cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
How large an effect can we expect from school reforms

How Large an Effect Can We Expect from School Reforms? Judging the success of school reform requires an interpretative context in which to judge whether effects obtained are large enough to be important or so small as to be a disappointment. The logic of school reform suggests two frameworks with which to judge the importance of effects. One is the size of the existing achievement gaps between important groups in society. The other is the size of gaps in mean achievement among schools (adjusted for student characteristics). NAEP data is used to demonstrate that in national data, gaps which appear large by one standard may appear small by the other. We argue that the most appropriate framework for judging reform effects is the national distribution of school effects. JEL Classification: I20
Comparative Administrative Law: Outlining a Field of Study

Comparative administrative law is emerging as a distinct field of inquiry after a period of neglect. To demonstrate this claim, the authors summarize their edited volume on the topic – a collection that aims to stimulate research across legal systems and scholarly disciplines. After a set of historical reflections, the authors consider key topics at the intersection of administrative and constitutional law, including the contested issue of administrative independence. Two further sections highlight tensions between expertise and accountability, drawing insights from economics and political science. The essay then considers the changing boundaries of the administrative state – both the public–private distinction and the links between domestic and transnational regulatory bodies, such as the European Union. The essay concludes with reflections on a core concern of administrative law: the way individuals and organizations across different systems test and challenge the legitimacy of public authority.
Economic dynamics and forest clearing: A spatial econometric analysis for Indonesia

Abstract This paper uses a large panel database to investigate the determinants of forest clearing in Indonesian kabupatens since 2005. Our study incorporates short-run changes in prices and demands for palm oil and wood products, as well as the exchange rate, the real interest rate, land-use zoning, forest protection, the estimated opportunity cost of forested land, the quality of local governance, the poverty rate, population density, the availability of communications infrastructure, transport cost, local rainfall and terrain slope. The econometric results highlight the role of dynamic economic factors in forest clearing: significant roles for lagged changes in all the short-run economic variables—product prices, demands, the exchange rate and the real interest rate—as well as communications infrastructure, some types of commercial zoning, rainfall and terrain slope. We find no significance for the other variables, although our measure of protected-area status is too general for strong conclusions to be drawn about the empirical relationship between forest clearing and protection. It is also possible that the insignificance of transport cost in our results is due to collinearity with our proxy for communications cost, and/or the offsetting effects of transport cost on the direct profitability of forest clearing (negative) and the effectiveness of local forest regulation (positive). Our results strongly support a model of forest clearing as an investment that is highly sensitive to expectations about future forest product prices and demands, as well as changes in the cost of capital (indexed by the real interest rate), the relative cost of local inputs (indexed by the exchange rate), and the cost of land clearing (indexed by local precipitation). By implication, the opportunity cost of forested land fluctuates widely with changes in international markets and decisions by Indonesia's financial authorities about the exchange and interest rates. Our results suggest that forest conservation programs are unlikely to succeed if they ignore such powerful forces.
Defending Intellectual Property Rights in the BRIC Economies

A 2003 study by Goldman Sachs concluded that in less than 40 years the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China) will outsize the G6 economies in dollar terms. The enormous growth presents an unparalleled opportunity for American firms expanding abroad. The enormous growth also presents a challenge to American firms wishing to protect their intellectual property rights. This article examines treatment of intellectual property rights by the BRICs and offers strategies for American firms to protect these rights in major developing economies.
Impact of the Dodd-Frank act on credit ratings ☆

Abstract We analyze the impact of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) on corporate bond ratings issued by credit rating agencies (CRAs). We find no evidence that Dodd-Frank disciplines CRAs to provide more accurate and informative credit ratings. Instead, following Dodd-Frank, CRAs issue lower ratings, give more false warnings, and issue downgrades that are less informative. These results are consistent with the reputation model of Morris (2001) , and suggest that CRAs become more protective of their reputation following the passage of Dodd-Frank. Consistent with Morris (2001) , we find that our results are stronger for industries with low Fitch market share, where Moody׳s and Standard & Poor׳s have stronger incentives to protect their reputation ( Becker and Milbourn, 2011 ). Our results are not driven by business cycle effects or firm characteristics, and strengthen as the uncertainty regarding the passage of Dodd-Frank gets resolved. We conclude that increasing the legal and regulatory costs to CRAs might have an adverse effect on the quality of credit ratings.
The profitability of imperialism: The British experience in the West indies 1768–1772

The controversy over the nature and extent of the gains from imperialism has been long and enduring, occupying, at one time or another, the attention of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, David Ricardo, the Marxists, and contemporary observers. The assertion has been, and is still made, that the rich nations of the world derive much of their present affluence because they reaped the benefits of colonialism. The purpose of this paper is to test the proposition that colonies were a net economic benefit to the mother country. The empirical study concentrates upon the British West Indies colonies during the years 1768-1772 which was the apogee of the First British Empire.
Keynote: Before and after the Summary Judgment Trilogy

In this keynote speech for the Seattle University School of Law Colloquium on the 25th Anniversary of the Summary Judgment Trilogy: Reflections on Summary Judgment, Professor Suja Thomas discusses access to courts and juries before and after the summary judgment trilogy. Following up on debate in the academic literature on the effect of the trilogy on summary judgment, Professor Thomas explores influences on the trilogy and influences of the trilogy outside of summary judgment. She first describes Supreme Court decisions on judgment notwithstanding the verdict, remittitur, and the directed verdict, which helped set the stage for the trilogy. She then explores access after the trilogy. Professor Thomas describes how access to courts and juries continued to decline through the Supreme Court’s decisions on arbitration and the motion to dismiss. Professor Thomas gives all of these procedures some context by showing their effect on one class of factually intensive cases — employment discrimination cases. She concludes by introducing the concept of “the Other Branch” and states that access to courts and juries can possibly increase if the jury is viewed in this manner.
Deficits, defense, and income redistribution

By now there is a substantial literature in economics pioneered by George Stigler (1971) and refined by Sam Peltzman (1976) and Gary Becker (1985) that analyzes the role the state plays in redistributing wealth across different groups in society. This transfer of wealth can be effectuated implicitly by government laws and regulations or by direct taxation and the redistribution of the revenues to different groups (Meltzer and Richard 1981). The key feature of models in this literature is that the redistribution is implicitly assumed to occur repeatedly across the same groups at a given moment in time but not between different groups over time. These static models of government behavior contrast with macroeconomic models that view government policy from a normative prospective and analyze it within a dynamic framework. For example, Robert Barro (1979) assumes that the state chooses a tax path subject to the constraint that individual taxpayers seek to maximize their intertemporal utility.With notable exceptions, the public choice literature has not focused on the possibilities available to the state to transfer wealth intertemporally across groups, nor has the macroeconomics literature. The question of whether deficit financing of government expenditures has an impact on the real economy is a case in point. If deficits do affect real variables, then budget deficits can be used by government to redistribute wealth across different generations. Conversely, changes in institutional structures, laws, or regulations intended to transfer income across groups to increase political support may lead to income transfers across generations. This paper examines whether the enfranchisement of blacks in the United States, who have relatively low incomes, has led to increased use of debt to finance government spending.
Facilitated Plagiarism: The Saga of Term-Paper Mills and the Failure of Legislation and Litigation to Control Them

This article discusses facilitated plagiarism: plagiarism or cheating by students who purchase and submit papers obtained from term-paper mills. The article begins by tracing forty-five years of term-paper mill history and operations, including the move to the Internet and efforts to circumvent regulations. It then discusses statutory and judicial efforts to control these companies. Next, the article analyzes why legal efforts have failed. The article concludes by laying the groundwork for future work regarding a comprehensive approach to academic dishonesty on college campuses. That foundation involves adopting and applying concepts of environmental management to issues of academic dishonesty, including plagiarism and facilitated plagiarism.
McDonald v. Chicago, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Right to Bear Arms and the Right of Self-Defense

The Supreme Court of the United States has granted certiorari in the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago to consider this question: "Whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is incorporated as against the States by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities or Due Process Clauses." This case follows and seeks to build upon District of Columbia v. Heller which held that the Second Amendment protects both the right to self-defense and what has been termed an individual right to bear arms. Of course, Heller’s application is limited to the federal government and has no direct application to the states. Yet all knew, as surely as night follows day, that the question of applying Heller to the states would be the next inevitable step in the litigation. At one level, Heller was a monumental decision. It was the first case in modern times where the Court squarely considered whether there was an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment and it was the first time in which the Court indicated there was a constitutional right to engage in self defense. On the other hand, this case could also be viewed as simply reigning in an “outlier.” Justice Scalia’s opinion, by recognizing a right to have arms but reassuring lower courts that this would not interfere with traditional regulation of those arms, displaced only “outlier” regulations and crafted an opinion which paralleled the views of the majority of people in the nation. Extending Heller to the states would have both a greater and a smaller impact than Heller itself. It would have a greater impact, because it would apply to all fifty states and encompass more people and a much larger geographical region than Heller which only applies to the District of Columbia and other federal enclaves. Yet it can be said to have a smaller impact because while it may conflict with laws of a city like Chicago, it would be largely congruent with the state laws and most city regulations across the country. Though it is easy to see how the rationale of Heller could be extended and enforced against the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, the purpose of this essay is to illustrate how the right to bear arms could be reasonably enforced againct the states even without reference to Heller.
'Emaciated' Defense or a Trend to Independence and Equality of Arms in Internationalized Criminal Tribunals?

This short article gives an overview of recent developments in recognition of the right to effective defense in international criminal proceedings, with particular attention to new structures. The systems for provision of defense lawyers are examined in a case study of the Charles Taylor trial by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, sitting in The Hague, as well as the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
Growth still is good for the poor

Incomes in the poorest two quintiles on average increase at the same rate as overall average incomes. This is because, in a global dataset spanning 118 countries over the past four decades, changes in the share of income of the poorest quintiles are generally small and uncorrelated with changes in average income. The variation in changes in quintile shares is also small relative to the variation in growth in average incomes, implying that the latter accounts for most of the variation in income growth in the poorest quintiles. These findings hold across most regions and time periods and when conditioning on a variety of country-level factors that may matter for growth and inequality changes. This evidence confirms the central importance of economic growth for poverty reduction and illustrates the difficulty of identifying specific macroeconomic policies that are significantly associated with the relative growth rates of those in the poorest quintiles.
The Cash Flow Sensitivity of Cash

We model a firm’s demand for liquidity to develop a new test of the effect of financial constraints on corporate policies. The effect of financial constraints is captured by the firm’s propensity to save cash out of cash flows (the cash flow sensitivity of cash). We hypothesize that constrained firms should have a positive cash flow sensitivity of cash, while unconstrained firms’ cash savings should not be systematically related to cash flows. We empirically estimate the cash flow sensitivity of cash using a large sample of manufacturing firms over the 1971 to 2000 period and find robust support for our theory. TWO IMPORTANT AREAS OF RESEARCH in corporate finance are the effects of financial constraints on firm behavior and the manner in which firms perform financial management. These two issues, although often studied separately, are fundamentally linked. As originally proposed by Keynes (1936), a major advantage of a liquid balance sheet is that it allows firms to undertake valuable projects when they arise. However, Keynes also argued that the importance of balance sheet liquidity is influenced by the extent to which firms have access to external capital markets (p. 196). If a firm has unrestricted access to external capital— that is, if a firm is financially unconstrained—there is no need to safeguard against future investment needs and corporate liquidity becomes irrelevant. In contrast, when the firm faces financing frictions, liquidity management may become a key issue for corporate policy. Despite the link between financial constraints and corporate liquidity demand, the literature that examines the effects of financial constraints on firm behavior has traditionally focused on corporate investment demand. 1 In an influential paper, Fazzari, Hubbard, and Petersen (1988) propose that when firms face financing constraints, investment spending will vary with the availability of internal funds, rather than just with the availability of positive net present
Strategic compliments in sales

Salespersons often spend time and money giving prospective buyers compliments such as kind words, meals and gifts. Though prior research has shown that compliments will influence a prospective buyer’s decision, it is unknown the extent to which salespersons should make these investments. In this paper, we develop an analytical model to examine how seller and buyer characteristics affect the equilibrium provision of compliments by the seller. We establish that the optimal magnitude of compliments is non-monotonic in the buyer’s sensitivity to compliments. We identify conditions for when a seller of a high-quality product will offer greater (or lesser) compliments than a seller of a lower quality product. We show that, under certain conditions, an uninformed buyer earns greater utility than a buyer who knows the quality of the seller’s product. The findings have implications for sellers in their choice of compliments and buyers in the inferences they draw from the compliments received.
Institutional Work and Complicit Decoupling across the U.S. Capital Markets: The Work of Rating Agencies

We focus on the core institution of the capital market and the institu­tional work of professional service firms that provide ratings on corporate issuers, initially in a bid to maintain this institution, which suffered when those involved relied solely on information from the issuers themselves. Through our analysis we identify a new type of decoupling—complicit decoupling. Complicit decoupling evolves over time, beginning with the creation of a new practice, here corporate ratings as a form of policing work, which emerges to help to maintain a core institution. This practice is then adopted, implemented and later becomes decoupled. Exposure does not undermine the legitimacy of the practice because external actors collude in the ‘window dressing’ and, because it has become normalized, only partial repairs are enacted. It is by nature field-level institutional work, benefiting the majority of the field and inherently involves a violation of promise keeping. We conclude with implications for managers and behavioral ethics researchers.
Additional Information in Accounting Reports: Effects on Management Decisions and Subjective Performance Evaluations Under Causal Ambiguity

Organizations have often been criticized for reliance on a single item of accounting information (e.g., profit) in evaluating performance, because of its incompleteness. We provide theory-based experimental evidence that under frequently occurring performance-evaluation conditions (subjective performance evaluation, causal ambiguity, and individual differences in cognitive ability, knowledge, and/or motivation that lead to different interpretations of information), reliance on a single item of accounting information (profit), rather than profit plus additional (e.g., nonfinancial or external) information, can provide two potential benefits which offset the costs of information incompleteness. First, subordinates are more likely to make the management decisions that superiors will evaluate and reward highly—that is, there are fewer coordination failures in management decisions. Second, even after controlling for the presence or absence of coordination failures, subordinates experience less negative surprise about their performance evaluations.
Dead Again: The Nondelegation Doctrine, the Rules/Standards Dilemma and the Line Item Veto

Professor Bell discusses the revival of the nondelegation doctrine and related problems presented by the Line Item Veto statute and the Supreme Court's recent decision in Clinton v. New York. He concludes that the nondelegation doctrine is unworkable. Ultimately, delegation of lawmaking power is a function of statutory precision: the vaguer a statute, the more lawmaking power it delegates. Thus, to apply the nondelegation doctrine, the Judiciary must be able to form judgments, superior to legislative judgments, about the appropriate specificity of law, including judgments whether definitive rules rather than more open-ended standards must be employed. The Judiciary, which has difficulty making such decisions for itself, cannot make such determinations for Congress or other governmental institutions. The trend in its own decisions has been toward multi-factor, balancing, and reasonableness standards rather than rules, and it has not identified any clear principles to govern the choice between standards and rules. While a nondelegation inquiry (if it were workable) might have concluded that the Line Item Veto Act actually increased the likelihood that policy choices made in appropriations bills would lead to deliberation and votes for which legislators could be held accountable, the central problem with the Act lies elsewhere. The paper argues that by disaggregating the initial legislative package it frustrates the constitutional design that Congress play the predominate role in lawmaking and that the President assume merely a secondary role. By, in effect, permitting the President to define the final form of appropriations statutes, it relieves Congress of responsibility for them and thus reverses those roles. In Clinton v. City of New York, the Justices of the Supreme Court, mischaracterizing the authority granted by the Act, failed to analyzed the central problem posed by the Line Item Veto Act in this way.
Debunking The Myth that Insurance Coverage is Not Available or Allowed for Intentional Torts or Damages

What do unicorns, leprechauns, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny have in common with the proposition that insurance is not available for injuries or damage intentionally caused? They are all myths. It is a myth that insurance only covers unintentional injuries or damage. This myth has its roots in what is known as the “fortuity” doctrine in the first party or property insurance context. Although the term “fortuity” does not appear in insurance policies, some courts have held that there is as an implied exclusion of coverage for any loss that is not fortuitous. A loss is fortuitous if it is not certain to occur. The fortuity doctrine was transferred to the third party or liability insurance context when it was incorporated into the definition of an “occurrence” and subsequently as the “expected or intended” exclusion.
The Really New Property: A Skeptical Appraisal

(seagle@gmu.edu). 1. Kenneth R. Minogue, The Concept of Property and Its Contemporary Significance, in NOMOS XXII: PROPERTY 3, 8 (J. Roland Pennock & John W. Chapman eds., 1980). 2. Ecclesiastes 1:9. See infra note 7. An earlier version of this Article was presented at an Association of American Law Schools (AALS) panel on “Law as Transformative Agent: Thinking and Doing Property in New Categories.” 3. See KARL MARX, CAPITAL (Eden & Cedar Paul trans., J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. 1978) (1867) (The first volume of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital was published in 1867. Marx asserted not only that capitalism exploited and alienated labor, but also that it separated subjective moral value and objective economic value.). 4. See generally Steven J. Eagle, Economic Salvation in a Restive Age: The Demand for Secular Salvation Has Not Abated, 56 CASE W. RES. L. REV. 569 (2006). The relationship between market activity and human flourishing remains the subject of lively debate. See, e.g., Brian Leiter, Marxism and the Continuing Irrelevance of Normative Theory, 54 STAN. L. REV. 1129, 1136 (2002) (“When conservatives argue that the welfare state is doomed because it stifles private enterprise . . . they are adopting Marx’s argument that economics is the driving force in human development.”) (quoting John Cassidy, The Return of Karl Marx, NEW YORKER, Oct. 20, 1997, at 249, 250). 5. Rakesh K. Anand, Legal Ethics, Jurisprudence, and the Cultural Study of the Lawyer, 81 TEMP. L. REV. 737, 739 n.6 (2008) (citing, inter alia, the following examples: legal process, law and economics, and critical legal studies). 6. Thomas L. Shaffer, Lawyers and the Biblical Prophets, 17 NOTRE DAME J.L. ETHICS & PUB. POL’Y 521, 521 (2003). THE REALLY NEW PROPERTY: A SKEPTICAL APPRAISAL
A Summary of Contradictions: An Outline of the EU’s Main Internal and External Approaches to Ethnic Minority Protection

A number of available legal instruments have the potential to contribute to the elaboration of an EU minority protection standard. These instruments, however, are mostly limited to guaranteeing simple nondiscrimination, which is not enough to ensure minority protection stricto sensu. The lack of any viable internal minority protection standard did not prevent the European Union from treating minority protection as one of the key elements of the pre-accession process leading to the Eastern enlargement, reinforcing the internal-external competence divide and reducing the effectiveness of minority protection in the European Union. Although minority protection was one of the Copenhagen political criteria—and thus at the core of the conditionality principle presupposing a fair assessment of the candidate countries’ progress on the merits—the Commission clearly used minority protection in a discriminatory way, tolerating the standard of assimilation in one group of candidate countries (Latvia, Estonia) and backing cultural autonomy in others. Thus, alongside the internal toleration or simple denial of minority problems in the European Union, the Commission simultaneously promoted two contradicting approaches in external relations: de facto assimilation, which is prohibited by article 5(2) of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and cultural autonomy, which brings to life a complicated web of partly overlapping, partly contradicting standards. * Assistant Professor of European Law, Groningen Law School. European and Economic Law Department, Oude Kijk in ‘t Jatstraat 26, 9712EK Groningen, The Netherlands. +31 50 363 7486; +31 61 842 7031; +31 50 363 5603 (fax). I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Laurence W. Gormley, Prof. Dr. Christophe Hillion, Prof. Dr. Marc Maresceau, and Dr. Gabriel N. von Toggenburg, who read the drafts of this article at different stages of completion. All mistakes and omissions remain mine. 1 Jose Ortega y Gasset, Toward a Philosophy of History 57 (1940). 2 Boston College International & Comparative Law Review [Vol. 31:
Regression-based covariance functions for nonstationary spatial modeling

In many environmental applications involving spatially-referenced data, limitations on the number and locations of observations motivate the need for practical and efficient models for spatial interpolation, or kriging. A key component of models for continuously-indexed spatial data is the covariance function, which is traditionally assumed to belong to a parametric class of stationary models. However, stationarity is rarely a realistic assumption. Alternative methods that more appropriately model the nonstationarity present in environmental processes often involve high-dimensional parameter spaces, which lead to difficulties in model fitting and interpretability. To overcome this issue, we build on the growing literature of covariate-driven nonstationary spatial modeling. Using process convolution techniques, we propose a Bayesian model for continuously-indexed spatial data based on a flexible parametric covariance regression structure for a convolution-kernel covariance matrix. The resulting model is a parsimonious representation of the kernel process, and we explore properties of the implied model, including a description of the resulting nonstationary covariance function and the interpretational benefits in the kernel parameters. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our model provides a practical compromise between stationary and highly parameterized nonstationary spatial covariance functions that do not perform well in practice. We illustrate our approach through an analysis of annual precipitation data. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Work-based learning: Valuing practice as an educational event

This chapter introduces the theory and practice of work-based learning and provides guidelines for faculty with a particular emphasis on the value of reflective practice.
Percolation Model of insider threats to assess the optimum number of rules

Rules, regulations, and policies are the basis of civilized society and are used to coordinate the activities of individuals who have a variety of goals and purposes. History has taught that over-regulation (too many rules) makes it difficult to compete and under-regulation (too few rules) can lead to crisis. This implies an optimal number of rules that avoids these two extremes. Rules create boundaries that define the latitude at which an individual has to perform their activities. This paper creates a Toy Model of a work environment and examines it with respect to the latitude provided to a normal individual and the latitude provided to an insider threat. Simulations with the Toy Model illustrate four regimes with respect to an insider threat: under-regulated, possibly optimal, tipping point, and over-regulated. These regimes depend upon the number of rules (N) and the minimum latitude (L min) required by a normal individual to carry out their activities. The Toy Model is then mapped onto the standard 1D Percolation Model from theoretical physics, and the same behavior is observed. This allows the Toy Model to be generalized to a wide array of more complex models that have been well studied by the theoretical physics community and also show the same behavior. Finally, by estimating N and L min, it should be possible to determine the regime of any particular environment.
Introducing Excess Return on Time-Scaled Contributions: An Intuitive Return Measure and New Solution to the IRR and PME Problem

While the internal rate of return (IRR) remains widely used despite its well-documented flaws, considerable progress has been made in the literature on the search for a proper measure of performance for illiquid investments. Most recently, two general approaches have been proposed—namely the average internal rate of return (AIRR) approach and the aggregate return on investment (AROI) approach—and the following cash flow-based metrics have appeared in the literature: the economic AIRR, the index comparison method (ICM)-based AROI, and the direct alpha method. Motivated by the AIRR approach, the author presents a new cash flow-based metric, excess return on time-scaled contributions (ERTC), that is free from all the IRR flaws and represents a solution to the public market equivalent (PME) problem. ERTC is intuitively defined as the ratio of net present value to the aggregate discounted net contributions scaled by the length of time the net contribution is relevant to the investment. The author shows that ERTC can be obtained as a special case of the continuous version of AIRR with an ICM-based assumption on capital growth. Moreover, as part of the definition of ERTC, the author introduces a decomposition procedure that can be adapted to help ensure value consistency (i.e., value additivity and consistency with known market values) for all cash flow-based AIRR or AROI metrics.
The JOBS Act and crowdfunding: Harnessing the power—and money—of the masses

Abstract On April 5, 2012, President Barack Obama signed into law the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, dramatically changing the landscape for many companies raising capital. One of the most interesting sections of the Act is Title III, the CROWDFUND Act, which enables entrepreneurs and small business owners to sell limited amounts of equity in their companies to a large number of investors via social networks and various Internet platforms. Prior to the CROWDFUND Act, selling equity interests in companies via crowdfunding was for all practical purposes illegal under United States securities laws. The Act attempts to exempt crowdfunding from expensive registration requirements and allow crowdfunding websites to avoid the classification of broker, which would impose substantial registration costs on such sites. Through the CROWDFUND Act, equity-based crowdfunding has the potential to open funding opportunities to countless underfunded entrepreneurs and small businesses. In addition, it can provide investors with new ways to diversify their portfolios. However, the benefits of crowdfunding do not come without substantial risks. Given the combination of unsophisticated investors, inherently risky businesses, and the zeitgeist that changed regulations quickly, crowdfunding must be approached with caution.
The Great Lakes as an Environmental Heritage of Humankind: An International Law Perspective

Since 1985, the eight Great Lakes states and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec have cooperated to prevent almost all diversions of water from the Great Lakes basin. In 2005, the eight states signed an Agreement to create a tiered system of reviews for diversions and a draft interstate Compact, which creates a binding process to regulate diversions. This cooperation is primarily a state initia¬tive, supported by the federal governments in both countries, which has paid little attention to the international character of the lakes. This Essay argues that there are three major benefits to the region from the incorporation of international environmental law into the anti-diversion regime. First, the recent Compact is an important recognition of the Lakes as a common heritage of human kind. Second, the success of the regime will be aided by the involvement of the International Joint Commission (IJC) in diversion issues because of its broader perspective on Great Lakes issues. Third, international law serves as an additional buffer against the invocation of international and domestic free trade laws to unravel the proposed environmental-navigation protection regime.
Our Divine Constitution

The presumption that God is omnibenevolent — inherently just, wise, kind, and merciful — is so pervasive as to be almost a tautology. Were God not just, God would not be God. And the United States Constitution, often analogized to a religious document, has regularly been spoken of in the same way. While we accept that the Constitution can tolerate injustice, we are highly resistant to the notion that it can actively command it. When that appears to occur, we are torn between our intuition that the Constitution must allow for justice, and our instinct that our sense of justice cannot deviate from the dictates of the Constitution. We reject either that the contested point is the true command of the Constitution, or the true requirement of justice. Moreover, because Western political thought predicates the legitimacy of constitutional law on its consistency with prefigured conceptions of justice, if we cannot adopt either of these apologias, the only remaining move seems to be rejection of the Constitution itself. In this review of Robert A. Burt’s book "In the Whirlwind: God and Humanity in Conflict," I address this tension both in terms of theology and legal philosophy. Borrowing from the literature on "protest theology", I argue that neither our faith in the Constitution nor our faith in God is or can be predicated on the idea that these sovereigns are always behaving in a perfectly just manner. But I also reject the notion that injustice is an inherent part of these entities or that our relationship with them is unrelated to our desire for them to help instantiate justice. Our commitment to God and the Constitution is not dependent on their supposed perfection. It exists because it is a relationship we find meaningful even in spite of continual, mutual failings. It persists in spite of those shortcomings not because either God or the Constitution is "truly" or "essentially" just, but because we think it is a relationship worth preserving, and that each can at least be appealed to in the language in justice.
Corporate restructuring in Japan: an event-study analysis

Abstract The implementation of the Commercial Rehabilitation Law (CRL) on April 1, 2000, was considered a key event in setting up the official infrastructure supporting corporate restructuring in Japan. This study evaluates the stock price impact of restructuring announcements before and after the CRL implementation using event-study analysis. Following the CRL implementation, the results suggest an improvement in market credibility of restructuring announcements based on better disclosure, mergers, and to a lesser extent, labor force reductions. In contrast, the credibility of restructuring announcements aimed at reducing excess capital deteriorated.
Demographic responses to a political transformation: Evidence of women’s empowerment from Nepal

Abstract During the 2006 Democratic Movement in Nepal, the parliament unanimously decided to strip the over two century-old Shah monarchy of absolute power. We study the short-run effects of the arrival of democracy on different measures of women’s empowerment by exploiting exogenous variation in the government through abolition of the monarchy. This paper employs a propensity score matching estimator to evaluate the linkage between change in political regime and opinions related to women’s empowerment from 2006 Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys (NDHS). Results show that women’s say in decision making increased significantly, and opinions on violence against women strengthened. We further scrutinize the treatment effect estimates with Rosenbaum bounds and observe if they are sensitive to possible hidden selection bias. We also test for heterogeneity of the treatment effect across gender and find that males report higher probability of mutual household decision-making among couples than females.
Strategic conduct in credit derivative markets

Abstract This paper reviews recent research at the intersection of industrial organization and corporate finance on credit default swap (CDS) markets. These markets have been at the center of the financial crisis of 2007–09 and many aspects of their operation are not well understood. The paper covers topics such as counterparty risk in CDS markets, the "empty creditor problem," "naked" CDS positions, super-senior status of credit (and other) derivatives in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and strategic behavior in CDS settlement auctions.
Electoral cycles in pork barrel politics: Evidence from South Korea 1989–2008

Despite strong theoretical claims that politicians should target distributive benefits to swing voters and competitive districts, the empirical evidence is mixed. This paper resolves the inconsistencies by focusing on the time-varying incentives of an incumbent government. To the extent that election-motivated behavior entails directing government resources to marginal voters and constituencies, this behavior can be expected to peak in the period just prior to an election. An analysis of subsidy allocation in South Korea provides evidentiary support for this claim. In general, more subsidies are allotted to incumbents' core municipalities; however, before legislative elections, municipalities with close legislative races receive greater share of subsidies.
Why Pragmatism Works for Me

In this Article the author explores the growth of her interest in pragmatic legal theory. Pragmatism is often portrayed as a kind of black hole in the philosophical universe. It is defined not by the weight of its theories but instead by the counterweight of its anti-theoretical teachings. Whatever the reason, pragmatism's lack of adherents has resulted in a number of misconceptions about its limitations. Among them are: (1) Pragmatism is banal in the sense that it only tells us to continue with our common sense practices (2) Pragmatism is relativistic in that it reduces everything to viewpoint and perspective and (3) Pragmatism undermines our idealism and does not help us to lead morally better lives. One reason why these misunderstandings develop is that there are many different forms of pragmatism. But, the author argues, the deeper reason is that pragmatism - like the theories it endorses - must be read in the context of the practices that generate it and the goals it serves. Therefore, rather than pick apart the arguments and counterarguments among the various positions, the author chooses to share her experience with pragmatism and the meaning it has acquired in her life.
Disclosure - An Unappreciated Tool in the CFPB's Arsenal

Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”) establishes the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“the Bureau”). Dodd-Frank defines a broad mission for the Bureau. According to the legislation, the Bureau will “implement and, where applicable, enforce federal consumer financial law consistently for the purpose of ensuring that all consumers have access to markets for consumer financial products and services and that markets for consumer financial products and services are fair, transparent, and competitive.” The Bureau has produced considerable anxiety in the consumer finance industry. Most of the anxiety has focused on two issues – who will head the Bureau and what will the Bureau do with the newly created power to ban “abusive” products. This article suggests that the financial services industry should be focused on a third question – what will the Bureau do with its power to regulate the disclosure of consumer financial services.
Expanding Regional Renewable Governance

Energy drives economies and quality of life, yet accessible traditional fuels are increasingly scarce. Federal, state, and local governments have thus determined that renewable energy development is essential and have passed substantial requirements for its use. These lofty goals will fail, however, if policymakers rely upon existing institutions to govern renewable development. Renewable fuels are fugitive resources, and ideal property for renewable technology is defined by the strength of the sunlight or wind that flows over it. When a potential site for a utility-scale development is identified, a new piece of property, which I call a “renewable parcel,” is superimposed upon existing boundaries and jurisdictional lines. The entities within the parcel all possess rights to exclude, and this creates a tragedy with anticommons and regulatory commons elements, which hinder renewable development. In a renewable parcel, numerous rights of exclusion in the form of fee simple ownership, leasing rights, use rights, and regulation make use of a renewable parcel difficult and create anticommons-type problems. The multiple jurisdictions that may underlie the parcel also lead to a regulatory commons, wherein no one government is sufficiently incentivized to create a workable governance regime. This Article argues that the many exclusion rights within renewable parcels must be consolidated and governed by a regional agency to address these barriers to renewable development, and it analyzes elements of existing regional institutions to begin to suggest the ideal structure of this agency. Once formed, the regional framework should be applied to other areas of energy planning. States and municipalities share oil and gas reservoirs, electricity transmission constraints, and energy generation needs, and collaborative governance in these areas is necessary for a secure future.
The Relation between Punitive and Compensatory Awards: Combining Extreme Data with the Mass of Awards

Abstract This chapter assesses the relation between punitive and compensatory damages by combining two data sets of extreme awards with state court data from the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) for 1992, 1996, and 2001. One data set of extreme awards consists of punitive damages awards in excess of $100 million from 1985 through 2003, gathered by Hersch and Viscusi (H-V); the other includes the National Law Journal’s (NLJ) annual reports of the 100 largest trial verdicts from 2001 to 2004. The integration of these data sets provides the most comprehensive picture of punitive damages in American civil trials to date. Combining the data sets assists in observing the punitive-compensatory relation throughout the full range of trial awards. The large H-V and NLJ awards appear to fit comfortably within the pattern observed for the broader NCSC data set. We report regression results combining the three data sets, which yield reasonable models of the relation between punitive and compensatory damages. The models indicate that the compensatory award explains more than 50 percent of the variance in the punitive award. We also find no increase in punitive or compensatory awards over time in any of the three data sets.
Welfare Rules, Incentives, and Family Structure

We reexamine the effects of welfare on family structure, emphasizing that AFDC and TANF rules are based more on the biological relationship of the mother’s children to any male in the household than on marriage or cohabitation. We find that many 1990s welfare reform policies did not affect family structure, but that several work-related reforms increased single parenthood and decreased marriage to biological fathers. These effects are most evident when work-related reforms are bundled and examined over a longer time period. We hypothesize that these effects stem from increased earnings of single mothers and factors specific to biological fathers.
Rethinking Police Interrogation: Encouraging Reliable Confessions While Respecting Suspects' Dignity

This Article proposes a fresh approach to confessions based on traditional values, which promotes reliable confessions while respecting the dignity of those who might confess. It ensures that suspects continue to be fully advised of their rights while also encouraging them to make informed decisions to acknowledge their potential guilt. This approach,which is in full accord with constitutional rights and limitations, would better dignify Suspects and serve the common good.
Volunteer Militaries, The Draft, and Support for War

This study models how a nation's military manpower system affects the decision to go to war. Manpower systems differ primarily in how they distribute costs: the volunteer system shares the war's manpower costs broadly, whereas the draft forces a subset of the population to bear a disproportionate share of the load. This difference affects an office- and policy-motivated politician's decision to go to war. The draft induces prowar policy-makers to pursue more wars than the volunteer military does, whereas the volunteer system induces antiwar policy-makers to pursue more wars than the draft does. The manpower systems cannot be generically ranked by efficiency because each makes errors the other avoids, but the volunteer system induces selection of more efficient wars for a large class of plausible preference distributions.
Equity‐Based Incentives, Risk Aversion, and Merger‐Related Risk‐Taking Behavior

We find that post-merger equity risk is negatively related to the sensitivity of CEO wealth to stock return volatility (vega), but is concentrated in CEOs with high proportions of options and options that are more in-the-money. The probability of industrial diversification also increases in vega. Additional tests show that the decline in post-merger equity risk results in a significant decrease in shareholder wealth. This decrease is concentrated among firms with CEOs having the highest delta and the highest delta and vega. Our results suggest that the increased convexity provided by option-based compensation does not necessarily increase risk-taking behavior by CEOs.