cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The GATS and Legal Services in Limerick

* Laurel S. Terry is a Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson School of Law (LTerry@psu.edu). She would like to thank Howard Warshaw and Bob Rains for all their help, even though they couldn’t convince her California ear that parry and wary don’t rhyme. Her non-rhyming articles on the GATS are available at http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/l/s/lst3/ (last visited Jan. 13, 2007). 1. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is contained in Annex 1B to the Final Act Embodying the Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations. General Agreement on Trade in Services, Apr. 15, 1994, Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, Annex 1B, 33 I.L.M. 1125, 1167 (1994), available at http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/final_e.htm (last visited Jan. 13, 2007) [hereinafter GATS]. The GATS was the first world trade agreement to include services within its scope. For a discussion of the GATS’ relation to legal services, see Laurel S. Terry, GATS’ Applicability to Transnational Lawyering and its Potential Impact on U.S. State Regulation of Lawyers, 34 VAND. J. TRANSNAT’L L. 989 (2001), as revised in 35 VAND. J. TRANSNAT’L L. 1387 (2002). Additional articles are available at the American Bar Association GATS webpage, http://www.abanet.org/cpr/gats/articles.html (last visited Jan. 13, 2007). 2. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) dates from 1949 and deals with the sale of goods (such as hats). General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Oct. 30, 1947, 61 Stat. A11, 55 U.N.T.S. 187 (1947). In contrast to the GATT treaty, GATS dates from 1994 and covers services, rather than goods. See Terry, supra note 1, at 994 n.9. THE GATS AND LEGAL SERVICES IN LIMERICK
Does venture capitalist activism improve investment performance

Abstract We investigate whether venture capitalist (VC) activism is associated with higher investment returns. Advising portfolio firms is time consuming and creates tradeoffs between intensity of VC activism and portfolio size. As the number of assisted firms expands, advice can be stretched too thin, reducing portfolio company prospects. We test the hypothesis that increasing the number of investments while intensely assisting portfolio companies is negatively associated with investment returns (the profit destruction effect). We find that aggressive VC activism does predict higher investment returns, but the profit destruction effect operates as well. Portfolio size growth thus risks overextending scarce VC resources and lowering returns.
Rationalizing Costs in Investment Treaty Arbitration

International investment and related disputes are on the rise. With national courts generally unavailable and difficulties resolving disputes through diplomacy, investment treaties give investors a right to seek redress and arbitrate directly with states. The costs of these investment treaty arbitrations - including the costs of lawyers for both sides, as well as administrative and tribunal expenses - are arguably substantial. This Article offers empirical research indicating that even partial costs could represent more than 10% of an average award. The data suggested a lack of certainty about total costs, which parties had ultimate liability for costs, and the justification for those cost decisions. Although there were signs of balance and a preference for parties to be responsible for their own costs, there was neither a universal approach to cost allocation nor a reliable relationship between cost shifts and losing. Awards typically lacked citation to legal authority and provided minimal rationale, and the justifications for cost decisions exhibited broad variation. Small pockets of coherence existed. Tribunals typically decided costs only in the final award; and as the amount investors claimed increased, tribunal costs also increased. Such a combination of variability and convergence can disrupt the value of arbitration for investors and states. In light of the data, but recognizing the need for additional research to replicate and expand upon the initial findings, this Article recommends states consider implementing measures that encourage arbitrators to consider specific factors when making cost decisions, obligate investors to particularize their claimed damages at an early stage, and facilitate the use of other Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) strategies. Establishing such procedural safeguards can aid the legitimacy of a dispute resolution mechanism with critical implications for the international political economy.
Funding Liquidity Risk and the Dynamics of Hedge Fund Lockups

We exploit the expiring nature of hedge fund lockups to create a new measure of funding liquidity risk that varies within funds. We find that hedge funds with lower funding risk generate higher returns, and this effect is driven by their increased exposure to equity-mispricing anomalies. Our results are robust to a variety of sampling criteria, variable definitions, and control variables. Further, we address endogeneity concerns in various ways, including a placebo approach and regression discontinuity design. Collectively, our results support a causal link between funding risk and the ability of managers to engage in risky arbitrage.
Founder Replacement and Startup Performance

We provide causal evidence that venture capitalists (VCs) improve the performance of their portfolio companies by replacing founders. Using a database of venture capital financings augmented with hand-collected founder turnover events, we exploit shocks to the supply of outside executives via 14 states’ changes to non-compete laws from 1995 to 2016. Naive regressions of startup performance on replacement suggest a negative correlation that may reflect negative selection. Indeed, instrumented regressions reverse the sign of this effect, suggesting that founder replacement instead improves performance. The evidence points to the replacement of founders as a specific mechanism by which VCs add value.
Inflation Performance and Constitutional Central Bank Independence: Evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean

This paper explores the relationship between the constitutional entrenchment of central bank independence and inflation performance. Empirical studies for developing countries have not found a relationship between central bank independence, proxied by the de jure independence established in the central bank law, and inflation. We argue that the Con- stitution is likely to be better enforced than ordinary statutes owing to its higher legal rank. Our empirical analysis finds that in a sample of Latin American and Caribbean countries, those countries that entrench the independence of the central bank in the Constitution have a better infla- tion performance.
Communicating During Emergencies: Toward Interoperability and Effective Information Management

The suboptimal state of communications technology used by public safety agencies has emerged as a high profile political issue. In most cases, public safety agencies are able only to communicate using antiquated networks, engineered solely for providing voice communications and unable to interoperate beyond a select number of users. This type of system fails to provide the type of economies of scale, network flexibility, or the broader functionalities routinely used by the military and private sector enterprises. The challenge facing policymakers is thus how to develop a next generation architecture for public safety and spur adoption of a new set of technologies that provide far greater functionality than today's systems as well as interoperate with a broad array of organizations involved in emergency response. To change the culture and realities of public safety communications, this Article calls on policymakers to develop a new architecture for the use of information and communications technologies and provide a framework for leadership to transition to a next generation system for public safety communications. Such a culture change would include not only an embrace of new technologies, but a new framework for technology leadership - at the state or regional level - that spurs decisionmaking in a coordinated fashion (and not through ad hoc decisions by over 50,000 different local agencies). In short, this Article explains what new technologies can transform public safety communications and what intergovernmental relations strategy will be necessary to facilitate the implementation of such technologies.
Jurisdiction-Stripping and the Supreme Court's Power to Supervise Inferior Tribunals

Most accounts of the power of Congress over the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court focus on the Exceptions and Regulations Clause and the degree to which it authorizes Congress to restrict the Court's role as the ultimate interpreter of federal law. [This Article] proposes to broaden the debate over jurisdiction stripping to include a consideration of the constitutional significance of the Court's required "supremacy." Beginning with the text of Articles I and III, [the Article] notes the requirement that any federal courts that Congress creates must remain "inferior" to the one Supreme Court that the Constitution itself requires. [It] shows that the framers of the Constitution were likely to have understood the required relationship of supremacy and inferiority to entail a power in the Supreme Court to supervise lower courts through the issuance of the supervisory writs of mandamus, prohibition, and habeas corpus. Building on this supervisory understanding of the Court's supremacy, [the Article] reviews the historical and doctrinal case for a constitutional power of supervision. Finding broad support for such a power in the adoption and interpretation of the statutory precursors of the modern All Writs Act, [it] concludes that Congress may not place the work of lower federal courts beyond the supervisory authority of the Court.
Earnings management, lawsuits, and stock-for-stock acquirers’ market performance ☆

There is a positive association between stock-for-stock acquirers’ pre-merger abnormal accruals and post-merger announcement lawsuits. The market only partially anticipates the effects of post-merger announcement lawsuits at the merger announcement and the post-merger announcement long-term market underperformance is largely limited to litigated acquisitions. Overall, the evidence suggests that it is important that investors not only undo the direct stock price effects of earnings management but also factor the contingent legal costs associated with earnings management.
Common Risk Factors in Currency Markets

W e identify a “slope” factor in exchange rates. High interest rate currencies load more on this slope factor than low interest rate currencies. This factor accounts for most of the crosssectional variation in average excess returns between high and low interest rate currencies. A standard, no-arbitrage model of interest rates with two factors—a country-specific factor and a global factor—can replicate these findings, provided there is sufficient heterogeneity in exposure to global or common innovations. We show that our slope factor identifies these common shocks, and we provide empirical evidence that it is related to changes in global equity market volatility. By investing in high interest rate currencies and borrowing in low interest rate currencies, U.S. investors load up on global risk. ( JEL G12, G15, F31) W e show that the large co-movement among exchange rates of different currencies supports a risk-based view of exchange rate determination. In order to do so, we start by identifying a slope factor in exchange rate changes: The exchange rates of high interest rate currencies load positively on this factor, while those of low interest rate currencies load negatively on it. The covariation with this slope factor accounts for most of the spread in average returns between baskets of high and low interest rate currencies—the returns on the currency carry trade. We show that a no-arbitrage model of interest rates and exchange rates with two state variables—country-specific and global risk factors—can match the data, provided there is sufficient heterogeneity in countries’ exposures to the global risk factor. To support this global risk interpretation, we provide evidence that the global risk factor is closely related to changes in volatility of equity markets around the world. We identify this common risk factor in the data by building monthly portfolios of currencies sorted by their forward discounts. The first portfolio contains
Do legal systems matter

Abstract The argument of this paper reduces to two key propositions. First, legal rules differ where technologies and endowments are similar. Second, diversity matters, in the sense that it exercises an independent influence on economic structure and rates of economic growth, and in ways that have not fully been explored. Recent literature has tended to limit the effect of law on productive use (the sectoral distribution of inputs) to its efficacy in overcoming or not introducing bargain-impeding transactions costs. Insufficient attention has been given to the macro-economic consequences of variation in income and expenditure flows associated with different legal systems or assignments of legal rights, which have traditionally been considered principally with reference to issues of equity or fairness, as distinguished from their impact on economic structure.
Cultural Training Based on a Theory of Relational Ideology

This article describes the development of a theory-based cross-cultural training intervention, named relational ideology training, and reports a field experiment testing its effectiveness in facilitating intercultural collaborations. The intervention was based on our Protestant relational ideology (PRI) theory and cross-cultural research derived from this theory. An experiment compared the effectiveness of this novel intervention with the well established cultural assimilator training. Results show that compared to cultural assimilator training, relational ideology training is more effective in improving managers' task performance and affective adjustment in cross-cultural ventures. Important practical and theoretical benefits can be gained from integrating theoretical advances in cultural psychology into cross-cultural training. We discuss the implications of RI training as an empirically validated intervention for Americans living locally yet working globally.
Experiential Learning: Context and Connections for Legal Research–A Case Study

The American Bar Association requires that all law students receive “substantial instruction” in legal research. This article discusses a unique legal research program that meets this requirement by focusing on experiential learning. Two components of experiential learning, context and connections, are explained pedagogically and specifically as to legal research curriculum.
Neutron rich matter, neutron stars, and their crusts

Neutron rich matter is at the heart of many fundamental questions in Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics. What are the high density phases of QCD? Where did the chemical elements come from? What is the structure of many compact and energetic objects in the heavens, and what determines their electromagnetic, neutrino, and gravitational-wave radiations? Moreover, neutron rich matter is being studied with an extraordinary variety of new tools such as Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). We describe the Lead Radius Experiment (PREX) that is using parity violation to measure the neutron radius in 208Pb. This has important implications for neutron stars and their crusts. Using large scale molecular dynamics, we model the formation of solids in both white dwarfs and neutron stars. We find neutron star crust to be the strongest material known, some 10 billion times stronger than steel. It can support mountains on rotating neutron stars large enough to generate detectable gravitational waves. Finally, we describe a new equation of state for supernova and neutron star merger simulations based on the Virial expansion at low densities, and large scale relativistic mean field calculations.
A Pro-Employee Supreme Court?: The Retaliation Decisions.

In its three years, the Roberts Supreme Court has decided three employee retaliation cases. In all three, the employee won. So, the question is whether the Supreme Court is pro-employee, at least in retaliation cases. My answer is yes, but not in the sense of "liberal" or "conservative" in the conventional political sense that Democrats tend to be liberal and Republicans conservative. This should be no surprise since seven of the Justices were appointed by Republican Presidents. My thesis is that these decisions are a product primarily of a pragmatic approach to judicial decision making. To support that answer, I will first discuss all three decisions. Then I will analyze the positions of the Justices who spoke to the issue of retaliation in these cases to see if they support my thesis that a pragmatic approach governed, leading to plaintiffs winning. The final section will attempt to place these Justices on a spectrum from pragmatist to formalist.
Longing for Loving

Post-Lawrence efforts to secure marriage equality for same sex couples must be undertaken, at a minimum, in a way that is compatible with efforts to dislodge marriage from its normatively superior status as compared with other forms of human attachment, commitment and desire. Resisting the normative and epistemic frame that values non-marital forms of life in direct proportion to their similarity to marriage, we must unseat marriage as the measure of all things. To this end, I'll suggest a thought experiment: substituting friendship for marriage at the center of the social field in which human connection takes place. No longer the sun around which all other relationships and relations orbit, our investments in marriage and marriage's investments in us are likely to yield in such a way that we can imagine making the argument for same sex couples' right to marry while imagining and cultivating different longings than that for Loving.
Age Discrimination in the Delivery of Health Care Services to Our Elders

The problem of health care providers making age biased decisions when treating elderly patients has received considerable attention and condemnation from both medical and social science researchers. When health care providers offer inappropriate or less care to patients because of their advanced chronological age, they potentially violate the Age Act of 1975. However, a review of the cases litigated under the Age Act suggests that advocates, regulators, and elders have not used the Age Act to address even the most blatant ageist practices in health care. Using methods developed to identify unlawful discrimination under employment and civil rights laws, this article characterizes certain ageist practices in the delivery of healthcare as potential violations of the Age Act of 1975. It concludes that regulators should undertake certain reforms so that elderly patients and their advocates can make better use of the Age Act’s protections.
The Tyranny of Concepts: CUDIE (Cumulated, Depreciated, Investment Effort) Is Not Capital

The cost of public investment is not the increment to the value ofpublic capital. Unlike with private investors, there is no plausiblebehavioral model in which every dollar that the public sectorspends as ``investment'' creates economically valuable ``capital.''While this simple analytic point is obvious, it has so far beenuniformly ignored in the empirical literature on economic growth,which uses—at best—cumulated, depreciated, investmenteffort (CUDIE) as a proxy for capital stocks. However, particularlyfor developing countries the difference between investment costand capital value is of first-order empirical importance: governmentinvestment is half of more of total investment, and calculationspresented here suggest that in many countries government investmentspending has created little useful capital. This has implicationsin three broad areas. First, none of the existing empirical estimatesof the impact of public spending has identified the productivityof public capital. Even where public capital has a potentiallylarge contribution to production, public-investment spendingmay have had a low impact. Second, it implies that all estimatesof total factor productivity in developing countries are deeplysuspect as there is no way to empirically distinguish betweenlow growth because of investments that create no factors andlow growth due to slow productivity growth. Third, multivariateregressions to date have not adequately controlled for capitalstock growth, which leads to erroneous interpretations of regressioncoefficients.
Bobbitt, the Rise of the Market State, and Race

The importance of Philip Bobbitt’s seminal works is already being recognized as on par with such classics as Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. In these books, Bobbitt argues that the nature of the state is changing in a fundamental way in that our country is shifting from a nation-state into a market-state. Bobbitt's theories have profound significance for many areas of law which scholars are just beginning to explore. This article is seeking to fill a gap in the literature by considering the implications of his views in the area of race and immigration law. Specifically, the article contends that Bobbitt's theories explain much of what we observe in the area of race, including hyper-incarceration of blacks, the current beneficiaries of affirmative action, radical changes in pleading requirements in civil rights actions, and that sub-national attempts to preserve culture through the control of immigration will fail. This paper argues that race theorists must take into account Bobbitt's theories regarding the changing nature of the state.
Contrasting the Art of Economic Science with Pseudo-Economic Nonsense: The Distinction Between Reasonable Assumptions and Ridiculous Assumptions

ions one can make and still capture the essential elements of the problem, or in other words, which simplifying assumptions can be made and still preserve the essence of the problem for the purpose of the analysis."). 289. See id ("Every model or analysis of a problem is necessarily an abstraction from reality, ignoring some complication of life to focus on others."); see also JAMES M. HENDERSON & RICHARD E. QUANDT, MICROECONOMIC THEORY 2 (2d ed. 1971) ("The more general theories are fruitful because they contain statements which abstract from particulars and find elements which many situations have in common. Increased understanding is realized at the cost of the sacrificed detail."). 290. Consider the following excerpt from a popular text: Because all models simplify reality by stripping part of it away, they are abstractions. Critics of economics often point to abstraction as a weakness. Most economists, however, see abstraction as a real strength. Like maps, economic models are abstractions that strip away detail to expose only those aspects of behavior that are important to the question being asked.... But be careful. Although abstraction is a powerful tool for exposing and analyzing specific aspects of behavior, it is possible to oversimplify.... The key here is that the appropriate amount of simplification and abstraction depends upon the use to which the model will be put. To return to the map example: You don't want to walk around San Francisco with a map made for drivers-there are too many
Before the Fall: Were East Asian Currencies Overvalued?

Abstract Two major approaches to identifying the equilibrium exchange rate are implemented. First, the concept of purchasing power parity (PPP) is tested and used to define the equilibrium real exchange rate for the Hong Kong dollar, Indonesian rupiah, Korean won, Malaysian ringgit, Philippine peso, Singapore dollar, New Taiwanese dollar and the Thai baht. The calculated PPP rates are then used to evaluate whether these seven East Asian currencies were overvalued. A variety of econometric techniques and price deflators are used. As of May 1997, the HK$, baht, ringgit and peso were overvalued according to this criterion. The evidence is mixed regarding the Indonesian rupiah and NT$. Second, a monetary model of exchange rates, augmented by a proxy variable for productivity trends, is estimated for five currencies. An overvaluation for the rupiah and baht is indicated, although only in the latter case is the overvaluation substantial (17%). The won, Singapore dollar and especially the NT$ appear undervalued according to these models.
Mr. Smith and the economy: the influence of economic conditions on individual legislator voting

This paper estimates the influence of macroeconomic conditions on individual legislator voting over time. Previous work shows legislator voting to be stable over careers. In this paper, voting on an ideological issue space (ADA scores) and a fiscal issue space (NTU scores), from 1976 to 2002, exhibits significant short-term cyclicality with economic conditions. Individual legislators polarize by party in response to rising unemployment, and converge in response to rising inflation. As legislators accumulate tenure, they become more ideologically conservative but more fiscally liberal. Results are also reported on presidential party, divided government, and region. All results are weaker in the Senate than in the House.
401(k) participant behavior in a volatile economy

The booms and busts of the late 1990s and 2000s have taken 401(k) plan participants on a rollercoaster ride. Using data from administrative tax records and household surveys, this paper examines how participants responded to these periods of economic expansions and contractions by documenting changes in 401(k) participation, contributions, and contribution rates from 1990 to 2009. Controlling for earnings, job changes, and other household factors, we find that workers reduce their 401(k) participation and contributions during recessions – suggesting that they may be responding to changes in their expectations about the economy and stock market. We estimate that changes in participant behavior during the Great Recession, in particular, could lower 401(k) assets of the typical 30-year-old by as much as 8% at age 62.
Raza Islámica: Prisons, Hip Hop & Converting Converts

The interface of prisons, hip hop music, and Islam is a complicated subject. However, when closely examined, patterns begin to emerge, and predominantly, how scores of African Americans, and growingly Latinos arrive at mainstream Islam. The journey is a familiar script: It begins with a marginal, often racialist understanding of “Islam” that transforms into a universal, colorblind conception of it, as exemplified in the lives of many high-profile Muslims, most significantly Malcolm X. This colorblind vision of the world is where the Raza Islamica is born, a world where Islam is the key ingredient of identity — nothing matters more than the shared belief in Allah and his prophet Muhammad — not even color of one’s skin. The following article theorizes this “double conversion,” whereby converts abandon the marginal for the mainstream, but they never abandon Islam.
Theory of plasmon-enhanced metal photoluminescence

Metal photoluminescence (MPL) originates from radiative recombination of photoexcited core holes and conduction band electrons. In metal nanostructures, MPL is enhanced due to the surface plasmon local field effect. We identify another essential process in plasmon-assisted MPL—excitation of Auger plasmons by core holes—that hinders MPL from small nanostructures. We develop a microscopic theory of plasmon-enhanced MPL that incorporates both plasmon-assisted enhancement and suppression mechanisms and derive the enhancement factor for MPL quantum efficiency. Our numerical calculations of MPL from Au nanoparticles are in excellent agreement with the experiment.
Enforcing Judgments Across State and National Boundaries: Inbound Foreign Judgments and Outbound Texas Judgments

Litigation between parties in different states has been common since the success of the railroads and telegraph in the late nineteenth century. International litigation -- suits involving parties from different countries -- is now routine. In spite of that routine, lawyers continue to face enforcement obstacles when suing a defendant from another state or country. Similarly, defendants perceive unfairness from judgments rendered far away. Those enforcement obstacles and instances of unfairness have been lessened by uniform enforcement statutes and a few treaties, but the rules remain elusive.This Article provides a cursory outline for most foreign-judgment enforcement issues that Texas attorneys will face. It focuses primarily on the collection of money damages from judgments in civil cases between private litigants, and briefly addresses the extraterritorial enforcement of divorce, custody, other status decrees, child support awards, injunctions, and in rem claims. The Article is divided into two larger sections for interstate and international enforcement, and each of those in turn is divided into incoming foreign judgments and outgoing Texas judgments. Texas law predominates the state-law discussion, but other states' case law and secondary sources provide additional authority on points not yet litigated in Texas. For interstate judgment enforcement, these other sources should be highly persuasive because of their reference to the Full Faith and Credit Clause and the uniform enforcement statutes. For international judgment enforcement, there is somewhat less state-to-state similarity.
Antitrust Options to Redress Anticompetitive Restraints and Monopolistic Practices by Professional Sports Leagues

The hallmark of an antitrust violation is an agreement which has the effect of raising price, lowering output, or rendering output unresponsive to consumer demand. Owners of clubs comprising Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League engage in a variety of exploitative activities that consumers cannot avoid by substituting rival products. The purpose of this Article is to analyze specific areas where these monopoly sports leagues harm a variety of groups, through the maintenance of a monopolistic structure that precludes competitive entry, or through specific restraints that have demonstrable anticompetitive effects. The analysis is designed to provide potential private and governmental plaintiffs with theories of antitrust liability to support litigation to vindicate the interests of sports fans, as well as to provide the policy justification for appropriate legislative intervention.To be sure, American sports fans are treated to a very high level of entertainment by the four leading sports leagues, and reap a tremendous amount of enjoyment from professional sports. Sports leagues, through agreement among owners, have developed a variety of efficient ways to deliver a more improved product to their fans. Because the goal of this Article is to provide a roadmap for those interested in stronger enforcement of the antitrust laws, it will not focus on these desirable aspects of league cooperation. As Judge Richard Posner has written, just because firms lawfully cooperate in some procompetitive fashion, it does not allow that "there are no competitive gains from forbidding them to cooperate in ways that yield no economies but simply limit competition." This Article focuses on restraints in the latter category.
Unlearning ineffective or obsolete technologies

Often, before they can learn something new, people have to unlearn what they think they already know. That is, they may have to discover that they should no longer rely on their current beliefs and methods. This paper describes eight viewpoints that can help people to do this.
Unbundling Scope-of-Permission Goods: When Should We Invest in Reducing Entry Barriers?

Bundling has emerged as one of the great competition policy issues of the day. For the last eight years, it has been the defining issue in U.S. telecommunications, as the FCC has attempted, so far unsuccessfully, to implement the unbundled network elements (UNEs) regime contemplated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.1 The UNE regime is intended to foster entry and to lead to facilities-based competition.2 Questions of the permitted scope of bundling, tying and integration have been critical in the government actions against Microsoft in both the U.S. and Europe.3 And in as ordinary a market as
What are Moral Absolutes Like

This paper (originally presented as the Harvard Review of Philosophy Annual Guest Lecture in April 2011) explores the challenges involved in stating, characterizing and defending moral absolutes. The first part of the paper looks at the formulation of moral absolutes: must we assume that they are simple, directly prescriptive or prohibitive, not loaded with thick moral terms (as in "Do not kill the innocent"), etc? The paper compares the formulation of moral absolutes with the formulation of legal absolutes. And it considers some philosophical work on the subject, by Anscombe, Hare, Kant, and Finnis. The second part of the paper examines the ways in which moral absolutes – such as the rule against torture – deal with the burden of the humanitarian considerations arrayed against them in e.g. "ticking bomb" hypotheticals. Anxious to confront the best case that can be made against moral absolutes, the author insists that the most powerful challenge is that posed by Jeremy Bentham. Bentham's version of a ticking bomb hypothetical imagined that torturing one person may be the only way to save hundreds of people from being tortured. The challenge of this hypothetical is that each characterization of the awfulness of torture intensifies the stakes on BOTH sides of the dispute. This is the challenge that must be responded to, and the author argues that opponents of torture have made things too easy for themselves in just focusing on how bad (depraved, brutal, violative, etc.) torture really is. In responding to the challenge, the paper indicates a number of possible lines of inquiry – one in particular involving the idea of "tainted goods," i.e. the idea that the goods secured by a forbidden act (such as torture) may have some or part of their value compromised or tainted by the means used to achieve them. This and a number of other lines are explored. Along the way, the paper takes a couple of sly kicks at something called "threshold deontology." But at the end, the discussion is left open and inconclusive, with much more work to be done.
Multinationals do it better: Evidence on the efficiency of corporations' capital budgeting

Abstract With U.S. multinational enterprises playing increasingly important roles in the global economy, it is important to understand the efficiency of their capital budgeting decisions. We examine an unbalanced panel of 332 U.S. firms from 1992–2000. Using the deviation of a firm's estimated marginal Tobin's q from a benchmark as an indicator of effective resource allocation, we find that widespread multinationals make more efficient capital budgeting decisions. We also test whether this reflects the MNEs' investment locations, but do not obtain support for the hypotheses that they might be monitored by more agents or more successfully resist pressures from interest groups and governments.
Neutrino-induced Fission and r-Process Nucleosynthesis

An r-process scenario with fission but without fission cycling is considered to account for the observed abundance patterns of neutron-capture elements in ultra-metal-poor stars. It is proposed that neutrino reactions play a crucial role in inducing the fission of the progenitor nuclei after the r-process freezes out in Type II supernovae. To facilitate neutrino-induced fission, the proposed r-process scenario is restricted to occur in a low-density environment, such as the neutrino-driven wind from the neutron star. Further studies to develop this scenario are emphasized.
Privacy Laws and Privacy Levers: Online Surveillance Versus Economic Development in the People’s Republic of China

This essay describes and contextualizes the ongoing efforts by the Communist Party of China (CPC) to reconcile two dramatically competing interests: the desire to extensively monitor the communications of its citizenry, and a burning ambition to further develop its banking and financial industries, its high tech innovation capabilities, and its overall share of the “knowledge economy.” Monitoring and censoring communications, especially via “one to many” social networking platforms, is viewed as essential for the prevention of mass anti-Party political activities ranging from peaceful civil disobedience to armed insurrection and for the protection of the reputations of individual Party leaders. Mobile Internet technologies make electronic surveillance easier, but effective monitoring harder, as keeping track of the content and importance of individual communications requires time and trustworthy judgment calls that cannot be automated or outsourced.While unbounded surveillance may be a useful tool for keeping control of political subdivisions, it can be very bad for business. Companies want to protect their trade secrets, and control access to their financial data and other proprietary information, and they want to engage in confidential communications. Businesses also want access to the same information and Internet resources as their competitors abroad. The people running China would like to attract and retain all manner of sophisticated business ventures, but simultaneously wish to spy extensively on these companies and on the people who run them. And the Internet access that is generally available is censored and ponderously slow due to the extensive monitoring and filtering technologies that are in place.The CPC probably can’t have it both ways. If secure communication channels are not consistently available to private sector businesses within China, enterprises that value or require confidentiality will limit their in-country transactions. Some foreign companies may avoid doing business there altogether. But permitting credibly unmonitored and unfiltered communications on a scale commensurate with the size of the business community in China will not be a step the CPC takes lightly. Monitoring and censoring communications, especially via “one-to-many” social networking platforms, is viewed as essential for the prevention of mass anti-Party political activities ranging from peaceful civil disobedience to armed insurrection; and to protect the reputations of individual Party leaders.
Economic Evaluation of Systems that Expedite Inventory Information

Information delays exist when the most recent inventory information available to the Inventory Manager (IM) is dated. Such situations arise when it takes a while to process the demand data, count the inventory, and pass the results to the IM. We show that the optimal total inventory-related cost decreases when the length of the information delay decreases. The amount of the decrease is an important datum for an IM interested in considering whether or not to invest in reducing the delay. The investment is required to finance design and acquisition of an information (collection and dissemination) system that can reduce the information delay. Such systems include phone calls, business meetings, and the use of information collection mechanisms such as radiofrequency identification tags.
Distance graphs and sets of positive upper density in $\mathbb{R}^d$

We present a refinement and sharp extension of a result of Bourgain on finding configurations of k+1 points in general position in measurable subset of ℝd of positive upper density whenever d≥k+1 to all proper k-degenerate distance graphs.
Arising Under Jurisdiction and Uniformity in Patent Law

Congress created the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 1982, in part, to establish nationwide uniformity in patent law. The law governing the Federal Circuit's appellate jurisdiction was recently addressed by the Supreme Court's decision in Holmes Group, Inc. v. Vornado Circulation Systems, Inc. The Court held in Holmes that the Federal Circuit's appellate jurisdiction is governed by the well pleaded complaint rule and specifically rejected counterclaims as a vehicle to vesting appellate jurisdiction with the Federal Circuit. The Supreme Court's decision opens the door for claims of patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. Section 271, and other patent claims, to be reviewed by regional circuits, instead of the Federal Circuit. The impact of Holmes will also be felt with respect to a federal district court's removal jurisdiction and exclusive jurisdiction over patent counterclaims. The door is clearly open for the development of substantive patent law outside of the hands of the Federal Circuit and, perhaps even more importantly, outside of the federal courts. The very uniformity Congress attempted to introduce through its creation of the Federal Circuit and a federal patent law system may become undone by the Supreme Court's decision in Holmes. This Article addresses the potential non-uniformity in patent law Holmes may create and concludes that the potential for such a development is real. To prevent these situations from occurring, the effect of Holmes on the Federal Circuit's appellate jurisdiction and federal courts' jurisdiction must be limited and regional circuits and state courts must look to the Federal Circuit for guidance on patent law issues. This Article concludes that the only real solution is a legislative response, with Congress amending Section 1338 in such a way to return the Federal Circuit's appellate jurisdiction, and federal district court's original and exclusive jurisdiction, to their pre-Holmes form.
THE LIBERTARIAN NONAGGRESSION PRINCIPLE

Libertarianism is a controversial political theory. But it is often presented as a resting upon a simple, indeed commonsense, moral principle. The libertarian “Nonaggression Principle” (NAP) prohibits aggression against the persons or property of others, and it is on this basis that the libertarian opposition to redistributive taxation, legal paternalism, and perhaps even the state itself is thought to rest. This essay critically examines the NAP and the extent to which it can provide support for libertarian political theory. It identifies two problems with existing libertarian appeals to the NAP. First, insofar as libertarians employ a moralized understanding of aggression, their principle is really about the protection of property rights rather than the prohibition of aggression. Second, the absolutist prohibition on aggression, which libertarians typically endorse and which is necessary to generate strongly libertarian conclusions, is grossly implausible. The essay concludes by setting forth a version of the NAP that does not suffer from these problems. It argues that this more moderate and defensible version of the NAP still has important libertarian implications, but that a full defense of libertarianism cannot rely upon appeals to nonaggression alone.
Market Efficiency and Return Statistics: Evidence from Real Estate and Stock Markets Using a Present‐Value Approach

This paper develops a methodology to identify asset price response to news in the framework of the Campbell–Shiller log-linear present-value equation. We further show that a slow price adjustment in real estate markets not only induces a high serial autocorrelation in excess returns, but also dampens the return volatility and the correlation with excess returns in other asset markets. Using Hong Kong real estate and stock market data, we find that the quarterly real estate price assimilates only about half the effect of market news, whereas the quarterly stock price incorporates the news fully. Our analysis identifies a cumulative price adjustment that recovers lost information in real estate returns due to market inefficiency and thereby restores the real estate return volatility and the correlation between real estate and stock markets.
The Effect of Health Insurance Benefit Mandates on Premiums

This paper examines the effects of laws mandating that health insurance cover specific conditions, procedures, providers, and beneficiaries. Unlike previous work, this paper considers the market for employer-based health insurance rather than the much smaller individual market, and uses a panel data approach to account for unobserved heterogeneity among states. Using a fixed effects model, I find that the average mandate increases premiums by 0.44–1.11 percent annually. This implies that new mandates were responsible for 9–23 percent of all premium increases over the 1996–2011 period.
Alcohol, unemployment rates and advertising bans: international panel evidence, 1975–2000

This paper presents empirical evidence on the relationship between alcohol consumption and unemployment for an international panel of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). I find a significant negative or pro-cyclical relationship between unemployment and alcohol consumption, which agrees closely with prior estimates for the United States. This finding indicates that economic factors tend to dominate possible stress-induced changes in alcohol use. Model specifications control for non-stationary panel data and for a variety of other economic and cultural factors, including prices, income, wine sentiment, tourism, population ageing and restrictive policies pertaining to alcohol use and marketing. The effects of advertising bans are statistically insignificant or have contrary coefficient signs, while a composite index for other alcohol control policies is negative. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Language: en
Separating Ore sets for prime ideals of quantum algebras

Brown and Goodearl stated a conjecture that provides an explicit description of the topology of the spectra of quantum algebras. The conjecture takes on a more explicit form if there exist separating Ore sets for all incident pairs of torus-invariant prime ideals of the given algebra. We prove that this is the case for the two largest classes of algebras of finite Gelfand–Kirillov dimension that fit the setting of the conjecture: the quantized coordinate rings of all simple algebraic groups and the quantum Schubert cell algebras for all symmetrizable Kac–Moody algebras.
Do asset price drops foreshadow recessions

This paper examines the usefulness of asset prices in predicting the beginnings of recessions in the G-7 countries. It finds that equity/house price drops have a substantial marginal effect on the likelihood of a new recession. Increased market uncertainty, which is a second-moment variable associated with equity price changes, is also a useful predictor of new recessions in these countries. These findings are robust to the inclusion of the term spread and oil prices. The new recession forecasting performance of our baseline model is superior to that of a similar model estimated over all recession and expansion periods, highlighting a difference between the probabilities of a new recession versus a continuing recession.
Exporting Air Pollution? Regulatory Enforcement and Environmental Free Riding in the United States

Political jurisdictions have incentives to promote pollution spillovers to capture the benefits of economic production within their borders while exporting the environmental costs to their neighbors. The authors examine the extent to which U.S. states engage in this type of free-riding behavior. Studying enforcement of the federal Clean Air Act from 1990 through 2000, the authors employ zero-inflated negative binomial regression to predict the number of state-initiated enforcement actions conducted in counties bordering other jurisdictions. They find that states perform fewer enforcement actions in counties adjacent to international borders but no evidence that states conduct less enforcement in counties that border other states.