cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
BEYOND THE FLIGHT FROM CONSTITUTIONAL LEGALISM: RETHINKING THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL POLICY POST-CHARLOTTETOWN

A decade after the demise of the Charlottetown Accord in 1992, 1 one of the most visible features of federal-provincial relations is the replacement of constitutional with non-constitutional policy instruments to secure many of the same ends — what I term the “flight from constitutional legalism.” Instead of constitutional amendments, the instrument of choice is the non-legal, intergovernmental accord. The leading examples are the Social Union Framework Agreement 2 and the Agreement on Internal Trade , 3 which in differing levels of detail set out both a normative framework and an institutional architecture to manage the Social Union and the Economic Union, respectively.
The Burden of Social Proof: Shared Thresholds and Social Influence

Social influence rises with the number of influence sources, but the proposed relationship varies across theories, situations, and research paradigms. To clarify this relationship, I argue that people share some sense of where the “burden of social proof” lies in situations where opinions or choices are in conflict. This suggests a family of models sharing 2 key parameters, one corresponding to the location of the influence threshold, and the other reflecting its clarity—a factor that explains why discrete “tipping points” are not observed more frequently. The plausibility and implications of this account are examined using Monte Carlo and cellular automata simulations and the relative fit of competing models across classic data sets in the conformity, group deliberation, and social diffusion literatures.
Application of Default Rules to Address Financial Conflicts of Interest in Academic Medical Centers

A recent report issued from the Institute of Medicine contains an extensive analysis of financial conflicts of interest (FCOIs) in biomedical science. 1 In brief, an FCOI exists when a profit-seeking motive either unduly influences or appears to influence an academic scientist’s primary obligations. 2 The cornerstone of current policy to address FCOIs at academic medical centers (AMCs) is disclosure; however, disclosure does not appear to appropriately regulate, manage, or eliminate FCOIs. Interestingly, the regulation of FCOIs for extramural scientists (those who conduct research at AMCs) is quite different than the rules that apply to intramural scientists (those who conduct research within the National Institutes of Health (NIH)). Policies that regulate extramural scientists tend to focus on disclosure, either to the university or to the granting agency that is funding the research in a particular laboratory. The policies that govern intramural scientists contain defined restrictions on the types of relationships that the government scientists can have with the private sector. Although extramural and intramural scientists exist in somewhat different environments, an analysis of the impact of the NIH guidelines for intramural scientists over the past several years may provide valuable information for the types of rules that could be applied to extramural scientists to address FCOIs at medical schools. Medical schools struggle to regulate this area, and the application of a set of default rules applied to all AMCs may assist in decreasing or eliminating the detrimental impact of FCOIs. 3
Entrepreneurial finance: Banks versus venture capital.

Abstract We analyze how entrepreneurial firms choose between two funding institution: banks, which monitor less intensively and face liquidity demands from their own investors, and venture capitalists, who can monitor more intensively but face a higher cost of capital because of the liquidity constraints that they impose on their own investors. Because the firm's manager prefers continuing the firm over liquidating it and aggressive (risky) continuation strategies over conservative (safe) continuation strategies, the institution must monitor the firm and exercise some control over its decisions. Bank finance takes the form of debt, whereas venture capital finance often resembles convertible debt. Venture capital finance is optimal only when the aggressive continuation strategy is not too profitable, ex ante; the uncertainty associated with the risky continuation strategy (strategic uncertainty) is high; and the firm's cash flow distribution is highly risky and positively skewed, with low probability of success, low liquidation value, and high returns if successful. A decrease in venture capitalists’ cost of capital encourages firms to switch from safe strategies and bank finance to riskier strategies and venture capital finance, increasing the average risk of firms in the economy.
Nonconvex gradient flow in the Wasserstein metric and applications to constrained nonlocal interactions

Over the past fifteen years, the theory of Wasserstein gradient flows of convex (or, more generally, semiconvex) energies has led to advances in several areas of partial differential equations and analysis. In this work, we extend the well-posedness theory for Wasserstein gradient flows to energies satisfying a more general criterion for uniqueness, motivated by the Osgood criterion for ordinary differential equations. We also prove the first quantitative estimates on convergence of the discrete gradient flow or "JKO scheme" outside of the semiconvex case. We conclude by applying these results to study the well-posedness of constrained nonlocal interaction energies, which have arisen in recent work on biological chemotaxis and congested aggregation.
Keep Your Money: Let the West Pay for its Own Water Projects

The question posed here is what role the federal government should play in responding to the western water crisis, in light of the changes in the social and political landscape that have occurred in the last decade. My thesis is that solutions to water needs that are funded locally are more likely to be sustainable than those produced through national appropriations. My thinking is affected by the work I did on a Presidential commission that recommended sustainability be the cornerstone of western water policy.
A Three-Tiered Public Policy Approach to Copyright Misuse in the Context of Tying Arrangements

Over two decades since the copyright misuse doctrine was first recognized in Lasercomb America, Inc. v. Reynolds, a uniform approach for determining whether a specific behavior constitutes misuse still does not exist. Circuit courts have commonly applied two competing approaches to the misuse analysis. One approach centers on the public policy underlying copyrights; the other approach centers on antitrust principles. This Note explores relevant jurisprudence and elucidates the shortfalls of each approach. It then proposes a compromise that underscores the interplay between copyright and antitrust laws. The proposed resolution aims to provide a much-needed uniform misuse analysis that does not overlook the important policies underlying copyright law, or disregard antitrust principles relevant in the context of tying arrangements.
Why Retailers Cluster: An Agent Model of Location Choice on Supply Chains

University of Minnesota M.S. thesis. March 2010. Major: Civil Engineering. Civil Engineering. Advisor: David M. Levinson. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 36 pages. Ill. (some col.)
Reconciling the capability approach and the ICF: A response

In Reconciling the Capability Approach and the ICF, Jerome Bickenbach (2014) asks for caution in the “head-to-head comparison” of the capability approach and the International Classification of Functioning, Health and Disability (ICF). Bickenbach’s main argument is that the ICF has been misunderstood. I start with what the ICF is and how it has been used so far, then take up Bickenbach’s reactions to the major criticisms of the ICF that he identifies in the capability approach literature. Finally, I react to Bickenback’s proposal for a reconciliation.
Marriage and Consumption Insurance: What's Love Got to Do with It?

When markets are incomplete, individuals may choose to marry to diversify their labor income risk. Love, however, can complicate the picture. If love is fleeting or the resolution of agents’ income uncertainty occurs predominantly later in life, then marriages with good economic matches last longer. In contrast, if love is persistent and the resolution of uncertainty to agents’ income occurs early, then marriages with good economic matches are more likely to be caught short with too little love to save a marriage. Consequently, once married, the partners will be more likely to divorce. Evidence is provided to distinguish between these alternative scenarios.
Financial accounting information, organizational complexity and corporate governance systems

Abstract We posit that limited transparency of firms’ operations to outside investors increases demands on governance systems to alleviate moral hazard problems. We investigate how ownership concentration, directors’ and executive's incentives, and board structure vary with: (1) earnings timeliness, and (2) organizational complexity measured as geographic and/or product line diversification. We find that ownership concentration, directors’ and executives’ equity-based incentives, and outside directors’ reputations vary inversely with earnings timeliness, and that ownership concentration, and directors’ equity-based incentives increase with firm complexity. However, board size and the percentage of inside directors do not vary significantly with earnings timeliness or firm complexity.
Quality Control in Economics

This paper analyzes the editorial screening process in economics, employing data from the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics. We examine three issues: the decline of critical commentary in economics, the increased referencing behavior of authors, and the decline in the citation of economic research. We find that there is empirical evidence in favor of the idea that these trends are mostly due to more ex ante investment by authors in their papers and less need for ex post quality control. We appreciate helpful comments received from William Shughart, John Sophocleus, and the editors of Kyklos. The usual caveat applies.
Hiding the Statute in Plain View: University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar

The Supreme Court decided in University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar that the “a motivating factor” level of proof to establish liability set forth in §§ 703(m) and the same-decision defense to full remedies of 706(g)(2)(B) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not apply to claims of retaliation brought pursuant to § 704(a). Instead, Title VII retaliation must be the “but-for” cause of the adverse action plaintiff challenges. The obvious impact of Nassar is that it makes it more difficult for plaintiffs to prove retaliation. In some ways, Nassar is a surprise because the Court had consistently held for plaintiffs in a number of retaliation cases. In other ways, it was not a surprise that the Court would move its retaliation jurisprudence more in line with its recent pro-employer, anti-civil rights interpretation of statutes typified by its decision in Gross v. FBL Financial, Inc. To reach its desired decision, the Court had to forego the plain meaning approach to statutory interpretation that in Gross it said was to be used. The Court reached its conclusion by hiding the terms and the structure of Title VII in plain sight while replacing the actual terms of the statute with terms of its own creation. Further, the majority of the Court was captivated by a hypothetical presented by counsel for the employer of employees gaming retaliation law, a fact pattern that does not appear to have happened in any reported case, with that captivation indicative of the majority’s perspective favoring employers over employees in its recent antidiscrimination decisions.
Discontinuous extraction of a nonrenewable resource

Abstract This paper examines the sequence of optimal extraction of nonrenewable resources in the presence of multiple demands. We provide conditions under which extraction of a nonrenewable resource may be discontinuous over the course of its depletion.
Coercive capacity and the durability of the Chinese communist state

Abstract Why has the Chinese communist state remained so durable in an age of democratization? Contrary to existing theories, this article argues that the strong state coercive capacity has survived the authoritarian rule in China. We demonstrate that the Chinese Communist Party has taken deliberate actions to enhance the cohesion of its coercive organizations—the police, in particular—by distributing “spoils of public office” to police chiefs. In addition, the state has extended the scope of its coercion by increasing police funding in localities where the state sector loses control of the population. We use and rely on mixed methods to test this theory.
On Deconvolution as a First Stage Nonparametric Estimator

We reconsider Taupin's (2001) Integrated Nonlinear Regression (INLR) estimator for a nonlinear regression with a mismeasured covariate. We find that if we restrict the distribution of the measurement error to a class of distributions with restricted support, then much weaker smoothness assumptions than hers suffice to ensure consistency of the estimator. In addition, we show that the INLR estimator remains consistent under these weaker smoothness assumptions if the support of the measurement error distribution expands with the sample size. In that case the estimator remains also asymptotically normal with a rate of convergence that is arbitrarily close to . Our results show that deconvolution can be used in a nonparametric first step without imposing restrictive smoothness assumptions on the parametric model.
A Stochastic Formulation of the Bass Model of New-Product Diffusion

For a large variety of new products, the Bass Model (BM) describes the empirical cumulative-adoptions curve extremely well. The BM postulates that the trajectory of cumulative adoptions of a new product follows a deterministic function whose instantaneous growth rate depends on two parameters, one of which captures an individual's intrinsic tendency to purchase, independent of the number of previous adopters, and the other captures a positive force of influence on an individual by previous adopters. In this paper, we formulate a stochastic version of the BM, which we call the Stochastic Bass Model (SBM), where the trajectory of cumulative number of adoptions is governed by a pure birth process. We show that with an appropriately-chosen set of birth rates, the fractions of individuals who have adopted the product by time t in a family of SBMs indexed by the size of the target population converge in probability to the deterministic fraction in a corresponding BM, when the population size approaches infinity. The formulation therefore supports and expands the BM by allowing stochastic trajectories.
Avoiding Litigation: The Benefits of Employment Contracts and Arbitration

This research reviews the current environment in employment disputes. In an ever-increasing litigious era where it is not uncommon to see six-figure settlements, the entrepreneur needs to examine the possible legal options in the event of a lawsuit involving current or former employees. While many employment-oriented lawsuits are settled through litigation, this is a time-consuming and costly process. Indeed, due to its adversarial nature, dispute resolution through litigation can take years to settle. In contrast, one business strategy that is growing in popularity includes the use of employment contracts specifying arbitration in dispute resolution. Because arbitration is "almost entirely separate from the legal system " (Siegel, Sect. 586), it offers many advantages to both employers and employees.
Modernity, Religion, and the Public Sphere

For many decades, Americans have openly disagreed about the role that religion should play in public debate. Liberals typically maintain that religion should not be an important element in public discussion about our communal goals. Conservatives insist that religion should play an unencumbered role in public life. This article reviews two works: Steven H. Shiffrin, "The Religious Left and Church-State Relations", and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, "Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the Constitution", both of which challenge this liberal-conservative dichotomy. They suggest that we have reached this liberal-conservative impasse partly because of the forces animating modernity. Late-stage modernists generally have insisted that the only path to knowledge lay in experience: the empirical study of external reality. By questioning modernity and its implications, the authors encourage readers to reconsider some basic notions of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. While each author approaches these topics in unique ways, they agree on a crucial point: as a practical matter, religion cannot be banned from the public sphere.
Preserving the Rule of Law in America's Jails and Prisons: The Case for Amending the Prison Litigation Reform Act

Prisons and jails pose a significant challenge to the rule of law within American boundaries. As a nation, we are committed to constitutional regulation of governmental treatment of even those who have broken society’s rules. And accordingly, most of our prisons and jails are run by committed professionals who care about prisoner welfare and constitutional compliance. At the same time, for prisons — closed institutions holding an ever-growing disempowered population — most of the methods by which we, as a polity, foster government accountability and equality among citizens are unavailable or at least not currently practiced. In the absence of other levers by which these ordinary norms can be encouraged, lawsuits, which bring judicial scrutiny behind bars, and which promote or even compel constitutional compliance, accordingly take on an outsize importance. Over the past twelve years, it has become apparent that a number of provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”) cast shadows of constitutional immunity, contravening our core commitment to constitutional governance. The PLRA’s obstacles to meritorious lawsuits are undermining the rule of law in our prisons and jails, granting the government near-impunity to violate the rights of prisoners without fear of consequences.
Forecasting inflation using commodity price aggregates

Abstract This paper shows that for five small commodity-exporting countries that have adopted inflation targeting monetary policies, world commodity price aggregates have predictive power for their CPI and PPI inflation, particularly once possible structural breaks are taken into account. This conclusion is robust to using either disaggregated or aggregated commodity price indexes (although the former perform better), the currency denomination of the commodity prices, and to using mixed-frequency data. In pseudo out-of-sample forecasting, commodity indexes outperform the random walk and AR(1) processes, although the improvements over the latter are sometimes modest.
Apprendi after Miller and Graham : How the Supreme Court's Recent Jurisprudence on Juveniles Prohibits the Use of Juvenile Adjudications as Mandatory "Sentencing Enhancements"

Part I will introduce Supreme Court jurisprudence on the evolution of the juvenile court system and the extension of some procedural protections to juvenile delinquency proceedings. Part II will explain Apprendi v. New Jersey and the Court’s recognition of a “conviction exception.” Part III will discuss how federal courts have treated juvenile adjudications in light of the Apprendi exception. Part IV will discuss recent Supreme Court cases dealing with juveniles as a class distinguishable from adults, specifically the most recent cases of Miller v. Alabama and Graham v. Florida. Finally, in Part V, this note will address how Miller v. Alabama and Graham v. Florida reflect a change in the Court’s perception of juveniles. It advances the argument that, regardless of whether a juvenile adjudication was obtained by a jury, the Court’s view of juveniles as a class fundamentally distinct from adults prohibits equating juvenile adjudications with adult convictions under Apprendi.
Bioterrorism Response and IT Strategies

Most analyses of possible future bioterrorism events predict they may be similar to the anthrax events of 2001. Specifically: a limited population of individuals may experience morbidity or mortality, but the concern, panic, and worry stirred up by the threat will catch the attention of the entire nation. If public health IT is to help with bioterrorism preparedness, it needs to not only address mitigation of civilian illnesses and deaths, but also help to manage individual and societal fears springing from the real or threatened occurrence of such an event.
Productivity revolutions and science driven growth

Abstract This paper presents a simple model of growth over the very long run that distinguishes between scientific knowledge and technology. Making this distinction highlights the importance of the scientific revolution to the emergence of modern sustained economic growth.
Biennial Budgeting in the Federal Government

This article examines the possible outcomes of changing from the current annual budget review to biennial budgeting. It looks at the experience of various states and its application to the federal level. It explores all of the supposed benefits, including less time spent on budgeting issues, more accurate budget projections, reduction of congressional workload and increased congressional oversight and, for the president's point of view, increased power of the executive branch. Concluding on a cautious note, the article offers some plausible applications of biennial budgeting to the national budget.
Metaphor making meaning: Dickinson's conceptual universe

Abstract If meaning, understanding, and reasoning in human language are achieved through bodily experience and figurative processes, as recent work in cognitive linguistics has argued, then the traditional notion of a separation in kind between ordinary discourse and poetic language no longer holds. Metaphor making, under this view, is not peripheral but central to our reasoning processes, not unique to poetical thinking but that which is shared by both ordinary discourse and the language of poetry. Poets, then, in their metaphor making, serve as arbiters of and commentators on the way humans understand and interpret their world. Much of Dickinson's poetry is structured by the extent to which she rejected the dominant metaphor of her religious environment, that of life is a journey through time , and replaced it with a metaphor more in accordance with the latest scientific discoveries of her day, that of life is a voyage in space . Examples from her poems show how the schemas of path and cycle and the air is sea image metaphor contribute to a coherent and consistent patterning that at the same time reflects a physically embodied world and creates Dickinson's conceptual universe.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENTREPRENEUR PSYCHOLOGICAL CAPITAL AND NEW VENTURE PERFORMANCE

The current study investigated the relationship between the psychological capital of entrepreneurs and the performance of their new ventures (i.e., revenue and employment growth). Entrepreneurs’ psychological capital was found to explain a significant amount of variance in new venture performance, above and beyond measures of financial capital, human capital and social capital. Further, the relationship between psychological capital and new venture performance was found to be enhanced by environmental dynamism, such that the relationship is most positive when dynamism is high, as opposed to low.
Distance Still Matters: Evidence from Municipal Bond Underwriting

Using a sample of municipal bond offerings, I find that “local” investment banks have substantial comparative and absolute advantages over nonlocal counterparts--locals charge lower fees and sell bonds at lower yields. Local investment banks’ strongest comparative advantage is at underwriting bonds with higher credit risk and bonds not rated by rating agencies. These findings suggest that high-risk bonds and nonrated bonds are more difficult to evaluate and market, and that investment banks with a local presence are better able to assess “soft” information and place difficult bond issues.
The Advice Puzzle: An Experimental Study of Social Learning Where Words Speak Louder Than Actions

This paper studies how individuals learn by observing the behavior of predecessors as well as from their advice. What we find is a truly puzzling result that we call the advice paradox. This paradox can be stated as follows: subjects in a laboratory social learning situation played with and without advice appear to be more willing to follow the advice given to them by their predecessor than to copy their action, despite the fact that both pieces of information are equally informative in equilibrium. The consequence of this advice paradox is that in experiments with advice subjects tend to herd more than they do in experiments where they can only view their predecessor’s action. Remarkably, these herds tend to select the correct action and, hence, advice tends to be efficiency increasing when compared to experiments where subjects can only observe their predecessor’s action. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C91,C92, D8.
The Upside of Losing

Conventional understanding in legal reform communities is that time and resources are best directed toward legal disputes that have the highest chance of success and that litigation is to be avoided if it is likely to establish or strengthen unfavorable precedent. Contrary to this accepted wisdom, this Essay analyzes the strategic decisions of litigation entrepreneurs who pursue litigation with the awareness that losing the case can provide substantial benefits. Unfavorable litigation outcomes can be uniquely salient and powerful in highlighting the misfortunes of individuals under prevailing law, while presenting a broader narrative about the current failure of the legal status quo. The resulting public backlash may slow down legislative trends and can even prompt legislative initiatives that reverse the unfavorable judicial decisions or induce broader reform. This analysis revises some conventional wisdom about litigation. First, while it is traditionally understood that legal reform activists must persuade courts to recognize unattended rights or to confirm new rights and activist positions, the analysis here suggests that social changes can be obtained in litigation without requiring the involvement of courts as policymakers. Moreover, passive courts and judicial deference in fact strengthen the mobilizing effect of litigation by clearly shifting the burden to legislators and their constituents. Second, the dynamics of successful defeat in litigation shed new light on the costs and benefits involved with litigation. In the proposed framework, a plaintiff's decision to litigate rests not simply on the probability of success but also on a tradeoff between the potential costs of a negative precedent and the political benefits obtained in defeat. Third, the mobilizing potential of adverse court decisions presents a fascinating conflict between the immediate interests of the actual plaintiff and of the litigation entrepreneur or intermediary that supports the litigation with an eye on the underlying long-term goals of a social cause. Finally, the potential benefits of adverse outcomes refute some of the criticisms about the limitations and downsides of pursuing social change through courts.
Is There a Politically Optimal Level of Judicial Independence

Independent courts render current policy more durable (by raising the cost of future policy changes) but may also engage in policy-making of their own. This paper asks: Is there an optimal level of judicial independence from the perspective of incumbent officials in the other branches? To answer that question, the paper develops a model of strategic institutional choice, and tests it on the judicial institutions of the American states. Consistent with the model's predictions, the most independenceenhancing institutions are found where political competition between rival parties is tightest and differences between party platforms are largest.
Partisan Agenda Control and the Dimensionality of Congress

Recent studies have questioned the familiar characterization of Congress as unidimensional. We argue that agenda control, orchestrated through the House Rules Committee and other techniques, can make multidimensional congresses appear more unidimensional. We evaluate this argument by examining the relationship between measures of unidimensionality and various measures of party control for the House of Representatives from 1875 to 1997, at both the roll-call level and congress level. Our findings contribute to an expanding literature explaining why a single dimension could explain most of the variance in voting data, even if latent ideology is multidimensional.
The Missing Monitor in Corporate Governance: The Directors' & Officers' Liability Insurer

This article reports the results of empirical research on the monitoring role of directors’ and officers’ liability insurance (DO second, monitoring provides benefits to shareholders who might not otherwise need the risk distribution that DO and third, the “bonding” provided by risk distribution gives insurers a comparative advantage in monitoring. Nevertheless, we find that D&O insurers neither monitor corporate governance during the life of the insurance contract nor manage litigation defense costs once claims arise. Our findings raise significant questions about the value of D&O insurance for shareholders as well as the deterrent effect of corporate and securities liability. After exploring various explanations for these findings, we conclude that the absence of monitoring is due, at least in part, to the agency problem in the corporate context. Our analysis thus suggests that the existing form of corporate D&O insurance both results from and contributes to the relatively weak constraints on corporate managers. Corporate managers buy D&O coverage for self-serving reasons, and the coverage itself, because it does not control moral hazard, reduces the extent to which shareholder litigation aligns managers’ and shareholders’ incentives.
Time trends and determinants of the method of payment in M&As

Abstract We examine the time trends and determinants of the method of payment in M&As spanning four decades. The fraction of mixed payments tripled from about 10% before the turn of the century to 30% in the new century, while the fraction of stock (cash) payments peaked (bottomed out) in the late 1990s but has since plunged (surged). We can explain a portion, but not all, of these trends using explanatory variables linked to adverse selection theory, taxation, and contracting costs. We also show that mixed payments are not merely hybrids between cash and stock payments, but have unique determinants and features.
Laptop Searches at the United States Borders and the Border Search Exception to the Fourth Amendment

The border search exception to the Fourth Amendment allows broad discretion for United States customs officers to search the belongings of incoming and outgoing international passengers and their luggage. Although courts typically weigh the national security interest in the search against the privacy invasion caused by a potentially intrusive search,, most border searches are constitutional if they are either routine or preceded by reasonable suspicion. Border searches of passengers' laptop computers, including hardware, software, and any external storage devices, pose a constitutional issue. This Note argues that laptop searches not preceded by reasonable suspicion are intrusive because the search may invade upon personal, proprietary, or confidential information that a passenger expects to be kept private, even at the border. Furthermore, this Note argues that even those laptop searches that are preceded by reasonable suspicion may not be constitutional, because border searches must be limited in scope to that which may either confirm or disprove the preceding suspicion.
New equation of nonrelativistic physics and theory of dark matter

Two infinite sets of Galilean invariant equations are derived using the irreducible representations of the orthochronous extended Galilean group. It is shown that one set contains the Schrodinger e...
Extinction Curves, Distances, and Clumpiness of Diffuse Interstellar Dust Clouds

We present CCD photometry in UBVRI of several thousand Galactic field stars in four large (>1 deg2) regions centered on diffuse interstellar dust clouds, commonly referred to as "cirrus" clouds (with optical depth AV less than unity). Our goal in studying these stars is to investigate the properties of the cirrus clouds. A comparison of the observed stellar surface density between on-cloud and off-cloud regions as a function of apparent magnitude in each of the five bands effectively yields a measure of the extinction through each cloud. For two of the cirrus clouds, this method is used to derive UBVRI star-count–based extinction curves, and U-band counts are used to place constraints on the cloud distance. The color distribution of stars and their location in (U-B, B-V) and (B-V, V-I) color-color space are analyzed in order to determine the amount of selective extinction (reddening) caused by the cirrus. The color excesses, Aλ-AV, derived from stellar color histogram offsets for the four clouds, are better fitted by a reddening law that rises steeply toward short wavelengths [RV ≡ AV/E(B - V) 2] than by the standard law (RV = 3.1). This may be indicative of a higher than average abundance of small dust grains relative to larger grains in diffuse cirrus clouds. The shape of the count-based effective extinction curve and a comparison of different estimates of the dust optical depth (extinction optical depth derived from background star counts/colors; emission optical depth derived from far infrared measurements) are used to measure the degree of clumpiness in clouds. The set of techniques explored in this paper can be readily adapted to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data set in order to carry out a systematic, large-scale study of cirrus clouds.
A Rarefaction-Based Extension of the LDM for Testing Presence-Absence Associations in the Microbiome

Motivation Many methods for testing association between the microbiome and covariates of interest (e.g., clinical outcomes, environmental factors) assume that these associations are driven by changes in the relative abundance of taxa. However, these associations may also result from changes in which taxa are present and which are absent. Analyses of such presence-absence associations face a unique challenge: confounding by library size (total sample read count), which occurs when library size is associated with covariates in the analysis. It is known that rarefaction (subsampling to a common library size) controls this bias, but at the potential cost of information loss as well as the introduction of a stochastic component into the analysis. Currently, there is a need for robust and efficient methods for testing presence-absence associations in the presence of such confounding, both at the community level and at the individual-taxon level, that avoid the drawbacks of rarefaction. Results We have previously developed the linear decomposition model (LDM) that unifies the community-level and taxon-level tests into one framework. Here we present an extension of the LDM for testing presence-absence associations. The extended LDM is a non-stochastic approach that repeatedly applies the LDM to all rarefied taxa count tables, averages the residual sum-of-squares (RSS) terms over the rarefaction replicates, and then forms an F-statistic based on these average RSS terms. We show that this approach compares favorably to averaging the F-statistic from R rarefaction replicates, which can only be calculated stochastically. The flexible nature of the LDM allows discrete or continuous traits or interactions to be tested while allowing confounding covariates to be adjusted for. Our simulations indicate that our proposed method is robust to any systematic differences in library size and has better power than alternative approaches. We illustrate our method using an analysis of data on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in which cases have systematically smaller library sizes than controls. Availability The R package LDM is available on GitHub at https://github.com/yijuanhu/LDM in formats appropriate for Macintosh or Windows. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Federal Sentencing in the States: Some Thoughts on Federal Grants and State Imprisonment

As the movement to reduce the outsized scale of U.S. incarceration rates gains momentum, there has been increased attention on what federal sentencing reform can accomplish. Since nearly ninety percent of prisoners are held in state, not federal, institutions, an important aspect of federal reform should be trying to alter how the states behave. Criminal justice, however, is a distinctly state and local job over which the federal government has next to no direct control.
"3rd of tha Month": Do Social Security Recipients Smooth Consumption Between Checks?

This paper examines the response of consumption expenditures to the monthly receipt of Social Security checks. Since the amount and arrival date of these checks are known to the recipients, the basic Life-Cycle/Permanent Income Hypothesis (LCPIH) predicts that consumption should not respond to the receipt of these checks. Using daily diary data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, this paper finds evidence that both the dollar amount and probability of expenditures increase immediately following the receipt of this check. Most relevant to testing the LCPIH, categories of instantaneous consumption expenditure such as food away from home increase on the check arrival date. The response is found primarily amongst households for whom Social Security is the primary source of income. However, the magnitude of the estimated responses are relatively small and do not suggest that the utility losses are large from this non-smoothing behavior.
Night landings on an aircraft carrier: hospital mergers and antitrust law.

Justice Stewart’s 1966 dictum about the inevitability of government success in challenging mergers under Section 7 of the Clayton Act held true for another fifteen years or so. In the early 1980s, however, federal enforcement agencies, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), began to find the federal courts less hospitable to antitrust merger cases as more sophisticated economic inquiries and changing proof burdens complicated the task of identifying anticompetitive mergers. Indeed, since the early 1980s, the government has lost more litigated merger cases than it has won and has come under criticism from some quarters for becoming gun shy and not adequately policing the wave of consolidations that have occurred over the past decade. Hospital mergers, however, are a different story. Until two years ago, the government rode a streak of important victories in federal courts and FTC administrative proceedings, and had obtained consent decrees from scores of hospitals that had announced plans to merge.
Cases and Controversies: Pregnancy as Proof of Guilt Under Pakistan's Hudood Laws

Pakistan’s Hudood (Islamic criminal) laws have been a source of controversy since their promulgation by the military regime of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1979. For their supporters, these laws are a welcome step towards the enforcement of shari’ah (Islamic law) and, as such, represent a logical and inevitable progression of those historic processes that had led to the creation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. To their opponents, these laws represent gross violations of fundamental human rights and constitutional norms designed to uphold democratic participation in lawmaking and the equality of citizens irrespective of their religion or gender. However, despite the protests at home and the notoriety generated in the international media, these laws continue to exist on the statute books and are enforced in the courts of law. This paper will survey the contours of the controversies surrounding the Hudood laws, and seek to broaden the horizons of the debate surrounding these laws by incorporating an “Islamic critique” of these laws that has generally been lacking in the discourse. More importantly, the paper seeks to analyze the role that the Federal Shariat Court has played in substantively shaping the law, through a chronological analysis of the Court’s decisions on the most contentious aspects of the Hudood laws: the conviction of rape victims for zina (consensual adultery/fornication) regarding as proof the pregnancy caused by the rape. This analysis will indicate the strengths of the Islamic critique and propose reforms that may offer a viable avenue for alleviating the hardships perpetrated in the application of the Hudood laws. * Assistant Professor of Law & Policy at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan, presently teaching and conducting research on the country’s criminal laws; Attorney-at-Law (California); LL.M., Harvard Law School, 1999; LL.B., University of London, 1998. Support for this paper has been provided by the Social Enterprise Development Programme (SEDP) at LUMS and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). 122 BROOK. J. INT’L L. [Vol. 32:1
How Do Pensions Affect Corporate Capital Structure Decisions

This article examines the capital structure implications of defined benefit corporate pension plans. The magnitude of the liabilities arising from these pension plans is substantial. We show that leverage ratios for firms with pension plans are about 35% higher when pension assets and liabilities are incorporated into the capital structure. We estimate that the tax shields from pension contributions are about a third of those from interest payments. Pension contributions have a modest effect in lowering firms' marginal corporate tax rates. Once pensions are considered, firms are less conservative in their choice of leverage than has been previously thought. We show that firms incorporate the magnitude of their pension assets and liabilities into their capital structure decisions. The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org., Oxford University Press.
The Stock Market and the Financing of Corporate Growth in Africa: The Case of Ghana

This paper examines corporate financing patterns in Ghana, in particular, whether listed Ghanaian corporations make considerable use of the stock market to finance their growth. The paper also examines econometrically the effect of stock market development on the importance of debt relative to external equity in the balance sheet of Ghanaian firms. The results show that the average listed Ghanaian firm finances its growth mainly from short-term debt. The stock market, however, is the most important source of longterm external finance. Stock market development tends to shift the financial structure of Ghanaian firms toward more equity and less debt. Overall, the evidence suggests that the stock market is a surprisingly important source of finance for funding corporate growth.
Ethnic Innovation and U.S. Multinational Firm Activity

This paper studies the impact that ethnic innovators have on the global activities of U.S. firms by analyzing detailed data on patent applications and on the operations of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational firms. The results indicate that increases in the share of a firm's innovation performed by inventors of a particular ethnicity are associated with increases in the share of that firm's affiliate activity in countries related to that ethnicity. Ethnic innovators also appear to facilitate the disintegration of innovative activity across borders and to allow U.S. multinationals to form new affiliates abroad without the support of local joint venture partners. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.
INTRADAY STEALTH TRADING: WHICH TRADES MOVE PRICES DURING PERIODS OF HIGH VOLUME?

Research documents a U-shaped intraday pattern of returns. We examine which trade sizes drive the U-shaped pattern and find that intraday price changes from larger trades exhibit a U-shaped pattern whereas price changes from smaller trades show a reverse U-shaped pattern. We argue that price changes from smaller trades are higher during the middle of the day because informed investors break up their trades to disguise their information when intraday volume is low. Price changes from larger trades are likely higher at the beginning and end of the day because high volume allows informed investors to increase their trade size without revealing their information to the market.
Tree induction vs. logistic regression: a learning-curve analysis

Tree induction and logistic regression are two standard, off-the-shelf methods for building models for classification. We present a large-scale experimental comparison of logistic regression and tree induction, assessing classification accuracy and the quality of rankings based on class-membership probabilities. We use a learning-curve analysis to examine the relationship of these measures to the size of the training set. The results of the study show several things. (1) Contrary to some prior observations, logistic regression does not generally outperform tree induction. (2) More specifically, and not surprisingly, logistic regression is better for smaller training sets and tree induction for larger data sets. Importantly, this often holds for training sets drawn from the same domain (that is, the learning curves cross), so conclusions about induction-algorithm superiority on a given domain must be based on an analysis of the learning curves. (3) Contrary to conventional wisdom, tree induction is effective at producing probability-based rankings, although apparently comparatively less so for a given training-set size than at making classifications. Finally, (4) the domains on which tree induction and logistic regression are ultimately preferable can be characterized surprisingly well by a simple measure of the separability of signal from noise.