cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
M&A Due Diligence, Post‐Acquisition Performance, and Financial Reporting for Business Combinations

Before completing merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions, acquiring firms conduct due diligence. This process provides acquiring firms with a more informed assessment of the expected costs, benefits, and risks of an acquisition and offers one last opportunity to renegotiate or terminate an M&A transaction. However, acquiring firms must trade off the costs and benefits of performing additional due diligence versus completing the acquisition. Based on an analysis of the time to negotiate the acquisition agreement and complete the transaction, I predict and find that competitive pressures, short‐term financial reporting incentives, and agency problems are associated with less due diligence. I also find that less due diligence is associated with lower post‐acquisition profitability, a higher probability of acquisition‐related goodwill impairments, and lower quality fair value estimates for the acquired assets and liabilities. These findings highlight due diligence as an important factor explaining cross‐sectional variation in post‐acquisition performance and financial reporting for business combinations. Controle diligent dans le cadre des operations de fusion‐acquisition, performance posterieure a l'acquisition et information financiere relative aux regroupements d'entreprises Avant de conclure une operation de fusion‐acquisition, les entites acheteuses procedent a un controle diligent, exercice qui leur permet d’evaluer avec plus de precision les couts, les avantages et les risques prevus associes a l'acquisition et qui leur offre une ultime occasion de renegocier l'operation ou d'y renoncer. Les entites acheteuses doivent toutefois soupeser les couts et les avantages d'un controle diligent plus pousse par rapport a ceux de la conclusion de l'acquisition. Une analyse du temps necessaire a la negociation d'un contrat d'acquisition et a la conclusion de l'operation amene l'auteur a prevoir et constater que des pressions concurrentielles, des motivations a communiquer l'information financiere a court terme et des problemes de delegation sont associes a un controle diligent moins pousse. L'auteur observe egalement l'existence d'une relation entre ce controle diligent moins pousse et une plus faible rentabilite posterieure a l'acquisition, une probabilite accrue de la perte de valeur de l’ecart d'acquisition, et une qualite inferieure des estimations de la juste valeur des actifs acquis et des passifs pris en charge. Ces observations mettent en evidence l'importance du controle diligent a titre de facteur explicatif de l’ecart transversal dans la performance posterieure a l'acquisition et l'information financiere relative aux regroupements d'entreprises.
PPACA and the Individual Mandate: A Healthy Approach to Severability

In 2010, Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, legislation designed to comprehensively reform the United States health care system. Promptly after the law’s passage, numerous lawsuits challenged the constitutionality of the individual mandate, a key provision requiring nearly every American to carry a minimum level of health insurance or pay a penalty. Courts have sharply split on whether the individual mandate is outside the scope of Congress’s constitutional authority, and those who have struck down the provision have had to address what fate should befall the remainder of the bill. Severability doctrine is the exclusive mechanism for the courts to deal with questions of partial unconstitutionality in statutes. As of this writing, three courts have addressed the mandate’s severability by finding the provision unconstitutional, and all have come to divergent conclusions on if, and how much of, the bill can be allowed to stand if the mandate is excised. This note approaches the split of authority regarding the severability of the individual mandate. It advocates that the approach taken by the Eleventh Circuit — striking the mandate while leaving the remainder of the bill intact — is the appropriate course of action for the Supreme Court if it finds that the mandate is unconstitutional. Severability doctrine is ultimately guided by principles of judicial restraint and respect for separation of powers; ultimately, this note concludes that the judiciary would overstep its own constitutional boundaries if it were to strike additional provisions alongside the mandate, and that any subsequent re-working of PPACA is a task reserved for the legislature.
The Wisdom of Soft Judicial Power: Mr. Justice Powell, Concurring

President Theodore Roosevelt believed in talking softly while carrying a big stick. 1 Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., who served on the Court from 1972 to 1987 after a distinguished career in private practice, also talked softy but wielded a great deal of influence without using a stick, and sometimes just by agreeing with the majority. Branzburg v. Hayes is perhaps the clearest example. Writing for a five-person majority (that included Powell), Justice Byron White refused to create a First Amendment privilege for newsmen, rejecting the argument that the burden on news gathering created by grand jury subpoena was sufficient to override the "public interest in law enforcement." White thereby declined the opportunity to create a First Amendment privilege for newsmen seeking to shield their sources, a privilege not available to other citizens.
Reparations for Apartheid's Victims: The Path to Reconciliation?

This Article will address the South African context of reparations and reconciliation within the broader project of national reconstruction and nation building. This Article will also raise the concerns of truth and forgiveness and their place within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process with specific reference to the question of racial healing, racial harmony, and racial reconciliation. In addition, this Article will note the tensions inherent in individualizing racial harms by demarcating individual victims and perpetrators within a context of systemic and structural racial oppression and subordination. Particularly, it will highlight the complications in implicating the beneficiaries of racial privilege, and assess both the nature of the harm and causation for victims and beneficiaries. This Article will also discuss the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance by highlighting the difficulties of the global reparations project.
Should The Perception of Corporate Punishment Matter

When corporations engage in criminal conduct, they generally do so in a big way. Save perhaps for Bernie Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme, the types of harm inflicted by a corporation are far beyond what any individual could produce, both in terms of the dollars involved and the impact of the misconduct on broad portions of society. For example, as part of its guilty plea to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), German conglomerate Siemens A.G. admitted to paying approximately $1.4 billion in bribes, over a six-year period, through subsidiaries in France, Turkey, and the Middle East to obtain contracts. Similarly, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer paid $2.3 billion, including a criminal fine of $1.195 billion, to settle civil and criminal investigations for promoting “off-label” uses of its drugs. From environmental damage to price fixing, large corporations can affect the lives of thousands—perhaps even millions—of people. The perception that corporations are persons like any other
Integrating innovation and learning curve theory: an enabler for moving nanotechnologies and other emerging process technologies into production

Process technology selection is biased against selection of emerging process technologies such as nanotechnologies, biotechnology and microtechnologies (MEMS), since these decisions are frequently based on assumptions that are only valid for mature sustaining process technologies. This is a great concern since emerging process technologies are drivers of economic growth, especially in developed economies. We consider the learning curve literature and integrate it with the literature on technological trajectories and innovation to develop a theory for modeling the learning curve for emerging process technologies.
Beyond the Enforcement Principle: Sodomy Laws, Social Norms, and Social Panoptics

Social norms scholarship offers various conceptual models for understanding law's capacity to produce or inhibit particular behaviors. The current literature, however, has inadequately attended to either testing these theories through empirical research or studying law's ancillary effects on social structure and individuals' lives. In response, this Article undertakes an empirical study of the social effects of an unenforced criminal law: sodomy statutes. The Article examines the constitutive impact these laws have on individual identity, social relations, and conceptions of public space. This aspect of the study is based on ethnographic research conducted in South Africa before and after the country's sodomy laws were abolished. The findings of this inquiry provide the empirical basis for development of a conceptual model for understanding the process by which laws intersect with informal social surveillance to produce a regime in which lesbians and gays are ultimately encouraged to discipline themselves. In developing this framework, the Article calls for integrating these understandings of micro-level social relations into a macro-sociological perspective on the regulatory effects of law. The Article thus examines the influence exerted by the criminalization of homosexuality on other institutional discourses (such as religion and medicine). These connections are explored as one way of analyzing law's constitutive effects in shaping and remaking social norms.
Viscoelasticity of biomolecular condensates conforms to the Jeffreys model

Biomolecular condensates, largely by virtue of their material properties, are revolutionizing biology, and yet, the physical understanding of these properties is lagging. Here, I show that the viscoelasticity of condensates can be captured by a simple model, comprising a component where shear relaxation is an exponential function (with time constant τ1) and a component with nearly instantaneous shear relaxation (time constant τ0 → 0). Modulation of intermolecular interactions, e.g., by adding salt, can disparately affect the two components such that the τ1 component may dominate at low salt, whereas the τ0 component may dominate at high salt. Condensates have a tendency to fuse, with the dynamics accelerated by interfacial tension and impeded by viscosity. For fast-fusion condensates, shear relaxation on the τ1 timescale may become rate-limiting such that the fusion speed is no longer in direction proportion to the interfacial tension. These insights help narrow the gap in understanding between the biology and physics of biomolecular condensates.
Contract as Agreement

For generations law students have been taught that the law governing the formation of contracts is by and large objective in nature, although it has some subjective elements. It is the appearance of intent that matters most. Yet theories of contract law, whether based upon the rights of the individual as an autonomous actor, the benefits to society of encouraging people to engage in bargained-for transactions, or the justice due those who have relied on the promises and representations of others, are intentional in nature. No one speaks, for example, of the freedom to be bound by something one didn't intend. Bargains imply volition. Acts in reliance come only after an understanding that someone has made a commitment. However contract law is constructed, at the very least one would expect it to take as its point of departure the players' actual psychological states underlying the various theories that motivate it. This article argues for an approach to contract law whose focus is on the actual agreement of the parties, although it privileges objective evidence of intent. It further argues that that plain language is not in conflict with the intent of the speaker. Rather, it results from a combination of that intent and cognitive structures that speakers of a language share. The result of this shift in focus is much greater descriptive adequacy and greater coherence among contract doctrines. Most significantly, this subjective account of contract formation eliminates anomalies in available remedies, and brings the formation of contracts in harmony with the rules governing contract interpretation.
Inside the Blackwall Box: Explaining U.S. Marine Salvage Awards

Under U.S. maritime law, a salvor of imperiled maritime property on navigable waters is entitled to a monetary award from the owner. When the salvage service is rendered voluntarily in the absence of a contract, the court determines the salvage award according to six factors enumerated by the Supreme Court in The Blackwall, 77 US (10 Wall) 1 (1869). The law, however, does not specify a precise formula or rule for calculating awards on the basis of the Blackwall factors. How do courts turn their findings on the Blackwall factors into salvage awards? This Article addresses this question by examining the reported decisions of U.S. courts in salvage cases from 1799 to 2007. It employs two statistical methods—fractional polynomial regression and regression tree analysis—to make inferences about the mapping from factors to awards implicit in the salvage cases. In addition to presenting the first systematic empirical study of U.S. marine salvage awards, which complements the traditional doctrinal analysis offere...
Empire-building or bridge-building evidence from new CEOs' internal capital allocation decisions

This article investigates how the job histories of CEOs influence their capital allocation decisions when they preside over multidivisional firms. I find that, after CEO turnover, divisions not previously affiliated with the new CEO receive significantly more capital expenditures than divisions through which the new CEO has advanced. The pattern of reverse-favoritismincapitalallocationismorepronouncedifthenewCEOhaslessauthority or if the unaffiliated divisions have more bargaining power. I find evidence that having a specialist CEO negatively affects segment investment efficiency. The results suggest that new specialist CEOs use the capital budget as a bridge-building tool to elicit cooperation from powerful divisional managers in previously unaffiliated divisions. (JEL G30, G31) More than 70 years ago, Coase (1937) characterized firms as “systems of relationships”and“islandsofconsciouspower”wheretheallocationofresourcesis dependent on an “entrepreneur-coordinator” rather than the price mechanism. Today, the capital allocation decisions of CEOs, the modern-day equivalent of Coase’s entrepreneur, remain among the most important corporate decisions. A large literature in corporate finance is devoted to understanding the internal capital allocation process within conglomerates, yet few empirical studies directly examine the impact of CEO characteristics on investment outcomes inside such firms. 1 In this article, I examine CEOs’ decision-making processes for capital allocation in the context of power and relationships within corporations by investigating whether the job histories of CEOs influence their capital allocation decisions when they preside over multidivisional firms.
Risk aversion and implicit shortage cost explain the Anchoring and Insufficient Adjustment bias in human newsvendors

The Anchoring and Insufficient Adjustment (AIA) bias has been observed in many newsvendor experiments, although a mathematical explanation for this behavior has previously eluded researchers. We show here that risk aversion coupled with an implicit shortage cost, both of which are well-known components of newsvendor decisions, comprehensively explains this behavior. We construct combinations of a risk-averse utility function and a shortage cost that explain the results from previously reported newsvendor experiments.
THE PERSISTENT PUZZLES OF SAFEGUARDS: LESSONS FROM THE STEEL DISPUTE

The recent WTO dispute between the United States and eight complainant nations over protective measures for the steel industry brought widespread attention to a little known area of WTO law -- the rules governing 'safeguard measures', the temporary protection of troubled industries against import surges. The use of safeguard measures is normatively controversial, although their welfare implications are much less clear than their critics sometimes suggest. This paper makes the point that WTO rules, as interpreted by recent Appellate Body decisions and applied by the dispute panel in the steel case, pose nearly insurmountable hurdles to the legal use of safeguard measures by WTO members. Among other things, the current interpretation of the 'nonattribution' requirement for the use of safeguard measures in the WTO Safeguards Agreement obliges members to make a demonstration that is logically impossible as an economic matter. Those who believe that safeguard measures are merely wasteful protectionism may welcome such impediments to their use, but it is not obvious that the trading system will benefit in the long run, and there can be little doubt that one key objective of the Uruguay Round negotiators -- to revive the use of disciplined, temporary safeguard actions -- is being frustrated. Oxford University Press 2004; all rights reserved, Oxford University Press.
Merging the Weak Gravity and Distance Conjectures Using BPS Extremal Black Holes

We analyze the charge-to-mass structure of BPS states in general infinite-distance limits of $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 2 compactifications of Type IIB string theory on Calabi-Yau three-folds, and use the results to sharpen the formulation of the Swampland Conjectures in the presence of multiple gauge and scalar fields. We show that the BPS bound coincides with the black hole extremality bound in these infinite distance limits, and that the charge-to-mass vectors of the BPS states lie on degenerate ellipsoids with only two non-degenerate directions, regardless of the number of moduli or gauge fields. We provide the numerical value of the principal radii of the ellipsoid in terms of the classification of the singularity that is being approached. We use these findings to inform the Swampland Distance Conjecture, which states that a tower of states becomes exponentially light along geodesic trajectories towards infinite field distance. We place general bounds on the mass decay rate λ of this tower in terms of the black hole extremality bound, which in our setup implies $$ \lambda \ge 1/\sqrt{6} $$ . We expect this framework to persist beyond $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 2 as long as a gauge coupling becomes small in the infinite field distance limit.
Does Motivational Orientation Impact the Effectiveness of Incentive Contracts

ABSTRACT: Research in psychology has identified that individuals have two distinct neurologically based motivational systems. One system is the behavioral activation system (BAS), which activates individual motivation in response to signals of reward in order to “achieve success.” The second system is the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), which activates motivation in response to signals of goal conflict in order to “avoid failure.” We predict and find that a stronger, rather than weaker, BIS attenuates the positive effect of sensitive performance measures on performance. In contrast, the BAS does not moderate the effect of performance measure sensitivity on performance.
Mean reversion in stock prices? a reappraisal of the empirical evidence

The paper re-examines the empirical evidence for mean-reverting behaviour in stock prices. Comparison of data before and after World War II shows that mean reversion is entirely a pre-war phenomenon. Using randomization methods to calculate significance levels, we find that the full sample evidence for mean reversion is weaker than previously indicated by Monte Carlo methods under a Normal assumption. Further, the switch to mean-averting behaviour after the war is about to be too strong to be compatible with sampling variation. We interpret these findings as evidence of a fundamental change in the stock returns process and conjecture that it may be due to the resolution of the uncertainties of the 1930's and 1940's.
The Evidence on Credit Constraints in Post-Secondary Schooling†

This paper examines the family income–college enrolment relationship and the evidence on credit constraints in post-secondary schooling. We distinguish short run liquidity constraints from the long term factors that promote cognitive and noncognitive ability. Long run factors crystallised in ability are the major determinants of the family income - schooling relationship, although there is some evidence that up to 8% of the total US population is credit constrained in a short run sense. Evidence that IV estimates of the returns to schooling exceed OLS estimates is sometimes claimed to support the existence of substantial credit constraints. This argument is critically examined.
Scale, Congestion and Growth

This paper explores the relationship between aggregate and relative congestion, returns to scale and economic growth. Aggregate congestion reduces the effective productivity of capital; relative congestion reduces the effective productivity of labour. Both forms of congestion adversely affect the equilibrium growth rate, although their relative effects depend upon aggre- gate returns to scale. The two forms of congestion have contrasting effects on the transitional dynamics. Relative congestion retards the rate of adjustment; aggregate congestion accelerates it. The externalities generated by congestion and non-optimal expenditure can be fully cor- rected, both during the transition and in steady state, by a time-invariant income tax. The role of public expenditure as an instrument of economic growth has been a major policy issue as governments throughout the world design stimulus packages, as in Japan, and face difficult choices to meet the EMU criteria in Europe. Empirical research investigating the impact of public investment on the productivity of private capital and output was stimulated by Aschauer (1989a, b), who found the effects to be strongly positive.' The nature of public investment is, however, diverse. In general, public goods vary extensively in terms of the nature of their services, spanning the range between the polar cases of pure private and pure public goods. But the treatment of public expenditures in formal growth models is limited. Barro (1990) and Futagami et al. (1993) treat government expenditure as a pure pub- lic good, and in so doing they fail to take account of the congestion typically associated with public goods. However, as Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1992) have argued, almost all public services are characterized by some degree of congestion, so that the pure public good should be viewed as only a bench- mark. These considerations suggest that congestion is an important consider- ation in assessing the effect of public expenditures on economic growth. Attempts to analyse the effects of congestion on economic growth have been limited in various dimensions. Drawing on the public goods literature, Edwards (1990) proposes a number of specifications of congestion. Two notions, particularly relevant in a growth context, are relative congestion and aggregate (absolute) congestion. The former specifies the level of services derived by an individual from the provision of a public good in terms of the usage of his individual capital stock relative to the aggregate capital stock; aggregate congestion (sometimes called crowding) indicates how aggregate usage of the service alone influences the services received by an individual.2 Existing applications of congestion to growth theory introduce it into AK models; see Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1992,1995), Glomm and Ravikumar (1994,1997) and Turnovsky (1996,1997). However, the AK model features two limitations that restrict its flexibility to examine the relationship between congestion and growth. First, as Solow (1994) pointed out, sustained ongoing
The Siren Song of History: Originalism and the Religion Clauses

It is hard to foresee much happiness in the lot of those seeking the original meaning of the Religion Clauses. We may acknowledge the opacity of the historical record, the variety of viewpoints held by founders forgotten and non-forgotten, the humanness of the founders who did not always practice what they preached, even the basic indeterminancy of language; still, we are seduced by the siren song of interpretive certainty. But the search for greater clarity is not without its payoff. As the three books under review here illustrate, the more we look for answers in the historical record, the more we are likely to find ambiguity -- and with each step we take away from the promised land of historical clarity, we move a step closer to the richer, if less certain, terrain of historical truth. This essay reviews the following works: The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life. Edited by Daniel L. Dreisbach, Mark David Hall and Jeffrey H. Morrison. Foreword by Mark A. Noll. University of Notre Dame Press 2009. Pp. 316. ISBN: 0-268-02602-5; Church, State, and Original Intent. By Donald L. Drakeman. Cambridge University Press 2010. Pp. 371. ISBN: 0-521-11918-9; and God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson. By Vincent Phillip Munoz. Cambridge University Press 2009. Pp. 242. ISBN: 0-521-51515-7.
Agricultural Trade Reform and the Doha Development Agenda

Agriculture is yet again causing contention in international trade negotiations. It caused long delays to the Uruguay round in the late 1980s and 1990s, and it is again proving to be the major stumbling block in the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations (formally known as the Doha Development Agenda, or DDA). This study builds on numerous recent analyses of the Doha Development Agenda and agricultural trade, including five very helpful books that appeared in 2004. One, edited by Aksoy and Beghin (2004), provides details of trends in global agricultural markets and policies, especially as they affect nine commodities of interest to developing countries. Another, edited by Ingco and Winters (2004), includes a wide range of analyses based on papers revised following a conference held just before the aborted WTO trade ministerial meeting in Seattle in 1999. The third, edited by Ingco and Nash (2004), provides a follow-up to the broad global perspective of the Ingco and winters volume: it explores a wide range of key issues and options in agricultural trade reform from a developing-country perspective. The fourth, edited by Anania, Bowman, Carter, and McCalla (2004), is a comprehensive, tenth-anniversary retrospective on the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture and numerous unilateral trade and subsidy reforms in developed, transition, and developing economies. And the fifth, edited by Jank (2004), focuses on implications for Latin America.
The Therapeutic Effects of Managerial Reentry Courts

Reentry Courts are the latest solution to managing the transition of the 630,000 state and federal inmates released annually back into the poor, inner-city communities from which they are drawn. Modeled on the various "problem solving" courts targeted at drug-addicts, the mentally ill, and others, these courts propose to mediate the social and legal obstacles facing ex-inmates and their communities. A central concern surrounding this role is the type of authority wielded by the judges that staff them. Reentry courts, like all problem-solving courts, depends upon the collateral institutional authority of the judge. By collateral institutional authority I mean the sort of authority that is not formalized by statute or common law (or even custom) or some other official legal source, but which emanates from the repeated interactions between the judge and the variety of court officers and other players in the criminal or civil court systems. Collateral authority thus emanates from the judge's role or status as a particularly important actor in the larger legal community. The judge is someone whom other legal agent must keep friendly, so that the wheels of government run smoothly. Judges use this collateral authority in the service of a therapeutic paradigm that unfairly places accountability for reentry issues on individual offenders while minimizing governmental responsibility for a range of institutional failures in the areas of health care, education, housing, and employment. Therapy, in other words, ignores the bureaucratic and political morass that structures the offender's situation, in favor of a personalized, exhortative model of individualized suasion. This therapeutic model tends to characterize the problem as a one-way street, in which the offender must adapt herself to society or the community. It turns out, however that local communities often see the problem as a more nuanced and dynamic conflict between community, offender, and society, in which the offender and community may at times share interests in adapting the larger society to their needs.
Time-varying flow-performance sensitivity and investor sophistication

We examine how investment advisors guide the decision-making process of mutual fund investor clienteles by comparing the flow-performance sensitivity of no-load funds and the three main classes of load fund shares, conditional on the state of the market and on fund-specific non-linear and asymmetric return patterns. Our results indicate that the association between flows and returns is different across mutual fund share classes and conclusions regarding the simple association between fund flows and performance change when more complex return patterns are incorporated into the analysis.
Post-Unification Wage Growth in East Germany

Following monetary union with West Germany in 1990, the real wage of East German workers rose 83%. I use the German Socio-Economic Panel data to investigate the determinants of wage growth, and assess whether they are consistent with efficient restructuring. Although job-changing rates were initially high, the share of wage growth that accrued to movers was little higher than in the west, suggesting that the incentives to move were too low. For 1990 to 1991, the biggest gainers were low-wage workers generally, and women and the less-educated specifically. For 1991 to 1996, the biggest gainers were women and the better-educated.
The Impact of China's Antitrust Law and Other Competition Policies on U.S. Companies

This article is based on the author's testimony for part of the hearings on “The Impact of China’s Antitrust Law and Other Competition Policies On U.S. Companies,” held by the House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy on July 13, 2010. It describes developments in the enforcement and application of the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law, interpretation and enforcement during the two years since the AML came into effect, with particular attention to merger review. It comments on the organization and staffing of the enforcement agencies and the publication of numerous procedures, guidelines and regulations, which suggests that capacity building is important and ongoing. Legal developments indicate consideration of international best practices and a trend towards the consumer welfare model of antitrust thought, mediated by domestic approaches to national policy and governance. Finally, it points out that the AML and regulations include certain non-economic considerations and other provisions, such as treatment of SOEs and administrative monopolies, that are specific to the national history and development of the Chinese market economy.
Participation in Social Programs by Consumers and Companies A Nationwide Analysis of Participation Rates for Telephone Lifeline Programs

Lifeline is a unique nationwide public assistance program created by the Federal Communications Commission to provide price discounts to low-income telephone subscribers. Recently there has been concern that program participation rates are low and that there is great variation in participation across states. We examine the Lifeline Program to explain why people do not participate in a program that provides them with financial benefits. Using state-level panel data, we consider reasons Lifeline participation varies among states and why only approximately one-third of eligible households nationwide enroll in the program. We find that participation is actually closely aligned with what is predicted given state characteristics when we control for socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. We also find that in addition to the demographic factors affecting participation, telecommunications companies appear to affect Lifeline participation rates.
Office of Technology Assessment: History, implementation, and participatory critique

Abstract The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), which was created by the Technology Assignment Act of 1972, was—and still remains even after its abolishment in 1995—a unique congressional agency. OTA provided members of Congress with their own means of understanding and evaluating complex science and technology matters—of which there are no shortages. It spurred an entire literature of academic research both about OTA and the idea of technology assessment more generally. Understanding the legislative history and implementation of the Technology Assessment Act is crucial not just for scholarship, though. OTA was a blueprint for institutionalizing politically accountable technology assessment. Even as technologies advance at rapid rates, OTA still offers valuable lessons that scholars and policy-makers alike ought to glean. This paper places OTA in a contemporary context of (institutionalized) technology assessment. It contributes to a better understanding of OTA's origins by tracing its lineage to a set of federal reports beginning in 1929. It then analyzes OTA's response to pragmatic implementation questions of how to strike a balance between speed, depth, scope, and temporal focus. Lastly, it uses a public values framework to critique OTA's failure to adequately incorporate participatory elements into its processes.
Bargaining in the Shadow of Violence: The NPT, IAEA, and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Negotiations

The NPT non-proliferation regime is both a multilateral treaty of international law and a dispute system designed to manage conflict over the use of nuclear technology. The system seeks to balance the competing desires of memberstates to have access to peaceful nuclear technology and to provide national security. In the course of implementation, the system must handle disputes over alleged violations of the NPT and IAEA safeguards agreements. Negotiations, crucial to the functioning of the NPT dispute system, are undertaken in the shadow of the law and the shadow of violence. The NPT and any relevant agreement signed with the IAEA serve as a legal endowment, a set of rules that allocate rights and obligations for all parties involved. This legal framework acknowledges and incorporates various means of coercion, including the use of armed force, in order to enforce those rights and obligations. Still, the system has no monopoly on coercion and violence, as states can act outside of the system' s structure to influence actors within it. This article applies dispute systems design principles to analyze the NPT as a dispute system for nuclear proliferation concerns, and examines three case studies of non-proliferation negotiations-North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan-to see how negotiations were influenced by legal endowments and the shadow of violence. * Law Clerk to Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 2007-2008; J.D., Harvard Law School, 2007; M.Phil., International Peace Studies, Trinity College, Dublin, 2005; B.S.F.S., International Security Studies, Georgetown University, 2003. The author would like to thank the Harvard Negotiation Research Project (HNRP) Fellows program for sponsoring this project, and Robert Gallucci, Dean of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, for his guidance in researching this topic. The author would also like to give a special thanks to Professor Bob Bordone for his support, guidance, and mentoring, and to the other 2006-07 HNRP Fellows for their comments and support. Published by Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository, 2008 2008] BARGAINING IN THE SHADOW OF VIOLENCE 207 IN TRO D UCTIO N 207 I. APPLICABLE DISPUTE SYSTEMS DESIGN PRINCIPLES 211 II. THE NON-PROLIFERATION DISPUTE SYSTEM 214 A. Structure of NPT/IAEA Non-Proliferation Regime 214 B. Analysis of NPT as a Dispute System 219 C. Summary of NPT DSD Analysis 229 III. CASE STUDIES-NORTH KOREA, IRAN, AND PAKISTAN 230 A . N orth K orea 230 B . Iran 2 3 6 C . P akistan 24 1 IV . LESSONS LEARNED 244 A . Procedural Lessons 244 B . Substantive Lessons 247 C . R eflections on Reform 248 C O N CLU SIO N 253
The Sophisticates: Conflicted Representation and the Lehman Bankruptcy

Scholars have long suggested that attorney conflict of interest rules are too onerous and that sophisticated clients may not need the protection of such rules. This article uses the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell’s representation of Lehman Brothers during the financial crisis as a case study to contend that attorney conflicts of interest can undermine the representation of even extremely sophisticated corporate clients. This is because the significance of a particular conflict can change during the course of a representation and the fact that a sophisticated client may have previously consented to a conflict does not ensure that the conflict will not jeopardize the representation. Attorneys are also likely to overestimate their capacities to account for conflicts of interest. Attorney conflict of interest rules should be modified so as to prohibit conflicted representation when the attorney’s ability to satisfy the client’s objectives of the representation is frustrated by a conflict of interest and to expressly require regular consultation between the attorney and client concerning the conflict. Of equal importance is that attorneys not conceive of their conflicts of interest as mere obstacles to be circumvented.
How to Regulate Legal Services to Promote Access, Innovation, and the Quality of Lawyering

Proposals to change the regulatory framework for the legal profession to increase access to legal services have been made for decades. The organized bar frequently responds to these proposals by raising concerns about the difficulty of regulating alternative providers and corporate legal services entities with nonlawyer investors or managers. In this paper we explore the nature of the regulatory challenge. By reviewing in detail the approach developed in the U.K. under the 2007 Legal Services Act—which initiated a licensing regime for legal services entities including but not limited to lawyer-­‐owned law firms—we demonstrate the feasibility, and benefits, of developing an analogous regime in the U.S.
Bush v. Gore through the Lens of Constitutional History

This Article considers the long-term implications of Bush v. Gore for the Court's institutional standing and legitimacy. First, the Article considers the possibility that the Court's legitimacy turns on the legal soundness of the reasoning of its opinions. If this is the case, I argue, the Court is in a lot of trouble, since few reputable lawyers will be convinced that the result was a product of anything but the conservative Justices' partisan preference for George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election. Second, the Article considers the alternative (in my mind, more plausible) premise that history's verdict on a Supreme Court ruling depends more on whether public opinion ultimately supports the outcome than on the quality of the legal reasoning or the craftsmanship of the Court's opinion. The Article's strategy is to canvas some of the landmark decisions in American constitutional history ? Dred Scott v. Sandford, Brown v. Board of Education, Furman v. Georgia, Roe v. Wade, and others ? with the aim of deriving a list of factors that predict how particular rulings will affect the Court's reputation: the amount of opposition a decision generates, the intensity of opposition, perceptions of how efficacious a ruling is likely to be, the relative clout of constituencies supporting and opposing the decision, the continuing saliency of the issue adjudicated by the Court, shifts in public opinion regarding the issue resolved by the Court, the ability of the Justices to take advantage of subsequent opportunities to modulate their decision in light of hostile public opinion, and whether a particular decision is an isolated ruling or part of a "package" of controversial decisions. Finally, the Article considers how those variables apply to Bush v. Gore and predicts that the decision's long-term consequences for the Court's reputation are likely to be relatively insignificant, mainly because the underlying issue will rapidly become obsolete (unlike, say, the abortion or school prayer issues, which have remained controversial for over a quarter of a century).
Altruism spillovers: Are behaviors in context-free experiments predictive of altruism toward a naturally occurring public good?

Abstract This paper addresses the external validity of experiments investigating the characteristics of altruism in the voluntary provision of public goods. We conduct two related experiments that allow us to examine whether individuals who act more altruistically in the context-free environment are also more likely to act altruistically toward a naturally occurring public good. We find that laboratory behavior can be predictive of contributions toward naturally occurring goods, but not in a uniform way. In fact, parametric measures of altruism do a poor job of predicting which subjects are most likely to contribute to a naturally occurring public good.
Scenes from the Copyright Office

In his iconic song “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” Billy Joel uses a series of vignettes to describe an encounter between two former classmates, meeting again after many years. The song begins as a ballad as they exchange pleasantries, segues into jazz as they reminisce about high school, shifts to rock as they gossip about the decline and fall of the former king and queen of the prom, then returns to a ballad as they part. The genius of the song is that the banality of the vignettes perfectly captures the subjectivity of their lived experience.This essay uses a series of vignettes drawn from Joel’s career to describe his encounters with copyright law. It begins by examining the ownership of the copyright in Joel’s songs. It continues by considering the authorship of Joel’s songs. And it concludes by evaluating certain infringement actions filed against Joel. While Joel’s encounters with copyright law were confusing and frustrating, they are also typical. The banality of his experiences captures the uncertainty and incoherence of copyright doctrine.
The Predication Thesis and a New Problem about Persistent Fundamental Legal Controversies

According to a widely held view, people's commitments to laws are dependent on the existence in their community of a conventional practice of complying with certain fundamental laws. This conventionalism has significantly hampered our attempts to explain the normative practice of law. Ronald Dworkin has argued against conventionalism by bringing up the phenomenon of persistent fundamental legal controversies, but neither Dworkin nor his legal positivist respondents have correctly understood the real significance of such controversies. This article argues that such controversies pose a deep challenge to any conception of our legal practice as a genuinely normative, rule-mediated, practice. The article also argues that what is needed to deflect this challenge is a new understanding – different from the widely held conventionalist understanding – of how people's commitments to laws are predicated on their fellows’ like commitments.
The Narratives of Cyberspace Law (or, Learning from Casablanca)

Cyberspace scholars have wrestled extensively with the question of the "right" metaphorical approach to the Internet, in order to guide legal and policy decisions. Literary theorists have wrestled with the perception that cyberspace undermines conventional ideas about narrative. This Essay suggests that each group could learn from the other. Cyberspace tells a better story than literary scholars believe, and the lawyers should pay more attention to the narrative attributes of cyberspace. To illustrate the argument, the Essay proposes a specific story framework for cyberspace: the film Casablanca.
The law of large demand for information

An unresolved problem in Bayesian decision theory is how to value and price information. This paper resolves both problems assuming inexpensive information. Building on Large Deviation Theory, we produce a generically complete asymptotic order on samples of i.i.d. signals in finite-state, finite-action models. Computing the marginal value of an additional signal, we find it is eventually exponentially falling in quantity, and higher for lower quality signals. We provide a precise formula for the information demand, valid at low prices: asymptotically a constant times the log price, and falling in the signal quality for a given price.
Conditional Market Timing with Benchmark Investors

Abstract This paper tests models of mutual fund market timing that allow the manager's payoff function to depend on returns in excess of a benchmark, and distinguish timing based on publicly available information from timing based on finer information. We simultaneously estimate parameters which describe the public information environment, the manager's risk aversion, and the precision of the fund's market-timing signal. Using a sample of more than 400 U.S. mutual funds for 1976–94, our findings suggest that mutual funds behave as highly risk averse, benchmark investors. Conditioning on public information improves the model specification. After controlling for the public information, we find no evidence that funds have significant market-timing ability.
Emerging Models for Alternatives to Marriage

Formal and informal marriages have existed side-by-side since the founding of our country. While a formal, ceremonial marriage based on state statutory requirements is the conventional model, it is not the exclusive one. Another, recognized in some jurisdictions at various times during our history, is common law or informal marriage, a union of a man and a woman whose relationship meets the same statutory requirements as a formal marriage, save a license and ceremony. By definition, the status of common law marriage was not created by state legislatures but evolved. Perhaps that is why common law marriage is often misunderstood and carries with it a certain amount of negative connotations such as its being immoral, temporary, and a lower social class phenomenon. Where individuals have not intended their relationships to be con sidered marital, and where courts have not superimposed that status on them either through substantive laws by finding a common law mar riage, or procedural devices like presuming a marriage, these individ uals have not been able to secure legal recognition of their relationships except in a business context. In other words, courts have not given legal recognition to friendships.
The Elusive Balance between Investor Protection and Wealth Creation

This essay introduces the Investor Rights Symposium held at Pace Law School in 2005 and summarizes the papers presented at the symposium.