cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Extraordinarily large permittivity modulation in zinc oxide for dynamic nanophotonics

Abstract The dielectric permittivity of a material encapsulates the essential physics of light-matter interaction into the material’s local response to optical excitation. Photo-induced modulation of the permittivity can enable an unprecedented level of control over the phase, amplitude, and polarization of light. Therefore, the detailed dynamic characterization of technology-relevant materials with substantially tunable optical properties and fast response times is a crucial step to realize tunable optical devices. This work reports on the extraordinarily large permittivity changes in zinc oxide thin films (up to −3.6 relative change in the real part of the dielectric permittivity at 1600 nm wavelength) induced by optically generated free carriers. We demonstrate broadband reflectance modulation up to 70% in metal-backed oxide mirrors at the telecommunication wavelengths, with picosecond-scale relaxation times. The epsilon near zero points of the films can be dynamically shifted from 8.5 µm to 1.6 µm by controlling the pump fluence. The modulation can be selectively enhanced at specific wavelengths employing metal-backed zinc oxide disks while maintaining picosecond-scale switching times. This work provides insights into the free-carrier assisted permittivity modulation in zinc oxide and could enable the realization of novel dynamic devices for beam-steering, polarizers, and spatial light modulators.
Financing Correlated Drug Development Projects

Current business models have struggled to support early-stage drug development. In this paper, we study an alternative financing model, the megafund structure, to fund drug discovery. We extend the framework proposed in previous studies to account for correlation between phase transitions in drug development projects, thus making the model a more realistic representation of biopharma research and development. In addition, we update the parameters used in our simulation with more recent estimates of the probability of success (PoS). We find that the performance of the megafund becomes less attractive when correlation between projects is introduced. However, the risk of default and the expected returns of the vanilla megafund remain promising even under moderate levels of correlation. In addition, we find that a leveraged megafund outperforms an equity-only structure over a wide range of assumptions about correlation and PoS. TOPICS:Portfolio theory, portfolio construction, equity portfolio management, asset-backed securities (ABS), mutual funds/passive investing/indexing, simulations, performance measurement Key Findings • The performance of a biomedical megafund becomes less attractive when correlation between phase transitions in drug development projects is introduced. • The risk of default and the expected returns of the vanilla megafund remain promising to fixed-income investors and equity holders, even under moderate levels of correlation. • A leveraged megafund outperforms an equity-only structure over a wide range of assumptions about correlation and probability of success.
Fashionpedia: Ontology, Segmentation, and an Attribute Localization Dataset

In this work we explore the task of instance segmentation with attribute localization, which unifies instance segmentation (detect and segment each object instance) and fine-grained visual attribute categorization (recognize one or multiple attributes). The proposed task requires both localizing an object and describing its properties. To illustrate the various aspects of this task, we focus on the domain of fashion and introduce Fashionpedia as a step toward mapping out the visual aspects of the fashion world. Fashionpedia consists of two parts: (1) an ontology built by fashion experts containing 27 main apparel categories, 19 apparel parts, 294 fine-grained attributes and their relationships; (2) a dataset with everyday and celebrity event fashion images annotated with segmentation masks and their associated per-mask fine-grained attributes, built upon the Fashionpedia ontology. In order to solve this challenging task, we propose a novel Attribute-Mask R-CNN model to jointly perform instance segmentation and localized attribute recognition, and provide a novel evaluation metric for the task. Fashionpedia is available at: https://fashionpedia.github.io/home/.
Recent U.S. investment behavior and the tax reform act of 1986: A disaggregate view

Abstract The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was expected to cause an overall decline in business fixed investment and a shift in the composition of investment away from machinery and equipment, which previously had received an investment tax credit. Yet neither investment relative to GNP nor equipment investment relative to total investment declined during the period 1987–1989. This paper's analysis of investment at the level of individual industries and assets helps reconcile the recent pattern of investment and the predicted effects of the Tax Reform Act. We find that the trend toward investment in equipment predated the Act, and that recent investment in equipment has fallen short of what would have been expected on the basis on nontax factors alone. Using a new technique to identify the impact of taxation on investment, we confirm the importance of tax policy using the cross-section pattern of equipment investment since 1986.
Pharmaceutical R&D Spending and Threats of Price Regulation

Do threats of pharmaceutical price regulation affect subsequent research and development (R&D) spending? This study uses the Clinton administration’s Health Security Act (HSA) of 1993 as a natural experiment to study this issue. We link events surrounding the HSA to pharmaceutical stock price changes and then examine the cross-sectional relation between firms’ stock price changes and their subsequent unexpected R&D spending changes. Results show that the HSA had significant negative effects on stock prices and firm-level R&D spending. Conservatively, the HSA reduced R&D spending by about $1 billion even though it never became law.
Absolute Priority, Valuation Uncertainty, and the Reorganization Bargain

In a Chapter 11 reorganization, senior creditors are entitled to insist upon being paid in full before anyone junior to them receives anything. In practice, however, departures from such “absolute priority” are commonplace. Explaining these deviations has been a central preoccupation of reorganization scholars for decades. By the standard law-andeconomics account, deviations from absolute priority arise because well-positioned insiders take advantage of cumbersome procedures and inept judges. In this paper, we suggest that a far simpler and more benign force dominates bargaining in reorganization cases. “Deviations” from absolute priority are inevitable even in a world completely committed to respecting priority as long as asset values are uncertain. Uncertainty accompanies any valuation procedure. Bargaining in corporate reorganizations takes place in the shadow of this uncertainty, and standard models of litigation and settlement show that valuation uncertainty alone can explain many of the departures from absolute priority we see in large corporate reorganizations. Even where rational and well-informed senior investors expect the absolute priority rule to be strictly enforced, they must account for the uncertainty associated with any valuation. The possibility of an unexpectedly high appraisal will cause them to offer apparently out-of-the-money junior investors contingent interests in the reorganized business. The debate over absolute priority, the central principle of modern corporate reorganization law, has been misdirected for decades. It has failed to recognize that a substantive rule of absolute priority does not lead to an absolute priority outcome. A coherent account of absolute priority must incorporate relative priority. It must take account of the option value implicit in the junior investors’ right to insist on an appraisal. This paper offers an explanation for one of the most important and persistent puzzles in corporate reorganizations. In a Chapter 11 reorganization, senior creditors are, in principle, entitled to insist upon “absolute priority.” They have a right to be paid in full before junior investors receive anything. This “fixed principle” has been the foundation of our corporate reorganization laws for decades. In practice, however, departures from ab-
Dynamic Certification and Reputation for Quality

We study firm's incentives to build and maintain reputation for quality, when quality is persistent and can be certified at a cost. We characterize all reputation-dependent MPEs. They vary in frequency of certification and payoffs. Low payoffs arise in equilibria because of over-certification traps. We contrast the MPEs with the highest payoff equilibria. Industry certification standards can help firms coordinate on such good equilibria. The optimal equilibria allow firms to maintain high quality forever, once it is reached for the first time. They are either lenient or harsh, endowing firms with multiple or one chance to improve and certify quality.
Probability Theory Meets Res Ipsa Loquitor

Day in and day out, attorneys, judges, and jurors must estimate probabilities. To be sure, we rarely quantify such estimates of probability and almost never adopt the terminology and mathematics of probability theory to resolve matters. Nevertheless, the mathematical theory of probability can be applied to legal problems in various ways. This article uses probability theory normatively in an effort to clarify one aspect of the famous tort doctrine known as res ipsa loquitur. While not urging that jurors be instructed in probability theory or be equipped with microprocessors, it does seek an accurate statement of the res ipsa doctrine in ordinary language. In particular, it shows that the conventional formulation of the doctrine is misleading at best, and should be replaced with a more careful statement of the conditions warranting the res ipsa inference. It briefly surveys the aspect of the legal doctrine criticized, develops a mathematical apparatus and uses it to expose the weakness in the current version of res ipsa loquitur, and summarizes and elaborates on conclusions that suggest which cases should reach a jury and what instructions the jury should receive.
Moral Skepticism and Moral Disagreement in Nietzsche

This essay offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche's argument for moral skepticism (i.e., the metaphysical thesis that there do not exist any objective moral properties or facts), an argument that should be of independent philosophical interest as well. On this account, Nietzsche offers a version of the argument from moral disagreement, but, unlike familiar varieties, it does not purport to exploit anthropological reports about the moral views of exotic cultures, or even garden-variety conflicting moral intuitions about concrete cases. Nietzsche, instead, calls attention to the single most important and embarrassing fact about the history of moral theorizing by philosophers over two millennia: namely, that no rational consensus has been secured on any substantive, foundational proposition about morality. Persistent and apparently intractable disagreement on foundational questions, of course, distinguishes moral theory from inquiry in the sciences and mathematics (perhaps in kind, certainly in degree). According to Nietzsche, the best explanation for this disagreement is that, even though moral skepticism is true, philosophers can still construct valid dialectical justifications for moral propositions because the premises of different justifications will answer to the psychological needs of at least some philosophers and thus be deemed true by some of them. The essay concludes by considering various attempts to defuse this abductive argument for skepticism based on moral disagreement and by addressing the question whether the argument "proves too much," that is, whether it might entail an implausible skepticism about a wide range of topics about which there is philosophical disagreement.
Hanging Out with the Usual Suspects: Neighborhood Peer Effects and Recidivism

Social interactions within neighborhoods, schools and detention facilities are important determinants of criminal behavior. However, little is known about the degree to which neighborhood peers affect successful community re-entry following incarceration. This paper measures the influence of pre-incarceration social networks on recidivism by exploiting the fact that peers may be locked up when a prisoner returns home. Using detailed arrest and incarceration data that includes residential addresses for offenders, we find consistent and robust evidence that a former inmate is less likely to reoffend if more of his peers are held captive while he reintegrates into society.
Educational Vouchers: The Case for Public Choice Reconsidered

Parental choice and operational efficiency are the key features proponents use to promote the desirability of educational voucher programs. The argument is that educational vouchers increase competition among schools by allowing parents the freedom to choose which schools their children attend. In turn, competition improves the performance of individual schools. This article argues that, as currently put forth, the case for vouchers minimizes the special position of public schools with respect to their equity goals. Equity, arguably, has been one of the most significant tenets of public education policy in the last half-century. Moreover, vouchers have significant hidden costs that could compromise any efficiency.
A conceptual framework for managing information flow in innovation systems

This study introduces a framework for managing information flow in innovation systems. An organisation's capacity to receive information, to share it with others and to learn from it is assumed to be the key factor that shapes the flow patterns and, hence, the performance of the innovation system concerned. The framework is applied to characterise the information structure underlying the agricultural innovation system of Azerbaijan and to develop an information strategy for the system to accelerate the information flow. The key institutions required to promote and support an effective flow of information in innovation systems are also discussed.
Muslim Profiles Post 9/11: Is Racial Profiling an Effective Counterterrorist Measure and Does It Violate the Right to Be Free from Discrimination?

Racial profiling as a defensive counterterrorism measure necessarily implicates a rights trade-off: if effective, racial profiling limits the right of young Muslim men to be free from discrimination in order to promote the security and well-being of others. Proponents of racial profiling argue that it is based on simple statistical fact and represents “just smart law enforcement.” Opponents of racial profiling, like New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly, say that it is dangerous and “just nuts.” As a theoretical matter, both sides are partly right. Racial profiling in the context of counterterrorism measures may increase the detection of terrorist attacks in the short term, but create the possibility of dangerous substitutions in the long run. Defensive counterterrorism measures are notoriously tricky and can easily backfire. The installation of metal detectors in airports in 1973, for instance, produced a dramatic reduction in the number of airplane hijackings, but also resulted in a proportionally larger increase in bombings, assassinations, and hostage-taking incidents. Target hardening of U.S. embassies and missions abroad produced a transitory reduction in attacks on those sites, but an increase in assassinations. The evidence shows that some defensive counterterrorism measures do not work and others increase the likelihood of terrorist acts. As a practical matter, then, both sides are essentially wrong: racial profiling is neither “just” smart, nor “just” nuts. The truth is, we simply have no idea whether racial profiling would be an effective counterterrorism measure or would lead instead to more terrorist attacks. There is absolutely no empirical evidence on its effectiveness, nor any solid theoretical reason why it would be effective overall. As a result, there is no good reason to make the rights trade-off implicated by a policy of racial profiling in the counterterrorism context. 3/1/2006 Harcourt: Muslim Profiles 2 Muslim Profiles Post 9/11
The Profitability and Investment Premium: Pre-1963 Evidence

Abstract I investigate the profitability and investment premium in stock returns using hand-collected data from Moody's Manuals for 1940–1963. Controlling for value, the profitability premium emerges as important in this period. In contrast, there is no reliable relation between investment and returns, regardless of whether investment is measured using growth in total assets or book equity and even after extending the data back to 1926. In spanning regressions, factors constructed from profitability and book-to-market ratios (RMW and HML, respectively) improve the mean-variance efficient tangency portfolio but the investment factor (CMA) does not.
Empirically testing Dworkin's chain novel theory: Studying the path of precedent

This article provides an empirical study of the effect of precedent on judicial decisionmaking. Precedent is much analyzed as a controlling factor for judicial decisions but rarely tested for its effect. Some have argued that reliance on precedent creates a system of path dependence of the law, which may yield undesirable herd behavior. As a framework for the study of precedent, we use Dworkin's metaphor of a chain novel, in which each deciding judge writes upon a background to which he or she must adhere, thereby influencing his decisions. This yields testable hypotheses about judicial decisionmaking. Given the considerable data on the ideological component of judicial decisionmaking, it provides a means to study the effect of precedent, as a constraint on judicial ideology. First, we examine cases of first impression, for which there is no controlling precedent, like the very first chapter of a chain novel. The hypothesis is that the absence of precedent in these cases frees judges to use their ideology to a greater degree than in other cases with precedents, and this hypothesis is confirmed. Judges render more ideological opinions in cases of first impression. The second study considers the growth of precedent over time in the context of 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 litigation. The hypothesis is that as precedents accumulate, they steadily narrow the range of judicial discretion, so the effect of ideology should dwindle over time, as might be expected from a chain novel. The data falsify this hypothesis, as ideology seems to increase somewhat as a determinant as more precedents build up. The results suggest that precedent acts as only a limited constraint on judicial decisionmaking and the path dependence of a system of stare decisis is exaggerated.
Temples, Courts, and Dynamic Equilibrium in the Indian Constitution

Must all states have fixed constitutional identities? Does democracy necessarily entail citizen-sovereignty? This Article uses ethnographic data from India to argue that the answer to both questions is “no.” In the aftermath of a massive stampede in 2011, the Kerala High Court initiated an overhaul of the complex executive, legislative, and judicial network that governs the famous Hindu temple at Sabarimala. The courtâ–™s conflicting goals were to avoid further consolidating government authority over the temple and to further empower officials so that they could undertake needed reforms. Ultimately the court did bothâ–”and neitherâ–”in an instance of judicial balancing that reflects the two visions of sovereignty in India. On the one hand, Indian constitutional law and judicial practice reflect a conventional vision of sovereignty, in which sovereign authority is wholly vested in citizens and merely exercised on their behalf by the state. On the other hand, there exists a vision of “divided sovereignty” in which the state, as the agent of reform, has sovereign authority independent of citizens. The productive tension between these two visions, according to which sovereignty is both vested wholly in citizens and divided between citizens and state, is the dynamic equilibrium at the heart of Indian democracy.
Whence Comes Section One? The Abolitionist Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment

The contribution of abolitionist constitutionalism to the original public meaning of Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment was long obscured by a revisionist history that disparaged abolitionism, the ‘‘radical’’ Republicans, and their effort to establish democracy over Southern terrorism during Reconstruction. As a result, more Americans know about ‘‘carpetbaggers’’ than they know about the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment. Despite a brief revival of interest stimulated by the writings of Howard Jay Graham and Jacobus tenBroek, abolitionist constitutionalism remains obscure to law professors and even to historians of abolitionism. This study provides important evidence of the original public meaning of Section One. All the components of Section One were employed by a wide variety abolitionist lawyers and activists throughout the North, many of whom were instrumental in the formation of the Liberty, Free Soil, and Republican parties. To advance their case against slavery, they needed to appeal to the then-extant public meaning of the terms already in the Constitution. Moreover, their widelycirculated invocations of national citizenship, privileges and immunities, the due process of law, and equal protection made their own contribution to the public meaning in 1866 of the language that became Section One. The more one reads the forgotten writings of these ‘‘constitutional abolitionists,’’ the better their arguments look when compared with the opinions of the antebellum Supreme Court. But even if the Taney Court was right and the abolitionists wrong about the original meaning of the Constitution, the Thirteenth and
Information precision and IPO pricing

Abstract This paper investigates the role of information precision in IPO pricing. The model shows that more precise information will exert more influence on the offer price. In strong support of the model, I find that the proportion of the industry return during the waiting period that is incorporated into the offer price increases with a proxy for the precision of the industry return as a measure of the change in the IPO firm's value during the waiting period. The model and the empirical findings enhance our understanding of the partial adjustment phenomenon: noisy information will be partially incorporated into the offer price.
Peakompactons: Peaked compact nonlinear waves

This paper is meant as an accessible introduction to/tutorial on the analytical construction and numerical simulation of a class of nonstandard solitary waves termed peakompactons. These peaked compactly supported waves arise as solutions to nonlinear evolution equations from a hierarchy of nonlinearly dispersive Korteweg–de Vries-type models. Peakompactons, like the now-well-known compactons and unlike the soliton solutions of the Korteweg–de Vries equation, have finite support, i.e., they are of finite wavelength. However, unlike compactons, peakompactons are also peaked, i.e., a higher spatial derivative suffers a jump discontinuity at the wave’s crest. Here, we construct such solutions exactly by reducing the governing partial differential equation to a nonlinear ordinary differential equation and employing a phase-plane analysis. A simple, but reliable, finite-difference scheme is also designed and tested for the simulation of collisions of peakompactons. In addition to the peakompacton class of solutions, the general physical features of the so-called K#(n,m) hierarchy of nonlinearly dispersive Korteweg–de Vries-type models are discussed as well.
Pernicious Ambiguity in Contracts and Statutes

This Article explores pernicious ambiguity, an interpretive problem that is not adequately acknowledged by the legal system. Pernicious ambiguity occurs when the various actors involved in a dispute all believe a text to be clear, but assign different meanings to it. Depending upon how the legal system handles this situation, a case with pernicious ambiguity can easily become a crapshoot. If the judge does not take heed of the competing interpretations as reflecting a lack of clarity, and if that judge happens to understand the document in a way helpful to a particular party, that party wins. Because the document is not seen as ambiguous, the document is declared clear. In reality, however, the document is even less clear than are ambiguous documents. The competing interpretations reflect a complete communicative breakdown. If language worked so poorly generally, it would not be possible to have a language-driven rule of law at all. The problem, perhaps ironically, is that the concept of ambiguity is itself perniciously ambiguous. People do not always use the term in the same way, and the differences often appear to go unnoticed. While all agree that ambiguity occurs when language is reasonably susceptible to different interpretations, people seem to differ with respect to whether those interpretations have to be available to a single person, or whether ambiguity occurs when different speakers of the language do not understand a particular passage the same way. Often, courts even ignore disagreement among judges as irrelevant to whether a document is clear on its face. This Article will show how these different notions of ambiguity emerge, and offer some explanations based on advances in linguistics, cognitive psychology and the philosophy of language. Examples are taken from cases concerning the interpretation of statutes, contracts and insurance policies.
Home production, market production and the gender wage gap: Incentives and expectations☆

This paper explores the hypothesis that gender wage differentials arise endogenously from the interaction between the intra-household allocation of labor and the contractual relation between firms and workers in the presence of private information on workers’ labor market attachment. In our model, households efficiently choose the contribution of each spouse to home production. Workers with high home hours are less attached to market work. Individual home hours and effort applied to market work are private information. Firms offer incentive compatible labor contracts that imply an inverse relation between earnings and home hours. Absent ex ante gender differences in productivities, if firms believe women to be less attached to market work, they will offer them contracts with lower earnings and lower hours than men. If firms believe that labor market attachment is the same across genders, they will offer the same contract to male and female workers. Spouses’ optimal allocation of home hours will respond to firms’ beliefs, thus generating the potential for statistical discrimination by gender. If women have a comparative advantage in home production, then the interaction between the labor market and household decisions amplifies the resulting gender differences in earnings. The large variation in gender earnings differentials across industries and occupations observed in the data motivates the central role of incentive problems in the determination of gender differences in labor market outcomes. We document this variation using Census and PSID data and we relate it to the severity of incentive problem across industries and
Evaluating Flexibility in International Patent Law

Global patent law has raced toward harmonization over the past decades. Countries with vastly different industries, values, and levels of development now offer robust patent rights with similar contours through membership in the World Trade Organization and consequent adoption of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPS”). However, patent law is still far from harmonized among countries or static within countries. Jurisdictions tailor their patent laws to accommodate differences between industries, unforeseen inefficiencies, and diverse views of the costs and benefits associated with offering patent rights to stimulate innovation. Prior scholarly work consists of either doctrinal analyses of relevant governing treaties or utilitarian analyses of the measures’ consistency with an “ideal” level of patent protection. The first perspective sidesteps normative questions by assuming the balance between harmonization and flexibility embodied in TRIPS and provides little guidance for cases in which TRIPS compliance is unclear. The second adopts assumptions that either impose foreign preferences or tacitly accept local preferences embodied in the measure. Any conclusion thus over-privileges background preferences and predetermines a normative conclusion.
Designing Countercyclical Capital Buffers

This essay explores the new countercyclical capital buffer requirement that is a part of both the Basel III and Dodd-Frank rulemaking efforts following the financial crisis. The new buffer will require banks to hold higher levels of capital reserves during times that regulators determine capital markets have created excessive levels of debt. This essay briefly explores why financial regulation tends to be procyclical, how the new capital buffer attempts to address that tendency, and how well the attempt is likely to work. The verdict is mixed. The new countercyclical buffer may do some good. However, some features in its design may lead to it not being triggered when it should, and to weakening its effect even when it is triggered. The essay suggests some design tweaks which may help.
Asset Pricing and the Credit Market

This article studies the central role of the credit market. We show that the credit market facilitates optimal risk sharing by allowing less risk-averse investors to take on levered positions and consume more risk. The equilibrium amount behaves procyclically when aggregate consumption is low but countercyclically when it is high. The varying size of the credit market modifies the amount of risk sharing, which in turn influences asset prices such as expected stock returns, stock return volatility, and the term structure of interest rates. Our article provides a frictionless benchmark for the role and the behavior of the credit market. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.
A model of rational bias in self-assessments

A body of empirical work documents that most people believe they are above average in a variety of skills and abilities. This paper argues that such evidence does not necessarily imply that people process information in an irrational way. I build a model in which people can learn about their abilities at a cost of foregone production. Individuals in this model keep testing their abilities until their self-assessments become favorable enough, at which point they stop. This way, a disproportionately large share of the population ends up with a high opinion about their abilities.
Determinants of weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting

Abstract We examine determinants of weaknesses in internal control for 779 firms disclosing material weaknesses from August 2002 to 2005. We find that these firms tend to be smaller, younger, financially weaker, more complex, growing rapidly, or undergoing restructuring. Firms with more serious entity-wide control problems are smaller, younger and weaker financially, while firms with less severe, account-specific problems are healthy financially but have complex, diversified, and rapidly changing operations. Finally, we find that the determinants also vary based on the specific reason for the material weakness, consistent with each firm facing their own unique set of internal control challenges.
School subsidies for the poor: evaluating the Mexican Progresa poverty program

Abstract This paper evaluates how the Progresa program, which provides poor mothers in rural Mexico with education grants, has affected enrollment. Poor children who reside in communities randomly selected to participate in the initial phase of the Progresa are compared to those who reside in other (control) communities. Pre-program comparisons check the randomized design, and double-difference estimators of the program's effect on the treated are calculated by grade and sex. Probit models are also estimated for the probability that a child is enrolled, controlling for additional characteristics of the child, their parents, local schools, and community, and for sample attrition, to evaluate the sensitivity of the program estimates. These estimates of program short-run effects on enrollment are extrapolated to the lifetime schooling and the earnings of adults to approximate the internal rate of return on the public schooling subsidies as they increase expected private wages.
A Compromise Approach to Compromise Verdicts

Although one of the legal system’s most salient attributes is its insistence that a civil jury choose the story of one party over that of another, scholars have thus far paid almost no attention to the possibility of replacing the preponderance-of-the-evidence rule with an alternative that is not “winner-take-all.” This Article focuses on the issue of uncertainty about what the defendant did or whether the plaintiff was injured, offering an alternative to the extremes of all-or-nothing and compromise verdicts. It considers the possibility that, while sometimes an all-or-nothing verdict is appropriate, at other times a compromise verdict would be better. It also proposes a compromise approach in the form of a system of mixed verdicts, distinguishing between cases in which the trier of fact has a relatively high degree of confidence in its liability determination and those in which there is much less certainty. As I will show, arguments for all-or-nothing verdicts are most powerful when the trier’s estimate of the probability of liability is either quite low or quite high, and arguments for compromise verdicts are strongest for cases in which the balance of evidence is relatively even. In Part I of this Article, I consider a variety of general arguments about compromise verdicts, arguments that seek to discern the best verdict structure for all cases without asking how verdict structure will advance various aims of law. In Part II, I consider several such aims directly, including deterrence, efficient breach, restitution, retribution, and equality. The impact of compromise verdicts and a system of mixed verdicts on litigation costs is examined in Part III, which focuses on incentives to file and settle lawsuits. Part IV switches from an examination of factual uncertainty to a preliminary assessment of legal uncertainty. Though the prospect of compromise solutions to legal uncertainty introduces some additional issues, a system of mixed verdicts may be a promising way to accommodate a diversity of normative approaches to legal decision making. In Part V, I briefly consider some implementation issues and conclude.
Perturbations of Anti de Sitter Black Holes

I review perturbations of black holes in asymptotically anti de Sitter space. I show how the quasi-normal modes governing these perturbations can be calculated analytically and discuss the implications on the hydrodynamics of gauge theory fluids per the AdS/CFT correspondence. I also discuss phase transitions of hairy black holes with hyperbolic horizons and the dual superconductors emphasizing the analytical calculation of their properties.
Simulation in Sport Finance

Simulations have long been used in business schools to give students experience making real-world decisions in a relatively low risk environment. The OAKLAND AâS BASEBALL BUSINESS SIMULATOR takes a traditional business simulation and applies it to the sport industry, in which sales of tangible products are replaced by sales of experiences provided to fans. The simulator asks students to make decisions about prices for concessions, parking, and merchandise; player payroll expenses; funding for a new stadium; and more. On the basis of these inputs, the program provides detailed information about the state of the franchise after each simulated year, including attendance, winning percentage, revenues versus expenses, revenue sharing, and stadium financing. The use of simulations such as this one enhances studentsâ organizational skills and studentsâ ability to think critically and imaginatively about the data while applying relevant knowledge and an appropriate strategy to achieve the best possible results. This is particularly important in the field of sport management, in which few, if any, other simulators exist that are specific to the field.
An Illusion of Sacrifice: The Incompatibility of Binding Stipulations in CAFA Cases

Ever since the enactment of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (“CAFA”), plaintiffs attorneys have sought to circumvent it. Because class certification is more difficult to obtain in federal court than it is in certain state courts, plaintiffs typically prefer to litigate in state court. One method of avoiding CAFA’s removal provision is to limit damages to less than $5 million, thus rendering the action too small to be subjected to the statute. And plaintiffs attorneys have proven willing to stipulate to such diminished damages even where the action is far more valuable. This note examines whether such stipulations should be permitted.The note begins by introducing the topic and proceeds to place CAFA in a historical perspective and describe early techniques used to circumvent it. Because an understanding of why federal courts seem to disfavor class actions is important in examining how legitimate plaintiffs’ concerns vis-a-vis class certification are, the Note traces the history of the device in federal courts, starting in 1966 with the amendments to Rule 23 that created the modern class action and concluding with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes, which represents the latest example in a series of Supreme Court decisions that tend to make certification harder to obtain. The note then provides an overview of how district and circuits courts have analyzed this question and how circuits seem to be splitting. Binding stipulations create problems on three planes -- Rule 23 conflicts, specifically with regard to adequacy; federalism and Dormant Commerce Clause difficulties; and a poor fit in the modern landscape of complex litigation. After identifying these issues, the note explicates the shortcomings of judicial approaches employed thus far before addressing how the Federal Courts Jurisdiction and Venue Clarification Act of 2011 is a step in the right direction. Ultimately, the note concludes that -- for reasons legal, theoretical, and practical -- binding stipulations cause more harm than good in the class action context and should be prohibited.
Coastal Land Loss and the Mitigation-Adaptation Dilemma: Between Scylla and Charybdis

Coastal land loss is an inevitable consequence of the confluence of three primary factors: population growth, vanishing wetlands, and rising sea levels. Society may either mitigate coastal land loss by engaging in human engineering projects that create technological solutions or restore natural processes that protect the coastal zone, or it may choose to adapt to coastal land loss by shifting development and other human and economic resources out of areas especially at risk for coastal land loss. This Article first details the primary threats to coastal lands. Next, the Article discusses two primary means of addressing coastal land loss— mitigation and adaptation—applying those terms slightly differently than they are used in the broader climate change context in order to focus more precisely on the coastal land loss phenomena and its solutions. Finally, the Article makes three normative claims for why policy-makers should approach coastal land loss mitigation in particular with caution: (1) uncertainty of mitigation’s effectiveness scientifically and institutionally; (2) the political expediency of choosing mitigation over adaptation; and (3) the fact that failure to adapt past land-use activities in the coastal zone has contributed to the need to adapt or mitigate today.
Constructing the License to Operate: Internal Factors and their Influence on Corporate Environmental Decisions

Voluntary programs intended to improve corporate environmental practices have proliferated in recent years. Why some businesses choose to participate in such voluntary programs, while others do not, remains an open question. Recent work suggests that companies’ environmental practices, including their decisions to participate in voluntary programs, are shaped by a license to operate comprised of social, regulatory, and economic pressures. Although these external factors do matter, by themselves they only partially explain business decision making, since facilities subject to similar external factors often behave differently. In this article, we draw from organizational theory to explain why we would expect a company's license to operate to be ultimately constructed by internal factors, such as managerial incentives, organizational culture, and organizational identity, as these shape both interpretations of the external pressures and organizational responses to them. Using qualitative data from an exploratory study of matched facilities that reached different decisions about participating in a prominent voluntary environmental program, we then report evidence indicative of the role of these internal factors in shaping facilities’ environmental decisions. Finally, we offer suggestions for future research that could further develop understanding of how internal organizational characteristics influence environmental management decisions, including those concerning participation in voluntary programs.
PRODUCT MARKETS AND PAYCHECKS: DEREGULATION'S EFFECT ON THE COMPENSATION STRUCTURE IN BANKING

The author investigates how deregulation designed to promote competition in the commercial banking industry affected the compensation structure for banking employees. Using establishment-based data from the Employment Cost Index (ECI) Survey and, secondarily, Current Population Survey (CPS) data, she compares changes in the distribution of wages and benefits in the banking industry to changes in unaffected industries across states and over time. In the ECI, deregulation had no impact on overall compensation inequality in banking, but this concealed off-setting changes within the compensation structure. Manager wages fell while non-manager wages held steady, reducing between-occupation compensation inequality. In contrast, between-establishment inequality increased dramatically. Comparisons with CPS data reveal that including gender and educational controls modifies the declines in between-occupation inequality. Additionally, deregulation led to shifts in the types of non-wage benefits banking employees re...
Do managers define non-GAAP earnings to meet or beat analyst forecasts?

We provide evidence consistent with firm managers opportunistically defining non-GAAP earnings in order to meet or beat analyst expectations. This result is robust to controlling for other tools of benchmark beating (e.g., discretionary accruals, real earnings management, and expectation management). We also find that managers tend to exclude more expenses from non-GAAP earnings when it is costlier to use accrual earnings management due to balance sheet constraints, indicating that these tools are substitutes. Lastly, we find that investors discount positive earnings surprises when accompanied by exclusions from GAAP earnings, suggesting that the market partially understands the opportunistic nature of these exclusions. Our evidence is consistent with managers opportunistically defining non-GAAP earnings in a way that analysts fail to fully anticipate, resulting in an increased likelihood of exceeding analyst forecasts.
Trade policy under the GATT/WTO: empirical evidence of the equal treatment rule

. A fundamental difference between multilateral trade agreements like the GATT and WTO and a preferential agreement is the multilateral agreements’ inclusion of a most-favoured-nation principle. Though MFN requires that members implement policies that provide equal treatment to all GATT/WTO countries, how far do members actually follow the MFN principle when so required? We empirically investigate a sample of GATT/WTO trade disputes and the effect of successful dispute settlement negotiations on the disputed product trade of third country exporters to the defendant country. We document evidence of trade liberalization consistent with defendant countries successfully applying the equal treatment rule. JEL classification F13 Politique commerciale sous le regime GATT/OMC : resultats empiriques de la regle du traitement equivalent. Une difference fondamentale entre les accords commerciaux multilateraux comme le GATT ou l’OMC et un accord preferentiel est que dans le premier cas on fait appel au principe de la nation la plus favorisee. Meme si ce principe requiert que les membres mettent en place des politiques qui assurent un traitement equivalent a tous les pays de l’accord GATT/OMC, reste a savoir jusqu’a quel point les membres se soumettent a ce principe quand c’est requis. Ce memoire etudie la question en faisant enquete sur un echantillon de disputes commerciales autour d’accords de type GATT/OMC, et sur l’effet du succes des negociations dans la resolution de conflit sur le commerce du produit au caeur de la dispute en provenance de pays tiers exportant vers le pays qui se defend. On montre que les resultats de la liberalisation du commerce sont consistants avec l’application de la regle du traitement equivalent par les pays qui se defendent.
Financial constraints and investment efficiency: Internal capital allocation across the business cycle

Abstract The extent to which conglomerates face frictions in external capital markets has implications for their internal capital allocation. We find that, during recessions, when external financing costs are higher, conglomerates improve the efficiency of internal capital markets by increasing the allocation of funds to high q divisions relative to low q divisions. The improvement is significantly higher for conglomerates that are likely to face more binding financial constraints. This evidence suggests that although financial constraints impair managers’ ability to undertake positive net present value projects, they improve the quality of project selection by reducing free cash flow and pressuring managers to fund the more valuable investment opportunities. It is consistent with theories stressing the benefits of internal capital markets in the presence of external capital market imperfections.
LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS WITHIN A GLOBAL CONTEXT: AN OVERVIEW

This paper reviews 726 academic research studies covering logistics and supply chain management (L'SCM) applications within a global context. Articles are analyzed according to their publication year and outlet, common themes, and countries or regions investigated. The sample was drawn from the ABI/INFORM Global database, which includes almost 1,800 journal titles. The review offers a starting point for researchers, graduate students, faculty members or practitioners examining international L'SCM applications. The article also draws attention to the wide array of global L'SCM studies conducted, their settings and viewpoints. Additionally, this paper highlights some of the most interesting works and draws attention to lesser-researched countries and regions of the world. The overview also provides an introduction for practitioners and managers to what academic research has covered in the area of global L'SCM. Practitioners can use this review as a starting point for the identification of relevant and useful references for their particular task.