cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A note concerning the modular valued von Neumann interaction operator

The modular valued operator $${\hat{V}}_m $$ of the von Neumann interaction operator for a projector is defined. The properties of $${\hat{V}}_m $$ are discussed and contrasted with those of the standard modular value of a projector. The associated notion of a faux qubit is introduced and its possible utility in quantum computation is noted. An experimental implementation of $${\hat{V}}_m $$ is also highlighted.
Adaptive frequency cepstral coefficients for word mispronunciation detection

Systems based on automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology can provide important functionality in computer assisted language learning applications. This is a young but growing area of research motivated by the large number of students studying foreign languages. Here we propose a Hidden Markov Model (HMM)-based method to detect mispronunciations. Exploiting the specific dialog scripting employed in language learning software, HMMs are trained for different pronunciations. New adaptive features have been developed and obtained through an adaptive warping of the frequency scale prior to computing the cepstral coefficients. The optimization criterion used for the warping function is to maximize separation of two major groups of pronunciations (native and non-native) in terms of classification rate. Experimental results show that the adaptive frequency scale yields a better coefficient representation leading to higher classification rates in comparison with conventional HMMs using Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients.
SIRIUS B IMAGED IN THE MID-INFRARED: NO EVIDENCE FOR A REMNANT PLANETARY SYSTEM*

Evidence is building that remnants of solar systems might orbit a large percentage of white dwarfs, as the polluted atmospheres of DAZ and DBZ white dwarfs indicate the very recent accretion of metal-rich material. Some of these polluted white dwarfs are found to have large mid-infrared excesses from close-in debris disks that are thought to be reservoirs for the metal accretion. These systems are coined DAZd white dwarfs. Here we investigate the claims of Bonnet-Bidaud & Pantin that Sirius B, the nearest white dwarf to the Sun, might have an infrared excess from a dusty debris disk. Sirius B's companion, Sirius A, is commonly observed as a mid-infrared photometric standard in the Southern hemisphere. We combine several years of Gemini/T-ReCS photometric standard observations to produce deep mid-infrared imaging in five ~10 μm filters (broad N + four narrow band), which reveal the presence of Sirius B. Our photometry is consistent with the expected photospheric emission such that we constrain any mid-infrared excess to 10% of the photosphere. Thus, we conclude that Sirius B does not have a large dusty disk, as seen in DAZd white dwarfs.
Advanced Code-Division Multiplexers for Superconducting Detector Arrays

Multiplexers based on the modulation of superconducting quantum interference devices are now regularly used in multi-kilopixel arrays of superconducting detectors for astrophysics, cosmology, and materials analysis. Over the next decade, much larger arrays will be needed. These larger arrays require new modulation techniques and compact multiplexer elements that fit within each pixel. We present a new in-focal-plane code-division multiplexer that provides multiplexing elements with the required scalability. This code-division multiplexer uses compact lithographic modulation elements that simultaneously multiplex both signal outputs and superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) detector bias voltages. It eliminates the shunt resistor used to voltage bias TES detectors, greatly reduces power dissipation, allows different dc bias voltages for each TES, and makes all elements sufficiently compact to fit inside the detector pixel area. These in-focal plane code-division multiplexers can be combined with multi-GHz readout based on superconducting microresonators to scale to even larger arrays.
Galaxies M32 and NGC 5102 confirm a near-infrared spectroscopic chronometer

We present near-infrared (NIR) IRTF/SpeX spectra of the intermediate-age galaxy M32 and the post-starburst galaxy NGC 5102. We show that features from thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch (TP-AGB) and main-sequence turnoff (MSTO) stars yield similar ages to those derived from optical spectra. The TP-AGB can dominate the NIR flux of a coeval stellar population between ~0.1 and ~2 Gyr, and the strong features of (especially C-rich) TP-AGB stars are useful chronometers in integrated light studies. Likewise, the Paschen series in MSTO stars is strongly dependent on age and is an indicator of a young stellar component in integrated spectra. We define four NIR spectroscopic indices to measure the strength of absorption features from both C-rich TP-AGB stars and hydrogen features in main-sequence stars, in a preliminary effort to construct a robust chronometer that probes the contributions from stars in different evolutionary phases. By comparing the values of the indices measured in M32 and NGC 5102 to those in the Maraston stellar population synthesis models for various ages and metallicities, we show that model predictions for the ages of the nuclei of M32 and NGC 5102 agree with previous results obtained from integrated optical spectroscopy and color-magnitude diagram analysis of the giant branches. The indices discriminate between an intermediate-age population of ~3-4 Gyr, a younger population of 1 Gyr, and can also detect the signatures of very young 100 Myr populations.
Expansion and Age of the X-Ray Synchrotron-dominated Supernova Remnant G330.2+1.0

We report new Chandra observations of one of the few Galactic supernova remnants whose X-ray spectrum is dominated by nonthermal synchrotron radiation, G330.2+1.0. We find that between 2006 and 2017, some parts of the shell have expanded by about 1%, giving a free-expansion (undecelerated) age of about 1000 yr, and implying shock velocities there of 9000 km/s for a distance of 5 kpc. Somewhat slower expansion is seen elsewhere around the remnant periphery, in particular in compact knots. Because some deceleration must have taken place, we infer that G330.2+1.0 is less than about 1000 yr old. Thus, G330.2+1.0 is one of only four Galactic core-collapse remnants of the last millennium. The large size, low brightness, and young age require a very low ambient density, suggesting expansion in a stellar-wind bubble. We suggest that in the east, where some thermal emission is seen and expansion velocities are much slower, the shock has reached the edge of the cavity. The high shock velocities can easily accelerate relativistic electrons to X-ray-emitting energies. A few small regions show highly significant brightness changes by 10%–20%, both brightening and fading, a phenomenon previously observed in only two supernova remnants, indicating strong and/or turbulent magnetic fields.
TRANSITIONS IN THE CLOUD COMPOSITION OF HOT JUPITERS

Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowship through NASA Exoplanet Science Institute; Origins grant [NNX12AI196]
Climbing Mount Scalable: Physical Resource Requirements for a Scalable Quantum Computer

The primary resource for quantum computation is Hilbert-space dimension. Whereas Hilbert space itself is an abstract construction, the number of dimensions available to a system is a physical quantity that requires physical resources. Avoiding a demand for an exponential amount of these resources places a fundamental constraint on the systems that are suitable for scalable quantum computation. To be scalable, the effective number of degrees of freedom in the computer must grow nearly linearly with the number of qubits in an equivalent qubit-based quantum computer.
Cosmic expansion from spinning black holes

We examine how cosmological expansion arises in a universe containing a lattice of spinning black holes. We study averaged expansion properties as a function of fundamental properties of the black holes, including the bare mass of the black holes and black hole spin. We then explore how closely the expansion properties correspond to properties of a corresponding matter-dominated FLRW universe. As residual radiation present in the initial data decays, we find good agreement with a matter-dominated FLRW solution, and the effective density in the volume is well-described by the horizon mass of the black hole.
Filling the void in confined polymer nematics: Phase transitions in a minimal model of dsDNA packing

Inspired to understand the complex spectrum of space-filling organizations of the dsDNA genome within the capsid of bacterial viruses, we study a minimal, coarse-grained model of single chains densely packed into a finite spherical volume. We build the three basic elements of the model —i) the absence of chain ends, ii) the tendency of parallel-strand alignment and iii) a preference of uniform areal density of chain segments— into a polymer nematic theory for confined chains. Given the geometric constraints of the problem, we show that axially symmetric packings fall into one of three topologies: the coaxial spool; the simple solenoid; and the twisted solenoid. Among these, only the twisted solenoid fills the volume without the presence of line-like disclinations, or voids, and is therefore generically preferred in the incompressible limit. An analysis of the thermodynamics behavior of this simple model reveals a rich behavior, a generic sequence of phases from the empty state for small container sizes, to the coaxial spool configuration at intermediate sizes, ultimately giving way, via a second-order, symmetry-breaking transition, to the twisted-solenoid structure above a critical sphere size.
The Boltzmann distribution and the quantum-classical correspondence

In this paper we explore the following question: can the probabilities constituting the quantum Boltzmann distribution, $P^B_n \propto e^{-E_n/kT}$, be derived from a requirement that the quantum configuration-space distribution for a system in thermal equilibrium be very similar to the corresponding classical distribution? It is certainly to be expected that the quantum distribution in configuration space will approach the classical distribution as the temperature approaches infinity, and a well-known equation derived from the Boltzmann distribution shows that this is generically the case. Here we ask whether one can reason in the opposite direction, that is, from quantum-classical agreement to the Boltzmann probabilities. For two of the simple examples we consider---a particle in a one-dimensional box and a simple harmonic oscillator---this approach leads to probability distributions that provably approach the Boltzmann probabilities at high temperature, in the sense that the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the distributions approaches zero.
LUMINOSITY DEPENDENCE AND REDSHIFT EVOLUTION OF STRONG EMISSION-LINE DIAGNOSTICS IN STAR-FORMING GALAXIES*

We examine the redshift evolution of standard strong emission-line diagnostics for Hbeta-selected star-forming galaxies using the local SDSS sample and a new z = 0.2 - 2.3 sample obtained from HST WFC3 grism and Keck DEIMOS and MOSFIRE data. We use the SDSS galaxies to show that there is a systematic dependence of the strong emission-line properties on Balmer-line luminosity, which we interpret as showing that both the N/O abundance and the ionization parameter increase with increasing line luminosity. Allowing for the luminosity dependence tightens the diagnostic diagrams and the metallicity calibrations. The combined SDSS and high-redshift samples show that there is no redshift evolution in the line properties once the luminosity correction is applied, i.e., all galaxies with a given L(Hbeta) have similar strong emission-line distributions at all the observed redshifts. We argue that the best metal diagnostic for the high-redshift galaxies may be a luminosity-adjusted version of the [NII]6584/Halpha metallicity relation.
ArraMon: A Joint Navigation-Assembly Instruction Interpretation Task in Dynamic Environments

For embodied agents, navigation is an important ability but not an isolated goal. Agents are also expected to perform specific tasks after reaching the target location, such as picking up objects and assembling them into a particular arrangement. We combine Vision-andLanguage Navigation, assembling of collected objects, and object referring expression comprehension, to create a novel joint navigation-and-assembly task, named ARRAMON. During this task, the agent (similar to a PokeMON GO player) is asked to find and collect different target objects one-by-one by navigating based on natural language (English) instructions in a complex, realistic outdoor environment, but then also ARRAnge the collected objects part-by-part in an egocentric grid-layout environment. To support this task, we implement a 3D dynamic environment simulator and collect a dataset with human-written navigation and assembling instructions, and the corresponding ground truth trajectories. We also filter the collected instructions via a verification stage, leading to a total of 7.7K task instances (30.8K instructions and paths). We present results for several baseline models (integrated and biased) and metrics (nDTW, CTC, rPOD, and PTC), and the large model-human performance gap demonstrates that our task is challenging and presents a wide scope for future work.
Folklore, the Borromean Rings, the Icosahedron, and Three Dimensions*

There are many bits of mathematical folklore—results that have been known for a long time—that are not covered in a typical undergraduate curriculum. We will give a proof that the Borromean rings a...
The dynamic retina: contrast and motion detection for active vision

This paper presents an efficient, biologically-inspired early vision architecture, the dynamic retina, that is well-suited to highly active and responsive vision platforms. The dynamic retina exploits normally undesirable camera motion as a necessary step in detecting image contrast, by using dynamic receptive fields instead of traditional spatial-neighborhood operators. We analyze the continuous miniature “noise” movements made by active imaging systems, and show that they can be exploited to detect contrast. We then develop an appropriate photoreceptor response function, based on light-adaptation models for vertebrate receptors. Together, the movements and response function over time compute image contrast. The dynamic retina is also useful for motion analysis, since moving objects processed by the system leave a clear signature from which motion parameters can be extracted. Results from a number of experiments with real video sequences demonstrate the effectiveness of the system for both contrast detection and motion analysis.
Conversion of Polyolefin Waste to Liquid Alkanes with Ru-Based Catalysts under Mild Conditions.

Chemical upcycling of waste polyolefins via hydrogenolysis offers unique opportunities for selective depolymerization compared to high temperature thermal deconstruction. Here, we demonstrate the hydrogenolysis of polyethylene into liquid alkanes under mild conditions using ruthenium nanoparticles supported on carbon (Ru/C). Reactivity studies on a model n-octadecane substrate showed that Ru/C catalysts are highly active and selective for the hydrogenolysis of C(sp3)-C(sp3) bonds at temperatures ranging from 200 to 250 °C. Under optimal conditions of 200 °C in 20 bar H2, polyethylene (average Mw ∼ 4000 Da) was converted into liquid n-alkanes with yields of up to 45% by mass after 16 h using a 5 wt % Ru/C catalyst with the remaining products comprising light alkane gases (C1-C6). At 250 °C, nearly stoichiometric yields of CH4 were obtained from polyethylene over the catalyst. The hydrogenolysis of long chain, low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and a postconsumer LDPE plastic bottle to produce C7-C45 alkanes was also achieved over Ru/C, demonstrating the feasibility of this reaction for the valorization of realistic postconsumer plastic waste. By identifying Ru-based catalysts as a class of active materials for the hydrogenolysis of polyethylene, this study elucidates promising avenues for the valorization of plastic waste under mild conditions.
Asymptotic Behavior of a Sequence of Conditional Probability Distributions and the Canonical Ensemble

The probability distribution of a function of a subsystem conditioned on the value of the function of the whole, in the limit when the ratio of their values goes to zero, has a limit law: It equals the unconditioned marginal probability distribution weighted by an exponential factor whose exponent is uniquely determined by the condition. We apply this theorem to explain the canonical equilibrium ensemble of a system in contact with a heat reservoir. Since the theorem only requires analysis at the level of the function of the subsystem and reservoir, it is applicable even without the knowledge of the composition of the reservoir itself, which extends the applicability of the canonical ensemble. Furthermore, we generalize our theorem to a model with strong interaction that contributes an additional term to the exponent, which is beyond the typical case of approximately additive functions. This result is new in both physics and mathematics, as a theory for the Gibbs conditioning principle for strongly correlated systems. A corollary provides a precise formulation of what a temperature bath is in probabilistic terms.
Kaledin's degeneration theorem and topological Hochschild homology

We give a short proof of Kaledin’s theorem on the degeneration of the noncommutative Hodge-to-de Rham spectral sequence. Our approach is based on topological Hochschild homology and the theory of cyclotomic spectra. As a consequence, we also obtain relative versions of the degeneration theorem, both in characteristic zero and for regular bases in characteristic p.
Theoretical Analysis of Self-Training with Deep Networks on Unlabeled Data

Self-training algorithms, which train a model to fit pseudolabels predicted by another previously-learned model, have been very successful for learning with unlabeled data using neural networks. However, the current theoretical understanding of self-training only applies to linear models. This work provides a unified theoretical analysis of self-training with deep networks for semi-supervised learning, unsupervised domain adaptation, and unsupervised learning. At the core of our analysis is a simple but realistic ``"expansion" assumption, which states that a low-probability subset of the data must expand to a neighborhood with large probability relative to the subset. We also assume that neighborhoods of examples in different classes have minimal overlap. We prove that under these assumptions, the minimizers of population objectives based on self-training and input-consistency regularization will achieve high accuracy with respect to ground-truth labels. By using off-the-shelf generalization bounds, we immediately convert this result to sample complexity guarantees for neural nets that are polynomial in the margin and Lipschitzness. Our results help explain the empirical successes of recently proposed self-training algorithms which use input consistency regularization.
Monetary Policy in Economies with Little or No Money

. (1) Medium-of-exchange money will not entirely disappear in the foreseeable future. (2) In economies with no currency but settlement balances at the central bank, policy can be conducted much as at present by activist adjustment of overnight interest rates. (3) In economies without any money there can be no monetary policy. Liabilities of some official entity might serve as the medium of account, but there could be rivals. (4) A broad commodity-bundle monetary standard could be viable, even with a redemption medium, and there is scope for quantitative analysis of such systems. (5) The number of distinct national currencies may decline sharply.
Information Asymmetry and the Ex Ante Impact of Public Disclosure Quality on Price Efficiency and the Cost of Capital: Evidence from a Laboratory Market

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the ex ante effects of public information quality on market prices and how such effects vary with information asymmetry among traders in a two-period experimental market. We vary public information quality by changing its precision and information asymmetry among traders by varying the distribution of private signals. We find high-quality public disclosure leads to increased price efficiency and decreased cost of capital in the pre-announcement period when information asymmetry is high. The impending high-quality public information increases the competition among informed traders, which leads prices to impound more private information and alleviates the adverse selection problems facing uninformed traders. Our study suggests building a high-quality public information environment (e.g., by adopting high-quality accounting standards or committing to transparent disclosure policies) would likely provide ex ante benefits for firms with significant adverse selection among traders.
Law and Religion in Plymouth Colony

2020 marks the 400th anniversary of the planting of Plymouth Colony. Although the literature about Plymouth is voluminous, the discussion about law and religion has been inappropriately superficial to date. This Article addresses the Pilgrims’ conception of law on matters of religion and the new insights into the Pilgrims’ story that can be ascertained by focusing on law. “Law” has been defined in many different ways by many different people throughout history. Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, and other proponents of natural law argued that law is the exercise of reason to deduce binding rules of moral behavior from nature’s or God’s creation. The renowned English positivist John Austin, in contrast, maintained that law is the command of the sovereign. To Friedrich Karl von Savigny and other proponents of the so-called historical school, law is the unconscious embodiment of the common will of the people. To the philosophical school, law is the expression of idealized ethical custom. The dominant contemporary view seems to be that law is the reflection of social, political, and economic interests. For the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony, law was both the memorialization of their commitment to the Word of God and an instrument for exercising social control so as to effectuate that commitment. The Pilgrims, of course, used law to regulate the more mundane aspects of life as well. Indeed, quantitatively speaking, more laws were enacted by the Pilgrims that addressed the day-to-day activities of life in Plymouth Colony than memorialized the Pilgrims’ commitment to eternal glory in the afterlife, but the latter was unquestionably more important, qualitatively speaking, than the former. In the oft-quoted words of a young William Bradford, “to keep a good conscience, and walk in such a way as God has prescribed in his Word, is a thing which I must prefer before you all, and above life itself.”
CAT.0/ spaces with boundary the join of two Cantor sets

We will show that if a proper complete CAT.0/ space X has a visual boundary homeomorphic to the join of two Cantor sets, and X admits a geometric group action by a group containing a subgroup isomorphic to Z , then its Tits boundary is the spherical join of two uncountable discrete sets. If X is geodesically complete, then X is a product, and the group has a finite index subgroup isomorphic to a lattice in the product of two isometry groups of bounded valence bushy trees.
Anticipated Entry and Entry Deterrence: Evidence from the American Casino Industry

Using new data on entry plans into the American casino industry, I find that incumbent firms invest in physical capacity when threatened with a nearby entry plan, and these strategic investments deter eventual entry. Consistent with an entry-deterrence motive, incumbents respond to the threat of entry when entry is uncertain, but not when entry is assured. The average capacity expansion of 2,300 square feet is associated with a 6.8-percentage-point greater likelihood that the entry plan fails. These findings show that investments in deterrence are viable, especially when new entrants face other significant barriers to entry. Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2730. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.
Sources of China's economic growth, 1952-99 : incorporating human capital accumulation

China's performance in economic growth, and poverty reduction has been remarkable. There is an ongoing debate about whether this growth is mainly driven by productivity, or factor accumulation. But few past studies have incorporated information on China's human capital stock, and thus contained an omission bias. The authors construct a measure of China's human capital stock from 1952 to 1999, and, using a simple growth accounting exercise, incorporate it in their analysis of the sources of growth, during the pre-reform (1952-77), and the reform period (1978-99). They find that the accumulation of human capital in China (as measured by the average years of schooling for the population aged 15 to 64) was quite rapid, and contributed significantly to growth, and welfare. After incorporating human capital, they also find that the growth of total factor productivity, still plays a positive, and significant role during the reform period. In contrast, productivity growth was negative in the pre-reform period. The results are robust to changes in labor shares in GDP. The recent declining rate of human capital accumulation is a cause for concern, if China is to sustain its improvements in growth, and welfare in the coming decade. Funding for basic education is unevenly distributed, and insufficient in some poor regions.
Construal instructions and professional skepticism in evaluating complex estimates

This study investigates the use of audit evidence documentation instructions that promote the collection and processing of evidence with high-level construals (broad, abstract interpretations of the evidence). Abstraction can help a person piece together individual pieces of information or evidence and better enable a person to see the big picture of what the collective information portends. The results of an experiment suggest that auditors think and act with more professional skepticism when using the documentation instructions that promote high-level construals as compared with auditors using documentation instructions promoting low-level construals (specific, detailed interpretations of the evidence, akin to current audit practice) and with auditors not given documentation instructions. Further, the high-level construals foster better processing of the collected evidence. The study also provides preliminary evidence that task complexity could interfere with professional skepticism.
A Palestinian Growth History, 1968-2000

The West Bank and Gaza have been occupied by Israel since 1967. As a result, it experienced a deep integration of its factor and goods markets with the richer economy of Israel. However, such an integration did not bring significant “dynamic” gains. Time series analysis indeed suggest that productivity growth hardly contributed to Palestinian GDP. Besides, the decomposition of income convergence patterns with Israel implies a rather unusual phenomenon of divergence in productivity. Economies of adaptation and scale that could have been encouraged by greater integration with Israel remained scarce, or were offset by opposite forces.
Bottom Up Workplace Law Enforcement: An Empirical Analysis

This article presents an original analysis of newly-available data from a landmark survey of 4,387 low-wage, front-line workers in the three largest U.S. cities. We analyze data on worker claims, retaliation, and legal knowledge to investigate what we call “bottom up” workplace law enforcement, or the reliance of many labor and employment statutes on workers themselves to enforce their rights. We conclude that bottom up workplace law enforcement may fail to protect the workers who are most vulnerable to workplace rights violations, as they often lack the legal knowledge and incentives to complain that are prerequisites for enforcement activity.
Creating Convergence: Debiasing Biased Litigants

Previous experimental research has found that self-Serving biases are a major cause of negotiation impasses. In this study we show that a simple intervention can mitigate such biases and promote efficient settlement of disputes.
Understanding investor perceptions of financial statement fraud and their use of red flags: evidence from the field

We surveyed 194 experienced, nonprofessional investors to examine the relations between their perceptions of the frequency of financial reporting fraud, their use of financial statement information, the importance they place on conducting their own fraud risk assessments, and their use of fraud red flags. We find that investors’ perceptions of the frequency of fraud and their use of financial statement information positively influence the importance they place on conducting their own fraud risk assessments. Investors who place importance on assessing fraud risk make greater use of fraud red flags to avoid fraudulent investments. Red flags commonly relied upon include SEC investigations, pending litigation, violations of debt covenants, and high management turnover. Investors rely less on company size and age, the need for external financing, and the use of a non-Big 4 auditor. We also find evidence of positive associations between the use of specific red flags and investors’ portfolio returns.
Catching Up Is Hard to Do: Undergraduate Prestige, Elite Graduate Programs, and the Earnings Premium

A commonly held perception is that an elite graduate degree can “scrub” a less prestigious but less costly undergraduate degree. Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates from 2003 to 2017, this article examines the relationship between the status of undergraduate degrees and earnings among those with elite postbaccalaureate degrees. Few graduates of non-selective institutions earn postbaccalaureate degrees from elite institutions, and even when they do, undergraduate institutional prestige continues to be positively related to earnings overall as well as among those with specific postbaccalaureate degrees including business, law, medicine, and doctoral. Among those who earn a graduate degree from an elite institution, the present value of the earnings advantage to having both an undergraduate and a graduate degree from an elite institution generally greatly exceeds any likely cost advantage from attending a less prestigious undergraduate institution.
Information aggregation, matching and radical market–hierarchy hybrids: Implications for the theory of the firm

More than 65 years ago Friedrich Hayek parenthetically remarked that while ‘man has learned to use [the market] ... he is still very far from having learned to make the best use of it’ (1945: 528). The ensuing years have seen significant innovation in the structure and use of markets, including the infusion of market mechanisms into organizations (Zenger and Hesterly, 1997). However, the focus in extant theory of the firm scholarship has largely been on the market’s high-powered incentives. But markets – as we argue in this essay – have additional features, such as information aggregation and matching. These novel features of markets have recently begun to receive managerial attention as organizations experiment with market-like practices such as crowdsourcing, information and prediction markets and open innovation. While we are descriptively learning much about these market-like practices and forms, nonetheless the theoretical foundations behind them, their implications for comparative governance (market vs hierarchy), their possible forms (market–hierarchy hybrids) and implications for strategy and competitive advantage have yet to be fully vetted in the organizational literature. The purpose of this essay, then, is to step back and theoretically discuss the common threads that unite innovative practices such as prediction markets and crowdsourcing, and more importantly, to discuss their comparative implications for markets and organizations, as well as market–hierarchy hybrids. We specifically focus on two, relatively neglected features of markets as a governance form – features that give markets an advantage over firms and hierarchy: information aggregation and matching. We provide a contrast of the informational and matching-related assumptions associated with coordinating economic activity via the market’s price mechanism versus hierarchy and organization, and highlight the potential gains from infusing the information aggregation and matching-related features of markets into organizations. While organizational scholars have certainly focused on the importance of information in organizations (Stinchcombe, 1990), and economists have highlighted the role that information So!apbox editorial essay Downloaded from soq.sagepub.com at Oxford University Libraries on October 16, 2015 164 Strategic Organization 9(2) plays in markets (e.g. signaling, information asymmetry; Spence, 1973; Stigler, 1961), nonetheless the market’s capacity for information aggregation and matching has not been well integrated into our theories of the firm – specifically, questions of comparative governance and radical market–hierarchy hybrid forms of organization. Based on our discussion, and in the spirit of the So!apbox forum, we also speculate on possible areas of future research for the field of strategic organization.
Creating Quality Undergraduate Research Programs in Economics: How, When, Where (and Why)

While undergraduate research (UR) has been growing across the academy for decades, economics has been relatively slow to adopt it as pedagogy. We argue for the development of comprehensive UR progr...
How to Compete: The Impact of Workplace Practices and Information Technology on Productivity

Using data from a unique nationally representative sample of businesses, we examine the impact of workplace practices, information technology, and human capital investments on productivity. We estimate an augmented Cobb-Douglas production function with both cross section and panel data covering the period of 1987–1993, using both within and GMM estimators. We find that it is not whether an employer adopts a particular work practice but rather how that work practice is actually implemented within the establishment that is associated with higher productivity. Unionized establishments that have adopted human resource practices that promote joint decision making coupled with incentive-based compensation have higher productivity than other similar nonunion plants, whereas unionized businesses that maintain more traditional labor management relations have lower productivity. Finally, plant productivity is higher in businesses with more-educated workers or greater computer usage by nonmanagerial employees.
Copyright in the Expanded Field

Intellectual property (“IP”) law and the art forms it is meant to protect are expanding. In our information age, artists hoping to assert their rights frequently assert a combination of trademark, copyright, and right of publicity or moral rights claims in order to maximize their chances of success. This Article looks beyond IP law to some of its more unlikely complements—tort and property law—as a viable means of redress for artists who may be ineligible for copyright protection. Specifically, recent cases involving a specific form of hybrid art—land art, or “site specific art”—have determinedly stripped artists of either their moral rights or copyright claims. Thus, I suggest looking to the laws of trespass and nuisance as new ways of thinking about the same problem: How do we balance public rights in our shared artworks with private rights of control? Surprisingly, this Article suggests that applying nuisance law’s balancing test has much in common with the four-factor balancing test of copyright’s fair use doctrine. On a greater level, this Article hopes to encourage the ongoing trend of creative ways of thinking about and asserting artistic rights when traditional copyright claims may not be feasible or successful.
RESPA - Questioning its Effectiveness

Purchasing real estate is a complicated process, especially for the average consumer. The closing procedure alone involves fees and documents that can be confusing to a borrower. The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) was enacted in 1974 in order to ease some of this confusion. This article discusses the enactment of RESPA and its purpose, which is mainly to "insure that consumers... are provided with greater and more timely information on the nature and costs of the settlement process and are protected from unnecessarily high settlement charges caused by certain abusive practices."The author discusses disclosure requirements that lenders must comply with, such as delivering to the borrower a good faith estimate, a Special Information Booklet, and a HUD-1 Settlement Statement, and problems associated with those disclosures. Additionally, the article analyzes case law that deals with the legality of certain kickbacks and referral fees under RESPA. The article further discusses reform proposals to RESPA that would better inform consumers of the costs related to their mortgages. The author concludes by suggesting safeguards to help ensure proper disclosures pursuant to RESPA.
Joint Production in Teams

Abstract Consider Holmstrom's moral hazard in teams problem when there are n agents, each agent i has an a i -dimensional strategy space and output is m-dimensional. We show that a compensation mechanism that satisfies budget balance, limited liability and implements an efficient allocation generically exists if and only if ∑ i = 1 n a i / ( n - 1 ) m . Moreover, under a weak additional condition, the equilibrium implemented by this mechanism is unique in the class of pure strategy Coalition-Proof equilibria.
The Charitable Deduction Games: Catching Change

The article addresses a matter that could result in profound changes in the ability of the United States to ameliorate the most pressing humanitarian and global problems of our times. It provides the mechanics and addresses the solutions required to enable US donors to do more good. In an efficient market, capital ends up in its most productive use. In charitable giving, donations are not always allocated to their most effective use due in no small part to current cross-border giving laws impeding that result. The article sets forth the concept of an “efficient charitable market,” which is predicated upon unshackling the hands of the giver. The article proposes a system for implementing a new law that would allow US donors to make contributions to non-US charities.
Foreign banks in emerging market crises: Evidence from Malaysia

Abstract This paper compares performance of domestic and foreign banks in Malaysia during the Asian crisis. We find that foreign banks were not a homogeneous group: while banks with a stronger regional focus suffered from the crisis as much as domestic banks, foreign banks not focused on Asia performed significantly better. The key difference appears to be exposure to sectors hurt by the bursting of the asset price bubble. Availability of support from parent banks, likelihood of being bailed out, or political connections do not seem to explain the differences. Theories of managerial herding may explain why non-regional foreign banks were not caught in the financial bubble.
Moral Objectivity and Reasonable Agreement: Can Realism Be Reconciled with Kantian Constructivism?

. In this paper I analyze the tension between realism and antirealism at the basis of Kantian constructivism. This tension generates a conflictive account of the source of the validity of social norms. On the one hand, the claim to moral objectivity characteristic of Kantian moral theories makes the validity of norms depend on realist assumptions concerning the existence of shared fundamental interests among all rational human beings. I illustrate this claim through a comparison of the approaches of Rawls, Habermas and Scanlon. On the other hand, however, objections to moral realism motivate many Kantian constructivists to endorse the antirealist claim that reasonable agreement is the source of the validity of social norms. After analyzing the difficulties in the latter strategy, I try to show how a balance between the realist and antirealist elements of Kantian constructivism can be reached by drawing a sharper distinction between the justice and the legitimacy of social norms.
Optimal Conservatism with Earnings Manipulation

This paper examines the role of conservatism when an agent can manipulate upcoming earnings before all uncertainty is resolved. An increase in conservatism, by reducing the likelihood of favorable earnings, requires steeper performance pay to maintain the same level of incentives, which in turn increases the equilibrium earnings manipulation. Trade-offs between inducing effort and curbing manipulation predict an interior level of conservatism as optimal. The optimal level of conservatism is positively associated with enforcement, economic profitability, and earnings quality, and negatively associated with agency frictions. In particular, we show that more economically profitable firms choose to be more conservative. We also establish that the association between performance pay and manipulation identifies whether conservatism is optimally chosen or exogenously imposed. In an application to debt contracting, we show that optimal conservatism is negatively associated with borrowers’ bargaining power. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Genealogical Pragmatism: How History Matters for Foucault and Dewey

AbstractThis article offers the outlines of a historically-informed conception of critical inquiry herein named genealogical pragmatism. This conception of critical inquiry combines the genealogical emphasis on problematization featured in Michel Foucault’s work with the pragmatist emphasis on reconstruction featured in John Dewey’s work. The two forms of critical inquiry featured by these thinkers are not opposed, as is too commonly supposed. Genealogical problematization and pragmatist reconstruction fit together for reason of their mutual emphasis on the importance of history for philosophy. In so fitting together they repair crucial deficits in both traditions as they currently stand on their own (namely, genealogy’s normative deficit and pragmatism’s excessive instrumentalism). The resulting conception of critical inquiry as simultaneously problematizational and reconstructive is offered as a first step toward a crucial philosophical task we face today: articulating normativity without foundations.
HIGH DIMENSIONAL COVARIANCE MATRIX ESTIMATION IN APPROXIMATE FACTOR MODELS

The variance–covariance matrix plays a central role in the inferential theories of high-dimensional factor models in finance and economics. Popular regularization methods of directly exploiting sparsity are not directly applicable to many financial problems. Classical methods of estimating the covariance matrices are based on the strict factor models, assuming independent idiosyncratic components. This assumption, however, is restrictive in practical applications. By assuming sparse error covariance matrix, we allow the presence of the cross-sectional correlation even after taking out common factors, and it enables us to combine the merits of both methods. We estimate the sparse covariance using the adaptive thresholding technique as in Cai and Liu [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 106 (2011) 672–684], taking into account the fact that direct observations of the idiosyncratic components are unavailable. The impact of high dimensionality on the covariance matrix estimation based on the factor structure is then studied.
Ripples Against the Other Shore: The Impact of Trauma Exposure On The Immigration Process Through Adjudicators

Immigration is currently a hot topic; discussion of immigration reform and the problems in our current system appear in the news virtually every day. There is widespread consensus that our current immigration system is “broken,” but there is little agreement on why and even less on what should be done to fix it. These are difficult and important questions, involving many complex interrelated factors. While I do not hope and cannot aim to answer them completely in this article, I will argue that in doing so we must consider an often overlooked and generally understudied issue: the effects of trauma exposure in our immigration process and specifically on our immigration adjudicators, that is, immigration judges, Board of Immigration Appeals members, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services officers.Despite the little attention paid to the effects of trauma exposure, this is a topic of great importance. If our goal is to have an immigration system that not only operates fairly and efficiently but also has a positive effect on all participants — noncitizens, attorneys, adjudicators, and other officials, among them — we must consider the ways that our current system causes psychological harm to those involved. Evidence of this harm in our legal system is abundant. It can be seen in the stories of noncitizens caught up in our immigration process, in the high levels of distress suffered by attorneys and judges, in the criticism of immigration judges and other officials, and in the general dysfunction of our immigration system. At the same time, the causes for this harm are only infrequently discussed. This article will highlight one cause of such harm: trauma exposure.I have multiple goals for this article. First, I want to continue the important work begun by the many others cited throughout the article of normalizing the discussion of the emotional dimension of lawyering and its impact in and on our legal system. Second, I want to highlight the very significant impact of a particular aspect of this emotional dimension, trauma, on the immigration process by exploring its effect on immigration adjudicators. Finally, I intend to set the stage for a future article that will consider reforms to the immigration system to better manage the impact of trauma exposure.
Annual report readability, current earnings, and earnings persistence

Abstract This paper examines the relation between annual report readability and firm performance and earnings persistence. I measure the readability of public company annual reports using the Fog index from the computational linguistics literature and the length of the document. I find that: (1) the annual reports of firms with lower earnings are harder to read (i.e., they have a higher Fog index and are longer); and (2) firms with annual reports that are easier to read have more persistent positive earnings.
Religion and State: Some Main Issues and Sources

Public reason's default position is not atheism or agnosticism about the dependence of everything on a transcendent Creator. On the contrary, there is good reason to judge that there is such a transcendent cause, capable of communicating with intelligent creatures, that one of the world's religions may be essentially true and others substantially truer than atheism, and that there is a human or natural right to immunity from coercion in religious inquiry, belief (or unbelief, precisely as such), and practice so far as is compatible with public order, that is with the rights of others, public peace and public morality. Contrary to the arguments of legal theorists such as Dworkin, Eisgruber and Sager, and the "mystery" passage in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the right to religious freedom should not be regarded as a mere instance of a general right to choose one's lifestyle and ethical beliefs or passionate choices. At the same time, any religious beliefs or practices which deny or overlook that right to religious liberty, and which encourage or license intimidation in relation to religious belief or in the name of religion, are not immune from coercive defensive measures where necessary for the protection of the rights of others or of the other aspects of public order. Such measures discriminate amongst religions justifiably.