cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Interpretive Preferences and the Limits of the New Formalism

A recent movement in contracts scholarship-the so-called New Formalism-seeks to justify limitations on the introduction of extrinsic evidence to interpret contracts on the instrumental grounds of efficiency and empirical observation. Less attention has been directed at the development of a similar instrumental argument for the more contextual types of interpretation observed in the Uniform Commercial Code and the Restatement (Second) of Contracts. This Article engages this question by arguing that the relative ability of transactors to draft complete contracts is likely to be an important determinant of their preferred interpretive regime. Where low contracting costs allow commercial parties to draft relatively complete contracts, it is understandable that these parties would have a strong preference for formal contract rules. This approach may best ensure the interpretation of these contracts in accordance with their express terms. But when contracts are more difficult to write-and hence contain more gapstransactors may prefer interpretive rules that allow courts to fill in contractual gaps based on extrinsic evidence such as industry custom, unexecuted drafts, and other indications of the parties' understanding of their obligations under the contract. At least in some instances, the use of this ex post evidence may be more cost effective relative to the ex ante investments that would be necessary to draft more complete contracts. To explore this problem, this Article adapts the framework used to predict vertical integration in the New Institutional Economics literature to identify the variables that are likely to affect the ability to draft complete contracts. This adapted model argues that the frequency and uncertainty of a transaction are the key variables that will determine the amount that parties are likely to invest in filling contractual gaps. The predictions generated by this model help to explain why some transactors, such as the grain, cotton, and diamond merchants studied by Lisa Bernstein, have strong preferences for formal interpretation. The model also suggests why industries that involve infrequent and uncertain transactions-such as construction, tailored software, and the market for mergers and acquisitions-do not share the preference for formal interpretation advocated and observed by the New Formalists. t Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law School. I thank Bob Cooter, Mel Eisenberg, Rob MacCoun, and Oliver Williamson for valuable comments. All errors are my own. HeinOnline -6 Berkeley Bus. L.J. 1 2009 Berkeley Business Law Journal Vol. 6.1, 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE PERFORMANCE OF MUTUAL FUNDS IN THE PERIOD 1945–1964

In this paper I derive a risk-adjusted measure of portfolio performance (now known as Jensen's Alpha) that estimates how much a manager's forecasting ability contributes to the fund's returns. The measure is based on the theory of the pricing of capital assets by Sharpe (1964), Lintner (1965a) and Treynor (Undated). I apply the measure to estimate the predictive ability of 115 mutual fund managers in the period 1945-1964 - that is their ability to earn returns which are higher than those we would expect given the level of risk of each of the portfolios. The foundations of the model and the properties of the performance measure suggested here are discussed in Section II. The evidence on mutual fund performance indicates not only that these 115 mutual funds were on average not able to predict security prices well enough to outperform a buy-the-market-and-hold policy, but also that there is very little evidence that any individual fund was able to do significantly better than that which we expected from mere random chance. It is also important to note that these conclusions hold even when we measure the fund returns gross of management expenses (that is assume their bookkeeping, research, and other expenses except brokerage commissions were obtained free). Thus on average the funds apparently were not quite successful enough in their trading activities to recoup even their brokerage expenses.
Taking Distinction to the Next Level: Accountability for Fighters' Failure to Distinguish Themselves from Civilians

The nature of recent conflicts and the “civilianization” of the battlefield has led many to question the effectiveness of distinction going forward, in essence challenging the very foundations of the law of armed conflict. But is distinction truly on the defensive, or do we simply need to rethink how we approach this most fundamental protective principle? The nature of contemporary conflicts demands that we take distinction to the next level and hold non-state actors and others accountable for the failure to distinguish themselves from innocent civilians. Trumpeting the obligation to distinguish between combatants and civilians and then bemoaning the blurred and complex nature of the zone of combat, in which fighters purposely blend into the civilian population and fight from within the civilian infrastructure, simply falls short of the mark. The next step therefore is to reinforce this distinction not only in the conduct of hostilities but also in the post-conflict accountability phase. International criminal tribunals have issued numerous convictions and sentences for deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate attacks on civilians and disproportionate attacks on civilians – all violations of the principle of distinction. Accountability for violations in this second part of distinction, however, lags far behind. This article will explore how the failure to hold persons accountable for perfidy and other violations of the obligation to distinguish will continue to undermine the ability of the law to provide maximum protection to innocent civilians during armed conflict. These violations pose an equal danger to civilians when soldiers cannot tell who is an innocent civilian and who is a fighter simply disguised in civilian clothes. When militants benefit both tactically and strategically from the use of the civilian population as a shield and as a disguise, the international community must take distinction to the next level and demand accountability for such violations as a critical step in the protection of civilians during armed conflict.
Consumption-Driven Environmental Impact and Age Structure Change in OECD Countries: A Cointegration-STIRPAT Analysis

This paper examines two environmental impacts for which population has a substantial demonstrated influence: transport carbon emissions and residential electricity consumption. It takes as its starting point the STIRPAT framework and disaggregates population into four key age groups: 20-34, 35-49, 50-69, and 70 and older. Population age structure’s influence was significant and varied across cohorts, and its profile was different for two dependent variables. For transport, young adults (20-34) were intensive, whereas the other cohorts had negative coefficients. For residential electricity consumption, age structure had a U-shaped impact: the youngest and oldest cohorts had positive coefficients, while the middle ones had negative coefficients.
Power Politics and International Labor Standards

This paper analyzes how a country's commitment to labor standards is affected by the international political power they possess. Powerful countries may be less committed to actual enforcement of certain labor standards since they are unlikely to face significant threats of international sanctions regardless of their actions. The paper introduces an index of international power for 116 countries that is used to examine how power affects the extent to which countries enforce standards relating to freedom of association and collective bargaining. The evidence suggests that, even after controlling for differences in wealth, productivity, and market freedom, powerful countries are significantly less committed to the protection of labor standards than less powerful countries.
Navigating the U.S. Transition to Sustainability: Matching National Governance Challenges With Appropriate Legal Tools

Sustainable development would require the United States to maintain and improve human prosperity while at the same time greatly reducing its consumption of energy, materials, water, and land. The scope of the challenge includes, but is not limited to, climate change. This Article suggests the elements of a legal structure for achieving sustainability. Because achieving sustainable development is a significant learning experience, the United States will need to employ a form of governance - reflexive governance - that requires constant learning and supportive citizens and stakeholders who are also working to ensure sustainability in their own activities. The two basic problems reflexive governance must address are the multigenerational nature of the effort and the need for across-the-board integration of environmental considerations into decision-making. The suggested legal structure includes a required national strategy, long-term and short-term goals, better integration of environment into decision making across and among various levels of government, public education and engagement, a broad range of legal and policy tools, feedback mechanisms to foster learning, and designated governmental entities for coordinating or managing this effort as well as providing an independent review of their efforts. The Governmental Performance and Results Act and existing environmental laws provide a starting point for this legal structure, but would have to be significantly amended.
The tradable pollution permit exercise: Three additional tools

Abstract Permit trading has been a significant innovation in controlling pollution. Ando and Harrington (2006) developed a classroom exercise demonstrating the effectiveness of a tradable permits market. We provide three additional pedagogical tools. First, we show how intermediate microeconomics students can algebraically and graphically calculate the market-clearing permit price. Second, for advanced students we show how the cost-minimizing allocation of pollution control is achieved using a Lagrangian equation and explain the economic interpretation of the shadow price. Third, we show how to solve the first order conditions using Excel's matrix inverse tool for each firm's emissions reductions and the shadow price.
Mean-Field Predictions of Scaling Prefactors Match Low-Dimensional Jammed Packings.

No known analytic framework precisely explains all the phenomena observed in jamming. The replica theory for glasses and jamming is a mean-field theory which attempts to do so by working in the limit of infinite dimensions, such that correlations between neighbors are negligible. As such, results from this mean-field theory are not guaranteed to be observed in finite dimensions. However, many results in mean field for jamming have been shown to be exact or nearly exact in low dimensions. This suggests that the infinite dimensional limit is not necessary to obtain these results. In this Letter, we perform precision measurements of jamming scaling relationships between pressure, excess packing fraction, and number of excess contacts from dimensions 2--10 in order to extract the prefactors to these scalings. While these prefactors should be highly sensitive to finite dimensional corrections, we find the mean-field predictions for these prefactors to be exact in low dimensions. Thus the mean-field approximation is not necessary for deriving these prefactors. We present an exact, first-principles derivation for one, leaving the other as an open question. Our results suggest that mean-field theories of critical phenomena may compute more for $d\ensuremath{\ge}{d}_{u}$ than has been previously appreciated.
Regime Switches in Interest Rates

We examine the econometric performance of regime-switching models for interest rate data from the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Regime-switching models forecast better out-ofsample than single-regime models, including an affine multifactor model, but do not always match moments very well. Regime-switching models incorporating international short-rate and term spread information forecast better, match sample moments better, and classify regimes better than univariate regime-switching models. Finally, the regimes in interest rates correspond reasonably well with business cycles, at least in the United States.
Firms' histories and their capital structures

Abstract This paper examines how cash flows, investment expenditures, and stock price histories affect debt ratios. Consistent with earlier work, we find that these variables have a substantial influence on changes in capital structure. Specifically, stock price changes and financial deficits (i.e., the amount of external capital raised) have strong influences on capital structure changes, but in contrast to previous conclusions, we find that over long horizons their effects are partially reversed. These results indicate that although firms’ histories strongly influence their capital structures, over time their capital structures tend to move towards target debt ratios that are consistent with the tradeoff theories of capital structure.
How Educators Can More Effectively Understand and Combat the Plagiarism Epidemic

This brief article is intended to aid higher education teachers in understanding and responding to plagiarism, which mostly occurs among students, but also occasionally among established professionals.It begins with definitions and definitional issues relating to plagiarism. Then, it asks if an ethical vacuum helps plagiarism flourish. Seven reasons why this misconduct occurs are discussed (academic pressures, poor planning, poor preparation, excessive or mindless workload, opportunity, cultural background, and prominent bad examples), as well as where and how plagiarism occurs. Finally, the article concludes with a discussion of how plagiarism can be best detected, combated, and prevented, as well as appropriate sanctions.This article is based on remarks made at the Committee on Libraries and Technology session of the 2004 Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.
When experimentalist governance meets science‐based regulations; the case of food safety regulations

This paper examines a central regulatory mechanism that shapes food economies. Food safety regulations in the United States rely on a science-based transnational regulatory system known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP), which bears central features of what Sabel and Zeitlin identified as experimentalist governance: a new form of regulation that is flexible, responsive, and involves stakeholders in iterative and direct democratic deliberation. The core theoretical question the paper examines is what the reliance on science means for the promise of an experimentalist policy regime to enable a new form of democratic politics. Based on a case study of the HACCP system implemented by the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service since the late 1990s, HACCP's reliance on food science has acted as an effective divider between producers who were able to take advantage of the system's flexibility and others for whom this was challenging. There is clear evidence that HACCP posed a disproportionate burden on small processors and that some of them were unable to adapt to the requirements of the regulatory system. In so far as the HACCP-based food safety regulations delineated the kind of producer that thrived in the system and contributed to the demise of another set of producers, the regulatory system shaped market outcomes.
Determinants of Moral Judgments Regarding Budgetary Slack:An Experimental Examination of Pay Scheme and Personal Values

ABSTRACT: We study moral judgments regarding budgetary slack made by participants at the end of a participative budgeting experiment in which an expectation for a truthful budget was present. We find that participants who set budgets under a slack-inducing pay scheme, and therefore built relatively high levels of budgetary slack, judged significant budgetary slack to be unethical on average, whereas participants who set budgets under a truth-inducing pay scheme did not. This suggests that the slack-inducing pay scheme generated a moral frame by setting economic self-interest against common social norms such as honesty or responsibility. We also find that participants who scored high in traditional values and empathy on a pre-experiment personality questionnaire (JPI-R) were more likely to judge significant budgetary slack to be unethical. These results suggest that financial incentives play a role in determining the moral frame of the budgeting setting and that personal values play a role in determining h...
In Defence of Exploitation

Roemer has a striking and novel criticism of Marx's thesis that capitalism is exploitative. Even if so, Roemer claims, that does not establish that it is morally objectionable. He argues from idealized models that involve what he calls ‘Marxian exploitation’, but do not have the consequences which, he says, Marxists think make exploitation bad – domination, alienation, and inequality – or have them only in unobjectionable ways. These models, Roemer thinks, show that the moral problem with capitalism that Marxian exploitation locates only imperfectly is unjust inequality. He develops an alternative notion of ‘property relations exploitation’, based on this charge, to replace the morally uninteresting notion of Marxian exploitation in assessing arguments for socialism.
Click Here to Print a Maker Movement Supply Chain: How Invention and Entrepreneurship Will Disrupt Supply Chain Design

Emerging technologies such as 3D printing promise to transform supply chain design and management. As these new technologies enable inventors to become entrepreneurs, new product introduction cycle times are being reduced and the variety of new products that are introduced through short channels of distribution is increasing. We show that these disruptive forces are growing and may have significant implications for practice, research, and teaching in supply chain management. We identify and elaborate important research questions, calling for theory-driven research to explain and predict how these phenomena will impact supply chain management.
The Incentive Effects of Property Taxes on Local Governments

This paper applies the ideas of Brennan and Buchanan (1977, 1978, 1980) to local property taxes. When local governments maximize their revenues, property taxes provide incentives for adequate amenity provision. Local amenity provision determines property values which then determine local tax revenues. As long as the demand for housing is inelastic, property-taxes will provide stronger incentives for local governments than lump-sum taxes. As current property values reflect expectations about future amenity levels, property taxes create incentives for even the most myopic government to invest for the future. Local property taxes can also act to limit the incentives of localities to tax; there are cases where higher levels of local property taxes lead to lower overall tax burdens. These ideas are applied to the tax reform in the late 1970s; one reason that tax reform may have been so successful is that in a period where land prices are driven by many forces other than government amenities, property taxes lose their value as incentive devices.
How Much Do Taxes Discourage Incorporation

The double taxation of corporate income should discourage firms from incorporating. We investigate the extent to which the aggregate allocation of assets and taxable income in the United States between corporate and noncorporate firms responds to the size of this tax distortion during the period 1959-1986. In theory, profitable firms should shift out of the corporate sector when the tax distortion is large, and conversely for firms with tax losses. Our empirical results provide strong support for these forecasts, and imply that the resulting excess burden equals 16 percent of business tax revenue. ONE OF THE MOST BASIC distortions created by the double taxation of corporate income in the United States is the disincentive to incorporate. Even in most countries with integrated or partially integrated tax systems, there are differential taxes across organizational forms. However obvious this distortion may be, most articles investigating the distortions created by the corporate tax have taken as exogenous a firm's choice whether or not to incorporate, assuming for example that some industries are inherently corporate, while others are inherently noncorporate. A variety of nontax factors, described below, can certainly influence a firm's choice of organizational form, causing some to favor incorporating and others not. But are these nontax factors so dominant that taxes do not in practice influence a firm's choice of organizational form? As Gravelle and Kotlikoff (1989, 1993) emphasize, tax-induced changes in firms' choices of organizational form in principle can create large excess burdens. The size of these excess burdens in practice depends on the extent to which firms respond to these tax incentives. In this article, we calculate how the tax distortion discouraging firms from incorporating has varied over time, then estimate the extent to which the allocation of assets and taxable income between corporate and noncorporate
The Cost of Free Trade

The two misconceptions — that globalization is unprecedented, accelerating, and predetermined and that trade benefits everyone — form the central justifications for negotiating free trade agreements. In fact, there is little evidence to support either of these assumptions. When we begin to scrutinize them more closely, we find that their application leads to an international legal structure that routinely undermines national standards for protecting workers and the environment. I do not mean to suggest that international trade is a bad thing. In fact, under the right circumstances global trade can increase competition and give consumers a wider choice of goods and services at lower prices. Instead, I argue that it is possible to reform our trading system in order to both increase competition and raise regulatory standards to benefit developing as well as industrialized countries.
Implied Reverse Preemption

When they apply the doctrine of preemption, courts refuse to hear claims for personal injury on the ground that adjudication of these claims would be inconsistent with a regulatory scheme. Finding that federal law preempts personal injury in those cases where Congress has not made this declaration overt is an inference about congressional purpose and intent. Because what Congress meant to do does not appear in the words of a statute, implied preemption can be more accurately understood as "inferred preemption." Current preemption law asymmetrically assumes that Congress sometimes intends to preempt tort liability yet never intends to abandon this kind of preemptive design once undertaken. This assumption is inaccurate, as a study of one exemplar - consumer product safety regulation - reveals. Because old inferences of preemption can grow obsolete and inaccurate after Congress has moved in a different direction, the judge-made doctrine of implied preemption calls for a complementary doctrine of implied reverse preemption.
The Effect of Legal Theories on Judicial Decisions

I draw a distinction in the beginning of this essay between judicial decision-making and a judge's decision-making. To persuade a judge, we should try to discover what her theories are. Across a range of theories, I offered well-known case examples typically cited as examples of each theory. Then I showed that the exact same theory used to justify or explain those case results could be used to justify or explain the opposite result in each of those cases.
Tenure and Its Discontents: The Worst Form of Employment Relationship Save All of the Others

This article attempts to defend academic tenure and offer some recommendations to make it more effective. There is nothing unique in this effort. What might be new to the discussion is the belief that the catalyst to making tenure more flexible and effective lies not with the professorate relinquishing some of its rights, but with university administrators creating an environment of expectations and incentives for tenured faculty, developing the fortitude and procedures to make tenure work as it should, and encouraging faculty to exercise the responsibilities that accompany their status.
Further evidence on the relation between analysts' forecast dispersion and stock returns

Prior research reports seemingly conflicting evidence and interpretations concerning the relation between dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts and stock returns. Diether et al. (2002) and Johnson (2004) find a negative relation between levels of dispersion in analysts' forecasts and future stock returns. Yet, changes in forecast dispersion are negatively associated with contemporaneous stock returns (L'Her and Suret 1996). We demonstrate that levels and changes in dispersion reflect different theoretical constructs. Changes in dispersion primarily reflect changes in information asymmetry whereas levels of dispersion primarily reflect levels of uncertainty. Further, the uncertainty component of dispersion levels reflects idiosyncratic risk that is negatively associated with future stock returns. These findings provide support for Johnson's (2004) explanation that dispersion levels reflect idiosyncratic uncertainty that increases the option value of the firm and generally refute Diether et al.'s (2002) explanation that dispersion levels reflect information asymmetry. In addition, we reconcile L'Her and Suret's (1996) findings with the findings of Johnson (2004). We find that the negative association between changes in dispersion and contemporaneous stock returns is not due to increased uncertainty but rather increased information asymmetry.
Guardianship for your own good: Improving the well-being of respondents and wards in the USA.

Adult guardianship is a coercive exercise of the state's power over an innocent individual, justified only by: 1) the ward's incapacity; and 2) the need to protect the ward's well-being. The raison d'etre of guardianship is to improve the well-being of the incapacitated ward. Studies of actual guardianship proceedings have long indicated serious ongoing concerns with the process. Repeated revisions of statutes have attempted to improve guardianship procedures, with some success. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the actual effect of guardianship on the well-being of respondents and wards, when the system functions as intended. The presumption that guardianship, when not abused, is in the best interests of an incapacitated adult is called into serious question by empirical research into the role of internal locus of control and autonomy on human well-being. Indeed, a wide range of data indicates that guardianship itself can have significant negative effects on the physical and mental well-being of respondents and wards. The guardianship system must be reformed to maximize the therapeutic effects of guardianship and to minimize the unnecessarily anti-therapeutic effects. I examine the effects of guardianship from a therapeutic jurisprudence perspective and propose and analyze modifications that could enhance the therapeutic effects of guardianship.
How Do Hospitals Respond to Price Changes

This paper examines hospital responses to changes in diagnosis-specific prices by exploiting a 1988 policy reform that generated large price changes for 43 percent of Medicare admissions. I find hospitals responded primarily by "upcoding" patients to diagnosis codes with the largest price increases. This response was particularly strong among for-profit hospitals. I find little evidence hospitals increased the volume of admissions differentially for diagnoses subject to the largest price increases, despite the financial incentive to do so. Neither did they increase intensity or quality of care in these diagnoses, suggesting hospitals do not compete for patients at the diagnosis level.
Risk, Ambiguity, and the Exercise of Employee Stock Options

Abstract We investigate the importance of ambiguity, or Knightian uncertainty, in executives’ stock option exercise decisions. We develop an empirical estimate of ambiguity and include it in regression models alongside the traditional measure of risk, equity volatility. We show that each variable has a significant effect on the timing of option exercises, with volatility causing executives to hold options longer to preserve option value, and ambiguity increasing the tendency for executives to exercise early.
Spending Medicare’s Dollars Wisely: Taking Aim at Hospitals’ Cultures of Overtreatment

With Medicare’s rising costs threatening the country’s fiscal health, policymakers have focused their attention on a primary cause of Medicare’s high price tag — the overtreatment of patients. Guided by professional norms that demand they do “everything possible” for their patients, physicians frequently order additional diagnostic tests, perform more procedures, utilize costly technologies, and provide more inpatient care. Much of this care, however, does not improve Medicare patients’ health, but only increases Medicare spending.Reducing the overtreatment of patients requires aligning physicians’ interests with the government’s goal of spending Medicare’s dollars wisely. Toward that end, recent Medicare payment reforms establish a range of financial incentives that encourage more efficient practices among physicians. Physicians, however, do not practice medicine in a vaccum. Rather, they are profoundly influenced by the organizational cultures of hospitals. Far too often hospitals’ cultures lead physicians to provide Medicare patients care of questionable value. If Medicare is to successfully contain costs, it must prod hospitals to move from cultures of overtreatment to cultures of efficiency. Current Medicare reform proposals, however, do too little to address hospitals’ cultures of overtreatment. That is unfortunate, as regulators will have limited success in constraining Medicare’s growth if hospitals’ cultures continue to foster the overtreatment of Medicare patients. This Article therefore sets forth a more robust proposal for reforming Medicare payment policy, one that would facilitate hospitals fully embracing a culture of efficiency. Specifically, federal regulators should reform the Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program so that a hospital’s Medicare payment rates are tied to the hospital’s success in lowering the cost of treating patients both inside and outside the hospital setting. Regulators could accomplish this goal by incorporating into the program efficiency measures based on broadly defined episodes of care.
‘Vintage’ Nash bargaining without convexity

I study Nash bargaining when the utility possibility set of the bargaining problem is not convex. A simple variation of Nash’s Symmetry axiom is all that is necessary to establish a set-valued version of Nash’s solution in non-convex settings.
Business Lawyers, Baseball Players, and the Hebrew Prophets

This article is a reflection on the ethics of practiving law for business, building on the career of Scott Boras, who acts as agent and lawyer for professional baseball players. The reflection wonders at the clout corporate lawyers have over their clients, mentioning, of course, some personal experiences (back before the invention of moveable type) from the author's two years in a large business-oriented law firm, as well as on Mr. Boras's significant influence in the baseball world. The object, finally, is ethical reflection on such things as the particular a lawyer has when she in "in house" rather than in a firm and working for other clients. The principal ethical guidance the author explores is the Biblical prophets, where much of the danger in the enterprise, as well as much of the moral influence employed, turned on the fact that the prophet was an insider.
Immigration and the Welfare State: Immigrant Participation in Means-Tested Entitlement Programs

This paper documents the extent to which immigrants [in the United States over the past 30 years] participate in the many programs that make up the welfare state. The immigrant-native difference in the probability of receiving cash benefits is small but the gap widens once other programs are included in the analysis: 21 percent of immigrant households receive some type of assistance as compared with only 14 percent of native households. The types of benefits received by earlier immigrants influence the types of benefits received by newly arrived immigrants. Hence there might be ethnic networks that transmit information about the availability of particular benefits to new immigrants. (EXCERPT)
The Effects of the Real Oil Price on Regional Wage Dispersion

We find that oil supply shocks decrease average real wages, particularly skilled wages, and increase wage dispersion across regions, particularly unskilled wage dispersion. In a model with spatial energy intensity differences and nontradables, labor demand shifts, while explaining the response of average wages to oil supply shocks, have counterfactual implications for the response of wage dispersion. Only an additional response in labor supply can explain this latter fact, highlighting the importance of general equilibrium effects in a spatial context. We provide additional empirical evidence of regionally directed worker reallocation and housing prices consistent with our spatial model. Finally, we show that a calibrated version of our model can quantitatively match the estimated effects of oil supply shocks.
Income inequality and well-being in the U.S.: evidence of geographic-scale- and measure-dependence

U.S. income inequality has risen dramatically in recent decades. Researchers consistently find that greater income inequality measured at the state or national level is associated with diminished subjective well-being (SWB) in the U.S. We conduct the first multi-scale analysis (i.e., at the ZIP-code, MSA, and state levels) of the inequality-SWB relationship using SWB data from the U.S. Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index and income inequality data from the American Community Survey. We use the rich set of SWB measures afforded by the dataset (evaluative, positive hedonic, and negative hedonic) to examine the consistency of the relationship. We find that the relationship is both scale-dependent and measure-dependent: income inequality is SWB-diminishing in large regions for all measures, SWB-diminishing in small regions for negative hedonic measures, and SWB-improving in small regions for evaluative and positive hedonic measures. Lastly, we find that taking all regions together, the net relationship between income inequality and SWB is negative for all hedonic measures.
Reconciling Theory and Doctrine in First Amendment Jurisprudence

Author(s): Post, Robert | Abstract: The twentieth century has seen the birth and the development of the doctrine of the First Amendment's free speech clause. In its current state, free speech jurisprudence is hampered by coexisting but conflicting First Amendment theories and doctrines. In this Essay, Professor Post examines these conflicts. He traces the development of two primary First Amendment theories: the theory of the marketplace of ideas, exemplified by Justices Holmes' dissenting opinion in Abrams v. United States; and the theory of democratic speech, articulated most notably by Alexander Meiklejohn. After discussing the doctrinal implications of these theories and noting that courts have not followed either theory consistently, Professor Post suggests that First amendment jurisprudence could be rendered more coherent if First Amendment theories were to be ordered according to a "lexical priority" that will illuminate what is at stake in the conflict between theories and how such conflicts may be settled.
Faces of Immigration Reform

The wait for so-called comprehensive immigration reform has been long and wrenching for immigrants and their advocates.1 Over the years, as I have written on subjects that intersect with immigration, I have followed legislative developments assuming we were on the verge of federal comprehensive reform that would cause me, happily, to rewrite my text. Yet, Congress consistently dashed those hopes.2 Recognizing the bitter disappointment of the hundreds of thousands of marchers for reform that packed the streets of Los Angeles and other cities in 2006,3 I remarked at the Florida International University Law Review Symposium that those hopeful for reform over the last decade might now wear a t-shirt lamenting resignedly: “We wanted comprehensive immigration reform and all we got was a lousy Secure Fence Act.”4 In the span of a decade, the roller-coaster ride of reform has devolved from the verge of compromise legislation just before the Sep-
Transformational technologies and the creation of new work practices: making implicit knowledge explicit in task-based offshoring

Studies have shown the knowledge transfer problems that arise when communication and storage technologies are employed to accomplish work across time and space. Much less is known about knowledge transfer problems associated with transformational technologies, which afford the creation, modification, and manipulation of digital artifacts. Yet, these technologies play a critical role in offshoring by allowing the distribution of work at the task level, what we call task-based offshoring. For example, computer-aided engineering applications transform input like physical dimensions, location coordinates, and material properties into computational models that can be shared electronically among engineers around the world as they work together on analysis tasks. Digital artifacts created via transformational technologies often embody implicit knowledge that must be correctly interpreted to successfully act upon the artifacts. To explore what problems might arise in interpreting this implicit knowledge across time and space, and how individuals might remedy these problems, we studied a firm that sent engineering tasks from home sites in Mexico and the United States to an offshore site in India. Despite having proper formal education and ample tool skills, the Indian engineers had difficulty interpreting the implicit knowledge embodied in artifacts sent to them from Mexico and the United States. To resolve and prevent the problems that subsequently arose, individuals from the home sites developed five new work practices to transfer occupational knowledge to the offshore site. The five practices were defining requirements, monitoring progress, fixing returns, routing tasks strategically, and filtering quality. The extent to which sending engineers in our study were free from having to enact these new work practices because on-site coordinators acted on their behalf predicted their perceptions of the effectiveness of the offshoring arrangement, but Indian engineers preferred learning from sending engineers, not on-site coordinators. Our study contributes to theories of knowledge transfer and has practical implications for managing task-based offshoring arrangements.
The 52-week high momentum strategy in international stock markets

Abstract We study the 52-week high momentum strategy in international stock markets proposed by George and Hwang [George, T., Hwang, C.Y., 2004. The 52-week high and momentum investing. Journal of Finance 59, 2145–2176.]. This strategy produces profits in 18 of the 20 markets studied, and the profits are significant in 10 markets. The 52-week high momentum profits exist independently from the Jegadeesh and Titman [Jegadeesh, N., Titman, S., 1993. Returns to buying winners and selling losers: implications for market efficiency. Journal of Finance 48, 65–91.] individual stock and Moskowitz and Grinblatt [Moskowitz, T.J., Grinblatt, M., 1999. Do industries explain momentum? Journal of Finance 54, 1249–1290] industry momentum strategies. These profits do not show reversals in the long run. We find that the 52-week high is a better predictor of future returns than macroeconomic risk factors or the acquisition price. The individualism index, a proxy to the level of overconfidence, has no explanatory power to the variations of the 52-week high momentum profits across different markets. However, the profits are no longer significant in most markets once transaction costs are taken into account.
Insider Trading and CEO Pay

This Article presents evidence showing that boards of directors "bargain" with executives about the profits they expect to make from trades in firm stock. The evidence suggests that executives whose trading freedom increased using Rule 10b5-1 trading plans experienced reductions in other forms of pay to offset the potential gains from trading. There are two potential benefits from trading-portfolio optimization and informed trading profits-and this Article allows us to isolate them. The data show that boards pay executives in a way that reflects the profits they are expected to earn from informed trades. It also casts some doubt on the existence of the incremental value for optimization trades provided by the Rule. In addition, this Article explores the legal issues associated with paying executives from illegal profits. As a matter of policy, the data seriously undercut criticisms of the laissez-faire view of insider trading most closely associated with Henry Manne. At least with respect to classic insider trading (that is, a manager of a firm trading on the basis of information about the firm where she works), if boards are taking potential trading profits into consideration when setting pay, it is difficult to locate potential victims of this trading. Current shareholders should be at least indifferent to a deal that pays managers in part out of the hide of future shareholders. The firm should also internalize any costs arising from this payment scheme, since future shareholders should take this into account when deciding whether and at what price to buy shares. While there still may be good reasons to prohibit some individuals from trading on material, nonpublic information, the data make the case for classic insider trading much weaker. I. INTRODUCTION 506 II. COSTS AND BENEFITS OF EQUITY COMPENSATION 508 III. BARGAINING ABOUT TRADING 513 A. Bargaining About Blackout Windows 514 B. Bargaining About 10b5-l Plans 516 1. Unwinding Blackout Windows 517 2. Lowering the Cost of Informed Trading ...... 519 3. Separating Informed and Optimization Trades 520 4. The Completeness of Bargaining 521 IV. DATA 522 V. EMPIRICAL ANALYSES 526 A. Difference-in-Difference 526 B. Plan Versus Nonplan Firms 533 C. Nonplan Versus Nondisclosure Firms 534 D. Robustness Check 535 VI. DISCUSSION 537 A. The Completeness of Bargaining 538 B. Securities Law Issues 541 1. Insider Trading 541 2. Disclosure 547 C. Corporate Governance 551 VII. CONCLUSION 554 I. INTRODUCTION This Article presents evidence showing that boards of directors bargain with executives about the profits they expect to make from informed trades in firm stock. There are two related takeaways. First, the evidence suggests that executives whose trading freedom is increased experience reductions in other forms of pay to offset the potential gains from trading. This result is consistent with (and the flip side of) a study by Darren Roulstone, finding that firms that restrict trading increase compensation to offset the lost opportunities from trading. …
Cities, regions and the decline of transport costs*

The theoretical framework of urban and regional economics is built on transportation costs for manufactured goods. But over the twentieth century, the costs of moving these goods have declined by over 90% in real terms, and there is little reason to doubt that this decline will continue. Moreover, technological change has eliminated the importance of fixed infrastructure transport (rail and water) that played a critical role in creating natural urban centres. In this article, we document this decline and explore several simple implications of a world where it is essentially free to move goods, but expensive to move people. We find empirical support for these implications.
CEO Overconfidence and Corporate Investment

We argue that managerial overconfidence can account for corporate investment distortions. Overconfident managers overestimate the returns to their investment projects and view external funds as unduly costly. Thus, they overinvest when they have abundant internal funds, but curtail investment when they require external financing. We test the overconfidence hypothesis, using panel data on personal portfolio and corporate investment decisions of Forbes 500 CEOs. We classify CEOs as overconfident if they persistently fail to reduce their personal exposure to company-specific risk. We find that investment of overconfident CEOs is significantly more responsive to cash flow, particularly in equity-dependent firms.
Resonant excitation of disk oscillations in deformed disks. VII. Stability criterion in MHD systems

In a disk with an oscillatory deformation from an axisymmetric state with frequency ωD and azimuthal wavenumber mD, two normal mode oscillations with a set of frequency and azimuthal wavenumber being (ω1, m1) and (ω2, m2) are resonantly coupled to each other through the disk deformation when the resonant conditions (ω1 + ω2 + ωD = 0 and m1 + m2 + mD = 0) are satisfied. In the case of hydrodynamical disks, the resonance amplifies the set of the oscillations if (E1/ω1)(E2/ω2) > 0 (Kato 2013b, PASJ, 65, 75), where E1 and E2 are wave energies of the two oscillations with ω1 and ω2, respectively. In this paper we show that this instability criterion is still valid even when the oscillations are ideal MHD ones in magnetized disks, if the displacements associated with the oscillations vanish on the boundary of the system.
The Hughes Court docket books: The early terms, 1929‐1933

For many years, the docket books kept by a number of the justices of the Hughes Court have been held by the Office of the Curator of the Supreme Court. Yet the existence of these docket books was not widely known, and access to them was highly restricted. Recently, however, the Court adopted new guidelines designed to increase access to the docket books for researchers. This article offers the first-ever examination of the available docket book entries relevant to what scholars commonly regard as the major decisions rendered during the early years of the Hughes Court, from the 1929 through the 1933 Terms. The decisions examined concern the Commerce Clause, the dormant Commerce Clause, substantive due process, equal protection, fair trade, labor relations, intergovernmental tax immunities, criminal procedure, civil rights, and civil liberties. The information in the docket books sheds particularly fascinating new light on decisions such as Nebbia v. New York, Home Bldg. & Loan Assn. v. Blaisdell, New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, Powell v. Alabama, Nixon v. Condon, and Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co. In particular, the docket books often reveal what the justices said to one another at their conference deliberations over major cases, and illuminate many previously unknown changes in justices’ votes between those conferences and the times the decisions were published. Analysis of the voting data contained in the docket books yields some surprising results, and offers a contribution to two bodies of political science scholarship on judicial behavior: the literature on vote fluidity and unanimity norms in the Supreme Court, and the literature on the so-called “freshman effect” that some scholars have found exhibited by the Court’s newest members.