward, almost obsessive, orientation of the discipline. Oxford seminars were devoted to Descartes’s riddle—how do you know you are not dreaming?—as the struggle for racial equality in the United States became more heated and took to the streets. I began law school in the fall of 1961, marched through the required courses, and spent the third year studying and writing on school segregation. My interest in this subject deepened as a result of my clerkships with two of the most exalted architects of the jurisprudence of equality, Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan, but the impact of working for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice from 1966 to 1968, then under the leadership of John Doar, registered in another key altogether. It was transformative. I came face to face with the trial process and the heroic attempt by a number of judges in the lower federal courts in the South to make Brown v. Board of Education2 a living reality. When I began working at the Division, there were approximately 2000 school districts in the South that operated in open defiance of Brown. Of all the federal judges involved in the implementation process, the work of Frank M. Johnson, Jr., then sitting as a district judge in Montgomery, was the most instructive.3 In 1964, he began the arduous process of desegregating the Montgomery County schools, and by 1966 he had in effect taken charge of the desegregation for almost all of the school districts in Alabama.4 Shunned by his neighbors and friends and scorned by local politicians, including the governor, Judge Johnson knew all too well the hostile character of the environment in which he acted. He therefore had to labor mightily to establish his legitimacy—a pervasive