cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Economic integration and the sustainability of multimarket collusion

Abstract We examine the impact of (and links between) two types of economic integration on the stability of multimarket collusion when firms interact in quantities in segmented markets: (1) multilateral trade liberalization, captured by a reduction of trade costs across all markets; and (2) preferential trade liberalization, captured by an expansion in the size of individual markets while holding the level of external trade costs (tariffs) constant. In general, collusive stability is non-monotonically related to economic integration. In the case of multilateral liberalization, the effect depends on the initial level of trade costs and the extent of liberalization. However, on the average, the complete elimination of trade costs is pro-competitive when these costs are sufficiently high initially. In the case of regional integration, the effect of liberalization is pro-competitive when external trade barriers are sufficiently high, but anti-competitive when these barriers are sufficiently low.
Fantasy and Dread: The Demand for Information and the Consumption Utility of the Future

We present evidence that intrinsic demand for information about the future is increasing in expected future consumption utility. In the first experiment, subjects may resolve a lottery now or later. The information is useless for decision making, but the larger the reward, the more likely subjects are to pay to resolve the lottery early. In the second experiment, subjects may pay to avoid being tested for herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and the more highly feared type 2 (HSV-2). Subjects are three times more likely to avoid testing for HSV-2, suggesting that more aversive outcomes lead to more information avoidance. In a third experiment, subjects make choices about when to get tested for a fictional disease. Some subjects behave in a way consistent with expected utility theory, and others exhibit greater delay of information for more severe diseases. We also find that information choice is correlated with positive affect, ambiguity aversion, and time preference, as some theories predict. Data, as sup...
Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(1)’s “Similar Motive” Test and the Admissibility of Grand Jury Testimony Against the Government

This Note examines the "similar motive" test of Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(1) as applied to grand jury testimony offered against the government. Rule 804(b)(1) admits an unavailable witness's prior testimony hearsay when its opponent had a "motive" to develop it at the previous proceeding that was "similar" to the motive its opponent would have at trial. However, the U.S. Courts of Appeals have differed in their interpretation of the rule's "similar motive" language with respect to the factors that judges should consider in the admissibility analysis for grand jury testimony offered against the government. This Note examines the development and purpose of the prior testimony hearsay exception as well as recent circuit court cases that have applied Rule 804(b)(1) to grand jury testimony offered against the government. It argues that certain factors commonly considered by courts - primarily prosecutors' strategic use of grand jury questioning - are beyond the scope of Rule 804(b)(1) and should not influence the "similar motive" inquiry. This Note proposes an admissibility test for exculpatory grand jury testimony that avoids consideration of these factors.
Defining Judicial Inactivism: Models of Adjudication and the Duty to Decide

Debates over the proper function of courts tend to focus on delineating the outer limits of judicial authority. One of the primary concerns in these debates is the phenomenon often described as judicial activism. Although there is no fixed notion of precisely what constitutes judicial activism, the core idea is a concern about judges overstepping the bounds of their role, and somehow or other doing more than is proper. What might be characterized as judicial inactivism, in contrast, has generally been overlooked. This is somewhat curious. Underlying concern about judicial inactivism is a recognition of the possibility that judges might fail to perform the minimal components of the judicial function. The consequences of such a judicial failure to act - typically the preservation of the status quo - will generally be no less significant than those resulting from judicial action. Indeed, since improper judicial inaction might be harder to detect than improper judicial action, one might suppose that we should be more concerned about judicial inactivism than we are about judicial activism. This article attempts to provide an answer to the question of what judicial inactivism might look like. In so doing, it draws on previous efforts to articulate models of civil adjudication, and unites that literature with the largely distinct body of work addressing the topic of judicial candor. The goal is to articulate at least some of the components of the adjudicative duty - a court's minimal adjudicative obligations when presented with a justiciable claim over which it has jurisdiction. Thus it considers such questions as whether a court may, in effect, decide not to decide. And if there is a duty to decide, how far does it extend? Is it enough for the court merely to pick a winner, or must it confront the parties' claims and arguments? If the latter, should the court regard itself as bound by the parties' characterization of the dispute? How much must the court disclose about its decisional process?
Understanding the workweek of foreign born workers in the United States

I analyze the length of the workweek of foreign-born workers in the US I concentrate on workers supplying long hours of work—50 or more weekly hours and document that immigrants are less likely than natives to work long hours. Surprisingly, these differences are greatest among highly educated and salary paid workers, and persists even after conditioning for demographic characteristics. I explain these differences with two within occupation characteristics. First, relative to natives, immigrants are less likely to supply long work weeks if they work in occupations where the immigrant-native earnings differential is big. Second, immigrants are also less likely to supply long work weeks when they work in occupations with a wide dispersion of earnings. This second result is important, because the occupation dispersion of earnings has been used to characterize changes of the worker’s earnings over the worker life cycle (Bell and Freeman, Labour Economics: 8(2), 2001a; Working Time in Comparative Perspective, 2001b; Kuhn and Lozano, Journal of Labor Economics:26(2), 311–344, 2008), and a good measure of the incentives to supply long hours of work.
Bookkeeping conventions and the micro‐macro link

The formal accounting logic of the national accounts and other macroeconomic statistics is not always well understood. In addition, the relation between macro statistics and micro accounting data often is not clear. This paper starts out by summarizing the main bookkeeping conventions at the macro level. A distinction is made between vertical and horizontal double-entry bookkeeping, which, if applied simultaneously, result in quadruple-entry bookkeeping. Vertical bookkeeping refers to the double-entry bookkeeping used in business practice. Horizontal bookkeeping requires that the transactions and other economic relationships between agents answer strict consistency rules regarding valuation, timing, and classification. At the micro level, this consistency is not guaranteed. The article reviews three options to reinforce the micro-macro link (proposals by Nancy and Richard Ruggles, proposals by Harry Postner, and the intermediate accounts in France), and concludes with a few suggestions that could be used in the upcoming revisions of the international statistical manuals.
Family Structure and Youths' Outcomes: Which Correlations are Causal?

Growing up in a family that lacks a biological father is correlated with a number of poor outcomes for youths. This study uses the National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (NELS) to examine the extent to which the apparent effects of divorce or remarriage are not causal, but are due to pre-existing problems or advantages of the family or youth. We find that the correlations between family structure and youth outcomes are causal: neither divorce nor remarriage appear to be related to pre-existing characteristics of the youth or family. Finally, unlike some previous research, we do not find gender differences in the effects of the presence of a father or stepfather.
Lawyers on Trial: Juror Hostility to Defendants in Legal Malpractice Trials

An enduring question in the study of civil justice is whether certain types of parties are advantaged or disadvantaged as litigants. Professor Marc Galanter’s classic essay, Why the “Haves” Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change, raises this question in terms of resources and experience and has been the subject of extensive testing. Other research has examined whether certain demographic factors, such as race or gender, disadvantage plaintiffs, whether
Fair Lending 2.0: A Borrower-Based Solution to Discrimination in Mortgage Lending

Fair lending promises that borrowers of similar credit profiles will receive similar loan products - regardless of their race. Yet, study after study reveals that black and Latino borrowers consistently receive loan products that are inferior to those of white borrowers with similar credit characteristics. Despite frequent amendments since their passage during the Civil Rights Era, the Fair Lending Laws that opened doors that were once completely closed to minority borrowers are unable to root out the subtle discrimination that persists in today’s mortgage lending market. These traditional Fair Lending Laws are built on an outdated framework that focuses exclusively on punishing lenders and righting past wrongs. This article proposes a new borrower-based approach to solving discrimination in lending. This new framework gives borrowers the tools to effectively understand and compare loan offers, reduces the complexity of loan products, and enhances the ability of borrowers to receive loan offers from a variety of potential lenders. This article also provides examples of tools derived from the new borrower-based approach, including a novel loan comparison report, that have the potential to take us the last mile toward a true fair lending environment.
Unleashing or Harnessing "Armies of Compassion"?: Reflections on the Faith-Based Initiative

A central tenet of President George W. Bush’s “faith-based initiative,” launched in 2001, is that the federal government, by entering into more partnerships with religious and community organizations, should put the “power of faith” to work to solve pressing social problems. Now several years old, and still controversial, the faith-based initiative seems an apt topic for this symposium’s consideration of separation of powers. Questions concerning the expanded use of partnerships with religious organizations by the government may seem outside the bounds of conventional understanding of separation of powers as addressing the tripartite division within government of executive, judiciary, and legislature. However, this Article suggests that the rhetorical appeal to the power of faith and to “unleash[ing] . . . armies of compassion,” as President Bush has put it,1 to carry out important public purposes invites attention to the relationship between governmental power and that of religious organizations. Notably, the initiative is being implemented largely through the executive branch— by executive orders—rather than through federal legislation. Moreover,
Quantifying the Causal Effects of Conversational Tendencies

Understanding what leads to effective conversations can aid the design of better computer-mediated communication platforms. In particular, prior observational work has sought to identify behaviors of individuals that correlate to their conversational efficiency. However, translating such correlations to causal interpretations is a necessary step in using them in a prescriptive fashion to guide better designs and policies. In this work, we formally describe the problem of drawing causal links between conversational behaviors and outcomes. We focus on the task of determining a particular type of policy for a text-based crisis counseling platform: how best to allocate counselors based on their behavioral tendencies exhibited in their past conversations. We apply arguments derived from causal inference to underline key challenges that arise in conversational settings where randomized trials are hard to implement. Finally, we show how to circumvent these inference challenges in our particular domain, and illustrate the potential benefits of an allocation policy informed by the resulting prescriptive information.
A Study on the Factors of Job Satisfaction among Entrepreneurs of Small and Medium Enterprises in the Batticaloa District

The Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Sri Lanka has suffered drastically in the past in the North and East as a result of the civil war and T-sunami havoc. The studies have shown that SMEs play a vital role on promoting economy and especially, on reducing poverty. Many studies have been carried out on this topic at international, global and national level. Similar study has not been carried out in the Batticaloa District with special reference to the job satisfaction among entrepreneurs of SMEs.
Informational limits to democratic public policy: The jury theorem, yardstick competition, and ignorance

Condorcet’s jury theorem provides a possible explanation for the success of democracies relative to other forms of government. In its modern form, the jury theorem predicts that majority decisions are well informed, because they are based upon far more information than possessed by any single individual. On the other hand, it is evident that democratic politicians and policies are not always as good as the jury theorem implies they should be.
Oil price shocks and exchange rate movements

This study investigates the effects of oil price shocks on exchange rate movements in five major oil-exporting countries: Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and Norway. The R2 of the fundamental model doubles in Russia and Brazil, but increases slightly in Canada and Norway when oil prices are added to it. The volatility of exchange rates associated with oil price shocks is significant in Russia, Brazil, and Mexico, but weak in Norway and Canada. It takes much longer for the exchange rate to reach the initial equilibrium level in Russia, Brazil, and Mexico than in Norway and Canada. The asymmetric behavior of exchange rate volatility among countries seems to be related to the efficiency of financial markets rather than to the importance of oil revenues in the economy.
Are Farmers of the Middle Distinctively “Good Stewards”? Evidence from the Missouri Farm Poll, 2006

In this paper we consider the question of whether middle-scale farmers, which we define as producers generating between $100,000 and $250,000 in sales annually, are better agricultural stewards than small and large-scale producers. Our study is motivated by the argument of some commentators that farmers of this class ought to be protected in part because of the unique attitudes and values they possess regarding what constitutes a “good farmer.” We present results of a survey of Missouri farmers designed to assess farmer attitudes and values regarding a variety of indicators of farmer stewardship, such as the most important issues in agriculture, environment, and treatment of farm animals, perspectives on the past and future of agriculture, and ethical behavior. We find little evidence that farmers-of-the-middle are particularly noteworthy in these regards. We do find evidence, however, that middle-scale farmers are more pessimistic and anxious about their role in the future of agriculture.
Critical Interventions: Toward an Expansive Equality Approach to the Doctrine of Good Faith in Contract Law

This article argues that courts should use the doctrine of good faith in contract law to prohibit improper considerations of race in contract formation and performance, and should recognize good faith as a device for eliminating racial subordination that can function beyond the scope of conventional civil rights discourse. Although civil rights laws provide important remedies to victims of discrimination, the elimination of racial subordination cannot remain the exclusive domain of civil rights law. Rather, other substantive areas of law can and should incorporate expansive equality principles to achieve that end. For example, this article demonstrates how the implied obligation of good faith in contract law, applied in the at-will employment context, can employ expansive equality principles to provide alternate remedies to at-will employees who may not be able to obtain civil rights remedies because of the onerous burdens they must satisfy in order to prevail on their civil rights claims. Although courts have used the good faith doctrine largely to achieve economically efficient outcomes, this article further argues that courts need not limit the doctrine's use in that way. By screening the doctrine of good faith through the lenses of critical race and law and market economy theories, this article argues that using the doctrine of good faith to prohibit improper considerations of race in contracting is consistent not only with the equitable principles embodied by the doctrine, but also with the contractual goals of protecting parties' bargains, wealth formation, and the facilitation of exchange transactions.
Wastewater management and Marcellus Shale gas development: trends, drivers, and planning implications.

Extraction of natural gas from tight shale formations has been made possible by recent technological advances, including hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling. Global shale gas development is seen as a potential energy and geopolitical “game-changer.” However, widespread concern exists with respect to possible environmental consequences of this development, particularly impacts on water resources. In the United States, where the most shale gas extraction has occurred, the Marcellus Shale is now the largest natural gas producing play. To date, over 6,000,000 m3 of wastewater has been generated in the process of extracting natural gas from this shale in the state of Pennsylvania (PA) alone. Here we examine wastewater management practices and trends for this shale play through analysis of industry-reported, publicly available data collected from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Oil and Gas Reporting Website. We also analyze the tracking and transport of shale gas liquid waste streams originating in PA using a combination of web-based and GIS approaches. From 2008 to 2011 wastewater reuse increased, POTW use decreased, and data tracking became more complete, while the average distance traveled by wastewater decreased by over 30%. Likely factors influencing these trends include state regulations and policies, along with low natural gas prices. Regional differences in wastewater management are influenced by industrial treatment capacity, as well as proximity to injection disposal capacity. Using lessons from the Marcellus Shale, we suggest that nations, states, and regulatory agencies facing new unconventional shale development recognize that pace and scale of well drilling leads to commensurate wastewater management challenges. We also suggest they implement wastewater reporting and tracking systems, articulate a policy for adapting management to evolving data and development patterns, assess local and regional wastewater treatment infrastructure in terms of capacity and capability, promote well-regulated on-site treatment technologies, and review and update wastewater management regulations and policies.
Debt constraints and equilibrium in infinite horizon economies with incomplete markets

Abstract This paper defines a notion of an equilibrium and a pseudo-equilibrium for infinite horizon economies with incomplete asset markets. This definition generalizes the usual ones for finite horizon economies with incomplete markets and for infinite horizon economies with complete markets. We establish the existence of a pseudo-equilibrium when assets are short-lived and denominated in general commodity bundles; we obtain a true equilibrium when assets are denominated solely in a single numeraire commodity, or in units of account. It seems to us that the notion of an equilibrium we define is a natural and compelling one; as evidence, we show that our notion actually coincides with several other - apparently quite distinct - notions of an equilibrium.
Status Locality on the Web: Implications for Building Focused Collections

Topical locality on the Web is the notion that pages tend to link to other topically similar pages and that such similarity decays rapidly with link distance. This supports meaningful Web browsing and searching by information consumers. It also allows topical Web crawlers, programs that fetch pages by following hyperlinks, to harvest topical subsets of the Web for applications such as those in vertical search and business intelligence. We show that the Web exhibits another property that we call “status locality.” It is based on the notion that pages tend to link to other pages of similar status (importance) and that this status similarity also decays rapidly with link distance. Analogous to topical locality, status locality may also be exploited by Web crawlers. Collections built by such crawlers include pages that are both topically relevant and also important. This capability is crucial because of the large numbers of Web pages addressing even niche topics. The challenge in exploiting status locality wh...
Hypothetical Bias in Dichotomous Choice Contingent Valuation Studies

This paper uses a meta-analysis to explore the relationship between hypothetical bias and the price respondents are asked to pay. For public goods, the results clearly indicate a difference in the price elasticity between hypothetical and actual payment conditions. Since the bias increases for larger dollar amounts, any simple guidelines, such as NOAA's "divide by two" rule of thumb, could be misleading. Future attempts to calibrate contingent valuation responses should reflect this price sensitivity.
Absenteeism under the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act

Employers seeking to discipline employees based on chronic absenteeism or use of leave are constrained by the protections provided to employees under the Family and Medical Leave Act ("FMLA") and the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"). Employees who seek or take leave under the FMLA cannot be disciplined for doing so, but employers may still discipline an employee based on related, unprotected absences. Similarly, the ADA prohibits discrimination based on disability of an otherwise qualified individual, and requires reasonable accommodation. These prohibitions may allow an employer to discipline a disabled employee for absenteeism only if the employee's absences render them unqualified to perform, and leave is not a reasonable accommodation or imposes a substantial burden on that employer. Under both the FMLA and the ADA, it is hard to distinguish discipline based on absences from discriminatory treatment based on leave taken under the FMLA or resulting from a disability. Courts should, however, allow the trier of fact to determine whether the employee's protected activity or status entered into the employer's decision to discipline that employee for absenteeism.
Universal Exceptionalism in International Law

A trope of international law scholarship is that the United States is an �exceptionalist� nation, one that takes a distinctive (frequently hostile, unilateralist, or hypocritical) stance toward international law. However, all major powers are similarly �exceptionalist,� in the sense that they take distinctive approaches to international law that reflect their values and interests. We illustrate these arguments with discussions of China, the European Union, and the United States. Charges of international-law exceptionalism betray an undefended assumption that one particular view of international law (for scholars, usually the European view) is universally valid.
A stochastic approximation method for approximating the efficient frontier of chance-constrained nonlinear programs

We propose a stochastic approximation method for approximating the efficient frontier of chance-constrained nonlinear programs. Our approach is based on a bi-objective viewpoint of chance-constrained programs that seeks solutions on the efficient frontier of optimal objective value versus risk of constraints violation. To this end, we construct a reformulated problem whose objective is to minimize the probability of constraints violation subject to deterministic convex constraints (which includes a bound on the objective function value). We adapt existing smoothing-based approaches for chance-constrained problems to derive a convergent sequence of smooth approximations of our reformulated problem, and apply a projected stochastic subgradient algorithm to solve it. In contrast with exterior sampling-based approaches (such as sample average approximation) that approximate the original chance-constrained program with one having finite support, our proposal converges to stationary solutions of a smooth approximation of the original problem, thereby avoiding poor local solutions that may be an artefact of a fixed sample. Our proposal also includes a tailored implementation of the smoothing-based approach that chooses key algorithmic parameters based on problem data. Computational results on four test problems from the literature indicate that our proposed approach can efficiently determine good approximations of the efficient frontier.
Intermediary Asset Pricing

Abstract We model the dynamics of risk premia during crises in asset markets where the marginal investor is a financial intermediary. Intermediaries face an equity capital constraint. Risk premia r...
Voices Protesting and Affirming: Engaging The Culture of Law

Pursing Walter Brueggemann’s metaphor of religious witness as testimony, and H. Richard Niebuhr’ typology to identify distinct motifs in the engagement of religious cultures their secular counterparts, with the law, the authors argues that Protestants, with all who engage the culture of law, participate in lawmaking out of both memory and hope, reciting the past and telling their story anew, with necessarily diverse voices that give lifeblood to the law. Niebuhr’s motif of Christ transforming culture finds its parallel in the legal impulse toward revolution and radical reform. Niebuhr’s “Christ in culture” motif finds its parallel in the preserving legal impulses such as legislative and bureaucratic action. The witness of Christ against culture in the withdrawal from legal institutions can be seen in the response characterized by conscientious objection and the protest against them in the response characterized by civil disobedience. The witness of Protestant “dualists” is reflected in the religious impulse toward critical advocacy of and engagement in the law.
Administrative and Court Reform in Central and Eastern Europe

The pre‐accession programmes of the European Union and the candidate countries have focused heavily on law reform. Only relatively recently, it was recognised that successful administrative and court reform would be just as necessary in order to achieve the desired goals, namely that the candidates would eventually be able to take on their obligations as new members of the Union. Unfortunately, it has now become evident that it is easier to write new laws than to get them properly applied in every day practice. This article describes a number of cases to illustrate the problem. It shows that administrators and judges in Central and Eastern Europe have significant difficulties with Western working methods, specifically the application of international norms in the national legal order, due process and procedural safeguards, treatment of precedents, resolution of ambiguities and lacunae in the law, etc., which may in turn result in unjust and sometimes absurd application of laws. These difficulties cannot be resolved merely by organising ever more training courses and other theoretical programmes. The author claims that the majority of efforts promoting administrative and court reform applied so far have rendered only meager results. Therefore, additional and more creative measures have to be designed and implemented and have to be continued for years beyond accession of most of these countries to the EU in 2004. Otherwise, rule of law deserving its name will not materialise in the new Member States. The author concludes by offering some ideas based on many years of experience in the region.
Risky Returns: Accounting for Risk in the Federal Budget

There has been a growing consensus among academics, analysts, and policymakers that the official federal budget estimates should reflect the “cost of risk”—the amount that the private market would demand to bear risk. The result would be to add tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in annual costs to the federal budget and, in combination with the budget enforcement laws now in place, make it much more difficult for the federal government to create or expand programs that involve risk—ranging from student lending to home mortgage guarantees to, potentially, broad social insurance programs like unemployment insurance. This Article is the first academic analysis to reject this consensus and argue that including the cost of risk would improperly skew budget estimates. In addressing this issue, this Article explores the purpose of budgeting and concludes that official budget measures are best used as a gauge of the federal government’s fiscal position and not as a means of capturing broader social effects. Including the cost of risk in the official budget estimates confuses cost-benefit analysis with budgeting and would generate incoherence in the official budget measures that would leave them doing little well at all.
Plus Factors and Agreement in Antitrust Law

Plus factors are economic actions and outcomes, above and beyond parallel conduct by oligopolistic firms, that are largely inconsistent with unilateral conduct but largely consistent with explicitly coordinated action. Possible plus factors are typically enumerated without any attempt to distinguish them in terms of a meaningful economic categorization or in terms of their probative strength for inferring collusion. In this Article, we provide a taxonomy for plus factors as well as a methodology for ranking plus factors in terms of their strength for inferring explicit collusion, the strongest of which are referred to as “super plus factors.”
Gary Becker's Contributions to Family and Household Economics

Gary Becker's influence on the economics of the family has been pervasive. His ideas have dominated research in the economics of the family, shaping the tools we use, the questions we ask, and the answers we give. The foundational assumptions of Becker's economic approach to the family–maximizing behavior and equilibrium–as well as such primary auxiliary assumptions as household production and interdependent preferences, are now widely accepted not only by economists but also by family sociologists, demographers, and others who study the family. Yet the interesting and provocative implications of Becker's economic approach to the family do not follow from the foundational assumptions or from the primary auxiliary assumptions. Instead they depend on contested auxiliary assumptions to which neoclassical economics has no commitment and which lack empirical support. This paper discusses the crucial role of auxiliary assumptions in Becker's analysis of the family, first in the context of preferences, then in the context of household production, and finally in the context of family or household collective choice.
Scientific Innovation and Environmental Protection: Some Ethical Considerations

This article explores a fundamental problem that scientific research poses for environmental ethics. Scientific research has brought great gains to our knowledge of the environment, but the motivations for scientific research tend systematically to run counter to environmental protection. While research scientists may have many different individual motivations for their work, economic actors are most likely to pay attention to and fund scientific research agendas that can lead to economically valuable information, which means that the research results must be capable of belonging to some entity. However, environmental harms and benefits are generally not experienced as belonging to anyone, because their diffuseness makes them difficult to reduce to property. The result is a pattern in which scientific research veers first towards products that can be "propertized," and only later, if at all, towards the environmental consequences of such new products. Environmental ethics need to address this research gap. The article explores some ways in which publicly funded research and regulatory programs might do so. It concludes that, in spite of ethical doubts that have been raised about market-based environmental regulation, such programs deserve closer attention; they may have ethical value that can offset ethical qualms, because they can motivate economic actors to channel research toward the environment, and thus help to narrow the research gap as between "propertized" goods and environmental goods.
Creating a Viral Federal Privacy Standard

National identification ("ID") cards appear increasingly inevitable. National ID cards have the potential to be repressive and privacydestroying, but it is also possible to design a system that captures more benefits than costs. Because the United States currently lacks a single, reliable credential, private businesses have trouble authenticating their customers and matching data among distributed databases. This Article argues that the desire for reliable ID creates a window of opportunity for the federal government to strike a bargain: offer private businesses the use of a reliable credential in the form of a national ID card, on the condition that they abide by a privacy standard set and owned by the United States. But the government must act quickly—the Real ID Act of 2005, which sets tip a national standard for the issuance of state driver's licenses, is poised to become effective in May 2008. This law does not provide for privacy protections, and once it goes into effect the opportunity to leverage such protections on a national ID card will be greatly reduced.
Informed trading and price discovery before corporate events

Abstract Stock prices incorporate less news before negative events than positive events. Further, informed agents use less price aggressive (limit) orders before negative events and more price aggressive (market) orders before positive events (buy–sell asymmetry). Motivated by these patterns, we model the execution risk that informed agents impose on each other and relate the asymmetry to costly short selling. When investor base is narrow, security borrowing is difficult, or the magnitude of the event is small, buy–sell asymmetry is pronounced and price discovery before negative events is lower. Overall, we show that the strategies of informed traders influence the process of price formation in financial markets, as predicted by theory.
Stock markets and the real exchange rate: An intertemporal approach

Abstract We study the role of financial markets in the dynamics of the real exchange rate. To do so, we develop a model with stock markets, and we derive a closed-form solution for the real exchange rate. This solution stresses that a country's financial structure affects its real exchange rate, as well as the volatility of this exchange rate. We also contrast other implications of the model with the Balassa–Samuelson effect and with the prediction of traditional Keynesian models.
Optimum currency areas and the European experience

Across nations or regions, the debate on optimum exchange rate cum monetary policies is not yet resolved on three levels. First is the optimum domain of fixed exchange rates versus keeping them flexible. Second is the subordinate debate on whether one needs full monetary union (as in continental Europe) to secure an optimum currency area's internal domain; or, whether virtually fixed exchange rates — where national currencies remain in circulation — can be sufficient. Third is whether a regional grouping of economies with close trade ties (as in East Asia) gain by collectively pegging to an outside currency such as the US dollar. Using an axiomatic approach, which limits the set of cross-country financial claims to what is feasible, I analyse how best to both share and reduce macroeconomic risks on these three levels. JEL classification: F31, F36.
On stationarity and ergodicity of the bilinear model with applications to GARCH models

. We establish sufficient conditions for the bilinear time-series model to be strictly stationary and ergodic in terms of its associated Lyapunov exponent. In two special cases, we verify that the conditions are also necessary. We then use these results to give necessary and sufficient conditions for stationarity of specific generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH) models which can be written as a bilinear model, including linear GARCH, Power GARCH, EGARCH among others. These results generalize the ones found in the studies of, among others, Bougerol and Picard [Journal of Econometrics 52 (1992) 115], Duan [Journal of Econometrics 79 (1997) 97] and Nelson [Econometric Theory 6 (1990) 318]. In many cases, the conditions are weaker than the ones found elsewhere in the literature.
Integrating punishment and efficiency concerns in punitive damages for reckless disregard of risks to others

Justifications for the use of punitive damages refer to deterrence and punishment. After formulating a social welfare function that incorporates both economic efficiency and a desire for retribution, optimal punitive damages are considered to balance concerns for economic efficiency and for retribution. This optimal balancing is considered where compensatory damages alone provide the correct level of deterrence, allowing the ideal retribution to vary with the level of wealth and with the level of precaution. The analysis is extended to situations where some accidents do not result in liability.
On completeness of historical relational query languages

Numerous proposals for extending the relational data model to incorporate the temporal dimension of data have appeared in the past several years. These proposals have differed considerably in the way that the temporal dimension has been incorporated both into the structure of the extended relations of these temporal models and into the extended relational algebra or calculus that they define. Because of these differences, it has been difficult to compare the proposed models and to make judgments as to which of them might in some sense be equivalent or even better. In this paper we define temporally grouped and temporally ungrouped historical data models and propose two notions of historical relational completeness, analogous to Codd's notion of relational completeness, one for each type of model. We show that the temporally ungrouped models are less expressive than the grouped models, but demonstrate a technique for extending the ungrouped models with a grouping mechanism to capture the additional semantic power of temporal grouping. For the ungrouped models, we define three different languages, a logic with explicit reference to time, a temporal logic, and a temporal algebra, and motivate our choice for the first of these as the basis for completeness for these models. For the grouped models, we define a many-sorted logic with variables over ordinary values, historical values, and times. Finally, we demonstrate the equivalence of this grouped calculus and the ungrouped calculus extended with a grouping mechanism. We believe the classification of historical data models into grouped and ungrouped models provides a useful framework for the comparison of models in the literature, and furthermore, the exposition of equivalent languages for each type provides reasonable standards for common, and minimal, notions of historical relational completeness.
Competition, Auctions & Negotiations in REIT Takeovers

The lack of hostile takeovers and relatively modest wealth gains associated with REIT mergers motivate two fundamental yet previously unexplored questions: how competitive are REIT takeovers, and how exactly does a REIT sell itself to another firm? This paper examines these questions using hand-collected data from SEC merger filings. Four primary findings emerge from this study. First, REITs most often utilize a sales process resembling an auction, where an average of 19 potential buyers are contacted. Second, REIT mergers are on average just as competitive, or more so, as those in other industries. Third, the market for corporate control for REITs is more active than previously thought. Fourth, failure to account for publicly available signals that a REIT is for sale (which typically occur several months in advance prior to the official public merger announcement) results in omitting approximately one third of the total shareholder wealth effect produced by REIT mergers.
Benefits and costs of newer drugs: an update

In previous work, we found strong evidence to support the hypothesis that the replacement of older drugs by new drugs resulted in reductions in total medical expenditures. In this study, we update and extend our previous study of the effect of drug age—years since FDA approval—on total medical expenditure, in several respects: (1) the unit of analysis is a medical condition, rather than a prescription; (2) the sample is much larger, including data for 3 years, rather than 1 year; (3) we obtain estimates for the Medicare population as well as for the entire population; and (4) within the Medicare population, we examine the effect of drug age on Medicare expenditure as well as on expenditure by all payers. The estimates indicate that, in the entire population, a reduction in the age of drugs utilized reduces non-drug expenditure 7.2 times as much as it increases drug expenditure. For example, reducing the mean age of drugs used to treat a condition from 15 years to 5.5 years is estimated to increase prescription drug spending by $18 but reduce other medical spending by $129, yielding a $111 net reduction in total health spending. Most of the savings are due to reductions in hospital expenditure ($80) and in physician office-visit expenditures ($24). In the Medicare population, a reduction in the age of drugs utilized reduces non-drug expenditure by all payers (i.e. Medicare and various forms of Medicare supplemental insurance, Medicare for dually eligible individuals and Medicare beneficiaries' out of pocket payments) 8.3 times as much as it increases drug expenditure; it reduces Medicare non-drug expenditure 6.0 times as much as it increases drug expenditure. About two-thirds of the non-drug Medicare cost reduction is due to reduced hospital costs. The remaining third is approximately evenly divided between reduced Medicare home health care cost and reduced Medicare office-visit cost. We also show that Medicare enrollees with private prescription drug coverage tend to use newer drugs than those without such coverage: the mean age of drugs used by Medicare enrollees with private Rx insurance is about 9% lower than the mean age of drugs used by Medicare enrollees without either private or public Rx insurance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Concordance models of reionization: implications for faint galaxies and escape fraction evolution

Recent observations have constrained the galaxy ultraviolet (UV) luminosity function up to z∼ 10. However, these observations alone allow for a wide range of reionization scenarios due to uncertainties in the abundance of faint galaxies and the escape fraction of ionizing photons. We show that requiring continuity with post-reionization (z < 6) measurements, where the Lyα forest provides a complete probe of the cosmological emissivity of ionizing photons, significantly reduces the permitted parameter space. Models that are simultaneously consistent with the measured UV luminosity function, the Thomson optical depth to the microwave background and the Lyα forest data require either (1) extrapolation of the galaxy luminosity function down to very faint UV magnitudes Mlim∼−10, corresponding roughly to the UV background suppression scale; (2) an increase of the escape fraction by a factor ≳10 from z= 4 (where the best fit is 4 per cent) to 9; or (3) more likely, a hybrid solution in which undetected galaxies contribute significantly and the escape fraction increases more modestly. Models in which star formation is strongly suppressed in low-mass, reionization-epoch haloes of mass up to Mh∼ 1010 M⊙ (e.g. owing to a metallicity dependence) are only allowed for extreme assumptions for the redshift evolution of the escape fraction. However, variants of such models in which the suppression mass is reduced (e.g. assuming an earlier or higher metallicity floor) are in better agreement with the data. Interestingly, concordance scenarios satisfying the available data predict a consistent redshift of 50 per cent ionized fraction zreion(50 per cent) ∼ 10. On the other hand, the duration of reionization is sensitive to the relative contribution of bright versus faint galaxies, with scenarios dominated by faint galaxies predicting a more extended reionization event. Scenarios relying too heavily on high-redshift dwarfs are disfavoured by kinetic Sunyaev–Zeldovich measurements, which prefer a short reionization history.
The Consequences to Managers for Financial Misrepresentation

We track the fortunes of all 2,206 individuals identified as responsible parties for all 788 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) enforcement actions for financial misrepresentation from January 1, 1978 through September 30, 2006. A total of 93 % lose their jobs by the end of the regulatory enforcement period. Most are explicitly fired. The likelihood of ouster increases with the cost of the misconduct to shareholders and the quality of the firm’s governance. Culpable managers also bear substantial financial losses through restrictions on their future employment, their shareholdings in the firm, and SEC fines. A sizeable minority (28 %) face criminal charges and penalties, including jail sentences that average 4.3 years. These results indicate that the individual perpetrators of financial misconduct face significant disciplinary action.
Technology Adaptation in E-commerce:: Key Determinants of Virtual Stores Acceptance

Abstract The emergence of the virtual store has paved the way for the diffusion of E-commerce. Understanding key determinants for successful virtual stores will provide important theoretical and practical implications for developing E-commerce strategies. Expanding the Technology Acceptance Model and Innovation Diffusion Theory, we propose a theoretical model for studying a wide array of issues involved in E-commerce strategies. We test the model using a Web-based survey, and identify factors that have impacted acceptance of virtual store, including product offerings, information richness, usability of storefront, perceived trust and perceived service quality. We discuss the implications for research and practice on how to remain competitive in the volatile electronic marketplace.
Linear symplectomorphisms as R-Lagrangian subspaces

The graph of a real symplectic linear transformation is an R-Lagrangian subspace of a complex symplectic vector space. The restriction of the complex symplectic form is thus purely imaginary and may be expressed in terms of the generating function of the transformation. We provide explicit formulas; moreover, as an application, we give an explicit general formula for the metaplectic representation of the real symplectic group.