cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Roles of Acceleration

Acceleration clauses are found in most debt instruments. Upon the occurrence of predetermined triggering event, acceleration makes a creditor's future claim due and payable. While debt covenants have been analyzed extensively in the academic literature, the role of acceleration has been overlooked. This paper examines the role of acceleration clauses and maintains that they play a critical role in debt financing. The paper argues that the prime role of acceleration is to perfect a complex set of governance mechanisms within the corporate setting. This governance role is comprised of three parts. First, acceleration is a complementary measure that supports debt covenants in mitigating ex ante the borrower's agency costs of self-interest actions. The other two parts of the governance mechanism function ex post, upon the debtor's financial distress. Each deals with disciplining a different entity that may generate wasteful costs to the creditor. One entity that requires restraining is the debtor. Acceleration facilitates the commencement of the debtor's bankruptcy and thus curtails any prospective losses to the creditors resulting from the borrower's continuous moral hazard. The other entity a creditor must worry about, which has been widely neglected by the financial literature, is other, self-interested, creditors who rush to dismantle the common debtor upon the latter's financial distress. Crossacceleration clauses place all creditors on equal footing, establish an inter-creditor balance of terror, and prevent the creditors from liquidating the firm prematurely. Instead, cross-acceleration leads the creditors to engage in collective negotiations and work out a comprehensive restructuring of the firm's finance. * Senior Lecturer, Bar-Ilan University School of Law, Israel. J.S.D. NYU School of Law. I am grateful to Gideon Parchomovsky for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. ___________________________________________________________________________________ HAHN – ACCELERATION JAN. 2010 ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ © PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT THE AUTHOR'S CONSENT ___________________________________________________________________________________ 2
THE INVENTION OF COMMON LAW PLAY RIGHT

A. EARLY AMERICAN THEATRE 1401 B. THE 1856 DRAMATIC COPYRIGHT ACT 1402 C. COMMON LAW RIGHTS 1403 D. EATON DRONE’S NATURAL LAW PLAY RIGHT 1410 E. WHOSE PLAY RIGHT? 1416
Hybrid Energy Governance

Energy law is substantively complex and deeply fragmented. Each energy sector—including fuel extraction and pipelines, electricity generation and transmission, and transportation—has its own legal regime and federalism approach. Confusion often exists at moments of crisis about how much authority federal, state, and local regulators have in these areas. The complexity and fragmentation of energy law are particularly problematic because the energy system faces major transitions due to emerging technology, more unpredictable and extreme weather events, and public pressure for cleaner energy. Regulators struggle to: (1) manage the risks of hydraulic fracturing and deepwater drilling, which are increasingly common in light of dwindling conventional oil and gas reserves; (2) upgrade our aging electricity grid; and (3) integrate renewable energy sources onto that grid and into electricity markets. This Article develops a novel theory of energy governance and uses it to assess how institutional innovation can help meet critical modern energy challenges. Building from our prior work arguing for a dynamic approach to energy federalism, this Article focuses on the potential of institutions that are “hybrid” by virtue of including public and private actors from several governance levels and enabling important interactions among them. Grounding its approach in interdisciplinary governance theory, it argues that these institutions have characteristics that could address structural barriers to substantive
Beyond Gender and Negotiation to Gendered Negotiations

Deborah Kolb Kathleen McGinn Simmons College Harvard University Morgan Stanley has been hit, yet again, with a gender discrimination lawsuit. […] The suit comes two years after former Morgan broker Allison Schieffelin was awarded $12 million in her sexual discrimination suit against the firm. […] According to this latest complaint, […] “Morgan Stanley has engaged in a pattern and practice of gender discrimination with respect to compensation and promoting females.” Specifically, the women contend that Morgan discriminated against female advisers in terms of training, mentoring, assignment of accounts, participation in company-approved partnership arrangements with male advisers, promotions to branch manager positions and assignment of office space and sales support staff.
Introduction: From Ferguson to Geneva and Back Again

Discrimination based on race is becoming increasingly harder to get away with in modern society both in America and overseas. This Essay addresses the hypothesis that a different form of discrimination – that of Colorism – has largely overtaken more ‘traditional’ forms of racial discrimination. Colorism is the process by which light-skinned people are privileged over dark-skinned people in areas such as income, education, housing, and marriage. This hypothesis was explored at a Symposium convened by Professor Kimberley Norwood in 2015, entitled ‘Global Perspectives on Colorism.’ This Essay introduces that Symposium and the Articles contained within the Symposium Volume, which reveal that discrimination based on skin color is a reality faced by millions of individuals appertaining to a wide variety of religious, social, and ethnic groups both in the United States and around the world.
"Play in the Joints Between the Religion Clauses" and Other Supreme Court Catachreses

Even when the U.S. Supreme Court reaches the right result in a matter involving church-state relations, the Justices too often do so for the wrong reasons. Cutter v. Wilkinson 1 is illustrative. Decided during the Court’s last term, Cutter reversed a lower court that had struck down as unconstitutional the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. 2 Known by the clunky acronym RLUIPA, this relatively new congressional statute tempers the impact of zoning decisions on religious organizations, as well as assists those individuals of faith who are incarcerated in our country’s jails and penitentiaries. In these two quite distinct arenas where regulation is pervasive, RLUIPA requires that laws having a disparate impact on a religious organization or a particular religious observance must yield to the needs of the religious liberty claimant. This means that the religious claimant is exempt from the strictures of a law generally binding on others. The exemption holds unless officials can show that the claimant should not be excused—even in just this one circumstance—because of likely serious public harm such as a traffic hazard or a prison security breach. In Cutter, the three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reasoned that RLUIPA’s exemption specifically for religious observance constituted a preference for religion, and that the no-establishment command in the First Amendment did not permit legislation to prefer religion over nonreligion. That is not the law, and there was little doubt that the Sixth Circuit’s decision would not stand up on appeal. From a certain perspective, however, one has to empathize with the confused judges of the circuit court. In the Supreme Court’s decision in Kiryas Joel Board of Education v. Grumet, Justice Souter did say in oft-quoted obiter dictum that the Establishment Clause prohibits government from “favoring . . . religious adherents collectively over nonadherents.” 3 But the High Court, in its high-handed fashion, does not always mean what it
International Institutions for Reducing Global Financial Instability

This paper asks how recent developments in research on banking and sovereign lending can help inform the debate on choosing a new international financial architecture. A broad range of plans is considered, including a global lender of last resort facility, an international bankruptcy court, an international debt insurance corporation, and unilateral controls on capital flows. One common failing of the main plans that have been proposed is that they fail to confront the biases in the existing system towards debt finance and bank intermediation, at the expense of equity finance and direct investment.
Using magnetic activity and Galactic dynamics to constrain the ages of M dwarfs

We present a study of the dynamics and magnetic activity of M dwarfs using the largest spectroscopic sample of low-mass stars ever assembled. The age at which strong surface magnetic activity (as traced by Hα) ceases in M dwarfs has been inferred to have a strong dependence on mass (spectral type, surface temperature) and explains previous results showing a large increase in the fraction of active stars at later spectral types. Using spectral observations of more than 40000 M dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we show that the fraction of active stars decreases as a function of vertical distance from the Galactic plane (a statistical proxy for age), and that the magnitude of this decrease changes significantly for different M spectral types. Adopting a simple dynamical model for thin disk vertical heating, we assign an age for the activity decline at each spectral type, and thus determine the activity lifetimes for M dwarfs. In addition, we derive a statistical age-activity relation for each spectral type using the dynamical model, the vertical distance from the Plane and the Hα emission line luminosity of each star (the latter of which also decreases with vertical height above the Galactic plane).
Redefining the Transracial Adoption Controversy

Transracial adoption is a highly sensitive topic, evoking intense debate between those who consider transracial placements positive for children and society, and those who consider them injurious to Black children and the Black community. The author explores this debate while asserting that the key to successful living as a minority person in a discriminating, denigrating society is to have positive affiliations with others like oneself. Thus, to promote and protect a child's "best interests," race is an important factor to be considered when evaluating the appropriateness of prospective adoptive parents. The Essay considers whose interests would actually be served if race considerations were completely eliminated from adoptive placement decision-making and what drives the momentum toward this elimination. Additionally, the consequences that would follow the elimination of race-matching preferences are discussed as they would relate to Black adoptees, the status and integrity of the Black family, the Black community and American society in general. The author posits that the transracial adoption debate is more about adults seeking to establish a right to parent than it is about meeting the needs of Black children. She, therefore, recommends that professional practitioners and policy makers develop culturally sensitive services and strategies to meet the needs of the growing number of Black children in foster care.
Professional Responsibility in an Uncertain Profession: Legal Ethics in China

The rapidly expanding Chinese legal profession provides an extraordinary opportunity for the U.S. legal profession to test U.S. assumptions about legal ethics. This essay examines challenges facing Chinese legal education and the Chinese legal profession as it develops norms of legal ethics. This essay examines this process from the law school and law student’s perspective about legal ethics, and then briefly explores the effort to create norms of attorney conduct from a top-down perspective. Both a bottom-up and top-down view show the tremendous challenges facing the emerging Chinese legal culture in building a coherent model of lawyering that can serve as the foundation for a system of legal ethics.
Can Pragmatism Be Radical? Richard Posner and Legal Pragmatism

Richard Posner's Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy (2003) is the most comprehensive account to date of his pragmatic vision of the law and democracy. For the most part, Posner's theory of pragmatism has been attacked externally, mainly by theorists unsympathetic to pragmatism. In contrast, in this Review, we contest Posner's account of pragmatism from within the pragmatic tradition. We contend that Posner's views are problematic not because they are pragmatic, but because they are often not pragmatic enough. We put Posner's account of pragmatism to the pragmatic test by examining its implications. Posner views ideals as useless and philosophical theorizing as empty. Lacking any meaningful approach for scrutinizing social goals, however, pragmatism devolves into an efficiency exercise - finding the appropriate means to achieve our given ends. Posner's account has little to say about the selection of ends. Accordingly, his attack on abstract ideals becomes, in effect, an endorsement of such ideals, since it leaves unreconstructed the dominant moral ideals of present society. In contrast, we return to the thought of the classical pragmatists (primarily John Dewey) to offer an alternative vision of pragmatism. This account better integrates theory and practice and provides more meaningful guidance about the choice of ends. Although Posner adopts many of the ideas of the classical pragmatists, he diverges in crucial ways that lead to internal inconsistencies with his own pragmatic commitments and to end up employing unpragmatic forms of reasoning. Posner finds himself in this position because the pragmatic ideas upon which he founds his theory have far more potent and revolutionary implications than Posner is willing to entertain. After setting forth his account of pragmatism, Posner attacks theories of deliberative democracy as unpragmatic. According to Posner, the pragmatist recognizes that it is too unrealistic and idealistic to expect most Americans to engage in meaningful political dialogue. Instead, Posner advances a concept of democracy based on the ideas of Joseph Schumpeter: Democracy should consist of a set of elite managers whose goal is to find the most efficient means to achieve our inherited ends. We argue that Posner's account of democracy is not pragmatic at all - even on his own terms. Under Posner's account, since people are not encouraged to make any effort to form a community on the basis of shared ideals, the dominant normative ideals of society are left to drift haphazardly. Posner views the equilibrium that emerges from individuals who pursue their own private interests as sufficient to generate the larger social ethos. We contend that this conclusion is deeply flawed. Additionally, we demonstrate that certain central features of deliberative democracy, far from being unpragmatic, are, in fact, deeply connected to pragmatic inquiry.
Friedman rule in a model with endogenous growth and cash-in-advance constraint

This paper introduces money into an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth. The model, due to Docquier et al. (2007), exhibits a positive intergenerational externality which precludes its laissez-fair equilibrium to be optimal even if the government can control the level of physical capital and set it to satisfy the modified golden rule. The main message of the paper is that, as long as the modified golden rule is attained, Friedman rule is optimal. The result holds regardless of the ability of the government to internalize the externality and control the level of human capital. Other results include: (i) violation of Friedman rule for a different second-best environment wherein human capital accumulation is controlled but not physical capital accumulation; (ii) existence of a negative relationship between money growth rate and the economy's endogenous growth rate, and (iii) non-uniqueness of Friedman rule.
The Immorality of Textualism

In this short essay I argue that textualism, as a doctrine of statutory interpretation, is inherently deceptive and therefore immoral. Textualism is typically presented by its adherents as an interpretive practice that is motivated by respect for democracy and respect for the authority of the legislature. But in fact, textualism's preoccupation with ordinary meaning and literal application of statutes is motivated by constraining the legislature's ability to pursue broad regulatory policies. Authorities do not want to be understood literally. Authorities purport to govern, and governance requires cooperation in the spirit of its goals, not strict adherence to the letter of its directives.
Moral hazard with the (unlikely) possibility of catastrophes

Without sacrificing tractability, we analyze the effect of fat-tailed events such as catastrophes on the optimal compensation contract between a principal and an agent. The optimal contract depends on all the moments and not just the variance.
The Endowed Progress Effect: How Artificial Advancement Increases Effort

This research documents a phenomenon we call the endowed progress effect, whereby people provided with artificial advancement toward a goal exhibit greater persistence toward reaching the goal. By converting a task requiring eight steps into a task requiring 10 steps but with two steps already complete, the task is reframed as one that has been undertaken and incomplete rather than not yet begun. This increases the likelihood of task completion and decreases completion time. The effect appears to depend on perceptions of task completion rather than a desire to avoid wasting the endowed progress. Moderators include the reason, if any, offered for the endowment and the currency in which progress is recorded.
Session Effects in the Laboratory

In experimental economics, where subjects participate in different sessions, observations across subjects of a given session might exhibit more correlation than observations across subjects in different sessions. The main goal of this paper is to clarify what are session-effects: what can cause them, what forms they can take, and what are the potential problems. It will be shown that standard solutions are at times inadequate, and that their properties are sometimes misunderstood.
Why Do IPO Offer Prices Only Partially Adjust

This study develops a structural model of the initial public offering (IPO) pricing process that enables the estimation of adjustment rates for public and private pricing information gathered during bookbuilding. The estimated upward adjustment rate of public information is only 21%, significantly less than the 28% rate of private information. Adjustment rates decline towards the IPO date, especially for upward adjustments. The findings contradict information acquisition theories that predict a complete adjustment to public information and highlight the inefficiency of the IPO bookbuilding mechanism in handling new information even when information is publicly available and especially when it is favorable.
Multitasking, Information Disclosure, and Product Quality: Evidence from Nursing Homes

This paper uses a mandatory quality disclosure policy, the Nursing Home Quality Initiative (NHQI), to investigate how quality ‘report cards’ affect firms’ choices of multidimensional product quality. I show that after the introduction of NHQI: (1) scores of quality measures improve for the reported dimensions but deteriorate for the unreported ones; (2) there is no evidence that nursing homes decrease quality-related inputs; (3) consumer demand becomes sensitive to changes in the NHQI quality measures. These findings are consistent with the multitasking hypothesis that firms may respond to information disclosure by reallocating effort across dimensions of quality without necessarily increasing overall quality.
50 Years after the "War on Poverty": Evaluating the Justice Gap in the Post-Disaster Context

The Legal Services Corporation (“LSC”), formed as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, was one of many initiatives aimed at providing low-income individuals with equal access to justice. Today, the increasing number of people living in poverty, coupled with decreased funding for legal services, has resulted in a significant justice gap in the provision of civil legal services. Poor people do not have the kind of access to legal services that was envisioned when the LSC was created. This justice gap is no more apparent than in the post-disaster context. For example, following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, legal services programs in Louisiana could not handle as much as ninety percent of the legal needs of low-income individuals. To more meaningfully provide legal services post-disaster, we must re-examine the entire system in which postdisaster legal services are provided.
Optimal public debt redux

Abstract We examine the role played by government investment in infrastructure in determining the optimal quantity of public debt in a heterogeneous agent economy with incomplete insurance markets. Calibrating our model to the key aggregate and distributional moments of the U.S. economy for the period 1990–2015, we show that (i) the inclusion of infrastructure, and (ii) transitional dynamics between stationary states critically affect the characterization of the optimal level of public debt. Our results indicate that the inclusion of public infrastructure in the model specification implies a lower optimal debt level relative to the specification without infrastructure, both when comparing stationary equilibria and when accounting for transitional dynamics. When welfare comparisons are made by comparing stationary equilibria, we find that it is optimal for the government to accumulate assets (public surplus). However, once transitional dynamics are accounted for, accumulating debt becomes optimal, with the optimal share implied by our model being significantly higher than the average public debt-GDP ratio for the U.S. observed during our sample period.
Should Religious Groups Be Exempt from Civil Rights Laws

Should a private, religious university lose its tax-exempt status because it bans interracial dating? Should a religious school fire a pregnant married teacher on religious grounds despite the ban against gender discrimination in employment? Should a religious social service agency be exempt from a state regulation banning discrimination in the delivery of social services on the basis of sexual orientation? This Article argues that courts and legislatures have granted and refused exemptions for religious groups from civil rights laws in response to historical social movements, producing the differential treatment of race, gender, and sexual orientation laws. This Article identifies avenues, informed by virtue ethics and value-added negotiation, for negotiating solutions other than full exemptions or no exemptions. Pursuing productive stances toward clashes over religious exemption claims is highly relevant to sustaining and replenishing both American pluralism and constitutional protections for minority groups.
China's exports, subsidies to state-owned enterprises and the WTO

Abstract In its Protocol of Accession to the World Trade Organization China agreed to eliminate subsidies to loss-making state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by 2000. Nonetheless, these subsidies continued at least through 2003. OLS and random effects panel regressions using Chinese provincial data suggest that the subsidies and the annual increments in the long-term liabilities of SOEs, mainly bank loans, have been associated with the exports of SOEs in the important exporting provinces. Exports of foreign-invested enterprises, reflecting provincial exporting conditions, were also significant.
Old law meets new medicine: revisiting involuntary psychotropic medication of the criminal defendant.

Introduction 308 I. Two Legal Models for Evaluating Involuntary Medication of the Criminal Defendant 320 A. Riggins v. Nevada and Unanswered Questions 321 B. Two Models of Involuntary Medication of the Criminal Defendant 328 1. United States v. Weston and the Uniform and Functional Models of Involuntary Medication 331 2. A Uniform Model of Involuntary Medication 337 a. Substantive Due Process Requirements under the Uniform Model 339 b. Procedural Due Process Requirements under the Uniform Model 340 3. A Functional Model of Involuntary Medication 341 a. Substantive Due Process Requirements under the Functional Model 342 b. Procedural Due Process Requirements under the Functional Model 344 II. Advances in Psychotropic Medication 344 A. The History of Psychotropic Medication and Competence to Stand Trial 345 1. The Traditional Antipsychotics and the Reduced Risks and Side Effects of the Novel Antipsychotics 346 2. Risks Associated with the Temporary Discontinuation of Psychotropics: Early Concerns and Re-Evaluation 350
How many viewers does a cable network need? A survival analysis of cable networks

This article employs survival/duration analysis to determine how subscriber levels affect cable networks’ survival probabilities. Using piecewise-constant hazards estimation, we find that an additional one million subscribers increases a cable network's probability of survival in a given year by 17%.
Relational Contracts and Organizational Capabilities

A large literature identifies unique organizational capabilities as a potent source of competitive advantage, yet our knowledge of why capabilities fail to diffuse more rapidly—particularly in situations in which competitors apparently have strong incentives to adopt them and a well-developed understanding of how they work—remains incomplete. In this paper we suggest that competitively significant capabilities often rest on managerial practices that in turn rely on relational contracts (i.e., informal agreements sustained by the shadow of the future). We argue that one of the reasons these practices may be difficult to copy is that effective relational contracts must solve the twin problems of credibility and clarity and that although credibility might, in principle, be instantly acquired, clarity may take time to develop and may interact with credibility in complex ways so that relational contracts may often be difficult to build.
Governance Through Trading and Intervention: A Theory of Multiple Blockholders

Traditional theories argue that governance is strongest under a single large blockholder, as she has high incentives to undertake value-enhancing interventions. However, most firms are held by multiple small blockholders. This article shows that, while such a structure generates free-rider problems that hinder intervention, the same coordination difficulties strengthen a second governance mechanism: disciplining the manager through trading. Since multiple blockholders cannot coordinate to limit their orders and maximize combined trading profits, they trade competitively, impounding more information into prices. This strengthens the threat of disciplinary trading, inducing higher managerial effort. The optimal blockholder structure depends on the relative effectiveness of manager and blockholder effort, the complementarities in their outputs, information asymmetry, liquidity, monitoring costs, and the manager's contract. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.
Altering the Terms of Executive Stock Options

Abstract We examine the practice of resetting the terms of previously-issued executive stock options. We identify properties of reset options, develop a model for valuing resettable options, and characterize the firms that have reset options. We find the vast majority of options are reset at-the-money, resulting, on average, in the strike price dropping 40%. Our valuation model suggests that resetting has only a small impact on the ex-ante value of an option award, but the ex-post gain can be substantial. Finally, we find resetting has a strong negative relation with firm performance even after correcting for industry performance.
The Implications of Mean-Variance Optimization for Four Questions in International Macroeconomics

Abstract The hypothesis of mean-variance optimization has powerful implications, transcending particular methods used for variance- covariance estimation. (1) For conventional estimates of risk-aversion, substitutability between domestic and foreign securities is close to perfect in the sense that risk premiums are small in magnitude (a few basic points), and thus cannot explain much bias in forward rates. (2) Nevertheless, as long as risk-aversion is not zero, foreign exchange intervention still affects the level of the exchange rate, proportionately (at least) to asset supply changes. (3) Current account deficits also have effects. (4) Finally, dollar depreciation should not be accompanied by appreciation of the mark against the franc.
The leading indicator approach to economic forecasting—retrospect and prospect

Our purpose in this paper is to explain briefly the theory and rationale underlying the leading, coincident and lagging indicators, describe the more important statistical procedures used, and review the evidence on how the indicators have performed in practice. The tests of performance concentrate on data not used in the selection of the indicators, in the United States and nine other countries. We conclude with some suggestions for future research and development, including the application of the approach to the analysis of inflation.
Sovereignty in the Age of Twitter

This essay considers the effect of modern methods of individual and group communication (e.g. cell phones, the internet, Twitter) on the concept and "practice" of sovereignty, hypothesizing that the inability of repressive regimes fully to control the exchange of information among their citizens and between their citizens and the outside world necessarily has a democratizing effect. The essay also considers some of the difficulties posed by the ubiquity of those same methods of communication: information overload, partial information, misinformation and disinformation.
Upcoding: Evidence from Medicare on Squishy Risk Adjustment

In most US health insurance markets, plans face strong incentives to "upcode" the patient diagnoses they report to the regulator, as these affect the risk-adjusted payments plans receive. We show that enrollees in private Medicare plans generate 6% to 16% higher diagnosis-based risk scores than they would under fee-for-service Medicare, where diagnoses do not affect most provider payments. Our estimates imply that upcoding generates billions in excess public spending and significant distortions to firm and consumer behavior. We show that coding intensity increases with vertical integration, suggesting a principal-agent problem faced by insurers, who desire more intense coding from the providers with whom they contract.
Redressing the unconscionable health gap: a global plan for justice.

If the health gap is unfair and unacceptable then how can the international community be galvanized to make a genuine difference? In this Article I propose an international call to action through the adoption of a Global Plan for Justice -- a voluntary compact among states and their partners in business philanthropy and civil society to redress health inequalities. The Global Plan for Justice would be a form of “soft” norm setting rather than a legally binding treaty. It could be achieved relatively easily with the passage of a World Health Assembly resolution. In the resolution member states would authorize the World Health Organization (WHO) Director General -- in collaboration with state and nonstate actors -- to establish a Global Plan for Justice. The Director General would negotiate funding commitments spending priorities an allocation system and mechanisms for monitoring compliance and implementation. The Global Plan for Justice would not require states to acquiesce to a treaty or to establish a new organization or governance structure. Rather it would encourage the WHO to exercise its constitutional powers to set norms exercise leadership and coordinate activities on the principal dimensions of world health. Under the Global Plan for Justice states would devote resources to a Global Health Fund based on their ability to pay—for example 0.25% of Gross National Income (GNI) per annum—in addition to maintaining current development assistance devoted to programs and activities of their choice. Global Health Fund resources would be allocated based on the health needs of developing countries measured by poverty morbidity and premature mortality. (Excerpt)
The economics of bank privatization

Abstract This paper surveys the empirical literature examining bank privatization. We begin by documenting the extent of, theoretical rationale for, and measured performance of state-owned banks around the world, and then assess why many governments have chosen to privatize their often very large state-owned banking sectors. The empirical evidence clearly shows that state-owned banks are less efficient than privately owned banks, and that state domination of banking imposes increasingly severe penalties on those countries with the largest state banking sectors. On the other hand, there is little in the empirical record to suggest that privatization alone transforms the efficiency of divested banks, especially when these are only partially privatized. Privatization generally improves performance, but by far less than is typically observed in studies of non-financial industries. An increasingly common outcome of large-scale bank privatization programs is foreign ownership of many nations’ banking sector, which evidence suggests is usually positive in an economic sense, but problematic politically.
Prospective Parents and the Children's Rights Convention

This Article addresses the novel question of whether states parties can successfully implement the Children’s Rights Convention by placing legal obligations on prospective parents, thereby influencing not just a child’s environment, but also the procreation of that child. First, the Article takes a unique version of the child-centered perspective, one that recognizes that as we move back in time in the direction of and even before a child’s birth, our obligations to the child grow because our actions become ever more influential. The perspective also takes into account current moral theories of parental obligation to prospective children. The Article then interprets the Convention from this perspective, exploring whether it requires states to pursue policies that heighten prospective parents’ perceptions of the duties they owe their prospective children before having them. If the Convention represents a sea change in the international legal community’s thinking about the relationship between children and adults, it has also inadvertently initiated another sea change: altering the traditional relationship between prospective parents and their prospective children, and with it the right to procreate.
Discussion of “Contracting theory and accounting”

Abstract Professor Lambert provides a very useful synthesis of the major issues in managerial accounting and the insights that agency theory has provided on those issues. In this discussion, I highlight some of the limitations of these models in examining accounting measurement questions. Lambert calls for additional work in multiperiod contracting models, and I discuss some of the modeling choices that must be made in such work. Finally, I present some thoughts on the relation between contract models and empirical research.
Inequality and media capture

Abstract Popular support of redistributive policies depends on information they have about the tax system and efficiency of public projects. Mass media provides a convenient means for manipulating public opinion, even when voters understand that the media can be biased. I develop a theory of media capture in which the rich can influence information published in a media outlet at a cost. The model shows that higher inequality is associated with lower media freedom; this effect is stronger in democratic regimes. I find empirical support for the model in both panel data and cross-country analysis.
New models and conflicts in the interconnection and delivery of Internet-mediated content

This paper examines the dramatic changes in interconnection and compensation agreements between content providers and carriers resulting from increasing use of the Internet for bandwidth intensive carriage of video. It identifies two emerging models: (1) interconnection and compensation arrangements that increase the total payments to Internet Service Providers ("ISPs") from end users, upstream ISPs and content providers; and (2) strategies by content creators and distributors to achieve congestion-free delivery at the lowest cost.While supportive of commercially negotiated agreements, the paper suggests that the two emerging models will trigger more disputes as interconnecting parties increasingly lack motivation to cooperate in finding ways to balance traffic flows and instead seek ever increasing compensation. The paper recommends that National Regulatory Authorities require ISPs to engage in transparent network management practices, backed up with reporting requirements that can help identify the causes of congestion and degraded service.The paper also suggests ways for regulators to resolve disputes between ISPs and content providers that could harm consumers, particularly when retail ISPs, providing the first and last kilometer of service, seek to leverage access to end users by demanding surcharges from upstream carriers and content providers. By creating such a bottleneck, retail ISPs may reduce the value of Internet access subscriptions, or increase costs even when congestion remedies do not require more broadband network capacity. Reporting requirements can provide empirical data for necessary forensic investigations that can determine whether a massive increase in traffic volume has caused congestion, or a carrier has artificially created it by strategic allocation of existing bandwidth and switching capacity. The Internet increasingly offers access to bandwidth intensive video content.Some ISPs impose paid peering or transit charges on high volume upstream carriers and content sourcesDemands for higher interconnection compensation have triggered disputes.Consumers risk degraded service when interconnection disputes become protracted.Regulators should impose reporting requirements on ISPs coupled with a complaint resolution process.
Length as a paradigm for understanding the classical limit

It is regrettable that the quantum length of an object is rarely if ever discussed, because it provides an ideal pedagogical paradigm for understanding how a physicist uses classical intuition to define quantum properties and how such quantum properties behave as one would expect in the classical limit. It also provides for a way to understand many-particle states, and leads to interesting quantum behavior that challenges our intuition about measurement. This exercise parallels the ways in which theories are developed, giving the student a concrete example of the thought process involved.
Phony Originalism and the Establishment Clause

The "originalist" interpretations of the Establishment Clause by Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas are remarkably indifferent to the original purposes of that clause. Their arguments are a remarkable congeries of historical error and outright misrepresentation. This is not necessarily a criticism of originalism per se. However, the abuse of originalist scholarship that these judges have practiced raises questions about what originalist scholars are actually accomplishing.
Why Don't Households Smooth Consumption? Evidence from a 25 Million Dollar Experiment

This paper evaluates theoretical explanations for the propensity of households to increase spending in response to the arrival of predictable, lump-sum payments, using households in the Nielsen Consumer Panel who received $25 million in randomly distributed stimulus payments. The pattern of spending is inconsistent with models in which identical households cycle rapidly through high and low-response states as they manage liquidity, but is instead highly predictable by income years before the payment. Spending responses are unrelated to expectation errors, almost unrelated to crude measures of procrastination and self-control, significantly related to sophistication and planning, and highly related to impatience.
Estimating Cost of Equity: Do You Need to Adjust for Foreign Exchange Risk?

Empirical reports of priced foreign exchange (FX) risk raise the question of whether managers should adjust their cost of equity estimates for FX risk. To study this question, we empirically compare the cost of equity estimates of several risk–return models, including some that have explicit FX risk premia and others that do not. We find that adjusting for FX risk makes little difference, on average, in the cost of equity estimates, even for small firms and firms with extreme FX exposure estimates.
ENVY, COMPARISON COSTS, AND THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF THE FIRM

managers take to mitigate such failure. In this article, we seek to develop a more complete theory of the firm by theorizing about the causes and consequences of organizational failure. Our theory focuses on the concept of social comparison costs that arise through social comparison processes and envy. While transaction costs in the market provide an impetus to move activities inside the boundaries of the firm, we argue that envy and resulting social comparison costs motivate moving activities outside the boundary of the firm. More specifically, our theory provides an explanation for ‘managerial’ diseconomies of both scale and scope—arguments that are independent from traditional measurement, rent seeking, and competency arguments—that provides new insights into the theory of the firm. In our theory, hierarchies fail as they expand in scale because social comparison costs imposed on firms escalate and hinder the capacity of managers to optimally structure incentives and production. Further, hierarchy fails as a firm expands in scope for the simple reason that the costs of differentially structuring compensation within the firm to match the increasing diversity of activities also rises with increasing scope. In addition, we explore how social comparison costs influence the design of the firm through selection of production technologies and compensation structures within the firm. Copyright  2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Discounting China'S CDM Dams

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is the Kyoto Protocol’s effort to encourage developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by investing in sustainable development projects in developing countries. The CDM has generated substantial investment but it has also received substantial criticism. My focus in this Essay is on how the CDM has subsidized the construction of so many new hydroelectric facilities in China, and what the consequences – positive and negative – of those dams are. This essay proposes an alternative approach that would shift more of the CDM resources to other nations and to renewable energy projects besides dams. The premise of the CDM is that the reduction of one ton of greenhouse gases should be treated the same regardless of where or how it happens. This makes perfect sense from the perspective of atmospheric science, for emissions from any place and any source soon mix with greenhouse gases throughout the earth. But climate change is about more than atmospheric science. Not all countries are equal with respect to energy development and its attendant greenhouse gas emissions. Nor are all alternatives to burning fossil fuels equal in their environmental consequences. The CDM has neglected these differences even though the Kyoto Protocol specifies that sustainable development is one of the purposes of the CDM.My proposal is that the CDM should discount hydroelectric projects in China so that they receive less credit. For example, a multiplication factor could be employed so that a solar energy project in Africa earns 1.25 credits for every one ton of greenhouse gas emissions that they avoid, while a hydroelectric dam in China earns only .75 credits for every ton of avoided greenhouse gas emissions. Such changes would enable the CDM to award more credits to projects in the least developed countries, and to projects that have the least harmful environmental consequences.
Sources of Innovation in China's Manufacturing Sector: Imported or Developed in-House?

The author investigates the innovative behavior of large and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in China. It is revealed that in-house research and development (R&D) efforts, rather than imported technologies, are the primary sources of industrial innovation in China. Regarding in-house R&D efforts, it is found that in-house R&D laboratories are important sources for the creation of new products as measured by patents, though it is enterprise-wide R&D spending rather than the mere presence of in-house facilities that is more likely to lead to market success. Concerning importation of technologies, it is revealed that the limited nature of efforts to absorb imported technologies has become a serious barrier to fulfilling the potential of these technologies and to upgrading China's internal creative capabilities. In addition, domestic technology markets have not been effectively linked to large and medium-sized industrial enterprises, despite China's enduring efforts in this direction since the middle 1...