cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The price–consumption puzzle of currency pegs

Abstract A defining stylized fact associated with exchange-rate-based stabilization programs is that their initial phase is characterized by several years of continuous expansion in private consumption and a gradual appreciation of the real exchange rate. This paper shows that a large class of standard optimizing models is unable to account for this empirical regularity. In particular, models in this class predict that a gradual appreciation of the real exchange rate must necessarily be accompanied by a declining path of consumption. The paper suggests several possible solutions to this problem and develops one in detail. Namely, the relaxation of the assumption of time separability in preferences. Specifically, it shows that under habit formation currency pegs induce a positive comovement between consumption and the real exchange rate. The paper also establishes that habit formation provides an explanation for why in failed currency pegs a contraction in aggregate demand sets in before the collapse of the program.
A Cure Worse Than the Disease? Currency Crises and the Output Costs of IMF-Supported Stabilization Programs

This paper investigates the output effects of IMF-supported stabilization programs, especially those introduced at the time of a severe balance of payments/currency crisis. Using a panel data set over the 1975-97 period and covering 67 developing and emerging-market economies (with 461 IMF stabilization programs and 160 currency crises), we find that currency crises even after controlling for macroeconomic developments, political and regional factors significantly reduce output growth for 1-2 years. Output growth is also lower (0.7 percentage points annually) during IMF-stabilization programs, but it appears that growth generally slows prior to implementation of the program. Moreover, programs coinciding with recent balance of payments or currency crises do not appear to further damage short-run growth prospects. Countries participating in IMF programs significantly reduce domestic credit growth, but no effect is found on budget policy. Applying this model to the collapse of output in East Asia following the 1997 crisis, we find that the unexpected (forecast error) collapse of output in Malaysia where an IMF-program was not followed-- was similar in magnitude to those countries adopting IMF programs (Indonesia, Korea, Philippines and Thailand).
Race, Genes, and Justice: A Call to Reform the Presentation of Forensic DNA Evidence in Criminal Trials.

The article considers how and when, if at all, is it appropriate to use race in presenting forensic DNA evidence in a court of law? This relatively straightforward question has been wholly overlooked by legal scholars. By pursuing it, this article promises to transform fundamentally the presentation forensic DNA evidence. Currently, it is standard practice for prosecutors to use race in presenting the odds that a given defendant's DNA matches DNA found at a crime scene. This article takes an interdisciplinary approach to question the validity of this widespread but largely uninterrogated practice. It examines how race came to enter the construction and presentation of forensic DNA evidence in the early 1990s and considers how its use has persisted and developed over time. It asks the basic question of what race adds as a practical matter to ability of the finder of fact to make fair and accurate decisions and weighs this against the potential dangers of bias created by introducing issues of race as genetic into the context of what is usually a violent crime. It considers how current technological advances have largely rendered the use of race irrelevant to the calculation of odds ratios necessary to establish a match between a DNA sample left at a crime scene and DNA from a suspect. It argues that in most cases such evidence should be excluded as irrelevant, or if deemed relevant it should be held inadmissible because the dangers of infecting the proceedings with racial prejudice outweigh any possible benefit that introducing the race-based statistics could provide. This is particularly the case where race is being introduced in a context that involves constructing a relationship between genetics and violent crime. The article concludes with a brief synthesis of the arguments for ending the practice of using race frame the presentation of forensic DNA evidence. It notes this would not materially hinder the ability of prosecutors to obtain convictions using DNA evidence, nor of defendants to challenge such evidence. Yet, by removing the gratuitous introduction of race into a context of genetics and violent crime, such reform would promote a positive and significant reorientation of the relation among race, genes, and justice.
Consent, Coercion, and Hard Choices

This famous passage from Hume is often quoted approvingly in attacks on the Lockean notion of tacit consent as a foundation for political obligation.3 Even writers who do not quote the passage directly use rhetoric of a similar nature in calling doctrines of implied and tacit consent into serious question.4 I have myself quoted the passage, without comment, as though it constituted a self-explanatory and self-evidently sound refutation of such doctrines.5
Wittgenstein on Understanding and Interpretation (Comments on the work of Thomas Morawetz)

Wittgenstein's distinction between understanding and interpretation is fundamental to the account of meaning in Philosophical Investigations. In his discussion of rule-following, Wittgenstein explicitly rejects the idea that understanding or grasping a rule is a matter of interpretation. Wittgenstein explains meaning and rule-following in terms of action, rejecting both realist and Cartesian accounts of the mental. I argue that in his effort to employ Wittgenstein's views on meaning and rule-following, Professor Morawetz embraces the position Wittgenstein rejects. In the course of making his case for law as a “deliberative practice,” Professor Morawetz embraces interpretation as a fundamental element of human practices, thereby taking up precisely the view Wittgenstein rejects
Reports of Beta's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

For decades the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) has been held as an article of faith among financial economists. The model, usually attributed to 1990 Nobel Laureate William Sharpe (1964), was also developed by Fischer Black (1972), John Lintner (1965), Jan Mossin (1966), and Jack Treyor (1965). CAPM attempted to quantify the relationship between risk and return. Both economists and financial practitioners have long believed that riskier assets must yield a higher expected rate of return to induce investors to hold them. The innovation of CAPM was to specify the particular risk measure that would be priced in the market.
The changing relationship between earnings expectations and earnings for value and growth stocks during Reg FD

Abstract Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) altered the voluntary disclosure practices of firms with publicly traded securities, thereby affecting relationships between value and growth stock expectations and actual earnings. The results show that earnings forecasts for both stock groups are biased but that bias is less after the introduction of Reg FD. In fact, the difference in pre/post FD forecast bias is larger for growth stocks, suggesting that before Reg FD, analysts did not just misinterpret news but consciously tried to maintain relationships with growth firm managers. However, Reg FD limited these relationships severing the monetary advantage that might be gained from manipulating forecasts.
To Seek a Newer World: Prisoners’ Rights at the Frontier

Prisoners’ rights lawyers have long faced a dismal legal landscape. Yet, 2015 was a remarkable year for prison litigation that could signal a new period for this area of law—the Supreme Court handed down decisions that will reverberate in prison jurisprudence for decades to come. New questions have been asked, new avenues opened. This piece is about what the Court has done recently, and what possibilities it has opened for the future. More broadly, I suggest that the Court may be subjecting prison officials to greater scrutiny and that this shifting judicial landscape reflects an evolving social discourse about prison conditions and mass incarceration. With the United States leading the world in incarcerating its own people,1 the federal courts’ attention to prison conditions is long overdue. The recent judicial decisions were made all the more surprising by a long and dreary prologue: In prison law, deference has long been the order of the day.2 In the 1960s and 1970s, federal judges had begun, for the first time in American history, to scrutinize and manage conditions in prisons and jails,3 but deference soon took hold. Lacking the training and technical competence to run prisons, lower court judges were instructed by the Supreme Court to back off—let the jailers run the jails.4 Deference to prison officials’ judgment was the dominant note in prison conditions law for at least three decades. In this field, a lawyer had to be naive to bring a case to
Six degrees of GM Bacon: network analysis of biotechnology inventors

Network analysis shows a stable network between states, but a changing environment between individual actors, with a growing importance of connectedness. The popular maxim that everyone is connected by six degrees of separation is tested with surprising results.
The Persistence and Pricing of Earnings, Accruals, and Cash Flows When Firms Have Large Book‐Tax Differences

I investigate the role of book‐tax differences in indicating the persistence of earnings, accruals, and cash flows for one‐period‐ahead earnings. I also examine whether the level of book‐tax differences influences investors' assessments of future earnings persistence. I find that firm‐years with large book‐tax differences have earnings that are less persistent than firm‐years with small book‐tax differences. Further, the evidence is consistent with investors interpreting large positive book‐tax differences (book income greater than taxable income) as a “red flag” and reducing their expectation of future earnings persistence for these firm‐years. I then investigate potential sources of the lower persistence for firm‐years with large book‐tax differences. I find that special items contribute in part to the results but that firm‐years with large booktax differences continue to have lower persistence in earnings after controlling for the effect of the special items.
Criminal Labor Law

This Article examines a recent rise in suits brought against unions under criminal statutes. By looking at the long history of criminal regulation of labor, the Article argues that these suits represent an attack on the theoretical underpinnings of post-New Deal U.S. labor law and an attempt to revive a nineteenth century conception of unions as extortionate criminal conspiracies. The Article further argues that this criminal turn is reflective of a broader contemporary preference for finding criminal solutions to social and economic problems. In a moment of political gridlock, parties seeking regulation increasingly do so via criminal statute. In this respect, “criminal labor law” should pose concerns, not only for scholars concerned about workplace democracy, but also those focused on overcriminalization and the increasing scope of criminal law.
Copyright 1992-2012: The Most Significant Development?

On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Fordham Intellectual Property Law & Policy Conference, its organizer, Professor Hugh Hansen, planned a session on “U.S. Copyright Law: Where Has It Been? Where Is It Going?” and asked me to look back over the twenty years since the conference’s inception in order to identify the most important development in copyright during that period. Of course, the obvious answer is “the Internet,” or “digital media,” whose effect on copyright law has been pervasive. I want to propose a less obvious response, but first acknowledge that digital media and communications have presented significant challenges to every one of the exclusive rights that §106 of the Copyright Act grants to authors. Part I will summarize those challenges, as well as the addition of a new §106 right, and of new “paracopyright” rights regarding technological protection measures and copyright management information. Digital media have also considerably broadened thescope of fair use and have prompted the introduction of commercially significant immunities for intermediary service providers. Part II will address the expansion of copyright defenses and immunities and will suggest that, contrary to the popular depiction of overreaching copyright rights and remedies, the courts have re-balanced copyright to weight toward users. Finally, turning from digital media, I will offer a less obvious response, one that I hope evokes the core of copyright law, past, present and future. ∗Columbia University School of Law. Many thanks to John L. Schwab, Columbia Law School, Class of 2012, and to Philip Sancilio and John Briggs, both Columbia Law School class of 2013. C04_GINSBURG (DO NOT DELETE) 3/5/2013 3:16 PM 465 Copyright 1992–2012: The Most Significant Development?
Oversight in Private Food Safety Auditing: Addressing Auditor Conflict of Interest

Private auditing is a significant component of food safety regulation. Typically, manufacturers, retail sellers, and food-service operators require their suppliers to obtain food safety certification from a private third-party auditor paid by the supplier. Auditors’ financial interest in acquiring accounts from suppliers who want the cheapest certification that they can obtain gives auditors incentive to reduce the rigor of audits. This constitutes a conflict of interest between the auditor’s private financial interest and its professional obligation to protect the public from food safety risks. Audit industry insiders and outside observers are well aware of this problem, and various institutional actors—both public and private—have developed oversight mechanisms to address it. We analyze the nature and sources of this conflict of interest in food safety auditing, efforts to prevent it, and responses when it occurs. Our focus is on institutional design—organizational structures, administrative routines, and professional norms. Part I of the Article describes how conflicts of interest lead some auditors to be less probing in their inspection of suppliers’ operations and to skew their risk evaluations in favor of suppliers’ desire for cheap certification. Part II of the Article surveys the different oversight mechanisms currently in place or under development that aim to counteract auditors’ incentive to reduce the rigor of audits. Conflict of interest is a structural feature of any system of private standards compliance in which the auditor is paid by the entity being audited. Other prominent examples include securities rating and environmental audits. Our analysis of food safety auditing aims to offer general insights into the comparative strengths and weaknesses of different responses to this problem.
Dispute Resolution Lessons Gleaned from the Arrest of Professor Gates and "The Beer Summit"

On July 30, 2009, President Obama convened the “beer summit,” a metaphorical mediation. President Obama invited Professor Henry Louis Gates, a well-respected African American Academic, and Police Sergeant James Crowley, a Caucasian, to the White House Rose Garden to resolve the issues surrounding the arrest of Professor Gates in his own home by Sergeant Crowley. Using the beer summit as a springboard, this article challenges the long held taboo proscribing the mediation of civil rights violations as racial profiling. The author raises the limitation of litigation, highlights existing effective mediation models, and suggests protocols to be considered when designing mediation programs to address to racism.
Information Conveyed in Hiring Announcements of Senior Executives Overseeing Enterprise-Wide Risk Management Processes

Enterprise risk management (ERM) is the process of analyzing the portfolio of risks facing the enterprise to ensure that the combined effect of such risks is within an acceptable tolerance. While m...
Vote Buying With Multiple Distributive Goods

Within the rich literature on distributive politics, models of vote buying treat the distributive logic of different particularistic incentives as theoretically similar. This article relaxes that a...
CAPM over the long run: 1926–2001

Abstract A conditional one-factor model can account for the spread in the average returns of portfolios sorted by book-to-market ratios over the long run from 1926 to 2001. In contrast, earlier studies document strong evidence of a book-to-market effect using OLS regressions over post-1963 data. However, the betas of portfolios sorted by book-to-market ratios vary over time and in the presence of time-varying factor loadings, OLS inference produces inconsistent estimates of conditional alphas and betas. We show that under a conditional CAPM with time-varying betas, predictable market risk premia, and stochastic systematic volatility, there is little evidence that the conditional alpha for a book-to-market trading strategy is different from zero.
Childhood disease and the precautionary demand for children

The childhood disease burden depends on the prevalence of infectious diseases, their case fatalities, and long-term morbidity. We propose a quantity–quality model of fertility choice under uncertainty that emphasizes morbidity and mortality from infectious disease. The fertility response to a decline in child mortality depends on the morbidity effect of the disease, the prevalence rate, and whether the prevalence or case fatality rate declines. Fertility follows mortality and morbidity, but since mortality and morbidity do not always move in the same direction, the fertility response may be dampened or nonmonotonic. Disease-specific evidence from sub-Saharan Africa supports these theoretical predictions.
Taking Leaves out of the International Criminal Court Statute: The Direct Application of International Criminal Law by Military Courts in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Article 215 of the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the entry point for international law into the DRC legal complex. It provides that international treaties and agreements duly ratified by the state predominate over Acts of Parliament. Cases and studies involving the direct effect or self-executing norms of international law in domestic cases are rare in the DRC. The correct ways of applying Article 215 of the Constitution and international law in domestic cases have not yet been authoritatively settled. The basic dilemma is whether courts should read the provisions of relevant international treaties into disputed provisions of DRC laws or read the disputed provisions in the light of the relevant treaty provisions.Using as a case study the emerging practice of DRC military courts of directly applying international criminal law in domestic cases, the article argues that carelessly cutting and pasting formulations found in international treaties into the texts of applicable municipal laws infringes state sovereignty. Instead, the article proposes a strategy that would avoid unpleasant friction between international criminal law and municipal law, while encouraging cultural pluralism and the judicious intervention of international law in municipal law.
Asset redeployability and the choice between bank debt and public debt

Abstract A firm with less redeployable assets, which are assets that have fewer alternative uses outside the firm, is more likely to borrow from banks than issue public debt. These findings are consistent with firms with less redeployable assets valuing the ability to renegotiate bank debt contracts instead of selling assets in the event of default. Consistent with this mechanism, firms with lower asset redeployability sell fewer assets following covenant violations. Our results contribute to work on the determinants of which debt markets a firm chooses to borrow from and the role that banks play as intermediaries.
Labor Law Reform: One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

This article deals with the question of whether the reforms proposed by the labor law traditionalists are desirable on economic grounds, and if not, what types of reform might be offered. The specific proposals include increased job security, increased employee participation in decision making, and reform of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The difficulty for reformers is that they have not yet accepted the challenge of designing proposals for today's more competitive labor and product markets. Until this changes, reform efforts can be shown to be backward steps.
Nineteenth century US black and white physical activity and nutritional trends among the working class

Much has been written about 19th century African American and white statures and body mass index values. However, little is known about their physical activity and calories required to sustain height and weight. This paper considers two alternative measures for biological conditions that address physical activity and available calories: basal metabolic rate and energy accounting. African-Americans had greater BMRs and required more calories per day than whites. Farmers and unskilled workers were in better physical condition and required more calories per day than workers in white-collar and skilled occupations. Nineteenth century BMRs and calories were greater in rural locations where greater physical activity was required and more calories were available.
Modularity in Contracts: Boilerplate and Information Flow

Contractual boilerplate is a little like property. Such a statement might seem like a category mistake. After all, contractual boilerplate language is part of contracts, which, unlike property, are...
The role of spatial demand on outlet location and pricing

Abstract In this article, the authors consider the problem of outlet pricing and location in the context of unobserved spatial demand. The analysis constitutes a scenario in which capacity-constrained firms set prices conditional on their location, demand, and costs. This enables firms to develop maps of latent demand patterns across the market in which they compete. The analysis further suggests locations for additional outlets and the resultant equilibrium effect on profits and prices. Using Bayesian spatial statistics, the authors apply their model to seven years of data on apartment location and prices in Roanoke, Va. They find that spatial covariation in demand is material in outlet choice; the 95% spatial decay in demand extends 3.6 miles in a region that measures slightly more than 9.5 miles. They also find that capacity constraints can cost complexes upward of $100 per apartment. As they predict, price elasticities and costs are biased downward when spatial covariance in demand is ignored. Costs a...
Mandatory Disclosure and Firm Behavior: Evidence from Share Repurchases

ABSTRACT: This paper examines changes in corporate behavior around the 2003 modification to SEC Rule 10b-18, which mandates enhanced disclosure of repurchase transactions. Firms announce significantly fewer and slightly smaller open market repurchase plans in the enhanced disclosure environment. However, completion rates (the amount of stock repurchased as a percentage of the announced amount) significantly increase. More conservative announcement strategies and more aggressive completion rates are consistent with a decline in false signaling. Indeed, open market repurchase announcements are viewed as more credible, on average, in the enhanced disclosure environment; after controlling for firm characteristics, cumulative abnormal announcement returns are significantly greater in the high disclosure period. As with any analysis based on a regulatory change affecting all firms simultaneously, other unobservable, macroeconomic trends could have affected repurchase behavior. Nonetheless, these results are con...
Examining the Hayek–Friedman hypothesis on economic and political freedom

Abstract This paper examines empirically the hypothesis made famous by Nobel Laureates Friedrich A. Hayek and Milton Friedman that societies with high levels of political freedom must also have high levels of economic freedom. In our judgment, the Hayek–Friedman hypothesis holds up fairly well to historical scrutiny. Using data on economic and political freedom for a sample of up to 123 nations back as far as 1970, we find relatively few instances of societies combining relatively high political freedom without relatively high levels of economic freedom. In addition, we find that these cases are diminishing over time. Finally, we examine several cases of countries on different economic and political freedom journeys.
The Power of Dignity

When I was born, in 1961, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) considered homosexuality a mental disorder1 and the Stonewall Rebellion was eight years away.2 When I was in college, in the early 1980s, I was informed that as a gay person I might not satisfy the “character and fitness” requirement for admission to the bar.3 And when I attended my first gay pride march in June 1985, I stood on the sidelines, too fearful to participate. The Supreme Court only heightened my sense of “otherness” when, at the end of my first year of law school, it handed down Bowers v. Hardwick,4 upholding the constitutionality of sodomy laws, using heinous characterizations of gay people to do so.5 That year, although I opted to march in the gay pride parade, I was petrified. My own experience was not that different from my peers. Most gay people I knew at the time were closeted in at least one part of their lives, most often in the workplace or with their families of origin.6 There were
On the role of personality, cognitive ability, and emotional intelligence in predicting negotiation outcomes A meta-analysis

According to a longstanding consensus among researchers, individual differences play a limited role in predicting negotiation outcomes. This consensus stemmed from an early narrative review based on limited data. Testing the validity of this consensus, a meta-analysis of negotiation studies revealed a significant role for a wide range of individual difference variables. Cognitive ability, emotional intelligence, and numerous personality traits demonstrated predictive validity over multiple outcome measures. Relevant criteria included individual economic value, joint economic value, and psychological subjective value for both the negotiator and counterpart. Each of the Big 5 personality traits predicted at least one outcome measure, with the exception of conscientiousness. Characteristics of research design moderated some associations. Field data showed stronger effects than did laboratory studies. The authors conclude that the irrelevance consensus was misguided, and consider implications for theory, educ...
Capital utilization, economic growth and convergence

Abstract Optimal decisions by economic agents regarding the utilization of capital lead to empirically plausible speeds of convergence in one-sector models of economic growth. The relationship between depreciation and capital utilization plays a crucial role in slowing down convergence to the steady state. Cross-country differences in the extent to which the capital utilization decision is internalized along the transition path may lead to differences in convergence rates, even for countries with similar initial and terminal conditions. Finally, by assuming a constant depreciation rate and full capital utilization, standard growth models may be overstating the magnitude of the steady-state equilibrium.
Constructing MDS Joint Spaces from Binary Choice Data: A Multidimensional Unfolding Threshold Model for Marketing Research:

The authors present a new multidimensional unfolding methodology that can analyze various types of individual choice data. The model represents choice data, defined by dichotomous variables that in...
Analysts’ Recommendation Revisions and Subsequent Earnings Surprises: Pre- and Post-Regulation FD

This study examines the extent to which analyst recommendations were useful in identifying earnings surprises during the pre- and post-Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) periods. A comparative analysis of the association between recommendation revisions and subsequent earnings surprises suggests a significant decline in the predictive value of analysts’ recommendations after Regulation FD took effect. Recommendation revisions are roughly 55% less useful in predicting earnings surprises in the post-Regulation FD period. Furthermore, the average abnormal return earned by investors following analysts’ advice to exploit earnings surprises is approximately 70% lower in the post-Regulation FD period. Overall, this article’s findings are consistent with Regulation FD having considerably reduced analysts’ comparative advantage in identifying earnings surprises.
The specification of conditional expectations

Abstract This paper explores different specifications of conditional expectations. The most common specification, linear least squares, is contrasted with nonparametric techniques that make no assumptions about the distribution of the data. Nonparametric regression is successful in capturing some nonlinearities in financial data, in particular, asymmetric responses of security returns to the direction and magnitude of market returns. The technique is ideally suited for empirically modeling returns of securities that have complicated embedded options. The conditional mean and variance of the NYSE market return are also examined. Forecasts of market returns are not improved with the nonparametric techniques which suggests that linear conditional expectations are a reasonable approximation in conditional asset pricing research. However, the linear model produces a disturbing number of negative expected excess returns. My results also indicate that the relation between the conditional mean and variance depends on the specification of the conditional variance. Furthermore, a linear model relating mean to variance is rejected and these tests are not sensitive to the expectation generating mechanism nor the conditioning information. Rejections are driven by the distinct countercyclical variation in the ratio of the conditional mean to variance.
Commissioning Innocence and Restoring Confidence: The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission and the Missing Deliberative Citizen

Since 1989, the United States has witnessed 289 DNA exonerations, with exonerees serving an average of thirteen years in prison.2 Although DNA and its unmatched power for conclusive results is what brought popular attention to wrongful convictions, the scope of the problem is vastly larger than the number of known DNA exonerations.3 The actual number of convicted individuals who are factually innocent is unknown. The state of North Carolina has recently responded to this national crisis via a newly created state agency. This essay applauds North Carolina’s response, but urges that ordinary citizens, qua jurors, be active participants in its important work.
House Swaps: A Strategic Bankruptcy Solution to the Foreclosure Crisis

Since the price peak in 2006, home values have fallen more than 30 percent, leaving millions of Americans with negative equity in their homes. Until the Supreme Court's 1993 decision in Nobelman v. American Savings Bank, the bankruptcy system would have provided many such homeowners with a remedy. They could have filed bankruptcy, discharged the negative equity, committed to pay the mortgage holders the full values of their homes, and retained those homes. In Nobelman, however, the Court misinterpreted reasonably clear statutory language and invented legislative history to resolve a three-toone split of circuits in favor of the minority view that debtors could not modify even the unsecured portions of the mortgages on their principal residences. Courts and commentators have since assumed that modifying home mortgages in bankruptcy is impossible. This Article presents a legal strategy for modifying home mortgages despite Nobelman. The strategy requires that debtors move out of their houses, lease the houses for one year, file bankruptcy, and propose mortgage modification plans that pay mortgage holders the full current values of the houses. This Article argues that despite the artificiality of a move-out with the intention to return, bankruptcy judges will approve the modification plans. The judges will do so because existing precedent requires approval and because the modification plans will be in the best interests of not only the debtors but also the mortgage holders and the American economy. The strategy will enable hundreds of thousands of homeowners to retain homes they would otherwise have lost to foreclosure.
Why are some people (and countries) more protectionist than others

We analyze two cross-country data sets that contain information on attitudes toward trade as well as a broad range of socio-demographic and other indicators. We /nd that pro-trade preferences are signi/cantly and robustly correlated with an individual’s level of human capital, in the manner predicted by the factor endowments model. Preferences over trade are also correlated with the trade exposure of the sector in which an individual is employed: individuals in non-traded sectors tend to be the most pro-trade, while individuals in sectors with a revealed comparative disadvantage are the most protectionist. Third, an individual’s relative economic status has a very strong positive association withpro-trade attitudes. Finally, non-economic determinants, in the form of values, identities, and attachments, play an important role in explaining the variation in preferences over trade. High degrees of neighborhood attachment and nationalism/patriotism are associated withprotectionist tendencies. c
Privatization of State Administrative Services

Privatization is an increasingly prevalent feature of state administrative law. It affects and overlaps with all the traditional areas of academic discussion regarding state administrative law continues to focus primarily on preemption, separation of powers, due process, and sovereign immunity. A cursory survey of recent litigation shows courts grappling with privatized state prisons, healthcare facilities, welfare programs, motor vehicle departments, workers’ compensation programs, schools, etc. Questions of sovereign immunity/state actor dominate the litigation surrounding privatization for obvious reasons. From a policy standpoint, however, nondelegation concerns are perhaps the more serious long-term concern.
“Fair marriages”: An impossibility

For marriage markets [Gale, D. and Shapley, L.S., 1962, College admissions and the stability of marriage, American Mathematical Monthly 69, 9–15.] so-called fair matchings do not always exist. We show that restoring fairness by using monetary transfers is not always possible: there are marriage markets where no amount of money can guarantee the existence of a fair allocation.
Does political theology entail decisionism

The thesis of political theology holds that all justificatory theories of the state rely on metaphysical assumptions, rather than just empirical facts and accepted political conventions. For this reason, the thesis challenges liberal theories that justify the state on the basis of individual autonomy and popular will. The thesis is controversial because many theorists believe that metaphysical assumptions introduce decisionism – the view that a state depends on the unrestrained personal decision of a ruler – to the theory of the state. But, does political theology entail decisionism? This article argues that decisionism does not follow necessarily from political theology because an omnipotent deciding sovereign is only one of many possible metaphysical assumptions in theology. It illustrates this claim with examples from the philosophy of Nicholas Cusanus and process philosophy. This conclusion challenges two different entrenched views: first, that the modern state is a continuation of theistic beliefs; a...
Performance, Property, and the Slashing of Gender in Fan Fiction

Introduction 461 I. Property and Performativity 470 A. The Performance and the Performer 471 B. The Audience and the Author in Copyright 476 II.Female Appropriation of Popular Culture: The Story of Slash......479 A. Theorizing Slash Fan Fiction 481 B. The Deconstruction (and Reconstruction) of Gender as Performance 489 III. The Governing Power of Law 497 A. Protecting Slash Transgression 499 B. Private Ordering and Copyright Enforcement 513 Conclusion 518
Embezzlement, whistleblowing, and organizational architecture: An experimental investigation

Abstract We investigate the optimal shape of organizations to reduce embezzlement. In a stylized synthesis of a common pool resource and ultimatum game, agents are activated sequentially within an organizational architecture wherein they can take a share of the available resources or choose to “blow the whistle”, an action that sets all payoffs to zero. The resources not taken will grow and benefit all agents. Six basic organizational architectures are tested, including horizontal, vertical, pyramid shaped, and inverted pyramid-shaped structures. Our results suggest that horizontal and pyramid structures are more effective at reducing embezzlement. Rates of embezzlement and whistleblowing increase with the number of levels in the structure. Holding the number of levels constant, embezzlement rates are lower in pyramid shaped structures than inverted-pyramid shaped structures, while whistleblowing rates are unchanged. Our results are relevant to public agencies, foreign aid, charitable non-profits, and other contexts where capital leakage is a common problem and the costs of whistleblowing are borne broadly by the members of the organization.
Dynamic derivative strategies

We study optimal investment strategies given investor access not only to bond and stock markets but also to the derivatives market. The problem is solved in closed form. Derivatives extend the risk and return tradeoffs associated with stochastic volatility and price jumps. As a means of exposure to volatility risk, derivatives enable non-myopic investors to exploit the time-varying opportunity set; and as a means of exposure to jump risk, they enable investors to disentangle the simultaneous exposure to diffusive and jump risks in the stock market. Calibrating to the S&P 500 index and options markets, we find sizable portfolio improvement from derivatives investing.
Do Excess Control Rights Benefit Creditors? Evidence from Dual-Class Firms

Excess control rights by inside shareholders have been documented to hurt minority shareholders. This paper shows that such governance feature may benefit creditors. Using a sample of U.S. dual-class firms, I show that these firms take less operational and financial risk than similar single-class firms, consistent with insiders’ emphasis on long-term survival to access ongoing private control benefits. Such risk avoidance translates into lower borrowing costs for dual-class firms. Further, lenders are able to use specific covenants to prevent potential expropriations by insiders. The overall relationship between excess control rights and firm value may be less negative than previously thought.
Is Too Much Privacy Bad for Your Health? An Introduction to the Law, Ethics, and HIPAA Rule on Medical Privacy

After years of Congressional debates and agency rule-making, the HIPAA health care privacy rule has finally become effective. Why did it take so long? Many of the issues which deadlocked Congressional attempts to pass federal privacy legislation reflect deep disagreements over how much individual privacy should be protected. On one hand, patients often believe that no one except their closest health caregivers should be able to see their medical records without their permission. On the other hand, many other people and entities, mostly strangers to the patient, believe they should have access to those records without having to ask permission. They argue that such relatively free access to individual health care information is good for the patient, good for other patients, and good for society - in other words, that too much privacy protection is bad for our individual and collective health. Indeed, society has often tolerated sacrifices in individual medical privacy in order to promote the public good. This article examines the ethical trade-offs that we have made between the benefits of privacy protection and the benefits of sacrificing it in the name of social welfare, such as advances in scientific research, protection of the public health, higher efficiency and better quality in the delivery of health care, and even improved law enforcement. It analyzes how these ethical trade-offs have been reflected in our laws, Congressional debates, and recent HIPAA privacy rule. It also examines several key issues which created the impasse in enacting comprehensive federal legislation, and which continue to be controversial as providers face the task of compliance. The article serves as a guide for legal and health care professionals who would like to be introduced to what the controversy over health care privacy has been all about and how the HIPAA rule has, at least for the time being, resolved some aspects of it.
First Amendment Restrictions on Title I Programs in Private Schools

For nearly forty years, the Supreme Court has wrestled with the establishment clause problems raised by government efforts to fund programs benefiting students of private schools. As the political mood of the country has swung toward conservatism in recent years, these problems, which cut to the heart of sensitive church-state relations, have come into sharper focus. In evaluating the constitutionality of government programs designed to aid private schools, the Court has charted an uncertain path, upholding some programs while striking down others. With no coherent method of legal analysis, the Court has relied on factual distinctions to differentiate permissible from impermissible parochial school aid programs.
Liquidity Premia in Dynamic Bargaining Markets

Abstract This paper develops a search-theoretic model of the cross-sectional distribution of asset returns, abstracting from risk premia and focusing exclusively on liquidity. In contrast with much of the transaction-cost literature, it is not assumed that different assets carry different exogenously specified trading costs. Instead, different expected returns, due to liquidity, are explained by the cross-sectional variation in tradeable shares. The qualitative predictions of the model are consistent with much of the empirical evidence.
Conservatism, growth, and return on investment

Return on Investment (ROI) is widely regarded as a key measure of firm profitability. The accounting literature has long recognized that ROI will generally not reflect economic profitability, as determined by the internal rate of return (IRR) of a firm’s investment projects. In particular, it has been noted that accounting conservatism may result in an upward bias of ROI, relative to the underlying IRR. We examine both theoretically and empirically the behavior of ROI as a function of two variables: past growth in new investments and accounting conservatism. Higher growth is shown to result in lower levels of ROI provided the accounting is conservative, while the opposite is generally true for liberal accounting policies. Conversely, more conservative accounting will increase ROI provided growth in new investments has been “moderate” over the relevant horizon, while the opposite is true if new investments grew at sufficiently high rates. Taken together, we find that conservatism and growth are “substitutes” in their joint impact on ROI.
Entry, Growth, and Exit Strategies of Chinese Technology Start-Ups: Choosing Between Short-Term Gain or Long-Term Potential

A defining characteristic of an entrepreneurial venture is its motivation to grow (Schumpeter, 1954). Such motivation is usually fuelled by the desire of entrepreneurs to improve venture performance, as well as by the excitement of associating with a growing entrepreneurial venture. Broadly speaking, several strategic alternatives are available for entrepreneurial firms. Initially, most new ventures pursue internally generated growth, where the primary goal is generic expansion. Obviously, there is a limit to this growth, as no firm is capable of generating internally driven expansion indefinitely because of managerial and organizational capabilities. Under circumstances that lead to market failure, even in modern Western economies, a firm has to engage in acquisitions of other firms to achieve boundary expansion. Although the traditional strategy for growth has been either through generic expansion or through acquisitions, more recently, an unprecedented number of firms has been entering a variety of interorganizational relationships, such as strategic alliances and joint ventures, to achieve growth. This strategy of growth does not so much reflect the focal firm’s inability to possess all the necessary resources to undertake generic expansion alone or to acquire other firms. Rather, it represents the firm’s efforts to gain access to complementary assets, thus reducing environmental uncertainties. Finally, many entrepreneurs expand the firm all the way to the limits of growth, where industry attractiveness begins to decline, existing resources cannot be used any more efficiently, and additional resources cannot be obtained. Subsequently, when
Stakeholder Governance: A Bad Idea Getting Worse

Calls for a stakeholder voice in corporate governance never end, as evidenced by the Symposium Corporations and Their Communities to which this paper is a contribution. The demise of labor unions and explosion of executive compensation while the income of most Americans has stagnated over the last several years has precipitated cries for remedial action, some of which include stakeholder governance. Although complaints about deepening inequality are just, other remedies should be pursued. The traditional objections to stakeholder governance remain valid: the interests of stakeholder groups clash not only with those of the shareholders but also with each other, and acceptable means for choosing representatives of stakeholders other than employees have not been discovered. Stakeholder governance would impair economic efficiency: maximization of shareholder wealth remains the best proxy for maximizing the benefits of private enterprise to society. Beyond the traditional problems with stakeholder governance, economic developments make it an even worse idea. Capital has become more mobile, and the U.S. is no longer so dominant a venue for investment; many countries (notably China and India) have now entered the competition for capital, and corporate governance in many countries now treats investors better than the U.S. does. Instituting a serious stakeholder role in corporate governance now would send capital fleeing abroad, with great resulting damage to the American economy.
The role of dietary information in women's whole milk and low-fat milk intakes

This study examines the effects of dietary information on women's whole and low-fat milk intakes. The sample is 1928 female meal planners aged 20 years or over who provided information on their milk intake for 2 days in the 1994–96 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals and who completed the 1994–96 Diet and Health Knowledge Survey in the follow-up interview. The nested Tobit model was used to handle the sequentially censored data. Women's dietary information contributed to reduced whole milk consumption and increased low-fat milk consumption indicating different effects on whole milk and low-fat milk consumption.