cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Do labor markets discipline? Evidence from RMBS bankers

Abstract This paper examines whether employees involved in residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS) securitization experienced internal and external labor market consequences relative to similar non-RMBS employees in the same banks and why. Senior RMBS bankers experienced similar levels of job retention, promotion, and external job opportunities. Even signers of RMBS deals with high loss and misreporting rates or deals implicated in lawsuits experienced no adverse internal or external labor market outcomes. These findings are likely not explained by targeted or delayed employee discipline, small legal fines, or protection due to pending litigation but are consistent with implicit upper-management approval of RMBS activities.
The response of term rates to monetary policy uncertainty

This paper shows that greater uncertainty about monetary policy can lead to a decline in nominal interest rates. In the context of a limited participation model, monetary policy uncertainty is modeled as a mean preserving spread in the distribution for the money growth process. This increase in uncertainty lowers the yield on short-term maturity bonds because the household sector responds by increasing liquidity in the banking sector. Long-term maturity bonds also have lower yields but this decrease is a result of the effect that greater uncertainty has on the nominal intertemporal rate of substitution—which is a convex function of money growth. We examine the nature of these relations empirically by introducing the GARCH-SVAR model—a multivariate generalization of the GARCHM model. The predictions of the model are broadly supported by the data: higher uncertainty in the federal funds rate can lower the yields of the three- and six-month treasury bill rates.
The share price effects of dividend taxes and tax imputation credits

Abstract We examine the hypothesis that dividend taxes are capitalized into share prices by focusing on investors’ implicit valuations of retained earnings versus paid-in equity. Retained earnings are distributable as taxable dividends, whereas paid-in equity is distributable as a tax-free return of capital. Consistent with dividend tax capitalization, firm-level results for the United States indicate that accumulated retained earnings are valued less per unit than contributed capital. In addition, differences in dividend tax rates across U.S. tax regimes are associated with predictable differences in the magnitude of the implied tax discount for retained earnings, as are differences in dividend tax rates across Australia, Japan, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
A Gap for Me: Entrepreneurs and Entry

We present a theory of entrepreneurial entry (and exit) decisions. Knowing their own managerial talent, entrepreneurs decide which market to enter, where markets differ in size. We obtain a striking sorting result: Each entrant in a large market is more efficient than any entrepreneur in a smaller market because competition is endogenously more intense in larger markets. This result continues to hold when entrepreneurs can export their output to other markets, thereby incurring a unit transport cost or tariff. The sorting and price competition effects imply that the number of entrants (and hence product variety) may actually be smaller in larger markets. In the stochastic dynamic extension of the model, we show that the churning rate of entrepreneurs is higher in larger markets. (JEL: L11, L13, M13, F12)
Campaign Finance Regulation and the Marketplace of Emotions

This essay examines the validity, in light of new empirical research, of the free speech theory the U.S. Supreme Court uses to justify the doctrines it currently employs to assess the constitutionality of campaign finance regulations. The Court’s model, which Professor McDonald terms the theory of 'stimulated democratic deliberation,' assumes that an unlimited quantity of campaign-related communications will result in increased public deliberation about ideas and better informed citizens, which in turn will result in better decisions about candidates for political office. In short, this model assumes that rational thought and deliberation about important issues of the day drive voter decision-making. McDonald examines new research by neuroscientists, political psychologists and political scientists which suggests that this model is neither an accurate description of the nature of campaign-related communications nor their affect on average voters. These studies conclude that human emotion, and not reason, plays the dominant role in voter decision-making, and that political strategists are increasingly taking advantage of such findings to target and manipulate voter decisions with emotional appeals contained in political advertising. McDonald argues that the Court should update its theoretical model to more accurately reflect these realities, which in turn would warrant doctrinal modifications to give the government greater constitutional latitude to impose reasonable campaign finance regulations.
Evaluating Pension Insurance Pricing

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's (PBGC) Pension Insurance Modeling System model has taken on the Herculean task of modeling in detail and under many scenarios the cash outflows associated with the pension obligations, they have assumed. This paper's comments are focused almost entirely upon the PBGC's termination liabilities, and address four pressing issues: (1) the need to discount the liability stream by current riskless interest rates instead of using corporate bond rates that reflect credit risk, call risk, and other risks, or using some ad hoc prescribed average of past rates; (2) the need to use a term structure of interest rates; (3) the need to employ more useful investment management benchmarks; and (4) how to implement a relevant and rigorous liability benchmark.
The Organizational Bases of Ethical Work Climates.

This research was funded through the Interdisciplinary Program in Applied Ethics, College of Law, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, by a grant from the Peter Kiewit Sons, Inc. Foundation and the Peter Kiewit Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the valuable guidance and insights provided by Marshall Meyer and four anonymous ASQ reviewers. We would also like to thank Tomoaki Sakano and Daniel Ganster for their helpful comments during the formative stages of this manuscript. Using a modification of a recently developed measure of ethical climates, this paper presents evidence from a survey of 872 employees of four firms that ethical work climates are both multidimensional and multidetermined. The study demonstrates that organizations have distinct types of ethical climates and that there is variance in the ethical climate within organizations by position, tenure, and workgroup membership. Five empirically derived dimensions of ethical climate are described: law and code, caring, instrumentalism, independence, and rules. Analyses of variance reveal significant differences in ethical climates both across and within firms. A theory of ethical climates is developed from organization and economic theory to describe the determinants of ethical climates in organizations. In particular, the sociocultural environment, organizational form, and organization-specific history are identified as determinants of the ethical climates in organizations. The implications of ethical climate for organizational theory are also discussed.'
Aborted Emotions: Regret, Relationality, and Regulation

Regret is a deeply contested emotion within abortion discourse. It is present in ways that we are both afraid of and afraid to talk about. Conventional pro-life and pro-choice narratives link regret to defective decision making. Both sides assert that the existence of regret reveals abortion’s harmfulness or harmlessness, generating a narrow focus on the maternal-fetal relationship and women’s “rights.” These incomplete, deeply flawed constructions mire discourse in a clash between regret and relief and exclude myriad relevant relationships. Moreover, they distort popular understandings of abortion that in turn influence women, creating cognitive dissonance and perhaps distress for those with different lived experiences of abortion. Finally, these portrayals contribute to the silence and stigma surrounding abortion. This Article contends that regret is more suggestive of women’s deep reflection on the abortion decision and respect for the fetal relationship than of flawed decision making—signifying autonomy, not victimization. It explains why we view regret as an outcome of deficient decision making, how this conception misrepresents regret and confuses it with remorse, and why it prompts liberals and conservatives alike to devalue women’s autonomy. This Article charts a course for reconceptualizing and ultimately decentering regret by discussing several common missteps in current constructions: (1) conflating regret with psychopathology, (2) confusing regret with remorse, (3) confining regret to the maternal-fetal relationship and women’s self-commitment, (4) linking regret to deficient decision making, and (5) coupling regret and moral culpability. Finally, this Article discusses how correcting these errors reprioritizes autonomy and profoundly impacts abortion regulation. * Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana. J.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2003; Ph.D., Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, 2007. The author would like to thank Susan Frelich Appleton, Brian Broughman, Beth Burkstrand-Reid, June Carbone, Glenn Cohen, Dawn Johnson, Leandra Lederman, Aviva Orenstein, Ryan Scott, Reva Siegel, Tim Waters, Susan Williams, and Deborah Widiss for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this project, and Basia Andraka for her marvelous research assistance.
Patent Law's Functionality Malfunction and the Problem of Overbroad, Functional Software Patents

Contemporary software patents are problematic because they are often overbroad. This Article offers a novel explanation of the root cause of this overbreadth. Patent law suffers from a functionality malfunction: the conventional scope-curtailing doctrines of patent law break down and lose their ability to rein in overbroad claims whenever they are brought to bear on technologies, like software, in which inventions are purely functional entities. In addition to identifying the functionality malfunction in the software arts, this Article evaluates the merits of the most promising way of fixing it. Courts can identify algorithms as the metaphorical structure of software inventions and limit claim scope to particular algorithms for achieving a claimed function. However, framing algorithms as the metaphorical structure of software inventions cannot put the scope of software patents on par with the scope of patents in other arts. Most importantly, the recursive nature of algorithms and Gottschalk v. Benson create to-date unappreciated problems.
Deliberative Accountability Rules in Inheritance Law: Promoting Accountable Estate Planning

In the last few decades, the emerging trend in trust and estate law has been a steady loosening of the limitations on testamentary freedom. The 1990 Uniform Probate Code pioneered some of these developments. Construction rules are no exception. It is widely accepted that testamentary construction rules should track the owner’s presumed intent. In this article, I argue that there is also room, alongside these intent-furthering rules, for intent-defeating rules in inheritance law. A property owner lacks incentives to internalize the relational, familial, or economic effects of her allocation. Such rules, termed deliberative accountability rules, are therefore designed to foster accountability in estate planning. These rules burden the owner with requirements to think her decision through, and to give reasons for and face the relational consequences of her act. These rules work to counterbalance the freedom of the owner by requiring her to make an informed decision.
Developing Better Lawyers and Lawyering Practices: Introduction to the Symposium on Innovative Models of Lawyering

This article provides an overview of a symposium sponsored by the University of Missouri Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution in 2007 that featured leading practitioners and scholars to analyze innovative models of lawyering, including Collaborative Law and other processes. The authors include David Hoffman, Nancy Welsh, Julie Macfarlane, Richard Shields, Pauline Tesler, Scott Peppet, Forrest ("Woody") Mosten, Jeanne Fahey, Kathy Bryan, Lawrence McLellan, and John Lande. The articles address issues including: teaching law students to "feel" like lawyers and not just "think" like them, using "conflict resolution advocacy" (which is not necessarily oriented to the courts), developing lawyers' professional orientation in practice, working with non-legal professionals, complying with ethical requirements in Collaborative Law, obtaining clients' informed consent to use Collaborative Law, providing Collaborative Law to low-income parties, using settlement counsel techniques in business disputes, using a variation of Collaborative Practice called Cooperative Practice, and overcoming tensions within the dispute resolution field.Several major themes run through the symposium articles. All the contributors agree that there is a value to continued innovation in lawyering practices and that there are many difficulties in disseminating and adopting them. Getting lawyers (and parties) to seriously consider innovations is a major challenge, and innovative lawyers need to develop effective ways to overcome unwarranted skepticism and resistance. For individual lawyers, implementing the changes discussed in the symposium requires much more than learning new legal concepts. For some, it requires a supportive legal culture and framework to enable them to enact their longstanding professional values. For some, it requires a significant re-orientation described by Collaborative practitioners as a "paradigm shift." For most lawyers, it takes experience in dealing with difficult cases, sometimes learning from mental health and other professionals. New models of lawyering also require sensitivity to ethical concerns, especially the importance of eliciting clients' informed consent to unfamiliar variations of legal practice. Innovators should also be sensitive to the needs of parties without substantial resources, including legal aid clients and much of the middle class population. Promoting good party decision-making should be a fundamental goal in lawyering. Lawyers should help parties make well-informed choices about the dispute resolution process as well as the substantive issues. Lawyers should respect different processes and models, rather than denigrate some as generally inferior in a supposed competition for the title of "best dispute resolution process." Thus the legal profession and dispute resolution field more generally should have the goal of developing a variety of desirable processes from which parties can choose.
Drug Development--Stuck in a State of Puberty?: Regulatory Reform of Human Clinical Research to Raise Responsiveness to the Reality of Human Variability

Scathing critiques of the Food and Drug Administration's (“FDA”) performance by the Government Accountability Office and Institutes of Medicine, a plummet in innovative new drug approvals in spite of significant annual investment increases in biopharmaceutical research and development (“RD end the pattern of putting new prescription medications on the market with too much dependence on the medical profession to introduce meaningful clinical understanding of drugs through patient use over time; improve biopharmaceutical RD align the regulatory standard with the infusion of added precision associated with contemporary genetics-based RD and realize more sound scientific information directly through the regulatory process to support the integrity of science in an age of academia-industry integration, aggressive commercialization, secrecy in science, and constantly, rapidly evolving technology. *365 Table of
Termination and Coordination in Partnerships

It is common practice for firms to pool their expertise by forming partnerships such as joint ventures and strategic alliances. A central organization problem in such partnerships is that managers may behave noncooperatively in order to advance the interests of their parent firms. We ask whether contracts can be designed so that managers will maximize total profits. We characterize first best contracts for a variety of environments and show that efficiency imposes some restrictions on the ownership shares. In addition, we evaluate the performance of two termination contracts that are widely used in practice: the shotgun rule and price competition. We find that although these contracts do not achieve full efficiency, they both perform well. We provide insight into when each rule is more efficient.
Confusion is the Key: A Trademark Law Analysis of Keyword Banner Advertising

Keyword banner advertising is a form of targeted online marketing practice whereby a banner ad is displayed on a search engine results page. The banner ad is triggered by the keyword used in the search. Many search engines sell trademarks as keywords as well, allowing competitors to purchase them as keywords for the purpose of displaying their own advertising. Some have argued that this practice should lead to liability for trademark infringement or dilution. Given the realities of online marketing and the underlying policies of trademark law, this is unlikely. Rather, this practice should be regarded as trademark fair use and treated as a form of lawful comparative advertising.
Explaining Peripheral Labor: A Poultry Industry Case Study

Drawing on data and anecdotal accounts from a wide variety of sources, this Article investigates the law and economics of peripheral labor, so called because low wage, low skill workers on the periphery are excluded from the promotion ladders, job security, and steadily increasing pay available to supervisory and managerial workers in the core. Using the U.S. poultry industry as a case study, this Article describes the terms and conditions of peripheral poultry work: de-skilled jobs, low wages, lack of job security, and negligible prospects for promotion. Worker bargaining power is also highly constrained, as workers have little ability to demand concessions, and overt claiming behavior such as filing a lawsuit, complaining to a government agency, or forming a union often is not effective, rational, or safe. The Article hypothesizes that the reasons for these conditions may be found in poultry firms’ labor practices and modes of economic organization, in the transnational nature of the external labor market, and in the structure of labor, employment, and immigration laws that apply to peripheral poultry work.
Evidence on the Role of Accounting Conservatism in Monitoring Managers’ Investment Decisions

Watts (2003), among others, argues that conservatism helps in corporate governance by mitigating agency problems associated with managers’ investment decisions. We hypothesize that if conservatism reduces managers’ex ante incentives to take on negative net present value projects and improves the ex post monitoring of investments, firms with more conservative accounting ought to have higher future profitability and lower likelihood (and magnitude) of future special items charges. Consistent with this expectation, we find that firms with more conservative accounting have (i) higher future cash flows and gross margins and (ii) lower likelihood and magnitude of special items charges than firms with less conservative accounting.
Slavery, Executive Power and International Law: The Haitian Revolution and American Constitutionalism

The Haitian Revolution and its aftershocks had a profound impact on American constitutionalism. The six administrations from George Washington through John Quincy Adams responded to the slave revolt and establishment of Haitian independence in ways that greatly expanded executive power and changed the nation’s approach towards the law of nations. The Executive took effective control over the nation’s most important dimensions of foreign policy, creating and employing instruments of power that are used to this day. For the first time, presidents unilaterally provided funds and military equipment to a foreign belligerent, intervened in a foreign civil war, negotiated secret commercial, diplomatic and military agreements with a foreign nation and the leader of a rebellion, used military force abroad, expanded the treaty and recognition powers and, with the acquiescence of the Supreme Court, violated accepted doctrines of the law of nations. These actions formed a blueprint for executive dominance over foreign policy, war and international law. This forgotten history is essential for a contemporary understanding of the foundations of modern presidential power over foreign affairs and war. Many of the most controversial questions presidents face in the modern era — whether to support regime change, use military force to protect American interests abroad, intervene in civil wars, arm foreign rebellions, form secret agreements with governments or belligerents, adhere to the requirements of international law — were first faced in the American reactions to the Haitian Revolution. Those decisions set precedents for the expansion of executive power whose legacies still exert a deep if unrecognized influence today. This article also illuminates the relationship of slavery to American foreign policy in the early Republic. The near-universal abhorrence and fear of a slave revolt was a powerful force in executive foreign policy decisions. But two other factors also influenced presidents in dealing with the Haitian Revolution — trade and geopolitics. When these other forces overcame domestic pro-slavery demands, presidents supported blacks fighting for their freedom and helped to create independence from the crucible of a slave revolt. However, when these forces were aligned with, or at least did not conflict with, the existential threat of a permanently successful slave revolt, the determination to isolate or crush the Haitian Revolution prevailed. As Haiti lost its strategic and economic importance to the United States, a consensus developed in the executive, legislative and judicial branches that, in the legal contemplation of the American government, the nation of Haiti did not exist.
Mismeasurement of Distance Effects: The Role of Internal Location of Production

The estimated effects of distance in empirical international trade regressions are unrealistically high. Using state-and-sector level U.S. exports data, this paper shows analytically and proves empirically that ignoring the internal location of production (of international exports), which leads to the overestimation of distance eieects by about twofold, is a possible explanation. This overestimation is mostly attributed to the mismeasurement of the distance elasticity of trade costs when internal locations of production are ignored. A corrective distance index is proposed to avoid such mismeasurements and is shown to work well for the median sector. The results are robust to the consideration of alternative estimation methodologies and data sets.
IS GROUP AFFILIATION PROFITABLE IN EMERGING MARKETS? AN ANALYSIS OF DIVERSIFIED INDIAN BUSINESS GROUPS

Emerging markets like India have poorly functioning institutions, leading to severe agency and information problems. Business groups in these markets have the potential both to offer benefits to member firms, and to destroy value. We analyze the performance of affiliates of diversified Indian business groups relative to unaffiliated firms. We find that accounting and stock market measures of firm performance initially decline with group diversification and subsequently increase once group diversification exceeds a certain level. Unlike U.S. conglomerates' lines of business, and similar to the affiliates of U.S. LBO associations, affiliates of the most diversified business groups outperform unaffiliated firms.
The Long-Run Performance of Firms Issuing Bonds

The authors examine equity returns of firm issuing public debt between 1980 - 1990 for three years following the debt issue. Bond rating has a strong impact upon the results. Equity returns of industrial issuers of B-rated non-shelf debt significantly underperformed the CRSP market value-weighted index over this period. All other issuers had equity returns not significantly different from the market value-weighted index. Returns for the B-rated issuers are also found to be highly skewed. A small number of firms experienced phenomenal returns, while the vast majority underperformed the market.
More Civil Wrongs: Personal Injury Litigation, 1901-1910

This article presents empirical data concerning trial-court, tort litigation in Alameda County, California from 1901-1910. The data analyze the entire universe of trial-court litigation during this decade and are NOT a sample.
The demand for space in China

Abstract We review the evolution of housing policy in the People's Republic of China as the government has, between 1949 and the present, shifted the provision of housing services from a market system to a planned system, and back again. Properly designing and assessing housing policies in China or elsewhere requires knowing the price and income elasticities of housing demand. While demand elasticities for housing have been much studied around the globe, relatively few studies have estimated housing elasticities in formerly planned economies. We use the unusually rich data from the 1991 to 2006 Chinese Health and Nutrition Surveys to estimate that in China's renewed market phase the permanent income elasticity of housing services demand in China is .70 and the elasticity of housing services demand with respect to the price of space is −.64. We also estimate that in China the own-price and income elasticities of the demand for habitable space are −.38 and .29, respectively.
The Controversial Transition Process From Investigating the President to Impeaching Him

In the decade preceding the impeachment of President Clinton, Congressional committees and independent counsels reshaped the presidential impeachment process. During that time, these committees and counsels, through intense and thorough investigations, created "The specially investigated President", a new legal status conferred upon the subject of examination. In this article, the author explores the legal and political consequences of President Clinton's impeachment, particularly Congress' transition from investigating the President to impeaching him. Analyzing the basic elements of the transition process from the viewpoints of Clinton "accusers" and "defenders," the author offers insight into how the two groups shaped and viewed the changing investigative and impeachment process. In so doing, he demonstrates how the Clinton impeachment process worked to reorient both the relationship between the branches of government and the interaction between criminal justice and politics. Although the issue of whether impeachment questions should be resolved by strict adherence to the constitution or through public debate remains unanswered, the author brings this debate to the forefront.
Discerning Why Patients Die: Legal and Political Controversies in Japan, the United States, and Taiwan

The processes of discerning the causes of medical injury, and sometimes attributing them to errors by medical professionals, are fraught with legal and political controversy. This short descriptive essay presents several key features of how Japan, the United States, and Taiwan address the discernment process through their respective legal systems. Statistical trends in civil, criminal, and administrative systems for fixing responsibility and determining compensation are set out, and areas of political controversy are identified. Of particular interest are the diminishing number of civil malpractice claims in the United States, the recent establishment of medical specialty courts and no-fault obstetrical injury compensation systems in Japan and Taiwan, the relative prominence in the 21st century (in terms of physician concern, if not in the absolute number of cases) of criminal prosecutions of medical personnel in Japan and especially in Taiwan, and legislative proposals now under consideration in Japan and Taiwan to channel medical disputes away from the criminal law system and to improve peer review, dispute resolution, and patient safety.
Private Equity Fund Returns and Performance Persistence

Successful private equity managers have funds that are often oversubscribed and provide persistent abnormal returns. Why do not successful managers increase fund size or fees? We argue that managers want to attract high-quality entrepreneurs, while entrepreneurs want to match with high-ability managers. However, observing fund performance does not allow entrepreneurs to distinguish a manager’s ability from the quality of firms in the fund’s portfolio. As a consequence, a fund manager may devote unobserved effort to select firms, and keep fund size small to limit the cost of effort, hoping to manipulate entrepreneurs’ beliefs about his ability.
Extracting density–density correlations from in situ images of atomic quantum gases

We present a complete recipe to extract the density–density correlations and the static structure factor of a two-dimensional (2D) atomic quantum gas from in situ imaging. Using images of non-interacting thermal gases, we characterize and remove the systematic contributions of imaging aberrations to the measured density–density correlations of atomic samples. We determine the static structure factor and report the results on weakly interacting 2D Bose gases, as well as strongly interacting gases in a 2D optical lattice. In the strongly interacting regime, we observe a strong suppression of the static structure factor at long wavelengths.
Fixed Cost Magnitude, Fixed Cost Reporting Format, and Competitive Pricing Decisions: Some Experimental Evidence

Although neoclassical economic theory predicts that fixed cost magnitude and fixed cost reporting format will not influence short-term pricing decisions, these factors systematically affected pricing decisions in a duopoly experiment. Increasing fixed cost magnitude (a pure sunk cost in this study) across experimental conditions caused participants to first lower, then raise, competitive prices. Consistent with the psychological phenomenon of loss aversion, this change in pricing behavior reduced the frequency of reported losses. This study further reveals that the accounting format for reporting fixed costs influenced pricing behavior. Specifically, participants receiving capacity costing feedback reports established increasingly lower selling prices relative to the prices established by participants receiving contribution margin feedback reports. Given that a very simple cosmetic reporting manipulation produced increasingly significant competitive pricing differences in a market setting, this study provides evidence that functional fixation is not necessarily eliminated by market forces.
Ostrom’s Law: Property Rights in the Commons

Elinor Ostrom's work has immeasurably enhanced legal scholars' understanding of property. Although the richness of these contributions cannot be distilled into a single thesis, their flavor can be captured in a maxim I call Ostrom's Law: A resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory. Ostrom's scholarship challenges the conventional wisdom by examining how people interact over resources on the ground - an approach that enables her to identify recurring institutional features associated with long-term success. In this essay, I trace some of the ways that Ostrom's focus on situated examples has advanced interdisciplinary dialogue about property as a legal institution and as a human invention for solving practical problems. I begin by highlighting the attention to detail that characterizes Ostrom's methodology. I then examine how Ostrom's scholarship yields insights for, and employs insights from, property theory. Next, I consider the question of scale, an important focal point of Ostrom's work, and one that carries profound implications for law. I conclude with some observations about interdisciplinarity as it relates to research on the commons.
Consumer bankruptcy and default: The role of individual social capital

Abstract In this paper, we empirically assess the role of individual social capital on personal bankruptcy and default outcomes in the consumer credit market. After controlling for a borrower’s risk score, debt, income, wealth, and legal and economic environments, we find that default/bankruptcy risk rises and then falls over the lifecycle, while a borrower who owns a home or is married has a lower risk of default/bankruptcy. Moreover, a borrower who migrates 190 miles from his “state of birth” is 17% more likely to default and 15% more likely to file for bankruptcy, while a borrower who continues to live in his state of birth is 14% and 10% less likely to default and file for bankruptcy, respectively. A borrower who moves to a rural area is 9% and 7% less likely to default and declare bankruptcy, respectively. We also find that measures of social networks, norms, and cooperation and trust (i.e., aggregate social capital) are inversely related to consumer bankruptcy.
Accruals, investment, and the accrual anomaly

This paper investigates two competing hypotheses for the accrual anomaly: investment/growth and persistence. Both investment/growth and persistence information in accruals are likely to vary cross‐sectionally, depending on a firm's business model, a fact that generates different cross‐sectional implications for the accrual anomaly. I find that the magnitude of the accrual anomaly monotonically increases with the investment information contained in accruals, as measured by the co‐variation between accruals and employee growth. In industries/firms in which accruals co‐vary with employee growth, accruals show strong predictive power for future stock returns. In industries/firms in which accruals show little correlations with employee growth, the accrual anomaly is much weaker. In contrast, the evidence from the cross‐sectional analysis is inconsistent with the persistence argument. From the earnings perspective, the evidence on one‐year‐ahead earnings growth is inconclusive, but the results on longer‐term ea...
The Origins and Dynamics of Export Superstars

Export superstars are important for export growth and diversification and are typically born large. Firm-level data on manufacturing trade from 32 developing countries show that the top five export...
A Multinational Perspective on Capital Structure Choice and Internal Capital Markets

This paper analyzes the capital structures of foreign affiliates and internal capital markets of multinational corporations. Ten percent higher local tax rates are associated with 2.8% higher debt/asset ratios, with internal borrowing being particularly sensitive to taxes. Multinational affiliates are financed with less external debt in countries with underdeveloped capital markets or weak creditor rights, reflecting significantly higher local borrowing costs. Instrumental variable analysis indicates that greater borrowing from parent companies substitutes for three-quarters of reduced external borrowing induced by capital market conditions. Multinational firms appear to employ internal capital markets opportunistically to overcome imperfections in external capital markets.
Age-of-Arrival Effects on the Education of Immigrant Children: A Sibling Study

We analysed the effects of late entry on the human capital of immigrant children, and investigated the channels via which age-at-migration affects the native-immigrant education gap. Ordinary-least-squares estimates could have been biased if parents factored the age of children into their migration decision. Using a sample of siblings from the 2000 US Census, we employed a family fixed-effects estimation strategy and found a negative and convex relationship between human capital and age-of-arrival. Teenage entrants’ outcomes were worst affected compared to younger entrants. Language was found to be an important mediating factor via which age-of-arrival influenced education. The critical age for English proficiency was 8–10. Age-of-arrival affected education not only through language but also via heterogeneous origin country conditions. The additional privileges of birth-right citizenship, if any, were disentangled from the benefits of zero age-of-arrival for natives. Citizenship by birth provided few advantages, except for college enrollment. Results were robust to sample selection changes.
Has the Internet accelerated the diffusion of new products

Abstract In this paper we measure the effect of Internet adoption on consumers’ propensity to adopt a wide range of diffusing products. To do this, we utilize a rich panel of household surveys on purchases of relatively new technology products. Our results indicate that the Internet accelerates product diffusion, but with varying magnitude. In an attempt to determine the mechanisms underlying this effect, we find direct evidence that the Internet does not increase product awareness. However, we find suggestive evidence that the Internet increases adoption rates both through access to increased information about new products (via online research) and through online shopping. We also find that the magnitude of the Internet's effect is strongly tied to diffusion rates, and especially familiarity rates. This finding is consistent with Internet access having the greatest impact on the adoption of products with more developed marketing strategies (i.e., more developed information sources and online markets). Our findings indicate that the Internet helps bolster demand for products early in their diffusion process, and they suggest that improved access to information and the convenience of online shopping are likely the primary drivers of this effect. Consequently, to the extent that accelerated diffusion of new products is (on net) desirable, our findings may provide a further argument toward social promotion of Internet adoption.
Performance-Based Compensation and Firm Value: Experimental Evidence

SYNOPSIS: We study equity price reactions to compensation contracting in experimental markets. Motivated by research reporting positive price reactions to adoption of performance-based compensation plans for executive managers, but postulating competing reasons as to why, we design an experiment that allows us to manipulate variables separately to examine the effect of adverse selection and moral hazard on equity prices. We find that managers select contracts based on their private information, sometimes differing from predicted choices, and that private information is conveyed to the market by the choice of compensation contract and is reflected in stock prices. We refer to this as the sorting effect. Additionally, we find that managers do not always exert costly effort in spite of favorable incentives to do so. The design also allows us to assess if the market rationally prices managers' actual choices. We find market prices are consistent with the empirically observed manager choices. Our results impl...
Analyzing Speech to Detect Financial Misreporting

We examine whether vocal markers of cognitive dissonance are useful for detecting financial misreporting. We use speech samples of CEOs during earnings conference calls, and generate vocal dissonance markers using automated vocal emotion analysis software. We begin by assessing construct validity for the software-generated dissonance markers by correlating them with four dissonance-from-misreporting proxies obtained in a laboratory setting. We find a positive association between these proxies and vocal dissonance markers generated by the software, suggesting the software's dissonance markers have construct validity. Applying the software to CEO speech, we find that vocal dissonance markers are positively associated with the likelihood of irregularity restatements. The diagnostic accuracy levels are 11% better than chance and of similar magnitude to models based solely on financial accounting information. Moreover, the association between vocal dissonance markers and irregularity restatements holds even after controlling for financial accounting and linguistic-based predictors. Our results provide new evidence on the role of vocal cues in detecting financial misreporting.
The Benefits and Pitfalls of Social Capital: Empirical Evidence from Two Organizations in the United Kingdom†

Recently, there has been a shift in the way management scholars view the firm, from traditional models that are based on ideas of opportunism and market failure to newer knowledge-based theories that argue for a more socialized perspective. One of the key components of these theories is the notion of social capital. Social capital is the set of resources that accrue to an individual or group by virtue of their social connections. As such, it is a resource that is jointly owned. Most recent research adopts a more-is-better approach to social capital, suggesting that individuals with larger quantity of ties derive more positive benefits. However in this paper, we argue that using social capital has both benefits and drawbacks for organizations, and that these positive and negative aspects of social capital occur simultaneously. To substantiate our claim, we use data collected from sets of interviews with senior and middle managers in two organizations in the United Kingdom. Our findings indicate that while social capital has many beneficial effects with respect to information access and retrieval, community building, and underlying group norms, there are also a number of less-beneficial aspects, which are under-explored in the current empirical literature. Furthermore, we suggest that organizations must develop an understanding of the bridging and bonding elements of social capital, as these are critical for its implementation. Implications of the research findings and future research directions are discussed.
When Judges Have Reasons Not to Give Reasons: A Comparative Law Approach

Influential theories of law have celebrated judicial reasongiving as furthering a host of democratic values, including judges’ accountability, citizens’ participation in adjudication, and a more accurate and transparent decision-making process. This Article has two main purposes. First, it argues that although reasongiving is important, it is often in tension with other values of the judicial process, such as guidance, sincerity, and efficiency. Reason-giving must, therefore, be balanced against these competing values. In other words, judges sometimes have reasons not to give reasons. Second, contrary to common intuition, common law and civil law systems deal with this tension between reasons for and against reason-giving in increasingly similar ways. By combining theories of democratic legitimacy with empirical, doctrinal, and historical evidence of judges’ concrete reason-giving practices in the United States and Europe, the Article argues that rather than being in opposition, these two legal cultures are converging toward a common methodology. No longer can it be assumed that civil law judges and common law judges are on opposite ends of the spectrum. * Associate Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law. For helpful suggestions and comments, I thank Hawa Allan, Ittai Bar-SimanTov, Lenni Benson, Jessica Clarke, Ashley Deeks, Erin Delaney, Elizabeth Emens, John Ferejohn, Kent Greenawalt, Bert Huang, Michael Kavey, Lewis Kornhauser, Alexi Lahav, Molly Lands, Joseph Landau, Gillian Metzger, Henry Monaghan, Trevor Morrison, Anthony O’Rourke, Tanusri Prasanna, Daniel Richman, Jessica Roberts, Carol Sanger, Elizabeth Sepper, Eva Subotnik, Irene Ten Cate, and participants of the Columbia Law School Associates and Fellows Workshop. 484 72 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 483 (2015)
The non-linear impact of digitization on remittances inflow: Evidence from the BRICS

Abstract Due to the impact of COVID-19, it is important now more than ever to analyze the relationship between the improvement in digitization and the flow of remittances in order to fill the void that has come as a result of stay at home and quarantine orders. Using a comprehensive measure of digitization that encompasses the commonly used proxies of financial technology (Fintech) and employing a System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) panel estimation methodology on annual data over the period 2004–2018, this paper examines the impact of digitization, as a proxy of Fintech, on the inflow of remittances for a sample of 34 developed and developing countries. Our analysis provides an interesting case study on Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), known as five emerging markets with a great number of workers out of abroad but below the average level of digital transfers. Using the Digital Ecosystem Development Index developed by Katz and Callorda (2018), the results of the paper uncover a statistically significant nonlinear relationship between the improvement in digitization measures and the inflow of remittances with an exact threshold level. More specifically, our results indicate that improvement in digitization may initially increase the remittances inflow leading to an increase in the stock of remittances received. Nevertheless, once the digitization index reaches its threshold level further improvement in digitization tends decrease as penetration increases, giving rise to a decline in the rate of remittances inflow. This result implies that the marginal effect of the digital penetration is larger when at its lower level, before the threshold level. For countries such as the BRICS, with a level of digitization below the average of our sample, policy makers should apply more aggressive and comprehensive policies to recoup the maximum gains of a digital ecosystem. Hence, our policy implications are directed towards increasing the investments in developing human capacity including carrying different skill development training programs to prepare individuals for the information age, expanding the internet coverage and speed especially in educational establishments, encouraging the use and access of electronic banking by consumers, producers, and governments, and taking cyber security and fraud protection more seriously to encourage the flow of remittances, especially in light of its renewed utility due to the recent pandemic.
Sarcopenic Obesity in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease—The Union of Two Culprits

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) continues to rise and has become the most common cause of chronic liver disease among all ages and ethnicities. Metabolic disorders, such as obesity and insulin resistance, are closely associated with sarcopenia and NAFLD. Sarcopenic obesity is a clinical disorder characterized by the simultaneous loss of skeletal muscle and gain of adipose tissue. It is associated with worse outcomes in individuals with NAFLD. It is projected that NAFLD and sarcopenia will rise as the prevalence of obesity continues to increase at an unparallel rate. Recently, sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity have gained considerable interest, but we still lack a well-defined definition and a management approach. Therefore, it is imperative to continue shining the light on this topic and better understand the underlying mechanism as well as treatment options. In this review article, we aimed to address the pathophysiology, impact, and outcomes of sarcopenic obesity on NAFLD.