cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Derivatives Markets in Bankruptcy

By treating derivatives and financial repurchase agreements much more favorably than it treats other financial vehicles, American bankruptcy law subsidizes these arrangements relative to other financing channels. By subsidizing them, the rules weaken market discipline during ordinary financial times in ways that can weaken financial markets, thereby exacerbating financial failure during an economic downturn or financial crisis emanating from other difficulties, such as an unexpectedly weakened housing and mortgage market in 2007 and 2008. Moreover, and perhaps unnoticed, because this favorable treatment in the Bankruptcy Code is readily available only for short-term financing arrangements, the Bankruptcy Code thereby favors short-term financing arrangements over more stable longer term arrangements. While some policymakers and proponents of bankruptcy’s favorable treatment justify it as reducing financial contagion, there is reason to think that the safe harbors do not reduce contagion meaningfully and did not reduce it in the recent financial crisis, but instead contributed to runs and weakened market discipline. A basic application of the Modigliani–Miller framework suggests that the risks policymakers might hope the favored treatment would eliminate are principally shifted from inside the derivatives and repurchase agreement markets to creditors who are outside that market. The most important outside creditor is the United States, as de jure or de facto guarantor of too-big-to-fail financial institutions.
The Effect of Risk on the CEO Market

This article presents a market equilibrium model of CEO assignment, pay, and incentives under risk aversion and moral hazard. Each of the three outcomes can be summarized by a single closed-form equation. In the presence of moral hazard, assignment is distorted from positive assortative matching on firm size as firms with higher risk or disutility choose less talented CEOs. Such firms also pay higher salaries in the cross-section, but economywide increases in risk or the disutility of being a CEO do not affect pay. The strength of incentives depends only on the disutility of effort and is independent of risk and risk aversion. If the CEO can affect firm risk, incentives rise and are increasing in risk and risk aversion. We calibrate the losses from various forms of poor corporate governance, such as failures in monitoring and inefficiencies in CEO assignment. ( JEL G34, J33) This article presents a market equilibrium model of CEO assignment, pay, and incentives. Risk-averse managers of different talents are hired in a competitive market by heterogeneous firms, which vary in their size, risk, and level of effort required. The level of pay drives the assignment of talent to firms. The strength of incentives induces the efficient effort level, and is determined by an optimal contracting approach. Our main contribution is to incorporate risk into a CEO market equilibrium in a tractable manner. A large empirical literature has shown that risk is a firstorder determinant of compensation contracts (Demsetz and Lehn 1985; Garen 1994; Core and Guay 1999; Oyer and Schaefer 2004; Peters 2009; Peters and Wagner 2009), but most theories assume risk-neutrality. This assumption is
Value versus Growth: The International Evidence

Value stocks have higher returns than growth stocks in markets around the world. For the period 1975 through 1995, the difference between the average returns on global portfolios of high and low book-to-market stocks is 7.68 percent per year, and value stocks outperform growth stocks in twelve of thirteen major markets. An international capital asset pricing model cannot explain the value premium, but a two-factor model that includes a risk factor for relative distress captures the value premium in international returns.
Loss severities on residential real estate debt during the Great Recession

Abstract This study develops estimates of expected loss severities on mortgage exposures using data from Florida during the Great Recession. This paper marks the first attempt at addressing sample selectivity in the context of loss models. We also construct measures of home equity that are more accurate than those employed in previous studies. We find that failing to address sample selection and the use of noisy equity measures in loss models can bias loss estimates significantly. We also find significantly higher loss severities and a greater sensitivity of loss severity to equity than what previous studies report.
No Excuses Charter Schools and College Enrollment: New Evidence from a High School Network in Chicago

Although it is well known that certain charter schools dramatically increase students' standardized test scores, there is considerably less evidence that these human capital gains persist into adul...
Decomposing the age effect on risk tolerance

a b s t r a c t The importance of investment portfolio allocation has become more apparent since the onset of the late 2000s Great Recession. Individual willingness to take financial risks affects portfolio decisions and investment returns among other factors. Previous research found that people of different ages have dis- similar levels of risk tolerance but the effects of generation, period, and aging were confounded. Using the 1998-2007 Survey of Consumer Finances cross-sectional datasets, this study uses an analytical method to separate such effects on financial risk tolerance. Aging and period effects on financial risk tolerance were statistically significant. Implications for researchers and financial planning practitioners and educators are provided.
Someday All This Will Be Yours: Inheritance, Adoption, and Obligation in Capitalist America

This lecture represents a first effort to present ongoing research on legal struggles over family promises and caretaking over the century between 1850 and 1950. It uses a mid nineteenth-century New Jersey adoption case to suggest some intersections between promises and inheritance, between caretaking and employment relations, between the family and the labor market.
International Joint Ventures and the Boundaries of the Firm

This paper analyzes the determinants of partial ownership of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational firms and, in particular, why partial ownership has declined markedly over the last 20 years. The evidence indicates that whole ownership is most common when firms coordinate integrated production activities across different locations, transfer technology, and benefit from worldwide tax planning. Since operations and ownership levels are jointly determined, it is necessary to use the liberalization of ownership restrictions by host countries and the imposition of joint venture tax penalties in the U.S. Tax Reform Act of 1986 as instruments for ownership levels in order to identify these effects. Firms responded to these regulatory and tax changes by expanding the volume of their intrafirm trade as well as the extent of whole ownership; four percent greater subsequent sole ownership of affiliates is associated with three percent higher intrafirm trade volumes. The implied complementarity of whole ownership and intrafirm trade suggests that reduced costs of coordinating global operations, together with regulatory and tax changes, gave rise to the sharply declining propensity of American firms to organize their foreign operations as joint ventures over the last two decades. The forces of globalization appear to have increased the desire of multinationals to structure many transactions inside firms rather than through exchanges involving other parties.
Religion and mergers and acquisitions contracting: The case of earnout agreements

This paper contributes to the growing literature on the effect of religion on corporate decision making. We posit that contingent payment in mergers and acquisitions not only violates Islamic law but also results in several agency issues by creating an incentive for managers to participate in long-term value-destroying behavior during earnout periods. Our empirical results, using regression as well as difference-in-difference estimation, show that target managers significantly manage earnings upward by cutting discretionary expenses during earnout periods. As compared to a sample of matched non-earnout M&A, acquisitions with earnout clauses are followed by significantly lower long-term abnormal returns. Our arguments and results have significant economic and legal consequences on cross-border M&A and could be used to facilitate worldwide economic integration.
Managing Indefinite Boundaries: The Strategy and Structure of a Chinese Business Firm

abstract This paper examines the status of boundaries in organizational theory. Tacitly if not explicitly, most researchers view organizations as bounded, tightly coupled and more or less rational systems. Yet organizations may also be open, loosely coupled, hierarchically nested systems whose boundaries are indefinite. In the case of China, incomplete separation of firms from the state, incomplete integration of firms and partial listing of assets have left most Chinese firms with indefinite boundaries. While many Chinese firms are disadvantaged by indefinite boundaries, some have managed their boundaries advantageously. The Chinese group corporation described here has resisted interference from its state owners, one of whom tried but failed to turn it into a captive supplier. It has secured full operational and financial control of subsidiaries despite their independent legal status, fractional local government ownership, and local government representation on their boards. And it has successfully funded and executed an aggressive acquisition strategy and now dominates its industry globally. There are lessons specific to the Chinese context. The most important is that boundaries should be assumed indefinite unless shown otherwise. And there are lessons about firms in emerging economies. Indefinite boundaries are characteristic of such firms; indefinite boundaries pose either threats or opportunities depending on the strategic response; lastly, managing indefinite boundaries will be a key strategic priority and a precondition of finding and exploiting market opportunities.
Profitability and capital structure: Evidence from import penetration

Abstract Firms experiencing increases in import competition significantly reduce their leverage ratios by issuing equity and selling assets to repay debt. Using import tariffs and foreign exchange rates as instrumental variables for import penetration, I show that these results are not manifestations of endogenous relations between import competition and leverage. The results are consistent with traditional trade-off models of capital structure that predict a positive relation between book leverage and expected future profitability. Further evidence suggests that import competition affects leverage through changes in the trade-off between the tax benefits of debt and the costs of financial distress.
The demand for tax haven operations

What types of firms establish tax haven operations, and what purposes do these operations serve? Analysis of affiliate-level data for American firms indicates that larger, more international firms, and those with extensive intrafirm trade and high R and D intensities, are the most likely to use tax havens. Tax haven operations facilitate tax avoidance both by permitting firms to allocate taxable income away from high-tax jurisdictions and by reducing the burden of home country taxation of foreign income. The evidence suggests that the primary use of affiliates in larger tax haven countries is to reallocate taxable income, whereas the primary use of affiliates in smaller tax haven countries is to facilitate deferral of U.S. taxation of foreign income. Firms with sizeable foreign operations benefit the most from using tax havens, an effect that can be evaluated by using foreign economic growth rates as instruments for firm-level growth of foreign investment outside of tax havens. One percent greater sales and investment growth in nearby non-haven countries is associated with a 1.5 to 2% greater likelihood of establishing a tax haven operation.
Beyond No-Fault

"[A]ll fortune, good and bad, is to be shared in common by the community as a whole." -Lysias' The debate between the "faulters" and the "no-faulters" continues unabated.2 Indeed, in the last few years, discussion has become even more furious and partisan. Only recently in retreat, the "faulters" seem to have experienced something of a sudden renaissance; they have regrouped and launched a fresh defence of the "fault" status quo. This articulation of tort theory represents a major part of contemporary legal scholarship.3 Unfortunately, there is little new on offer, and the debate seems well past the point where further argument or evidence might affect its resolution. Its participants cannot agree on what systemic aims the law should pursue, let alone on the relative priorities of these aims. As with most legal debates, the problem is as much ideological as intellectual. Both the "faulters" and "no-faulters" can claim some ana-
Managed care and undividing loyalties.

Managed care is often faulted for requiring physicians to abandon their traditional fiduciary responsibility to individual patients. Physician loyalty is said to be divided between a concern for patient benefit on the one hand and for financial advantages accruing to the physician personally or to the group of plan participants on the other. A recent U.S. Supreme Court case has supported this development by deciding that physicians are now responsible to function simultaneously as clinical caretakers and benefits administrators. It is granted that this situation gives rise to legitimate concerns about the potential for undermining patient trust in physicians and yet there are also reasons to believe that this is a step in the right direction. Specifically, by requiring doctors to make "mixed" treatment and eligibility decisions, the Court has pointed the way for people to think and make decisions about health and health care without abstracting from the cost of that care.
Regulation, industry structure, and performance in the electricity supply industry

This paper seeks to assess the impact of liberalisation and privatisation on performance in the generation segment of the electricity supply industry. Regulatory indicators for a panel of 19 OECD countries over a 10 year time period were constructed to examine the influence of regulatory reform on efficiency and price, and to assess the relative efficacy of different reform strategies. The presence of data with both cross-country and time-series dimensions allows separate identification of country specific and regulatory effects. The primary findings are that while changes in legal rules may be slow to translate into changes in conduct, unbundling of generation, private ownership, expanded access to transmission networks, and the introduction of electricity markets impact the performance measures in a statistically significant way ...
Does an Analyst's Access to Information Vary with the Favorableness of Their Language When Speaking to Management?

SYNOPSIS: We examine whether analysts who use more favorable language during earnings conference calls subsequently issue more accurate earnings forecasts. Using a large sample of earnings conference calls from the 2004–2013 period for S&P 500 firms, we find a significantly positive relation between an analyst's tone during a firm's call and the accuracy of the analyst's next quarterly earnings forecast for that firm. We find a similar relation for analysts who praise a firm's management during the call. Our findings are consistent with the favorableness of an analyst's language reflecting their access to a firm's management. In additional analyses, we find that female analysts, analysts with less general experience, analysts at smaller brokerage firms, and analysts who cover more industries, on average, use significantly more favorable language during earnings conference calls. Overall, we contribute a new proxy, incremental to other proxies, for the analyst-manager relationship.
Contracting on Credit Ratings: Adding Value to Public Information

We show that credit ratings are valuable even if they provide no information beyond what is known publicly. In our model, an investor contracts with a manager who invests in either a risky bond with a state-dependent return or a riskless asset. The state is known to both investor and manager, but unverifiable to a third party and therefore non-contractible. A credit rating on the risky bond provides a verifiable, but noisy signal about the state. If the rating is good, the optimal contract imposes no restriction on actions, and the wage is set to the minimal level that induces investment in the risky bond. If the rating is bad, the optimal contract depends on the precision of the rating. If the rating is precise, the manager is banned from investing in the risky bond. With an imprecise rating, the investor prefers to use a wage contract with no restrictions on action. In an economy with a continuum of investor-manager pairs, the use of the rating in setting contracts in turn determines the equilibrium return of the risky bond. We establish that widespread use of credit ratings may increase asset volatility.
Perceptions of price (un)fairness in a channel context

This article extends prior research on perceptions of price (un)fairness by attempting to disentangle where in the marketing channel (un)fairness inferences lie. Extant research in this area overwhelmingly considers (un)fairness perceptions with respect to the pricing action only, ignoring attributions aimed at specific channel actors. This article illustrates differences in (un)fairness inferences with respect to retailers and manufacturers given price increases accompanied by decreased product supply, increased demand, or increased variable costs. We show that a retailer is considered relatively more unfair than a manufacturer given a price increase accompanied by a demand increase, as well as when no explicit reason is given for the price increase. Conversely, a manufacturer is considered relatively more unfair given a price increase accompanied by a supply decrease. Both channel entities are considered equally fair given a price increase accompanied by a channel (both retailer and manufacturer) or manufacturer cost increase, while a retailer is deemed relatively more unfair given a price increase accompanied by a retailer cost increase. This research generally suggests that inferences of causality for specific pricing actions may differentially skew toward upstream or downstream channel entities depending on the particular economic circumstances of the price change.
Revelation and Suppression of Private Information in Settlement Bargaining Models

We discuss the implications of various models of settlement negotiations for the revelation or suppression of private information held by the parties. This information may be relevant to multiple audiences, including those involved in the instant lawsuit; other potential litigants that may subsequently make use of the information in their own suits against one of the parties; and more distant observers and users of the legal process. We also examine how rules of evidence and rules of civil procedure can sometimes result in different degrees of purposeful or (arguably) unintended information suppression.
Be Just to One Another: Preliminary Thoughts on Civility, Moral Character, and Professionalism

The premise of this Article is that the inability of lawyers to conduct themselves in a reasonable fashion has less to do with a lack of good manners or ignorance about what conduct is expected, but has more to do with not having the strength of character needed to exercise self-discipline when making practical or ethical choices. I focus on civility because it speaks to both the profession's present distress over an apparent deterioration in lawyer behavior and its ongoing interest in lawyers of high moral character. My main agenda is to reintroduce certain ancient, classical ideas about civility as a way to begin thinking about some fundamental aspects of the relationship between moral character and legal professionalism. My objective is to change the terms and level of analysis for discussing civility as a core professional concern.
At the Crossroads of Policymaking: Executive Politics, Administrative Action, and Judicial Deference by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals (1985–1996)*

This study seeks to expand our understanding of judicial deference to administrative agencies within the context of one particularly important legal forum – the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The DC circuit functions as a key venue for administrative law cases and the opinions of the court constitute a growing body of common law in the field of administrative law. We investigate the importance of several agency-centered and judge-centered variables in explaining judicial deference to administrative agencies in cases before the DC circuit court during a twelve-year period (1985–1996). We find that an integrated model of judicial deference, combining both legal and attitudinal factors, best explains judicial deference. Like judges on so many other courts, judges on the DC circuit are politically motivated, but their political activism is tempered by agency-centered factors such as the type of case before the court, and environmental factors such as the composition of the judicial panel reviewing the case and the behavior of the Supreme Court.
Tipping and Concentration in Markets with Indirect Network Effects

This paper develops a framework for measuring “tipping”---the increase in a firm's market share dominance caused by indirect network effects. Our measure compares the expected concentration in a market to the hypothetical expected concentration that would arise in the absence of indirect network effects. In practice, this measure requires a model that can predict the counterfactual market concentration under different parameter values capturing the strength of indirect network effects. We build such a model for the case of dynamic standards competition in a market characterized by the classic hardware/software paradigm. To demonstrate its applicability, we calibrate it using demand estimates and other data from the 32/64-bit generation of video game consoles, a canonical example of standards competition with indirect network effects. In our example, we find that indirect network effects can lead to a strong, economically significant increase in market concentration. We also find important roles for beliefs on both the demand side, as consumers tend to pick the product they expect to win the standards war, and on the supply side, as firms engage in penetration pricing to invest in growing their networks.
Veterans’ Political Activism in China:

This article examines protest, petitioning, lawsuits, open letters, blogging, and other forms of activism by Chinese veterans. Moving beyond images of heroic soldiers in the official media, and the near absence of reporting on veterans’ problems, we draw mainly on blog posts and military websites where veterans share their experiences of post-army life. We find that, overall, veterans have had difficulty adjusting to the economic, social, cultural, and political changes of the reform era, with many of them finding themselves left behind as other groups have leapt ahead. Veterans complain about poverty, unresolved medical problems, and lack of respect for their contributions to the nation. Not a few have experienced terrible indignities at the hands of security officials and a leadership that is bent on preventing any interest group formation that might ameliorate veterans’ problems.
Optimizing Local Content Requirements Under Technology Gaps

Problem definition: We study how the government of a developing country optimizes its local content requirement (LCR) policy to maximize social welfare in a setting where foreign original equipment...
The survey effect: Does administering surveys affect trainees' behavior?

Abstract This research demonstrates a survey effect, such that the act of administering surveys alters training effectiveness. Two aspects of survey administration were manipulated: the number of survey questions per training module (ranged from 1 to 30 across experimental conditions) and the type of survey questions (self-regulation or trainee reactions) across two studies focusing on self-administered online training. The number of survey questions had an indirect, negative effect on learning via the amount of time spent responding to survey questions. Furthermore, attrition increased when lengthy surveys were administered and this effect was moderated by pretraining motivation—adding additional survey questions increased the probability of dropping out for trainees who had low (rather than high) motivation to learn. The data quality also declined as the number of survey questions increased. Finally, learning performance was higher and the data quality was better when trainees were asked self-regulation rather than trainee reaction questions.
Ex Ante Evaluation of Social Programs

this paper discusses methods for evaluating the impacts of social programs prior to their implementation. Ex ante evaluation is useful for designing programs that achieve some optimality criteria, such as maximizing impact for a given cost. this paper illustrates the use of behavioral models in predicting the impacts of hypothetical programs in a way that is not functional form dependent. the programs considered are programs that operate by affecting the budget constraint, such as wage subsidy programs, conditional cash transfer programs, and income support programs. in some cases, the behavioral model justifies a completely nonparametric estimation strategy, even when there is no direct variation in the policy instrument. in other cases, stronger assumptions are required to evaluate a program ex ante. We illustrate the application of ex ante evaluation methods using data from the PRoGResa school subsidy randomized experiment in mexico. We assess the effectiveness of the ex ante prediction method by comparing predictions of program impacts to the impacts measured under the randomized experiment. the subsamples pertain to girls and boys aged 12-15. For the girls, the predicted impacts are fairly similar to the actual im pacts, both in magnitude and in replicating the age patterns, with larger impacts observed at higher ages. For boys, the predicted impacts tend to overstate the actual impacts. the ex-ante evaluation method is also used to predict the effects of counterfactal programs that include changes to the subsidy schedule and an unconditional
The effects of corporate spin-offs on productivity ☆

Abstract Using a unique sample of plant level data from the Longitudinal Research Database of the U.S. Census Bureau, which enables us to correctly identify the parent and spun-off entities prior to spin-offs, we establish that efficiency improves following spin-offs. A spin-off refers to the separation of the management of some assets of a firm into a separate entity (which we term as the spun-off entity or subsidiary). We investigate the underlying mechanisms and the real effects of spin-offs after correcting for potential endogenous selection using treatment effect estimators and propensity score matching in our analysis. We identify how (the precise channel and mechanism), where (parent or subsidiary), and when (the dynamic pattern) efficiency improvements arise following spin-offs. We show that spin-offs increase total factor productivity (TFP) and that such productivity improvements are long-lived. This post spin-off productivity improvement can be attributed to cost savings but not to higher sales. Further, such improvements arise primarily in plants remaining with the parent. However, contrary to speculation in the previous literature, we show that plants that are spun-off do not underperform parent plants prior to the spin-off. We identify acquisitions following spin-offs and find that while productivity improvements occur immediately after the spin-off in non-acquired plants, they start only after being taken over by another firm in acquired plants. Finally, we show that unrelated spun-off entities show greater improvements in productivity compared to related spun-off entities.
The Diffusion of Rights: From Law on the Books to Organizational Rights Practices

How does law change society? To gain new leverage on this long-standing question, this article draws on two lines of research that often ignore each other: political science research on the mobilization of law, and sociological research on the diffusion of organizational practices. Our insights stem from six case studies of diverse organizations’ responses to the accommodation provisions in the Americans with Disabilities Act and related state laws. We found that different modes of exposure to the law combined with organizational attributes to produce distinct ‘‘rights practices’’Fstyles of standard operating procedures and informal routines that reflect the understanding of legal requirements within an organization. The diversity of the organizational responses challenges simple dichotomies between compliance/noncompliance, change through deterrence/change through norms, and mobilization/nonmobilization, and it underscores the importance of combining political science and sociological perspectives on law and social change.
AGGLOMERATION AND TRADE: STATE‐LEVEL EVIDENCE FROM U.S. INDUSTRIES*

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the connection between economic agglomeration and trade patterns within the United States at the industry level. On the consumption side, industry- and state-specific international imports and elasticities of substitution are shown to be systematically connected to consumption agglomeration effects, while on the production side, industry- and state-specific international exports and intermediate input trade are shown to be systematically connected to production agglomeration and specialization effects. Industry structures play an important role in the determination and magnitude of these effects.
American Options Under Stochastic Volatility

The problem of pricing an American option written on an underlying asset with constant price volatility has been studied extensively in literature. Real-world data, however, demonstrate that volatility is not constant, and stochastic volatility models are used to account for dynamic volatility changes. Option pricing methods that have been developed in literature for pricing under stochastic volatility focus mostly on European options. We consider the problem of pricing American options under stochastic volatility, which has had relatively much less attention from literature. First, we develop a transformation procedure to compute the optimal-exercise policy and option price and provide theoretical guarantees for convergence. Second, using this computational tool, we explore a variety of questions that seek insights into the dependence of option prices, exercise policies, and implied volatilities on the market price of volatility risk and correlation between the asset and stochastic volatility. The speed and accuracy of the procedure are compared against existing methods as well.
Toward More Sophisticated Mediation Theory

In the lead article in this symposium, Professor Jeffrey Stempel provides a very thoughtful analysis of the mediation field. [FN1] He focuses on the debate over facilitative and evaluative mediation [FN2] and he is critical of many of the arguments made by proponents of facilitative mediation. I have expressed some similar concerns, [FN3] and I generally agree with his analysis (with a quibble here and there). I do think that the facilitationevaluation debate has been productive (though admittedly wearisome), and that proponents of facilitative mediation deserve more credit than he gives them in his article. To balance the analysis, this commentary outlines some of the benefits of the debate and the important contributions of facilitation proponents.
The Boundaries of Most Favored Nation Treatment in International Investment Law

IN TRODU CTION 538 I. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MFN TREATMENT 543 II. MFN CLAUSES AND BILATERAL INVESTMENT TREATIES 553 III. THE BOUNDARIES OF MFN CLAUSES AS RECOGNIZED BY INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS 559 A. Anglo-Iranian Oil: The Treaty-Boundedness of M FN C lauses 560 B. Rights of Nationals of the United States of America in Morocco: The Temporality of MFN Clauses 563 C. The Ambatielos Arbitration: Ejusdem Generis 564 IV. THE NATURE OF MFN CLAUSES IN INTERNATIONAL INVESTM ENT L AW 568 A. The Instantaneous Effect of an MFN Clause 568 1. The "Right to Claim" Understanding of M FN O bligations 569 2. The "Instantaneous Obligation" Understanding of M FN O bligations 570 3. The Justification for the "Instantaneous Obligation" Understanding in International Investm ent A rbitration 571 B. The Predominantly Forward-Looking Nature of MFN Clauses in International Investment Arbitration 572 1. The Role of Intent in Interpreting MFN Clauses in Investm ent Treaties 573 2. Party Intent as to the Extension of MFN Clauses to Already-Existing More Favorable Treatment 575 3. Interpretation of MFN Clauses and the Interconnectedness of Treaty Rights 578 4. MFN Clauses and Subsequent Adoptions of Already-Existing More Favorable Treatment 581
Website Functions and Shopping Strategies: Ontological Framework and Synthesis

In this research, we provide a comprehensive view of the factors related to website functions that influence shopping strategies leading to outcomes such as repurchase, purchase, no purchase, and rejection. We develop an ontological framework that encompasses 80 problem statements, and we used the framework to perform meta-analysis of the extant literature and map it. The results describe the stateof-research and highlight the bright, light, and blind/blank areas in the domain. We discuss the implications of our framework and the meta-analysis. We show that our ontological framework provides a new lens to explore the issues in the domain. Our analysis reveals that the current state-of-research is saturated with bright areas such as the studies of Ease of use & navigation factors while it lacks the attention towards blind/blank areas such as Shopping strategies. We conclude with open research questions and a discussion of limitations of our research.
Endogenous formation of coops and cooperative leagues

The labor-managed Mondragon cooperatives in the Basque country, and La Lega coops concentrated in North Central Italy, are grouped into leagues that enable them to reap economies of scale in key services such as RD O12; P13; D20; O52
Religion and Procedure

When I began telling my colleagues at Notre Dame that I had been invited to prepare a paper on religion and procedure, some of them said "How interesting," and looked vague. Others, more forthright, came straight out and asked what on earth I was going to say. The reaction is understandable. Since God made everything, there is nothing that cannot be related to religion if you work at it, but procedure seems to be harder going than most things. It is all very well to talk about God ruling the world and the state exercising authority on His behalf. But God does not seem to have any procedure.1 It is fairly easy, if you go in for analogies of that kind, to think of God as a lawgiver, even as a judge. But to think of Him as a sheriff or a process server stretches most people's imaginations farther than they will comfortably stretch. But it does not follow that the attempt to relate religion and procedure is futile. It is the business of human authority to do justice on behalf of God. If I were talking about substantive law, I would have to say what I mean by justice; but when I am talking about procedure, I can use it without defining it, as the framers of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure did.2 The point is that when God chooses to do justice on His own behalf, He has facilities human beings lack. This is
Unbound by Theory and Naming: Survival Feminism and the Women of the South African Victoria Mxenge Housing and Development Association

The emergence of a uniquely African formulation of feminism is one of the most energizing developments in feminist theory and discourse in recent history. As African women confront unprecedented economic and political challenges, they also are questioning, and, in some instances, redefining, individual and societal orthodoxies of gender and family roles. This Article will examine the discourse on African feminism and will consider the practical utility of feminist theory in the context of one extraordinary group of South African women, the members of the Victoria Mxenge Housing and Development Association. The discussion will review the historical context in which the Association evolved, will reflect upon a few of the impediments that its members confronted, and will contemplate the challenges and possibilities that these women continue to encounter.
The Trusteeship of Legal Rulemaking

Professor Robert D. Putnam's work is, in many respects, the contemporary companion to Democracy in America.' It comprehensively surveys and tests common presumptions held about our democracy with apparently very reliable quantitative data. Until recently, a work of this depth and breadth has been unavailable. Putnam sets forth a well supported thesis suggesting that even though American financial capital may be at a high, its "social capital" has perhaps reached a record low, or at least a level similar to the social, economic, and legal bottleneck of a century ago.' His use of empirical and combined data, however, probes into the American spirit, indeed implying that the present setting is more dangerous. This method is in contrast to many other surveys and commentaries that are based significantly on anecdotal evidence or that worship earlier studies founded on less than empirical or weak social science technique.
Facebook, Twitter, and the Uncertain Future of Present Sense Impressions

The intricate legal framework governing the admission of out-of-court statements in American trials is premised on increasingly outdated communication norms. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the hearsay exception for “present sense impressions.” Changing communication practices typified by interactions on social media web sites like Facebook and Twitter herald the arrival of a previously uncontemplated – and uniquely unreliable – breed of present sense impressions. This Article contends that the indiscriminate admission of these electronic present sense impressions (e-PSIs) is both normatively undesirable and inconsistent with the traditional rationale for the present sense impression exception. It proposes a reform to the exception that would exclude unreliable e-PSIs while simultaneously realigning the modern rule with its historical rationale. In so doing, the Article sounds an early warning to courts and legislators regarding similar challenges on the horizon, as modern communication norms continue to evolve beyond the contemplation of the drafters of the hearsay rules.
The European Union: Democratic Legitimacy in a Regional State?

Democratic legitimacy for the EU is problematic if it is seen as a future nation-state. If instead the EU were seen as a regional state—with shared sovereignty, variable boundaries, composite identity, compound governance, and a fragmented democracy in which the EU level assures governance for and with the people through effective governing and interest consultation, leaving to the national level government by and of the people through political participation and citizen representation—the problems of the democratic deficit diminish for the EU level. But they become even greater for the national level, where the changes to national democratic practices demand better ideas and discourses of legitimization. A further complicating factor results from problems of “institutional fit,” because the EU has had a more disruptive impact on “simple” polities, where governing activity has traditionally been channeled through a single authority, than on more “compound” polities, where it has been more dispersed through multiple authorities.
Introducing the First Management Control Systems: Evidence from the Retail Sector

Focusing on a sample of U.S. retailers, I study the management control systems (MCS) that firms introduce when they first invest in controls, and identify four categories of initial MCS, which are defined in terms of the purposes these MCS fulfill. The first category, “Basic MCS,” is adopted to collect information for planning, setting standards, and establishing the basic operations of the firm. The other three categories are contingent on more specific purposes: “Cost MCS” focus on enhancing operating efficiencies and minimizing costs; “Revenue MCS” are introduced to foster growth and be responsive to customers; and “Risk MCS” focus on reducing risks and protecting asset integrity. I hypothesize and find that the choice among these categories reflects the firms' strategy, and that firms that choose initial MCS better suited to their strategy perform better than others.
Persistent Interest Portfolios: Marrying Web Search Data with Mean–Variance Theory

Using Web search data obtained with Google Trends, the authors find that some companies among the S&P 500 Index constituents have persistently high search scores. Many of these companies provide consumer products/services. Mean–variance-optimal portfolios composed of these companies significantly outperform the S&P 500 Index and the consumer-related exchange-traded funds over the 2009–2015 period. The authors conclude that the information from Web searches may be helpful for identifying optimal portfolios.
Customer relationship and sales

Abstract In a large market where sellers post the terms of trade to direct search, I prove that customer relationships arise endogenously in the equilibrium as buyers make repeat purchases and sellers give priority to repeat trades. When the buyer–seller ratio is low, the equilibrium is separating between related and unrelated individuals. When the buyer–seller ratio is high, the equilibrium is partially mixing because a newly related seller attracts both the related buyer and unrelated buyers. Customer relationships improve welfare by reducing coordination frictions and helping sellers learn about the related buyer's utility. However, an equilibrium is constrained efficient only when it is separating and when the buyer–seller ratio is low. Moreover, customer relationships induce microprice dynamics, including sales, even when market conditions are constant. I examine how market conditions affect markups, the frequency and the sale duration, both analytically and in a calibrated example.
The Optimal Size of Hedge Funds: Conflict between Investors and Fund Managers

This study examines whether the standard compensation contract in the hedge fund industry aligns managers' incentives with the interests of investors. We demonstrate empirically that managers' compensation increases when fund assets grow, even when there are diseconomies of scale in fund performance. Under the current fee structure, managers' compensation is maximized at a much larger size than is optimal for fund performance. Therefore, hedge fund managers have strong incentives to increase their assets under management. However, to avoid capital outflows and retain fund assets, managers are also motivated to restrict fund growth to maintain style-average performance, which explains why funds sometimes close themselves to new investment.
Totals Markets as Evidence Against Widespread Point Shaving

Wolfers (2006) suggests that NCAA basketball is marred by widespread gambling corruption. We examine totals wagers in a variety of sports betting markets to determine whether observed outcomes are symmetric around closing lines, an important assumption Wolfers makes in his analysis. Our results show that totals wagers result in just under outcomes more frequently than they result in just over outcomes. This occurs because gamblers strongly prefer to take the over in totals betting, and profit-seeking bookmakers capitalize by shading totals lines upwards. Likewise, prior work shows that gamblers in point spread markets strongly prefer to bet on favorites, so it is not surprising that win/no cover outcomes occur more frequently that do win/cover outcomes. We conclude that the critical but erroneous symmetric-distribution assumption is responsible for creating the illusion of widespread point shaving.
Paying Too Much for Energy? The True Costs of Our Energy Choices

Abstract Energy consumption is critical to economic growth and quality of life. America's energy system, however, is malfunctioning. The status quo is characterized by a tilted playing field, where energy choices are based on the visible costs that appear on utility bills and at gas pumps. This system masks the “external” costs arising from those energy choices, including shorter lives, higher health care expenses, a changing climate, and weakened national security. As a result, we pay unnecessarily high costs for energy. New “rules of the road” could level the energy playing field. Drawing from our work for The Hamilton Project, this paper offers four principles for reforming U.S. energy policies in order to increase Americans' well-being.
External Governance and Debt Structure

This paper examines how external governance pressure affects the type of debt that firms issue. Consistent with a governance mechanism substitution effect, we find that an exogenous increase (decrease) in governance pressure from the product (takeover) market has a significant negative (positive) impact on the use of bank (public debt) financing over public debt (bank loan) issuance. Tests using changes in the strictness of loan covenants provide corroborative evidence. These findings are consistent with the notion that firms endogenously substitute governance mechanisms and that demand for creditor governance depends on the relative strength of alternative external governance mechanisms. Received May 18, 2016; editorial decision November 11, 2017 by Editor David Denis.
Leading for the Long Term

Abstract How do leaders build credibility, and what happens if they can’t or don’t? Existing economic models of leadership consider static settings only and, thus, are not well-suited for addressing such issues. Moreover, an important phenomenon of leadership is its persistence. To allow for credibility and other behaviors that make sense only in repeated games (such as the followers’ paying the leader tribute), this paper considers a repeated-game version of (Hermalin, B.E., 1998. Toward an economic theory of leadership: leading by example. American Economic Review 88, 1188–1206) leadership model.
A Note on Guided Tours for Two Classes of Tourists During the Slack Season

Recently, Batabyal and Yoo (2010) have conducted a probabilistic analysis of guided tours for a single class of tourists during the slack season. In this note, we extend the above analysis by considering the case of two distinct classes of tourists. Specifically, we first describe a general model that accounts for the common features of guided tours to city attractions and to other scenic locations. Then, we obtain a closed-form expression for the long run fraction of time that the guided tour providing firm under study is occupied and hence unable to immediately satisfy the demand for additional such tours.JEL Classification: L830, L230, D810
Antitrust Damages and Economic Efficiency: An Approach to Antitrust Injury

Three years ago, the Supreme Court enunciated the concept of "antitrust injury,"' which requires that antitrust-damage liability flow from the anticompetitive aspect of an unlawful practice. Since then, the concept has often been raised in litigation, and has sparked frequent judicial discussion.2 Courts and commentators, however, have developed no coherent theory to guide the application of the antitrust-injury doctrine in the award of damages for antitrust violations. This article will attempt to provide such a theory:3 it argues that the familiar criterion of economic efficiency gives content to the concept of antitrust injury, and therefore can be used to shape the award of antitrust damages.