cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Time Past and Time Present: a Duration Analysis of IMF Program Spells*

The programs of the IMF were designed to provide short-term assistance to countries with balance-ofpayments disequilibria. Over time, however, the Fund instituted new facilities with longer time horizons, while many countries adopted consecutive programs. As a result, the length of time spent by countries in IMF programs has grown. This paper analyzes IMF program spells for a group of developing economies over the period of 1982‐2000. Duration models are used to investigate the time dependence of the spells and the factors that affect their duration. The hazard ratio of spells has a nonmonotonic shape, first rising and then falling. Spell duration is independent of previous spell length or the number of spells. Program duration is extended for countries with lower income, exports concentrated in primary goods, landlocked geographic status and autocratic regimes. Governments that are polarized have shorter spells, which may reflect a breakdown in governance. Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past —T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets: Burnt Norton
A New Interpretation of the Onset of the Great Depression

Over the 1919-1929 period, fluctuations in the value of stock trading on the New York Stock Exchange exercised statistically significant and economically important impacts on the demand to hold cash balances. The marked post-1925 rise in the volume and value of stock trading led to a measurable increase in the transactions demand to hold cash balances, an increase in demand not recognized or seriously discussed by individuals inside or outside of the system. Had it been recognized, it is unlikely that the Fed would have persisted in its antispeculative policies in 1928-1929, policies associated with rises in interest rates and the beginnings of a downturn in real activity in the second quarter of 1929. THE proposition that exchanges of assets in secondary markets might influence the transactions demand for money was debated extensively in the 1920s among English, German, and American monetary theorists. But in the late 1920s and early 1930s a consensus was reached: Although such effects were theoretically possible, they were empirically unimportant because of the very high and inexpensively flexible velocity in the financial circulation. This conclusion was reached on the basis of casual empiricism; the early investigators did not have access to inexpensive multiple regression analysis. I have recently tested the proposition by including a measure of transactions on the New York Stock Exchange in a regression explaining the monthly demand for a variety of monetary aggregates during the 1919-1929 period (131 observations), and I obtain statistically significant and economically important estimates of the influence of stock market trading on the transactions demand for money.' Six monetary aggregates were used as dependent variables, ranging from demand deposits in New York City to the Friedman/Schwartz M3 series. Righthand variables included, in addition to the lagged endogenous variable, seasonally adjusted industrial production times a wholesale price index (a GNP proxy), the prime commercial paper rate (4- to 6-month maturity), or the call loan rate on new securities, and the value of
Household Division and Rural Economic Growth

The recent availability of longitudinal data from low-income countries makes possible for the first time the identification of the consequences of growth-augmenting innovations for household income change. However, it has become increasingly recognized that both the analysis and design of panel surveys is importantly affected by the break-up of households over time. In this paper we formulate, test, and estimate a structural model of household division. The model yields implications for how household size and intra-household inequality interact with exogenous income growth to affect (i) the amount of the household public good that is consumed, (ii) which households divide, (iii) the exact divisions of the assets among the new households, and (iv) the evolution of the incomes of the new configurations of households. The model is estimated using panel data describing Indian farm households starting from the onset of the Indian "green revolution" in the late 1960's through 1982. The estimates indicate that inattention to the consequences of technical change for household division can lead to a substantial overestimate of the extent to which better-off households differentially benefit from technical change and demonstrate that the amount of within-household inequality can have important effects on the evolution of land assets over time and for the interhousehold distributional consequences of economic growth.
The relative effectiveness of simultaneous versus sequential negotiation strategies in auditor-client negotiations

Since most audit engagements identify multiple proposed audit adjustments, auditors must decide how best to present and negotiate these adjustments with their clients. Prior research indicates that auditors can negotiate adjustments individually (a sequential strategy) or can negotiate multiple adjustments within the same negotiation setting (a simultaneous strategy). This paper examines the relative effectiveness of a simultaneous versus sequential negotiation strategy in eliciting concessions from clients and engendering greater client satisfaction. Participants negotiated audit adjustments with a simulated auditor who employed one of the two negotiation strategies. We find evidence that a simultaneous strategy elicits significantly greater total concessions from client managers and also generates more positive attitudes toward the auditor. We also manipulate the magnitude of the issues negotiated and find that significantly greater concessions are offered when larger issues are presented first. These findings have important implications for auditors, as they suggest that negotiating issues simultaneously and presenting larger issues first can result in significantly improved negotiation outcomes. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
The discriminatory incentives to bundle in the cable television industry

An influential theoretical literature supports a discriminatory explanation for product bundling: it reduces consumer heterogeneity, extracting surplus in a manner similar to second-degree price discrimination. This paper tests this theory and quantifies its importance in the cable television industry. The results provide qualified support for the theory. While bundling of general-interest cable networks is estimated to have no discriminatory effect, bundling an average top-15 special-interest cable network significantly increases the estimated elasticity of cable demand. Calibrating these results to a simple model of bundle demand with normally distributed tastes suggests that such bundling yields a heterogeneity reduction equal to a 4.7% increase in firm profits (and 4.0% reduction in consumers surplus). The results are robust to alternative explanations for bundling.
Dworkin in the Desert of the Real

Dworkin's positivist critics have charged that he errs in supposing that the philosophy of law and the philosophy of language have any connection. This paper argues that Dworkin is exactly right to deny a split between law and language. But there is an incommensurability in Dworkin's jurisprudence which Dworkin is well aware of: the split between theory and practice, between being and doing. This incommensurability means that Dworkin's jurisprudence is of the highest interest to law and psychoanalysis. It also makes Dworkin the noir philosopher of our age, as adjudication is subjected to what psychoanalysis calls the "ethics of the real."
L'absence d'envie ; une introduction

Cet article est une introduction elementaire a la litterature concernant l'analyse du concept d'une allocation «sans envie», c'est a dire une allocation telle que chaque personne prefere son panier de consommation au panier de toute autre personne. Nous presentons une liste des merites de cette definition et une liste de ses limitations.
Using Statutes To Set Legislative Rules: Entrenchment, Separation of Powers, and the Rules of Proceedings Clause

Each house of Congress ordinarily governs its proceedings through its own standing rules or through informal means such as consent. But sometimes Congress passes a statute that purports to regulate its parliamentary procedures. Indeed, such statutes have become increasingly prevalent in recent decades. The most famous of these regimes of "statutized rules" is probably the fast track procedure governing congressional consideration of trade agreements, but there are dozens of other examples spread throughout the US Code. These proliferating statutes raise a number of interesting questions that have been little explored in the literature. Why would Congress use a statute instead of a rule? Is Congress legally required to follow these statutes, and does it typically follow them in fact? If statutized rules are unconstitutional, why? This article explores and offers preliminary answers to those questions. It concludes that such statutes can be either binding or constitutional, but not both.
Critical Hermeneutics: The Intertwining of Explanation and Understanding as Exemplified in Legal Analysis

One of the most vexing questions in hermeneutics is whether it can be critical-whether it can engage in critique. In Part I of this Article, I show how within legal hermeneutics the element of critique is present even within those forms of legal interpretation most adherent to stances of "understanding." Here I concentrate on the work of Robert Bork and Justice Antonin Scalia and demonstrate how distance, separation, critique is present within their theories. In Part II, I reverse emphases and show how elements of "understanding" persist within legal theories most avowedly reliant on forms of "explanation." My exemplar here is work of Judge Richard Posner. In Part III, I explore Judge Posner's larger critique of much contemporary legal theory, in particular his criticisms of what he calls "top down" theory and "bottom up" theory. My claim here is that the dialectic between understanding and explanation that forms the character of hermeneutics (explored in Parts I and II) responds to Posner's critique. Finally, in Part IV, I assess the import for law of its being a product of both understanding and explanation. If anthropologist Clifford Geertz differentiates between "an experimental science in search of law" and "an interpretive one in search of meaning," how is it possible to recover a sense of "law" within the legal domain that encompasses both? To address this issue, I briefly advert to some work in evolutionary theory by biologist Ernst Mayr. Mayr claims that evolutionary biology itself does not proceed on the basis of deterministic "laws." Mayr's example from within the natural sciences reinforces the point that there are other forms of "explanation" than nomological explanation, explanation by "law." Mayr's work also provides a useful counterpoint to Posner, who invokes evolutionary biology as a more nomological form of explanation. My thesis, then, is that there is a fundamental dialectic between understanding and explanation: each lies at the heart of the other.
A mutual information approach to calculating nonlinearity

A new method to measure nonlinear dependence between two variables is described using mutual information to analyse the separate linear and nonlinear components of dependence. This technique, which gives an exact value for the proportion of linear dependence, is then compared with another common test for linearity, the Brock, Dechert and Scheinkman test. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
It Takes a Court

In the standard account of Caperton v. Massey Energy, it is a complex story about judicial elections, campaign contributions, conflicts of interest and the Due Process Clause. In another sense, however, it is a much more mundane story about poor judicial role modeling, in which an insensible West Virginia Supreme Court justice became notorious only because the followed the bad example of the United States Supreme Court itself. This article explains why courts of last resort (both SCOTUS and state supreme courts) should refer recusal motions to the entire court, rather than allow disqualification to be decided solely by the challenged justice.
Expected Mispricing: The Joint Influence of Accounting Transparency and Investor Base

We examine how accounting transparency and investor base jointly affect financial analysts' expectations of mispricing (i.e., expectations of stock price deviations from fundamental value). Within a range of transparency, these two factors interactively amplify analysts' expectations of mispricing—analysts expect a larger positive deviation when a firm's disclosures more transparently reveal income-increasing earnings management and the firm's most important investors are described as transient institutional investors with a shorter-term horizon (low concentration in holdings, high portfolio turnover, and frequent momentum trading) rather than dedicated institutional investors with a longer-term horizon (high concentration in holdings, low portfolio turnover, and little momentum trading). Results are consistent with analysts anticipating that transient institutional investors are more likely than dedicated institutional investors to adjust their trading strategies for near-term factors affecting stock mispricings. Our theory and findings extend the accounting disclosure literature by identifying a boundary condition to the common supposition that disclosure transparency necessarily mitigates expected mispricing, and by providing evidence that analysts' pricing judgments are influenced by their anticipation of different investors' reactions to firm disclosures.
Related Within the Second Degree? Burns v. Burns and the Potential Benefits of Civil Union Status

Many states have mini-DOMAs prohibiting the recognition of same-sex marriage. Many of these same statutes, however, do not prohibit the recognition of civil unions. This paper explores the circumstances in which civil unions may be recognized by other states, and argues that such recognition may in fact be more likely than out of state same-sex marriage recognition in view of the existence of mini-DOMAs prohibiting recognition of same-sex marriage.
Financing Durable Assets

This paper studies the nancing of durable assets in a model with collateral constraints due to limited enforcement. Durability aects the ease of nancing: we show that more durable assets require larger down payments of internal funds per unit of capital making them harder to nance, because durability raises the price of an asset and hence the overall nancing need more than its collateral value. Thus, nancial constraints have a bigger impact on purchases of more durable capital, such as land, structures, and durable equipment. This basic insight has implications for the choice between new and used capital, technology adoption, and the rent versus buy decision. Since new assets are more durable than used ones, unconstrained borrowers buy new assets and sell them when they are used, while constrained borrowers purchase used assets. Financial constraints inhibit technology adoption as constrained borrowers may adopt less durable, low quality assets, that are otherwise dominated technologies. More durable assets are more likely to be rented given their larger nancing need. Legal enforcement aects trade in durable assets and technology adoption, with weak legal enforcement economies being net importers of used assets and investing a larger fraction in less durable, low quality assets.
A Vision of Social‐Legal Change: Rescuing Ehrlich from “Living Law”

The hundredth anniversary of the original publication of Eugen Ehrlich's Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law is nearly upon us. The book earned high praise from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Roscoe Pound, and Karl Llewellyn as one of the outstanding works of its time. Ehrlich has been identified as an early legal realist, a pioneering figure in legal sociology, and a leading theorist of legal pluralism. In this retrospective review, I explain the strengths and weaknesses of this classic book. Ehrlich articulated an unsurpassed account of dynamic social‐legal change, an account that remains fresh and timely today.
Why multilevel selection matters

In spite of its checkered intellectual history, and in spite of the myriad proposals of alternative models that claim both to account for the range of human behavior and to dispense with the need for selection above the organism level, a multilevel selection framework allowing for biological as well as cultural group selection remains the only coherent means of accounting for the persistence and spread of behavioral inclinations which, at least upon first appearance at low frequency, would have been biologically altruistic. This argument is advanced on three tracks: through a review of experimental and observational evidence inconsistent with a narrow version of rational choice theory, through a critique of models or explanations purporting to account for prosocial behavior through other means, and via elaboration of the mechanisms, plausibility, and intellectual history of biological group selection.
Disrupting Global Governance: The Internet Whois Service, ICANN, and Privacy

ABSTRACT The Internet's Whois service allows anyone to type a domain name into a Web interface and then receive the name and contact details of whoever has registered it. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) contracts make it mandatory to provide indiscriminate public access to this information. Data protection laws in Europe and other countries conflict with this ICANN policy, yet Whois has remained in place for a decade. This article offers an explanation for this puzzling contradiction. We use the concept of a default value to explain how the development of a technological system can change the institutional conditions under which rights claims can be realized. We also note that the Whois story poses problems for Daniel Drezner's theory of global governance. Despite disagreement between the two great powers, the ICANN regime provides effective global governance; Drezner's theory cannot explain how the rise of a technical system could produce a global shift in privacy policy and a...
The Labor Market Consequences of Regulating Similar Occupations: the Licensing of Occupational and Physical Therapists

This study examines the influence of occupational licensing on two significant occupations that provide similar health care services: occupational therapists and physical therapists. Since many of the tasks that these occupations overlap, individuals in both occupations can have legal jurisdiction over these tasks. We examine how these two occupations interact with one another in the labor market on wage determination and employment. Unlike previous analyses of occupational licensing, our study evaluates two professions that are female dominated both within the vocations, and among its leadership. Our results show that the ability of physical therapists to have direct access to patients is associated with a reduction in hourly earnings for occupational therapists, suggesting there is substitution for certain overlapping service tasks across the two occupations. The ability of these two occupations to be mainly substitutes for one another provides new evidence on how the growing numbers of regulated occupations that provide similar tasks influence one another.
Categorically Black, White, or Wrong: 'Misperception Discrimination' and the State of Title VII Protection

This Article exposes an inconspicuous, categorically wrong movement within antidiscrimination law. A band of federal courts have denied Title VII protection to individuals who allege “categorical discrimination”: invidious, differential treatment on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, or sex. Per these courts, a plaintiff who self-identifies as Christian but is misperceived as Muslim cannot assert an actionable claim under Title VII if she suffers an adverse employment action as a result of this misperception and related animus. Though Title VII expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, courts have held that such a plaintiff’s claim of “misperception discrimination” is beyond Title VII’s scope. Accordingly, Title VII protection is only extended to such a plaintiff if she is “actually” Muslim or brings forth allegations of invidious, differential treatment based upon her actual Christian identity. This Article argues that these judicially created prerequisites to Title VII protection are categorically wrong. They impose a new “actuality requirement” on Title VII plaintiffs in intentional discrimination cases that engenders unfathomable results. Plaintiffs who suffer from invidious, differential treatment animated by either their self-ascribed or misperceived protected status will be denied statutory protection against discrimination if they fail to prove their actual religious, gender, ethnic, racial, or color identity upon defendant-employers’ challenge.
Matching Known Patients to Health Records in Washington State Data

The state of washington sells patient-level health data for $50. This publicly available data-set has virtually all hospitalizations occurring in the state in a given year, including patient demographics, diagnoses, procedures, attending physician, hospital, a summary of charges, and how the bill was paid. It does not contain patient names or addresses (only ZIPs). Newspaper stories printed in the state for the same year that contain the word "hospitalized” often include a patient’s name and residential information and explain why the person was hospitalized, such as vehicle accident or assault. News information uniquely and exactly matched medical records in the state database for 35 of the 81 cases (or 43 percent) found in 2011, thereby putting names to patient records. A news reporter verified matches by contacting patients. Employers, financial organizations and others know the same kind of information as reported in news stories making it just as easy for them to identify the medical records of employees, debtors, and others.
Conditions on option prices for absence of arbitrage and exact calibration

Abstract Under the assumption of absence of arbitrage, European option quotes on a given asset must satisfy well-known inequalities, which have been described in the landmark paper of Merton [Merton, R., 1973. Theory of rational option pricing. Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 4 (1), 141–183]. If we further assume that there is no interest rate volatility and that the underlying asset continuously pays deterministic dividends, cross-maturity inequalities must also be satisfied by the bid and ask option prices. In this paper, we show that there exists an arbitrage-free model, which is consistent with the option quotes, if these inequalities are satisfied. One implication is that all static arbitrage strategies are linear combinations, with positive weights, of those described here. We also characterize admissible default probabilities for models which are consistent with given option quotes.
Insurance and finance: Competition and/or convergence

This paper discusses facets of the insurance-finance convergence and their competition. Differences and similarities are emphasized and examples are used to highlight their approaches to pricing. We emphasize situations that are particular to the insurance world, such as non normal risks, catastrophic risks, contagions, and other situations where risks are not easily defined. Some questions relating to the efficiency of portfolio securitization are also raised in light of the latent and macroeconomic risks that have pervaded insurance and financial insurance portfolios during the financial crisis.
The birth of a legal economy: lawyers and the development of American commerce

American lawyers helped lay the foundation for capitalism in the nineteenth century, playing a basic economic role in their legal practices earlier than other historians have documented. At a time when the U.S. state was relatively powerless, the work of the profession was essential. Lawyers helped generate liquidity before the federal government printed money, built legal institutions on the frontier, and made markets secure enough for their clients to participate. In short, they provided the private bureaucracy that capitalism needed to function. Until now, the foundational role of lawyers in early nineteenth-century economic life has largely remained hidden, partly because legal historians have depended on court documents and published works. This article uses legal account books to uncover the day-to-day work of the legal profession. Through studies of lawyers on the Ohio frontier and in New York City, it reveals that lawyers embraced the routine commercial work that allowed the market to function; they encouraged economic growth and cemented the profession’s place in American commercial life. Taking the routine work of lawyers seriously reveals that scholars have vastly understated the importance of the profession to economic development. Lawyers provided the constraints and built the institutions that economists and economic historians believe are key to growth. The profession must therefore be understood alongside the law as a defining part of the American economy.
Unbreakable Vows: Same-Sex Marriage and the Fundamental Right to Divorce

This Article considers whether there is a fundamental constitutional right, through the liberty component of substantive due process, to divorce. This right to divorce becomes particularly important for same-sex couples whose marital rights are incomplete, at best. Surely, if divorce were outlawed by any state, the masses would rise up against such tyranny with cries that divorce must be constitutionally protected. But place divorce in the context of same-sex marriage and the response is predictably more tepid. “Those” marriages are not legal anyway, so what harm is there in excluding them from divorce? States that refuse to recognize same-sex marriage, for benefits purposes, can arguably refuse to recognize such marriage even for the limited purpose of divorce — which requires, as a predicate, a lawful marriage. This approach fails to appreciate the integral nature of divorce to marriage. When marriages fail, as they have since the founding of our nation, people exercise their right to divorce and move on to new, healthier, happier relationships. Nearly 5,000 divorces are granted daily in the United States. The reality remains that many Americans are married more than once in their lives. Many individuals seize this opportunity on multiple occasions, perhaps growing more convinced in their forever vows with each subsequent marriage. But, can a state outlaw divorce and hold individuals to their initial promise to the state and each other to be legally bound ‘til death do they part? Or, does the United States Constitution afford relief from marriage for changed circumstances, including the simple desire to remarry someone else? Numerous cases suggest there is a fundamental right to divorce. And, from a logical perspective, divorce appears to be an essential corollary of marriage. Surely the state cannot force individuals to remain legally bound, regardless of the words uttered during marriage ceremonies. Marriage, and its bundle of rights, must assuredly include not only an entrance, but also an exit. For many same-sex couples, this traditional exit has been sealed, withheld, or otherwise thwarted. Accordingly, same-sex couples must convince courts that divorce is a fundamental right — not a right that states can withhold from discrete or unpopular minorities. The fundamental right to divorce provides the only shelter from imposing unbreakable vows.
A Legisprudential Analysis of Evidence Codification: Why Most Rules of Evidence Should Not Be Codified - But Privilege Law Should Be

Although most of the law of evidence has been codified at the federal level for three decades, the law of privilege has resisted efforts at codification. Because it is such a glaring omission, those efforts are renewed periodically. Recently a number of prominent scholars have taken up this cause. Their calls for codification of the law of privilege raise the question of whether codification is truly justified with respect to the law of evidence more generally. In this article, I take up that question as a prelude to considering whether the law of privilege should be codified. To do this, I will first suggest standards for use in assessing any proposed codification. Then I will ask whether, as a normative matter, the law of evidence should be codified. I will then focus on the individual rules of evidence, most notably the privilege rules, to draw conclusions about whether those standards are met. I address the topic of codification from a particular legisprudential perspective. I take as my premise that, in our system rooted in the common law, legislation must be justified in relation to its effect on the common law. Relying on Hayek, Calabresi, and other scholars, I will argue that legislation is justified when it serves one of two functions: an ordering function, directed at ensuring the efficiency and fairness of existing common-law rules; and a remedial function, directed at correcting errors in the common law. I will analyze the rules of evidence - both the codified rules and the uncodified rules of privilege - to assess whether codification is justified according to my criteria. I will conclude that most rules of evidence do not meet the criteria for codification, but that the law of privilege does. My practical objectives are two-fold. First, as I suggested, I hope to bolster the case for the codification of privilege by showing why it, more than almost any other area of evidence law, satisfies the standards for codification. Second, while I acknowledge that repeal of the various evidence codes is unlikely and might not even be justified by the cost, I hope to sound a cautionary note about further codification efforts. With some important exceptions, most notably the law of hearsay, the current rules of evidence are vague enough to allow for development of the law through case-law evolution. For that evolution to occur, though, two conditions must be satisfied. We must leave the rules essentially as they are, without attempting to fix minor problems of application that might arise. And the courts, including the Supreme Court, must take seriously Rule 102's command to interpret the Rules so as to secure the promotion of growth and development of the law of evidence. I hope to encourage both of those developments by suggesting reasons why case-law evolution is generally superior to codification in the evidence context.
Managed care's Crimea: medical necessity, therapeutic benefit, and the goals of administrative process in health insurance.

Reading news headlines, one would think that the managed care wars were over. By the end of 2001, forty-two states had enacted laws subjecting coverage determinations by managed care companies to “external” or “independent” review, with twenty-seven states adopting them in the preceding three years. In June 2002, the Supreme Court held that the federal ERISA statute did not preempt an Illinois law requiring health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to submit coverage denials to binding independent review. In February
Do switching costs make markets more or less competitive? The case of 800‐number portability

Do switching costs reduce or intensify price competition if firms charge the same price to existing and new consumers? I study 800-number portability to determine how switching costs affect price competition under a single price regime. AT&T and MCI reduced their toll-free services prices in response to portability, implying that reduced switching costs increased competition. Despite rapid market growth, gains from higher prices to “locked-in” consumers exceeded the incentives to capture new consumers. Prices on larger contracts dropped more, consistent with greater lock-in for larger users. Price changes between portability's announcement and implementation are consistent with rational expectations.
Structural Models and Endogeneity in Corporate Finance: The Link Between Managerial Ownership and Corporate Performance

This paper presents a parsimonious, structural model that isolates primary economic determinants of the level and dispersion of managerial ownership, firm scale, and performance and the empirical associations among them. In particular, variation across firms and through time of estimated productivity parameters for physical assets and managerial input and corresponding variation in optimal compensation contract and firm size combine to deliver the well-known hump-shaped relation between Tobin’s Q and managerial ownership. To assess the effectiveness of standard econometric approaches to the endogeneity problem, we apply those remedies to panel data generated from the model. The unfortunate conclusion is that, at least in the ownership–performance context, proxy variables, fixed effects, and instrumental variables do not generally provide reliable solutions to simultaneity bias.
Stabilization and Reform in Eastern Europe: A Preliminary Evaluation

The paper analyzes common issues emerging from the recent experience with Fund-supported programs in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. These comprise the initial price-overshooting and the output collapse, fiscal sustainability as well as the financial and structural problems associated with bad loan portfolios and sluggish implementation of privatization programs. Substantial success, in varying degrees, has been achieved in the initial macro-stabilization and opening-up effort. At the same time mounting difficulties with fiscal and monetary control may be emerging, as a result of social and political pressures and insufficiently clear policy signals on the micro-issues involving the sharp structural transformation of the productive and financial systems.
Is Conflicted Investment Advice Better than No Advice

Abstract The benefit of investment advice depends on the quality of advice and the investor's counterfactual portfolio. We use changes in the Oregon University System Optional Retirement Plan to highlight the impact of plan design on the counterfactual portfolios of advice seekers. When brokers are available and target date funds (TDFs) are not, brokers help participants with high predicted demand for advice bear market risk, but they recommend higher-commission options. When brokers are removed and TDFs are added, new high-predicted-demand participants primarily invest in TDFs, which offer similar market risk but higher Sharpe ratios than the broker-advised portfolios within our sample.
The index premium and its hidden cost for index funds

Abstract This paper empirically investigates the index premium and its implications from 1990 to 2005. For additions to the S&P 500 and Russell 2000, we find that the price impact from announcement to effective day has averaged + 8.8% and + 4.7%, respectively, and −15.1% and −4.6% for deletions. The premia have been growing over time, peaking in 2000, and declining since then. The implied price elasticity of demand increases with firm size and decreases with idiosyncratic risk, supporting theoretical predictions. We also introduce a new concept that we label the index turnover cost, which represents a hidden cost borne by index funds (and the indexes themselves) due to the index premium. We illustrate this cost and estimate its lower bound as 21–28 bp annually for the S&P 500 and 38–77 bp annually for the Russell 2000.
Defining Overcriminalization Through Cost-Benefit Analysis: The Example of Criminal Copyright Laws

Introduction 784 I. Cost-Benefit Analysis 785 II. Applying a Cost-Benefit Analysis to Criminal Copyright Laws ....787 A. A Primer on Copyright Policy and the New Criminal Copyright Laws 788 1. National copyright policy 788 2. The new criminal infringement offenses 789 B. The Benefits of Criminal Copyright Infringement 792 1. The benefit of preventing harm 792 a. Identifying the harm to copyright holders 792 b. Social norms about file sharing 794 2. The educative benefit 797 3. A note on enforcement efforts 799 C. The Costs of Criminal Infringement 801 1. Costs of reduced access to copyrighted material and costs to copyright policy 802 2. The cost to criminal law 804 D. Evaluating the Costs and Benefits of Criminal Infringement 805 III. The Benefits of Defining Overcriminalization Through CostBenefit Analysis 806 Conclusion 807
A Proposal for Limiting the Duty of the Trial Judge to Instruct the Jury Sua Sponte

Errors in instructing the jury have become the single most common ground for appellate reversal in the Anglo-American legal tradition. It may be asserted that such reversals create no great cause for concern because they do not necessarily indicate an inadequacy of the trial system, but simply reflect the use of jury instructions as an appellate battleground for opposing legal theories. But one may ask whether such battles might have been fought more appropriately at trial, without the need for the unnecessary delay and expense of appellate reversal and retrial. At the very least, the high number of reversals due to errors in jury instructions indicate that problems in the jury instruction area deserve careful analysis. Perhaps the most distressing problem with the present instruction procedure is that while instructions do not provide adequate means for airing and resolving legal conflicts at trial, neither do they perform adequately their primary function: to assist the jurors in understanding the law they are to apply to the case. It is no secret that ritualistic delivery of a collection of technically worded instructions may be more confusing than helpful. It is suggested here that one reason instructions generally fail in their function of guiding and enlightening the jury is that trial judges are driven to a primary concern with avoiding reversal due to some technical error in formulating instructions.
The judgmental effects of strategy maps in balanced scorecard performance evaluations

Abstract We examine whether supplemental information displays affect decisions made using a common strategic performance measurement system, the balanced scorecard. A distinguishing feature of the balanced scorecard (BSC) is the number and diversity of its metrics. To effectively formulate a decision from such a complex information set, managers must view these measures within their strategic context ( Kaplan and Norton, 1993, 1996 ). However, academic studies indicate that problems in communication and comprehension of the strategic logic underlying the scorecard hinder its implementation and use ( Lipe and Salterio, 2000; Malina and Selto, 2001; Ittner et al., 2003a, 2003b ). We investigate whether a supplemental information display, in the form of a strategy map, results in performance evaluation judgments consistent with the recognition of relations between performance metrics and strategy. Strategy maps are causal diagrams depicting temporally-separate and non-linear relations between scorecard performance measures and overriding strategic objectives. As predicted, we find that performance evaluation decisions are more consistent with the achievement of strategic objectives when participants are provided with strategy maps.
Accounting Conservatism and the Efficient Provision of Capital to Privately Informed Firms

This study addresses conservatism in financial reporting. Firms seek financing for an investment. Investors have access to an imperfect accounting signal that may also have a conservative tendency. If the firms have no private information, conservatism is desirable only for negative ex ante expected value investments, consistent with the spirit of the results of Gigler et al (2009) and other studies. Conservatism is not optimal for positive expected value investments because it denies financing to too many of them. If firms have private information, however, conservatism may be desirable even for positive expected value investments. Conservatism is useful in this setting because it increases the probability that privately informed good firms will be able to distinguish themselves from bad firms. Otherwise, good firms prefer not to invest and the financing market fails.
Financial Crises and Political Crises

Abstract The simultaneous determination of financial default and political crises is studied in an open economy model. Political crises accompany default in equilibrium because of an information transmission conflict between the government and the public. Multiple equilibria are possible: if foreign lenders are pessimistic about the country's stability, they demand a high interest on the debt, exacerbating distortions and possibly leading to political crisis; but if lenders are optimistic, the cost of the debt falls and political crises disappear. In such a case, international liquidity packages can select the best equilibrium and rule out political crises at negligible cost.
Targeting Nuclear Programs in War and Peace: A Quantitative Empirical Analysis, 1941-2000

When do states attack or consider attacking nuclear infrastructure in nonnuclear weapons states? Despite the importance of this question, relatively little scholarly research has considered when an...
Heterosexuality and Title VII

INTRODUCTION 205 I. CONTEXT 211 A. Protected Traits 212 B. Sexual Orientation 216 C. Bootstrapping 219 II. HETEROSEXUALITY AND TITLE VII 220 A. Because of Sex 222 B. Because of Sex and Sexual Orientation 224 C The Double Standard 229 D. Refining the Double Standard 230 III. RE-ORIENTING TITLE VII 233 A. A New Approach 234 B. The New Approach in Action 236 C. Concerns 242 CONCLUSION 246 INTRODUCTION Dawn Dawson was an outsider among outsiders.1 A self-described gender-nonconforming lesbian woman,2 Dawson worked as a hair assistant and stylist trainee at Bumble & Bumble, a high-end salon in New York City.3 Her coworkers at the salon were an eclectic mix of outsiders, and the salon management encouraged its employees to express their nonconformist identities openly.4 Yet Dawson could not fit in with her coworkers. They teased her, saying she should act less like a man and more like a woman.5 They demeaned her in front of clients by referring to her as "Donald."6 And they ridiculed her because of her sexuality, announcing that she "needed to have sex with a man" and that she wore her sexuality "like a costume."7 After working at Bumble & Bumble for less than two years, Dawson was fired from her hair assistant position and kicked out of the salon's stylist training program.8 When the salon manager met with Dawson to inform her of these decisions, the manager explained that Dawson would never be able to get a stylist position outside of New York City because her demeanor and appearance would frighten people.9 Dawson brought a sex discrimination claim under Title VII,10 alleging that she was both fired and harassed because of, among other things, her failure to conform to traditional gender stereotypes.11 Ultimately, Dawson lost her lawsuit.12 In rejecting her gender-stereotyping claim, the Second Circuit held that the alleged discriminatory comments were targeted not at Dawson's gender-nonconformity, but at her homosexuality.13 And because sexual orientation is not a protected trait under Title VII, the court held that Dawson had not stated an actionable discrimination claim.14 The lesson of Dawson's case is that an employee's sexual orientation can swallow up an otherwise actionable claim of sex discrimination. Even though Dawson's Title VII claims were based on her sex and her gendernonconformity, the court concluded that Dawson was trying to "bootstrap" protection for sexual orientation into Title VII by framing discrimination targeted at her sexual orientation as a claim of discrimination based on her gender-nonconformity. …
Coding Complexity: Bringing Law to the Empirical Analysis of the Supreme Court

In recent years, the legal academy has experienced a surge of interest in quantitative empirical analysis. Unfortunately, this enthusiasm has not always been accompanied by careful analysis of what the tools and resources of quantitative analysis can tell us about law and legal doctrine. As this Article demonstrates, the findings of some studies therefore unwittingly reflect the limitations of those tools and resources rather than providing insight into the workings of courts.Specifically, this Article provides a long-overdue critical analysis of the most influential source of data about the Supreme Court, the Original Supreme Court Database, created by political scientist Harold J. Spaeth. The Database, which codes every opinion issued by the Supreme Court since 1953, contains coding for legal provisions considered by the court and for what Spaeth calls issue and issue area. Although numerous scholars - within both political science and law - rely on them, these codes do not report reliable information about the role that law and legal doctrine plays in the Supreme Court's cases. The Database does not reliably report the legal provisions or doctrines relied upon or at issue; it does not attempt to report legal issues at all, instead describing the "public policy context" of the case; and by design, it generally reports only one issue per case. These limitations have important, but poorly understood, implications for the many, many scholars who rely on the Database, and the Article describes a number of specific studies whose results are unreliable because of the way they use the Database.This critique of the Database and the ways scholars use it can help scholars to be smarter and more accurate in their use of the Database. At the same time, the Article explores ways to incorporate law and legal doctrine into empirical legal scholarship. To further both goals, the Article presents the results of my Recoding Project of a random sample of recent Supreme Court cases. The findings of the Recoding Project confirm that significant information about law and doctrine is omitted from the databases. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the databases systematically underreport law and doctrine related to courts in particular and to the structure and operations of government in general - issues that may be very salient to the justices in at least some cases. By demonstrating what information is missing or misstated in the Database and by exploring ways to develop more comprehensive and law-focused coding protocols, this Article helps positive scholars - whether political scientists or legal academics - to consider how to take account of law. The Article concludes by discussing implications for future research.
The Problem of the Commons: Still Unsettled after 100 Years

The problem of the commons is more important to our lives and thus more central to economics than a century ago when Katharine Coman led off the first issue of the American Economic Review. As the US and other economies have grown, the carrying capacity of the planet—in regard to natural resources and environmental quality—has become a greater concern, particularly for commonproperty and open-access resources. The focus of this article is on some important, unsettled problems of the commons. Within the realm of natural resources, there are special challenges associated with renewable resources, which are frequently characterized by open-access. An important example is the degradation of openaccess fisheries. Critical commons problems are also associated with environmental quality. A key contribution of economics has been the development of market-based approaches to environmental protection. These instruments are key to addressing the ultimate commons problem of the twenty-first century—global climate change. (JEL Q15, Q21, Q22, Q25, Q54)