cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Intent and Empirics: Race to the Subprime

The United States’ history of racially discriminatory banking, housing, and property policies created a community of black Americans accustomed to exploitative financial services and vulnerable to victimization by subprime lenders. My thesis is that black borrowers are experiencing a new iteration of intentional housing discrimination in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; lenders identified a vulnerable 'emerging market' of black homeowners and borrowers and knowingly targeted them to receive subprime or predatory loan products when equally situated white borrowers were given superior, prime mortgage products. This Article explores how disparate lending practices coupled with banking deregulation undermined the Congressional push for increased minority homeownership and widened the already burgeoning wealth divide. Millions of borrowers who accepted subprime loans between 1998 and 2006 already have or will lose their homes to foreclosure, resulting in a net loss in homeownership for nearly one million families. Blacks are disproportionately represented among the subprime victims, especially black women. The lending and financial services structure that caused this crisis is complicated by evidence of redlining and of steering blacks into subprime loans, all of which contributed to the present foreclosure crisis. This subprime dilemma merely adds new terminology to a long history of racial discrimination in housing in America. In the end, this Article argues that the search for an understanding of the cumulative events that facilitated the exploitation of blacks by subprime lenders illuminates the institutional and national impediments to reversing the present and future harm of the subprime crisis and to ensuring blacks equal access to one of the benefits of full citizenship - property. First, in Part II, I contend that the disparities in subprime lending experienced by black borrowers and especially by black women result from intentional reverse-redlining and steering by lending institutions, their loan officers, and brokers. Next, in Part III, I consider why blacks and black women are disproportionately victims of subprime mortgages and of predatory lending. Finally, Part IV concludes by discussing the after-effects of subprime and predatory lending and offers possible solutions for rethinking how blacks are to overcome this deeply profound experience with housing discrimination which I suggest made blacks prime subprime victims. It focuses on the property dilemma or rather the dilemma of the landless.
Assessing macroprudential policies Case of Korea

Bruno, Valentina; Shin, Hyun Song.May, 2013.Assessing macroprudential policies,Reports,CambridgeNational Bureau of Economic Research,NBER Working Paper/No. 19084,37
Local Government, "One Person, One Vote," and the Jewish Question

ion of Citizenship and the Resurgence of Territory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 R C. The Abstraction of Money and the Resurgence of Territory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 R IV. CONCLUSION: TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 R
Where has all the education gone

Cross-national data show no association between increases in human capital attributable to the rising educational attainment of the labor force and the rate of growth of output per worker. This implies that the association of educational capital growth with conventional measures of total factor production is large, strongly statistically significant, and negative. These are 'on average' results, derived from imposing a constant coefficient. However, the development impact of education varied widely across countries and has fallen short of expectations for three possible reasons. First, the institutional/governance environment could have been sufficiently perverse that the accumulation of educational capital lowered economic growth. Second, marginal returns to education could have fallen rapidly as the supply of educated labor expanded while demand remained stagnant. Third, educational quality could have been so low that years of schooling created no human capital. The extent and mix of these three phenomena vary from country to country in explaining the actual economic impact of education, or the lack thereof.
State Executive Lawmaking in Crisis

Courts and scholars have largely overlooked the constitutional source and scope of a state executive’s powers to avert and respond to crises. This Article addresses how actual and perceived legal barriers to executive authority under state constitutions can have major consequences beyond a state’s borders during times of crisis. It proposes to empower state executives to address federal and regional goals without any previous authorization from the state legislature—a presumption of state executive lawmaking, subject to state legislative override, which would give a state or local executive expansive lawmaking authority within its system of government to address national and regional goals during times of crisis. Although the approach of this Article is to suggest a solution for state courts, based on state constitutional interpretation, its analysis also recommends an approach for state legislatures as they consider state emergency management statutes, as well as for Congress as it considers national emergency management legislation.
The Equity and Efficiency of Two-Part Tariffs in U.S. Natural Gas Markets

AbstractResidential natural gas customers in the United States face volumetric charges that average about 30 percent more than the marginal cost of gas. This inefficient departure from marginal cost pricing allows gas utilities to cover their fixed infrastructure and operating costs. Proposals for recovering these costs instead through fixed monthly fees are often opposed because of a widespread belief that current rate schedules have desirable distributional consequences. Using nationally representative household-level data, we show that the correlation between household income and natural gas consumption is indeed positive but surprisingly weak, so current rate schedules are only mildly progressive. In part, we argue that this is because poor households tend to have larger families and less energy-efficient homes. We calculate bill impacts under a variety of scenarios and show that even a modest energy assistance program would more than offset the distributional impact of tariff rebalancing for most low...
Investment Indiscipline: A Behavioral Approach to Mutual Fund Jurisprudence

This Term, in Jones v. Harris Associates L.P., the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to resolve doctrinal, econometric, and philosophical divergences over a profoundly important financial system: the investment industry through which almost one hundred million Americans attempt to save more than ten trillion dollars for their retirement. When this case was before the Seventh Circuit, two of the foremost theorists of law and economics, Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judge Richard Posner, disagreed vociferously on competing analyses of this industry. The Supreme Court’s opinion in this case should not only resolve the intricate doctrinal fiduciary issues of the dispute but also have important implications for several major theoretical debates in contemporary American jurisprudence: the permissible constraints—if any—upon determinations of executive compensation; the judicial capacity to evaluate increasingly sophisticated econometric analyses of financial systems; and the growing tension between neoclassical and behavioral economics. Professor Birdthistle advances a positive account of the economic and legal context of this dispute and argues normatively for a behavioral approach to its resolution. Because of the unique structure and history of the personal investment industry in the United States, the architecture of this segment of the economy is singularly unprotected by beneficial market forces and exhibits significant competitive weaknesses such as broad price dispersion and a negative correlation between fees and performance. The ultimate judicial resolution of this
The Compatibility of Forward-Looking and Backward-Looking Accounts of Tort Law

This Article is the first to argue that forward-looking and backwardlooking accounts of tort law are intrinsically compatible with one another. This theoretical point is of great importance and will bring about a paradigm shift in tort theory—and, more generally, in legal theory. This is because the long-standing debate between corrective justice theorists and economic theorists about the purpose of tort law (with active participants including Posner, Calabresi, Coleman, Weinrib, Rawls, and countless others) is based on the universal assumption that forward-looking and backward-looking accounts of tort law are incompatible. This assumption, however, is false, and this Article explains why it is false and how so many other authors have gone wrong. The contribution of this Article, however, is not limited to this theoretical point—it also makes important contributions in the practical domain. The practical implications of the theoretical point are great and threefold: First, removing the forward-looking / backward-looking non-issue from the table will allow us to refocus our efforts on the all-important and complex question of what the substantive legal standard of behavior should be. Second, recognition of the reason for the compatibility between the forward-looking and backward-looking aspects of tort law itself provides us with newfound insight into which factors are relevant to our determination of the best substantive legal standard. Third, this recognition of the reason for compatibility not only aids us in the determination of the best substantive legal standard now, but it provides us with an understanding of what practical changes we can make to improve society’s welfare going forward. In sum, in addition to this Article providing groundbreaking theoretical conclusions, it also offers practical guidance and positive proposals, both of * B.A., Philosophy, Stanford University, 2006; M.A., Philosophy, Stanford University, 2006; J.D., Stanford Law School, 2010; Ph.D. Candidate, Philosophy, University of Southern California, 2017; Law Clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Bacharach, United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, 2016-2017; Law Clerk to the Honorable Nicholas G. Garaufis, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, 2017-2018. I owe great thanks to Greg Keating, Barbara Fried, John Gardner, Gary Watson, and Kimberly Ferzan, each of whom has commented on earlier drafts of this Article. I also owe thanks to audiences at the following conferences, where I presented earlier drafts of this Article: the 3 Annual UCLA Graduate Conference in Law and Philosophy, the 65 Northwest Philosophy Conference, and the Ontario Legal Philosophy Partnership Graduate Conference for Legal Theory. 46 UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE LAW REVIEW Vol. 15, No. 1 which are capable of having a tangible—and substantial—impact on society’s welfare.
Technology as a channel of economic growth in India

After decades of slow growth since Independence from the British Raj, Indian economy registered its own small miracle, when growth rate of GDP per capita surpassed the long term growth rate of many advanced economies. What caused this miracle? In this paper, we search for an answer in the neoclassical growth model. We use productivity as measured by Solow residual as our exogenous shock. Our idea is to quantitatively measure to what extent ‡fluctuations in productivity can account for observed ‡uctuations in macro economic aggregates in India. We find that exogenous fl‡uctuations in productivity can well account for fl‡uctuations in output during the boom periods of 1982 to 1988 and 1993 to 2002. However, fluctuations in productivity alone results in a much worse drop in ouput during 1988 to 1993 than observed in the economy.
Compensation Disclosures and Corporate Governance through Shareholder Voting

There are several measures of equity compensation that may provide shareholders with distinct and useful information for evaluating CEO pay. We examine whether shareholders consider additional disc...
Do Firms Use Restructuring Charge Reversals to Meet Earnings Targets

Many firms that take restructuring charges reverse a portion of those restructuring charge accruals in a later quarter. These reversals increase net income, often substantially. In this study, I investigate whether restructuring charge reversals are associated with incentives to meet or exceed analysts' forecasts, avoid earnings declines relative to prior‐year levels, and avoid losses. I examine both the decision to record a reversal and the amount of the reversal, using a sample of 121 reversals recorded between 1990 and 1999. The results suggest that some firms record reversals to beat analysts' forecasts and to avoid reporting net losses. There is also some evidence that firms record reversals to avoid earnings declines. Overall, the results are consistent with firms using restructuring accrual reversals to manage earnings.
The Role of Calibration Committees in Subjective Performance Evaluation Systems

We provide the first empirical evidence of the role that calibration committees play in subjective performance evaluation systems. Using proprietary data from a large multinational organization, we...
HOW DOES TERRORISM RISK VARY ACROSS SPACE AND TIME? AN ANALYSIS BASED ON THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE

We study the spatial and temporal determinants of terrorism risk in Israel, using a geocoded database of Israeli terrorist attacks from 1949 to 2004. In selecting targets, terrorists seem to respond rationally to costs and benefits: they are more likely to hit targets more accessible from their own homebases and international borders, closer to symbolic centers of government administration, and in more heavily Jewish areas. We also examine the waiting time between attacks experienced by localities. Long periods without an attack signal lower risk for most localities, but higher risk for important areas such as regional or national capitals.
Market Liquidity and Flow-driven Risk

Using a unique dataset of trades and limit orders for S&P 500 futures, we decompose the aggregate risk into a component driven by the impact of net market orders and a component unrelated to net orders. The first component flow-driven risk is large, accounting for approximately 50% of market variance, and it is not transient. This risk represents the joint effect of net trade demand and the price impact of that demand—i.e., illiquidity. We find that flows are largely unpredictable, and lagged flows have no price impact. Flow-driven risk is time varying because the price impact is highly variable. Illiquidity rises with market volatility, but not with flow uncertainty. Net selling increases illiquidity, which amplifies downside flow-driven risk. The findings are consistent with flow-driven shocks resulting from fluctuations in aggregate risk-bearing capacity. Under this interpretation, investors with constant risk tolerance should trade against such shocks (i.e., “supply liquidity”) to achieve substantial utility gains. Quantitatively accounting for the scale of flow-driven risk poses a major challenge for asset pricing theory.
History, Race, and Prediction: Comments on Harcourt's Against Prediction

This article reviews Bernard Harcourt's Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age (2007). It places the rise of actuarialism in criminal law in the United States in the context of trends in other areas of law, as well as in penology. It further suggests that this move toward actuarial thinking cannot in fact be separated from race; that prediction has always involved racial profiling, and that it is no accident that it does so.
Institutional Investors and Stock Market Volatility

Statement of responsibility on t.p. reads: Xavier Gabaix, Parameswaran Gopikrishnan, Vasiliki Plerou, H. Eugene Stanley
Exchange rates and adjustment : perspectives from the new open economy macroeconomics

The new open-economy macroeconomics has allowed economists to tackle classical problems with new tools, while also generating new ideas and questions. In their attempts to make the new models capture empirical regularities, researchers have entertained a variety of assumptions about the international pricing of goods, notably, models of pricing to market and destination-currency pricing of exports. Some of the resulting models imply that exchange rate changes lack international expenditure-switching effects, and they thus appear to call for a radical rethinking of the role of exchange rates in international adjustment. This paper argues that the recent resurgence of exchange rate pessimism stems from oversimplified modeling strategies rather than from evidence. Like earlier episodes starting with the extreme “elasticity pessimism” of the early postwar era, it is based on a misinterpretation of the empirical record.
Corruption and International Valuation: Does Virtue Pay?

Using firm-level data from 44 countries, the authors investigate the relation between corruption and international corporate values. The analysis shows that firms from more corrupt countries trade at significantly lower market multiples. The effect is both economically and statistically significant. Furthermore, using a two-stage estimation procedure, the authors show that corruption impacts firm value primarily through lower expected future cash flows, most directly captured by firms’ profitability forecasts. Collectively, the evidence shows that corruption has significant economic consequences for shareholder value.
What Can the Rule of Law Variable Tell Us About Rule of Law Reforms

The recent resurgence of optimism regarding the role of legal reforms in promoting development seems to be based in part upon cross-country statistical analyses that purport to show causal relationships between variables measuring characteristics of legal institutions and variables measuring levels of various kinds of development. However, the persuasiveness of these analyses is limited by the quality of the legal data upon which they rely. As it turns out, many of the variables that are commonly used to measure respect for the rule of law, enforcement of property rights and contracts do not capture information capable of shedding light upon the potential impact of purely legal reforms. In some cases the variables capture the interaction between legal and non-legal features of society. In other cases they aggregate the effects of a large number of legal institutions. In still other cases they capture information about features of legal systems that are not amenable to reforms.
Do Strict Capital Requirements Raise the Cost of Capital? Bank Regulation, Capital Structure and the Low Risk Anomaly

Abstract Traditional capital structure theory predicts that reducing banks' leverage reduces the risk and cost of equity but does not change the weighted average cost of capital, and thus the rates for borrowers. We confirm that the equity of better-capitalized banks has lower beta and idiosyncratic risk. However, over the last 40 years, lower risk banks have not had lower costs of equity (lower stock returns), consistent with a stock market anomaly previously documented in other samples. A calibration suggests that a binding ten percentage point increase in Tier 1 capital to risk-weighted assets could double banks' risk premia over Treasury bills.
Proof of Stembridge's conjecture on stability of Kronecker coefficients

We prove a conjecture of Stembridge concerning stability of Kronecker coefficients that vastly generalizes Murnaghan's theorem. The main idea is to identify the sequences of Kronecker coefficients in question with Hilbert functions of modules over finitely generated algebras. The proof only uses Schur---Weyl duality and the Borel---Weil theorem and does not rely on any existing work on Kronecker coefficients.
Strategic disclosure of risky prospects: A laboratory experiment

In a market experiment, buyers respond to sellers' disclosures of one of the two potential outcomes of a risky prospect. Buyer reactions reflect two separate disclosure phenomena that heretofore have not been considered jointly. First, consistent with cognitive predictions that users tend to anchor on explicit one‐sided disclosures, buyers pay more relative to expected value when the seller discloses the higher of the two potential outcomes than when the seller discloses the lower potential outcome. Second, consistent with the incentive‐driven predictions of information economics, buyers systematically discount bids when sellers choose which potential outcome they wish to disclose, relative to bids in a control condition in which the seller is constrained to disclose randomly. Both findings are robust to each other, addressing qualifications in prior research about generalizing cognitive disclosure phenomena to a strategic disclosure environment. One implication supported by the data is that if cognitive ...
The Failed Promise of a General Theory of Pure Economic Loss: An Accident of History?

This article was prepared for the 2012 Clifford Symposium, which was held in of the career of Robert Rabin. The article reviews Rabin’s efforts to analyze and rationalize American tort doctrine concerning negligently caused economic loss, which is sometimes dubbed “pure” negligent economic loss so as to distinguish it from economic loss resulting from injury to the plaintiff’s person or property. The article praises and criticizes Rabin’s efforts. It notes that in his early writings on negligently caused economic loss Rabin celebrated decisions such as J’Aire Corp. v. Gregory because it was based on a theory of duty that drawn from a general theory of negligence that applied with equal force to other parts of negligence law, ranging from personal injury to emotional distress. The article then observes that in his later writings, Rabin seemed to back off from his optimistic claim that negligently caused economic loss can be subsumed under a general theory of duty and argued instead that courts must resort to ad hoc duty rules, thus leaving plaintiffs facing a patchwork of holdings driven by various policy considerations.The article concludes by asking whether Rabin’s retreat is a reflection of an unavoidable reality, which is that negligently caused economic loss is, for whatever reason, destined to operate under principles that limit liability on the basis of principles and/or interests that are unmoored from tort law itself, or whether, as courts outside the United States have suggested (especially in Australia), there is a set of principles available which could subsume negligently caused economic loss cases within a broader theory of duty that includes personal injury, property damage, and emotional distress.
Gradual Retirement, Sense of Control, and Retirees' Happiness

The aim of this study was to explore the factors that affect an individual's happiness while transitioning into retirement. Recent studies have found that workers often view the idea of gradual retirement as a more attractive alternative than a “cold turkey” or abrupt retirement. However, there is very little evidence as to whether phasing or cold turkey makes for a happier retirement. Using longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study, the authors explored what shapes the change in happiness between the last wave of full employment and the first wave of full retirement. The results suggest that what matters is not the type of transition (gradual retirement or cold turkey) but whether people perceive the transition as chosen or forced.
The Speluncean Explorers--Further Proceedings

Lon L. Fuller's The Case of the Speluncean Explorers is a classic in jurisprudence. The case presents five judicial opinions which clash with each other and produce for the reader an exhilarating excursion into fundamental theories of law and the state and the role of courts vis-i-vis legislatures and executives. Though the issues articulated by Fuller are timeless, the past thirty years in jurisprudential scholarship have produced at least one major new vantage point—the "rights thesis". Tags: Jurisprudence, Legal Theory, Rights Thesis, Case of the Speluncean Explorers [pg467]** Lon L. Fuller's The Case of the Speluncean Explorers [FN1] is a classic in jurisprudence. Set in the Supreme Court of Newgarth in the year 4300 the case presents five judicial opinions which clash with each other and produce for the reader an exhilarating excursion into fundamental theories of law and the state and the role of courts vis-i-vis legislatures and executives. Though the issues articulated by Professor Fuller in 1949 are timeless, the past thirty years in jurisprudential scholarship have produced at least one major new vantage point—the "rights thesis" as advanced by Professor Dworkin and others. [FN2] Simply stated, the rights thesis holds that there is a "right" answer, and only one right answer, in every case. The litigants have a "right" to that and finally—to add one more shade of meaning to the comprehensive term "right"— the answer thus arrived at is dictated by general requirements of justice. Since justice is a branch of morality, the "right" answer is not only correct but also right in a moral sense. My purpose here is to examine how the rights thesis would apply to the Speluncean Case, and to do so in the spirit of my former teacher's presentation. Therefore, let us imagine that, right after the decision in the Speluncean Case was handed down, the Chief Executive of Newgarth constituted a Special Commission of three law professors at the University of Newgarth School of Law to present a recommendation on the question whether executive clemency should be extended to the convicted defendants.[FN3] [pg468] OPINION OF PROFESSOR WUN When I received news of the decision in this case, I was relieved that the Court had reached the only proper result. But later, as I read the opinions of the Justices, I realized how fragile the Court's decision really was. To recap the vote, Justices Handy and Foster voted for acquittal, Tatting withdrew from the case, and although Keen and Truepenny voted to affirm the finding of guilty they engaged in powerful pleas to the Chief Executive to extend clemency to the convicted defendants. Not one of them came even close to believing, as I do, that the defendants were clearly guilty of murder. Perhaps the most egregiously bankrupt opinion illustrating the Court's true feeling is that of Justice Keen, who found it necessary to resort to the old and discredited theory of positivism to prop up his conclusion. He insisted upon a separation between law and
Esther Morris and Her Equality State: From Council Bill 70 to Life on the Bench

This article focuses on the life of Esther Hobart Morris – the first female judge in the United States and a key figure in Wyoming’s pioneer women’s suffrage legislation. It attempts to sift through the myth, clarify her achievements as a judge, advocate, and family woman, and provide a picture into the life of the “Mother of Woman Suffrage.” Morris’ life and story as Justice of the Peace is necessarily told side-by-side with the realization of woman’s enfranchisement in the Equality State.
The SEC and Accounting, In Part through the Eyes of Pacioli

As part of a symposium marking the seventieth anniversary of the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), this Article pulls together two threads, namely Luca Pacioli’s prominence in accounting and the importance of the Management’s Discussion and Analysis (MDA the SEC’s leadership regarding the MDA the SEC’s initiatives on internal controls; and auditor independence. After identifying particular accomplishments in most of these areas notwithstanding often inadequate resources, the Article concludes that the failure to safeguard auditor independence stands as the SEC’s most glaring weakness during its first seventy years.
The Problem of Jurisdictional Non-Precedent

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the federal courts—and the Supreme Court, in particular—repeatedly confronted the complicated legal and political questions arising out of the detention of enemy soldiers outside the territorial United States.1 To be sure, the Court had occasionally grappled with comparable questions in prior conflicts,2 and it had also resolved a handful of military detention cases during and immediately after the war.3 But the sheer number of prisoners in U.S. custody, the seemingly indefinite duration of the post-hostilities detention,4 and the effectively unprecedented use of both domestic and international military tribunals to try many of the detainees as war criminals,5 all combined to produce a surge of litigation, as
Who underreacts to cash-flow news? evidence from trading between individuals and institutions

Abstract A large body of literature suggests that firm-level stock prices “underreact” to news about future cash flows; i.e., shocks to a firm's expected cash flows are positively correlated with shocks to expected returns on its stock. We examine the joint behavior of returns, cash-flow news, and trading between individuals and institutions. Institutions buy shares from (sell shares to) individuals in response to positive (negative) cash-flow news, thus exploiting the underreaction phenomenon. Institutions are not simply following price momentum strategies: When price goes up (down) in the absence of any cash-flow news, institutions sell shares to (buy shares from) individuals. Although institutions are trading in the “right” direction, institutions as a group outperform individuals by only 1.44% per annum before transaction and other costs, because they are extremely conservative in deviating from the value-weighted market index.
Option incentives, leverage, and risk-taking

Abstract While there is extensive research on how option incentives in executive compensation relate to risk-taking by managers, the impact of capital structure on this relationship has received little empirical attention. Extant work suggests that heightened managerial career concerns arising from financial risk and monitoring by debt holders will result in leverage dampening the relationship between managerial risk-taking and equity-linked incentives. We empirically evaluate this contention and find that firm leverage is associated with a significant weakening of the positive relationship between option incentives in flow compensation and managerial risk-taking. This result holds after accounting for the endogeneity of the firm leverage and incentive compensation decisions, and is robust across alternative measures of managerial risk-taking and to using the firm's credit ratings instead of leverage. The attenuating effect of firm leverage arises from both the long-term and short-term components of debt and is significantly stronger during the financial crisis of 2007–2009. Overall, the evidence highlights the influence of capital structure on the relationship between option incentives and managerial risk-taking.
Incorporation of the Establishment Clause Against the States: A Logical, Textual, and Historical Account

Incorporation of the Establishment Clause against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment is logically and textually impossible—so say most academics, a few lower-court judges, and a Supreme Court Justice. They maintain that because the Clause was originally understood as a structural limitation that protected state power against the federal government, it cannot restrain state power or fit within the Fourteenth Amendment texts that protect personal rights— indeed, that attempts to show that it does are laughable. This purported incoherence and textual inconsistency enable anti-incorporation critics to avoid serious engagement of the anti-establishment dimensions of Reconstruction history. They also undermine the Clause’s vigorous application against the states and place the Court’s anti-establishment decisions under a cloud of illegitimacy. This Article sets forth logical, textual, and historical justifications for Establishment Clause incorporation based on the original eighteenth-century understanding of the Clause as a purely structural limitation on federal power. By its terms, the Establishment Clause did not reserve state power but disabled congressional action. As an express disability on Congress, the Clause generated two immunities, one held by the states against congressional interference with state decisions about religious establishment or disestablishment, and one held by the people against congressional establishment of a national religion. As part of Reconstruction’s imposition of new federal limits on state power, the Fourteenth Amendment extinguished the state immunity from federal interference but extended the personal immunity to protect the people against state as well as federally established religions. This is logically coherent in the context of Reconstruction’s goals and also sounds in the personal liberty and citizen immunities protected by the text of the Fourteenth Amendment. When framed by a logical and textual account of Establishment Clause incorporation, Reconstruction history suggests an originalist account of the Fourteenth Amendment’s application of the Establishment Clause to the states.
Stock splits, stock prices, and transaction costs☆

Abstract We develop a model of stock-split behavior in which the split serves as a costly signal of managers' private information because stock trading costs depend on stock prices. We present empirical evidence confirming the relation between stock trading costs and stock prices. The signaling model is estimated using a large sample of splits and explains a substantial fraction of the split-announcement returns.
Harms from Exposure to Toxic Substances: The Limits of Liability Law

In the early 1980s, there was great optimism about the prospects for a dawning era of toxic harms litigation, arising out of a heightened sensitivity to public health and safety concerns. This new sensitivity had been manifested in the preceding decade through a whirlwind of political activity, highlighted by such landmark Congressional legislation as the Clean Air Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and by the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. Along parallel lines, a singularly proactive judicial framework for strict products liability emerged in the mid-1960s from a series of California Supreme Court cases and the promulgation of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, section 402A. To some, the stage seemed set for ushering in a new era. In this brief overview, I begin by highlighting some of the key early developments in the toxic tort domain and the contemporaneous critical literature in the 1980s. I then offer some thoughts on the mixed success realized in the ensuing years, focusing on the limitations imposed on the new types of claims by the institutional structure of tort law, but at the same time noting the expansive themes in more traditional types of claims - such as duty to warn - as well as in aggregation strategies of a less formal character. In concluding, I raise the question of comparative institutional competence: Do more conventional regulatory strategies for controlling risks associated with toxic exposures offer greater promise as policy options?
Parallels in Search of an Intersection: The Manifold Marcus Aurelius Resonances in Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

While Whitman’s knowledge of and affinity to Epictetus are well-known, the profound roots of Song of Myself in Marcus Aurelius’ To Myself (better known as Meditations) were not researched to date even though it is known that Stoicism was a powerful influence upon the autodidact poet. Through classical hermeneutical methodology, this paper shows how stoic practice and training in daily reflection, cosmopolitanism, pantheism, religious skepticism, public service, but most importantly its Platonic legacy of “doing one’s own thing” through fluxes and flows reach far beyond coincidences in Whitman’s work and may be traced through scores of sometimes verbatim parallels in Whitman’s magnum opus. Even if one leaves use of paradigms, vignettes, examples and transcendentalism aside, the study still shows that these parallels extend to a shared platform of individualism and higher-level virtue that cannot be reduced to the poet’s early love of classical motives and Greek culture. Epicurean materialistic atomism and its doctrine of interchangeability of all matter in metamorphosis came to him through the influence of German chemist Justus von Liebig in the perception of Fanny Wright’s novel Ten Days in Athens. This research traces Whitman’s stance opposed to slavery directly to Seneca and points out multiple parallels between the reflections of Marcus Aurelius on Rome and the words Whitman found for New York—each the metropolis of its day, slightly past its apex of historical power, yet peerlessly vibrant as a melting pot, engaged in cultural wars on multiple levels with forces labeled “barbaric.”
The Variable Optical Polarization and Fermi Observations of PMN J0948+0022

We report on observations of the γ-ray and optical photopolarimetric behavior of the radio-loud, narrow-line type-1 Seyfert galaxy PMN J0948+0022 over a 27 month period. As this object has recently been suggested to represent a prototype of an emerging class of blazar-like objects, the observed properties are compared to those of blazars. We extract doubling timescales of roughly 4 hr for the optical and γ-ray bands. The rapid microvariability in the optical/near-IR, significant and variable optical polarization, and strong yet rapidly variable γ-ray emission we observe for PMN J0948+0022 are all classical observational characteristics associated with blazars. However, since these observations do not show a clear correlation between the γ-ray and optical behavior, they do not offer conclusive proof that the emissive behavior of PMN J0948+0022 is due to a relativistic jet oriented close to our line of sight.
Networks, Norms, and National Tax Policy

Increasing economic integration inevitably draws states to coordinate their tax policies, yet policymakers are eager to protect their autonomous ―tax sovereignty.‖ Cooperation and autonomy are balanced in transnational networks, especially the OECD, where state representatives, experts, and interest groups engage in continuous negotiation to develop nonbinding, or ―soft‖ global tax policy norms. While the merits of these norms have prompted much scholarly analysis, little is understood about the nature and significance of using networks to develop tax policy norms in this manner. This Article demonstrates how and why states use the unique soft governance structure of the OECD to develop global tax policy norms and achieve national tax policy goals, and explores some of the implications of this particular means of balancing the competing goals of international cooperation and national autonomy in a politically, socially, and economically globalized world.  Assistant Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School. Thanks to Professors Howard Erlanger, Hugh Ault, Kim Brooks, Nan Kaufmann, Michael McIntyre, and the participants of the October 2008 ―Tracking Our Fiscal Footprint‖ workshop in Montreal, as well as to Colin Campbell and Nico Ooyevaar for their insightful comments and suggestions. Thanks also to Brad Kopetsky and Marc Korobkin for excellent research assistance. This project benefited from a generous grant from the Wisconsin Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy. Washington University Open Scholarship 2 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY GLOBAL STUDIES LAW REVIEW [VOL. 9:1
The Warren and Burger Courts on State, Parent, and Child Conflict Resolution: A Comparative Analysis and Proposed Methodology

Developing a legal framework for analyzing children's rights is difficult. In part, this difficulty stems from the inherent ambiguity of the term "child." Within this general rubric are individuals whose age, maturity, education, and developmental levels encompass a wide rage. A more important obstacle stems from the conflict between the democratic ideals of individual freedom and the sanctity of the family unit. Whether children can be given certain rights without destroying parental authority over the family is a dilemma. Taking into account these opposing principles, a simplified methodology for analyzing and resolving conflicts among the state, parent, and child is possible.
The Relevance of the Nlra and Labor Organizations in the Post-Industrial, Global Economy

As the United States continues to transition from a manufacturing to a post-industrial service-oriented economy that is directly affected by global competition, the strength of domestic labor organizations has declined and private sector union membership has fallen to below 8 percent. Most unions continue to behave like the craft and industrial organizations of the mid-1900s. They employ appeals that once worked well for blue collar manufacturing workers to appeal to new-age white collar and service personnel who view traditional unionization as working class. If labor organizations hope to appeal to twenty-first century employees, they must devise strategies that will resonate with persons who view themselves as professionals. They need to devise organizing goals that reflect their hopes and aspirations. They need to focus on such issues as professional development and salary inequities between top management and regular workers. The National Labor Relations Act has become more and more irrelevant, since many professional workers are now excluded from coverage as supervisors, even if they only marginally direct the work of others, or managerials even though they exercise no meaningful control over their basic employment conditions. If the NLRA is to have continuing relevance, it must be amended to extend coverage to new-age workers - most of whom have indicated that they would like to have some form of collective voice vis-a-vis their corporate employers.
Monopolistic Competition and Public Good Provision with By‐Product Firms

I develop a model in which the voluntary contributions mechanism for the provision of public goods totally breaks down in a large society. A by-product firm sells a private good and uses its profits to provide a public good. By-product firms compete with for-profit firms in a monopolistically competitive industry. If the number of by-product firms is proportional to the size of the society, then public good provision rises without bound as the society grows large. This stands in strong contrast to the results under the voluntary contributions mechanism.
The Law and Economics of De-policing

There is mounting evidence for what some have dubbed “De-Policing" — police retreat in the face of hostile public scrutiny, often in the wake of a highly publicized incident of police misconduct. Recent data reviewed by Professors Richard Rosenfeld and Paul Cassell in their important papers document sharp spikes in violent crime in major cities following the outbreak of widespread protests against police violence beginning in May 2020, after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. It is a devilishly difficult business to ascertain the causes of changes in crime rates. Even granting the ineradicable uncertainties, this article argues that there is an impressive case that the 2020 crime spike reflects de-policing. This paper first examines the data reflecting what Professor Cassell dubs a "Minneapolis Effect" because it followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and then considers the likely mechanism that produces this type of de-policing effect. In particular, the law and economics of policing suggest the most likely mechanism for the decline in law enforcement activity documented by Professor Cassell. Because police officers internalize few, if any, of the benefits of effective policing, when they perceive a risk that they will be made to internalize its costs, over-deterrence is the likely outcome. Anti-police protests demanding that police officers be disciplined or otherwise penalized suggest to officers an increased probability that they will internalize the costs of policing without internalizing its benefits. This theory of police incentives suggest that de-policing is the likely result, at least when the threat of sanctioning police officers is perceived as credible. There are important policy implications of this conclusion. Policing reforms must be alert to the risk that they will over-deter officers, and thereby spur increases in violent crime, which will impose disproportionate costs on disadvantaged communities and people of color.
Poverty and the welfare costs of risk associated with globalization

Summary “Globalization” implies change, and uncertainty over future change may affect household welfare. We use data on Lorenz curves over the last 50 years for a sample of 53 (mostly developing) countries. Treating each country-quintile-year as an observation, we first account for variation in consumption expenditures, finding that global shocks are of less importance than country-level shocks in explaining variation in country-quintile consumption growth. While poorer households experience more rapid consumption growth than do wealthier households, they also bear much more risk. However, we find no evidence that this greater risk is related to globalization.
Contract Thinking was Marvin's Fatal Flaw

This short essay was written for a symposium on the 25th anniversary of Marvin v. Marvin, the California Supreme Court decision recognizing the enforceability of cohabitation contracts. It observes that Marvin turned out to be far less significant in the lives of cohabiting couples than many had thought at the time it was decided, and argues that the reason is its misguided reliance upon contract as the basis of claims between partners in an intimate relationship. That reliance was misguided because while couples often think of their relationship as reciprocal, they do not think of it as contractual in any sense that the law can sensibly employ as the basis of liability. A legal regime in which contract is the main source of legal obligation will therefore lead to the rejection of compelling claims by courts unwilling to distort contract doctrine. The difference between reciprocal and contractual relationships, and ease with which they may be confused, is briefly explored. The essay concludes that there is a separate source of legal duty arising from relationships themselves, distinct from contract; that obligations arising from marriage are in fact relational rather than contractual; and that sensible rules governing legal duties between unmarried cohabitants would not ask whether they had a contract, but whether their non-marital relationship shares with marriage those qualities which lead the law to impose reciprocal legal duties on husbands and wives. The essay finally observes that a relational approach, based upon status rather than contract, has been recommended by the American Law Institute, has been enacted in many other countries, including Canada, and is the likely future of American law. Marvin's contract conception of obligation in intimate relationships therefore seems a relic of a failed experiment more than a harbinger of the future.
Financial intermediaries in the midst of market manipulation: Did they protect the fool or help the knave?

Abstract We examine a fund manager's alleged manipulation of platinum and palladium futures settlement prices. Using benchmarks from parallel electronic markets, we find that the manager's market-on-close trading causes significant settlement price artificiality. Defying predictions that competition among floor traders should limit any artificiality, the artificiality increases in the second half of the alleged manipulation period. Between 35% and 52% of the latter-period artificiality is directly attributable to noncompetitive floor prices. Inflated floor volume contributes a similar proportion to artificiality via the exchange's trade-weighted settlement price formula. We estimate that floor counterparties reaped more than $6.0 million in excess profits.