cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Dangerous Allure of the Issue Class Action

In the complex and chaotic world of mass torts, a class action that aggregates the claims of aggrieved individuals against a common defendant would seem not only a prudent solution, but possibly even a necessary one. The class device holds out the promise of resolving issues "common" to all plaintiffs in a single trial, preventing wasteful and repetitive litigation of similar issues, and the possibility of inconsistent results. And collective adjudication allows plaintiffs to pool resources against better-financed defendants. Despite these potential benefits and the admiration of a host of commentators, however, the class action has thus far failed to gain significant judicial acceptance as a fair and efficient mechanism for resolving mass tort claims. Indeed, the Supreme Court in recent years struck down two wide-reaching mass tort class actions in such sweeping terms that many observers predicted the death of the mass tort class action.
United we vote

This paper studies the advantages that a coalition of agents obtain by forming a voting bloc to pool their votes and cast them all together. We identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent to benefit from the formation of the voting bloc, both if the agent is a member of the bloc and if the agent is not part of the bloc. We also determine whether individual agents prefer to participate in or step out of the bloc, and we find the different optimal internal voting rules that aggregate preferences within the coalition.
Prosecuting the Informant Culture

Alexandra Natapoff,1 in her outstanding new book, Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice, makes a compelling case for reform of the system by which we regulate police use of criminal informants. Indeed, as other writers have discussed,2 law enforcement's overreliance on such informants has led to a "snitching culture" in which informant snitching replaces other forms of law enforcement investigation (pp. 12, 31, 88-89). Yet snitches, especially jailhouse snitches, are notoriously unreliable.3 Informants snitch in exchange for benefits from the state. These benefits include monetary payments, immunity from prosecution, sentence reductions, and even the freedom to continue criminal activity most commonly drugdealing while police turn a blind eye (pp. 32, 47-54). The lure of such benefits entices many informants into outright lying, and others into exaggeration, contributing significantly to wrongful convictions.4 Indeed, so grave is the innocence concern that numerous reformers have recommended a wide array of changes to the law from pretrial reliability hearings before permitting informants to testify, to corroboration requirements before snitches may testify, to wider discovery, cautionary jury instructions, limitations on informant rewards, and improved police officer training (pp. 190-99). Courts or legislatures in some jurisdictions have occasionally adopted some of these reforms piecemeal,5 while the FBI though not most state law enforcement agencies has adopted relatively stringent rules on how police "handlers" may treat their informant subjects (pp. 26, 47^19, 179-80,
Property, Wealth, Inequality and Human Rights: A Formula for Reform

This essay scrutinizes the persistence of inequality in the United States through a human rights lens and grapples with the troubling disparities unearthed by two works: American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass and Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. These two highly enlightening and, simultaneously, deeply troubling and depressing books elucidate the myriad locations at which inequalities persist and the historical, social, psychological, and legal foundations of, and explications for, such disparities in the African American community.This work proposes a human rights paradigm that provides a methodology to analyze, deconstruct and unravel the existing systematic inequalities in Black/white wealth. First, we examine the historical relationship between Blacks and Whites in the United States in the context of property, wealth, and economics. Then, in Part II, we reveal the disturbing reality that not much has changed. Next, we make a two-part suggestion of how to ameliorate, or at least begin to remedy, current economic inequalities by proposing the application of a human rights paradigm of economic discrimination as violence. Finally, we analyze the role of republican liberalism in Black/White economic inequality and reveal how, despite its equality-based dialect, it has translated into a model that has enabled inequality.
TOWARDS MIRROR SYMMETRY AS DUALITY FOR TWO DIMENSIONAL ABELIAN GAUGE THEORIES

Superconformal sigma models with Calabi–Yau target spaces described as complete intersection subvarieties in toric varieties can be obtained as the low-energy limit of certain abelian gauge theories in two dimensions. We formulate mirror symmetry for this class of Calabi–Yau spaces as a duality in the abelian gauge theory, giving the explicit mapping relating the two Lagrangians. The duality relates inequivalent theories which lead to isomorphic theories in the low-energy limit. This formulation suggests that mirror symmetry could be derived using abelian duality. The application of duality in this context is complicated by the presence of nontrivial dynamics and the absence of a global symmetry. We propose a way to overcome these obstacles, leading to a more symmetric Lagrangian. The argument, however, fails to produce a derivation of the conjecture.
Topological Transition in Spiral Elastic Valley Metamaterials

Elastic valley metamaterials offer an excellent platform to manipulate elastic waves and have potential applications in energy harvesting and elastography. Here we introduce a series of strategies to realize a topological transition in spiral elastic valley metamaterials by parameter modulations. We show the evolution of the Berry curvature and valley Chern number as a function of inherent parameters of a spiral, which further results in a general scheme to achieve topological valley edge states. Our strategy leverages multiple degrees of freedom in spiral elastic valley metamaterials to provide enhanced opportunities for desired topological states.
Is SOA Superior? Evidence from SaaS Financial Statements

We use audited financial statements to examine claims that service-oriented architecture (SOA) leads to higher profits relative to traditional software delivery models. Specifically, we examine vendors that rely on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) pricing model, and compare their performance to other firms that still use the traditional perpetual license model. We find that, relative to their peers, SaaS firms tend to have lower costs of goods sold as a portion of revenues. Compared to their software firm peers, SaaS firms are also younger, smaller, possess less financial leverage, and have higher costs (sales, general, and administrative) relative to revenues. Pure, per-unit costs of hosted SOA applications do not appear to be lower, however, compared to firms that specialize in retail provision of mass market software. This leads us to conclude that, despite the predictions of the most ardent adherents of SOA and SaaS, traditional vendors with sufficient economies of scale will not be intrinsically threatened by the new model.
Give us a little social credit: to design or to discover personal ratings in the era of Big Data

In 2014, the State Council of the Chinese Communist Party announced the institution of a social credit system by 2020, a follow-up to a similar statement on the creation of a social credit system issued by the State Council in 2007. Social credit ratings of the type being developed by the State Council in partnership with Chinese companies go beyond existing financial credit ratings in an attempt to project less-tangible personal characteristics like trustworthiness, criminal tendencies, and group loyalty onto a single scale. The emergence of personal credit ratings is enabled by Big Data, automated decision-making processes, machine learning, and facial recognition technology. It is quite likely that various kinds of personal and social credit ratings shall become reality in the near future. We explore China's version of its social credit system so far, compare the welfare and epistemological qualities of an ecology of personal ratings emanating from polycentric sources versus a social credit rating, and discuss whether a social credit system in an ideologically driven state is less a tool to maximize social welfare through trustworthiness provision and more a method of preventing and punishing deviance from a set of party-held ideological values.
A Head-Mounted Multi-Camera System for Electrophysiology and Behavior in Freely-Moving Mice

Advances in the ability to monitor freely-moving mice may prove valuable for the study of behavior and its neural correlates. Here we present a head-mounted multi-camera system comprised of inexpensive miniature analog camera modules, and illustrate its use for investigating natural behaviors such as prey capture, courtship, sleep, jumping, and exploration. With a four-camera headset, monitoring the eyes, ears, whiskers, rhinarium, and binocular visual field can all be achieved simultaneously with high-density electrophysiology. With appropriate focus and positioning, all eye movements can be captured, including cyclotorsion. For studies of vision and eye movements, cyclotorsion provides the final degree of freedom required to reconstruct the visual scene in retinotopic coordinates or to investigate the vestibulo-ocular reflex in mice. Altogether, this system allows for comprehensive measurement of freely-moving mouse behavior, enabling a more holistic, and multimodal approach to investigate ethological behaviors and other processes of active perception.
Thieving and Receiving: Overcriminalizing the Possession of Stolen Property

Historically, Anglo-American law has treated the offense of receiving stolen property in a variety of ways: it has regarded it as no crime at all; subjected it to accessory-after-the-fact liability; and treated it as a free-standing offense, subject, depending on the jurisdiction, to less punishment than theft, the same punishment as theft, or greater punishment than theft. To develop an analytical framework for determining which of these various approaches makes the most sense, we need to ask exactly what receiving statutes are meant to censure and deter. From a backward-looking perspective, receivers can be said to perpetuate the wrongful deprivation of the victim owner9s property rights, effected in the first instance by the thief. From a forward-looking perspective, the act of receiving can, at least in some cases, be said to encourage the commission of future thefts by helping to create a ready market for stolen goods. The problem is that the offense in its current statutory formulation reflects only the backward-looking perspective, requiring nothing more than that the offender possess or receive stolen property (knowing that it is stolen), and saying nothing about the future effects of his act. And because perpetuating an owner9s loss of property is a lesser wrong than causing him to lose his property to begin with (or so it will be argued), the receiver deserves less blame and punishment than the thief. Yet many modern statutes subject receiving to at least as much punishment as thieving. To avoid such disproportionality, various reforms in the law of receiving are recommended.
Secondary Refugee Movements and the Return of Asylum Seekers to Third Countries: The Meaning of Effective Protection

Refugees, while en route from their countries of origin to their ultimate destinations, typically pass through one or more ‘third countries’. When they reach their intended final destinations and apply for asylum, they are often returned to one of the third countries without substantive determinations of their claims. The destination country might reason either that the third country was a ‘safe third country’ from which the claimant should have requested protection, or that the third country was a ‘first country of asylum’, having already granted adequate protection. Either way, the returns have caused serious problems for the refugees, for the third countries, and for regional stability. The broad question is how much legal freedom refugees have to choose the countries that will decide their asylum claims. This article — a revised version of a UNHCR consultant’s report — proposes criteria for determining when international law and sound policy permit returns to third countries. It argues, contrary to conventional wisdom, that the criteria for returning asylum-seekers to ‘safe third countries’ and to ‘first countries of asylum’ should
What Technology Says About Decision-Making Evidence From Cricket’s Decision Review System (DRS)

We assemble and analyze a novel data set that provides evidence on the quality of decision-making by on-field umpires and teams in the sport of cricket. The decision review system, introduced in November 2009, gives teams a limited right to challenge an on-field umpire’s decision. Of the 1,201 on-field umpire decisions that were challenged in test matches by nine playing teams between 2009 and 2014, 310 (25.81%) were reversed by a 3rd umpire. Controlling for several match and team characteristics, logistic regressions show that (1) leg before wicket (LBW) and caught decisions that are ruled “out” by the on-field umpire are more likely to be reversed than decisions that are ruled “not out”; (2) for both LBW and caught decisions, home and away teams are equally likely to win a 3rd umpire reversal.
Environmental and ecological economics: A citation analysis

This study looks at two distinct questions: dWhat have been the most influential journal articles in environmental economics and ecological economics over the 10-year period 1994–2003?T; and dHow much overlap is there between the fields of environmental and ecological economics?T We examine the references in all articles published in JEEM and Ecological Economics (EE) over this period. For each of these two fields, a list of the top articles and top journals cited by articles published in JEEM and EE is presented. We also present some results based on our study of the ISI Journal Citation Reports. We find that there is a significant overlap between the two fields at the journal level — the two journals cite similar journals. There is a correlation of 0.34 between the number of citations received by the journals that are most cited and the correlation is even higher if journal self-citation is excluded. The main differences are that ecological economics tends to cite (but not be cited by) general natural science journals more often than environmental economics does, environmental economics cites more heavily from journals rather than other publications, and citations in environmental economics are more concentrated on particular journals and individual publications. However, there is much less similarity at the level of individual articles. Nonmarket valuation articles dominate the most cited articles in JEEM while green accounting, sustainability, and the environmental Kuznets curve are all prominent topics in EE. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
The IMF and Russia in the 1990's

This paper explains the IMF's impact on economic policies in Russia, focusing on where the IMF made a difference. The Russian economic and political leadership essentially determined economic policies. The IMF's influence was modest: it had only a limited impact on overall fiscal policy and the major structural reforms, but it had a positive impact on monetary policy. A tougher position on fiscal policy in 1996-98 might have produced a better outcome. The G-7's concerns weakened the IMF. However, the IMF played a major role in transferring knowledge about macroeconomic policymaking and implementation.
A Parent’s Apparent Authority: Why Intergenerational Coresidence Requires a Reassessment of Parental Consent to Search Adult Children’s Bedrooms

For most of the last century, the structure of the American family shifted from a multigenerational model to a nuclear one. However, since the 1980s, the pendulum has shifted back. This shift has been especially acute for the younger generation—aged 25 to 34—who have been hurt by the economic downturn in 2008; one in five of these adults now live in a multigenerational household. Despite this demographic shift, Fourth Amendment apparent authority doctrine has not adapted to take account of these changes. Apparent authority doctrine validates, under certain circumstances, an otherwise unlawful search on the basis of a third party’s consent. The doctrine reached its current genesis in Georgia v. Randolph, where the Court took account of “customary social understanding” in determining whether third party consent validated a police search. Premised on the traditional presumption of parental authority, police rely upon parental consent to search a premises shared by the parent and the child—even if the child is an adult, with her own expectations of privacy. In light of Randoph’s reliance on social customs, apparent authority doctrine can and should evolve to account for adult children in multigenerational households. The proliferation of multigenerational U.S. households provides a new perspective on the social customs and practices concerning coresidence in the United States. Rather than relying outdated presumptions of parental control, this Article argues that police should be compelled to conduct a more thorough inquiry before searching areas occupied exclusively by the adult child. Police should differentiate between “common” and private areas, and inquire into any agreements—formal or infor-
Dynamic Bertrand Oligopoly

We study continuous time Bertrand oligopolies in which a small number of firms producing similar goods compete with one another by setting prices. We first analyze a static version of this game in order to better understand the strategies played in the dynamic setting. Within the static game, we characterize the Nash equilibrium when there are N players with heterogeneous costs. In the dynamic game with uncertain market demand, firms of different sizes have different lifetime capacities which deplete over time according to the market demand for their good. We setup the nonzero-sum stochastic differential game and its associated system of HJB partial differential equations in the case of linear demand functions. We characterize certain qualitative features of the game using an asymptotic approximation in the limit of small competition. The equilibrium of the game is further studied using numerical solutions. We find that consumers benefit the most when a market is structured with many firms of the same relative size producing highly substitutable goods. However, a large degree of substitutability does not always lead to large drops in price, for example when two firms have a large difference in their size.
Trade and Child Labor: A General Equilibrium Analysis

This paper augments the existing literature on trade and child labor by exploring the effects of terms-of-trade changes in the context of a three-good general equilibrium model, in which one of the goods is a nontraded good. We find that, under quasi-linear preferences, the effect of the terms of trade on child labor depends critically on the pattern of substitutability (or complementarity) in the excess demand functions between the export good and the nontraded good. We extend the analysis to the case in which factors move freely between the three goods, as in a Heckscher-Ohlin-type framework. Finally, we show that a balanced budget policy of taxing the education of skilled families to subsidize the education of unskilled families must reduce child labor without any effect on aggregate welfare.
Teaching Diplomacy by Other Means: Using an Outside-of-Class Simulation to Teach International Relations Theory

In this article, we introduce the online version of the board game Diplomacy as a pedagogical tool to teach about the strengths and limitations of constructivism, liberalism, and realism. Beyond helping students learn about the three paradigms, the game has two additional benefits over traditional role-playing simulations. First, the online nature of the game allows it to take place outside of class, freeing up more class time, and creating fewer opportunity costs for instructors who want to use simulations. Second, Diplomacy allows for a more straightforward method of assessment because it has clear rules that apply equally to all students. Plus, the online version provides a platform that gives instructors better insight into student participation. Using data, we show that students enjoyed the game, saw it as educational, and liked the fact that they played it outside of class. We conclude that online Diplomacy and outside-of-class simulations can be used as helpful tools to teach about international relations.
Coasean Quality of Regulated Goods

The quality of goods provided by public utilities depends on infrastructure features and operational inputs. I compare the economic efficiency that results from price ceilings and minimum quality standards (i. e., compliance with environmental, chemical, and performance standards and norms) imposed by a benevolent regulator to a Coasean bargaining solution between a median consumer and a monopolist. When quality is non-excludable and non-rival, rate-of-return regulation yields higher economic efficiency than price cap regulation.
The Seats in Trouble Forecast of the 2010 Elections to the U.S. House

All indications are that 2010 will be a very good year for Republicans. After two election setbacks, they are poised for a comeback. Partisanship, ideology, the midterm decline from the prior presidential surge, the partisanship of districts being defended, and even President Obama's approval ratings have set the stage for significant seat gains by Republicans in the House.
An Analysis of Pascal Lamy’s Proposal on Collective Preferences

In September 2004, then-European Commissioner for Trade Pascal Lamy released his study on the political challenge of 'collective preferences' for the world trading system. Collective preferences cause a problem for the WTO if the resulting measure violates WTO rules and yet the measure is too popular in the regulating country for the government to withdraw it. The paradigmatic example is EC -- Hormones in which the European Commission could not comply because of contrary popular and parliamentary opinion. To address such circumstances, Lamy proposes the negotiation of a new WTO safeguard that would permit governments to retain strongly-supported measures provided that compensation is paid. This article analyzes Lamy's paper and discusses the many challenges to validating a collective preference. The article posits that whether a new safeguard is needed depends in part on the leeway that WTO rules provide for legitimate domestic measures. The article concludes that while Lamy's purpose may be worthy, his proposal has several weaknesses, and enacting it in the WTO is highly unlikely. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.
Competing Theories of Financial Anomalies

We compare two competing theories of financial anomalies: “behavioral” theories built on investor irrationality, and “rational structural uncertainty” theories built on incomplete information about the structure of the economic environment. We find that although the theories relax opposite assumptions of the rational expectations ideal, their mathematical and predictive similarities make them difficult to distinguish. Even if irrationality generates financial anomalies, their disappearance still may hinge on rational learning—that is, on the ability of rational arbitrageurs and their investors to reject competing rational explanations for observed price patterns. In this article we explore competing theories of financial anomalies. A financial anomaly is a documented pattern of price behavior that is inconsistent with the predictions of traditional efficient markets, rational expectations asset pricing theory. That theory has two characteristic features. First, investors are assumed to have essentially complete knowledge of the fundamental structure of their economy. 1 Second, investors are assumed to be completely rational information processors who make optimal statistical decisions. Put another way, investors in the benchmark theory have “access both to the correct specification of the ‘true’ economic model and to unbiased estimators of its coefficients” [Friedman (1979, p. 38)]. As evidence has mounted against This article has benefited from the comments of Nick Barberis, Eli Berkovitch, Joshua Coval, Kent Daniel (a discussant), Werner De Bondt (a discussant), Craig Fox, John Graham, Campbell Harvey, Harrison Hong,
The value of legal housing titles: An empirical study

Abstract This paper estimates the value of legal housing titles using a Costa Rican urban housing survey conducted in 1997. The general results obtained regarding the value of legal titles to the average individual are consistent with past estimations found in the literature, but the implications for policy are new; as some groups are shown to value legal titles more than others. The criterion used to create these groups was inspired by the theoretical guidelines provided by past literature and could be easily reproduced by policy makers who may wish to target these types of individuals.
Computers and populism: artificial intelligence, jobs, and politics in the near term

I project the near-term future of work to ask whether job losses induced by artificial intelligence will increase the appeal of populist politics. The paper first explains how computers and machine learning automate workplace tasks. Automated tasks help to both create and eliminate jobs and I show why job elimination centres in blue-collar and clerical workâ€”impacts similar to those of manufactured imports and offshored services. I sketch the near-term evolution of three technologies aimed at blue-collar and clerical occupations: autonomous long-distance trucks, automated customer service responses, and industrial robotics. I estimate that in the next 5â€“7 years, the jobs lost to each of these technologies will be modest but visible. I then outline the structure of populist politics. Populist surges are rare but a populist candidate who pits â€˜the peopleâ€™ (truck drivers, call centre operators, factory operatives) against â€˜the eliteâ€™ (software developers, etc.) will be mining many of the US regional and education fault lines that were part of the 2016 presidential election.
The FCC and the “Pre-Internet”

Network neutrality has dominated broadband policy debates for the past decade. While important, network neutrality overshadows other policy levers that are equally important to the goals of better, cheaper, and more open broadband service. This lack of perspective has historical precedent — and understanding this history can help refocus today’s policy debate. In the 1960s and 1970s, telephone companies threatened the growth of the nascent data industry. The FCC responded with a series of rulemakings known as the “Computer Inquiries” proceedings. In the literature, Computer Inquiries enjoys hallowed status as a key foundation of the Internet’s rise.This Article, however, argues that Computer Inquiries is less important than it seems. A series of lesser-known FCC proceedings was more important to the development of the “pre-Internet” — a term I use to describe the ancestral data networks that ultimately evolved into the Internet. When viewed in historical context, Computer Inquiries did not create growth, but instead reflected the growth that the pre-Internet proceedings had already unleashed. Computer Inquiries, however, contributed to the pre-Internet in other ways that the literature overlooks. Specifically, it became a crucial source of information that influenced the more important pre-Internet proceedings. Understanding how the FCC helped build the pre-Internet also provides important lessons for today’s modern policy debates. One implication is that today’s open Internet depended not upon “light touch” restraint, but upon aggressive regulatory enforcement over many years. It also illustrates how the current policy debate focuses too narrowly on network neutrality rules to the exclusion of other proceedings and policy levers that can construct a larger “habitat” of innovation.
The Effects of the Selective Consideration of Alternatives on Consumer Choice and Attitude–Decision Consistency

There are many instances of consumer decision making in which more consideration is given to 1 brand than to others in the choice set. This research explored how selective consideration of a brand affects attitudes toward the brand, relative standing of the focal brand within the choice category, and decision making. Experiment 1 demonstrated that when participants were prompted to consider a randomly determined focal alternative, that alternative was more likely to be chosen than nonfocal alternatives. Moreover, willingness to pay for an alternative was higher if it was the focus of consideration. Attitudinal data suggest that the selective consideration effect occurred because attitudes toward the focal alternative became more positive compared to those toward other alternatives in the choice set. Experiment 2 elucidated this attitudinal effect by demonstrating that selective consideration could cause the extremity of consumers’ attitudes toward a focal brand to become more positive. Experiment 3 explored the potential of the selective consideration of a focal alternative to influence the consistency between consumers’ attitudes and decisions and established that the initial attitude toward a focal alternative moderated the selective consideration effect.
What might globalisation's critics believe?

Critics of globalisation object to many things, some of which can be easily understood within standard economic models, but others of which seem to reflect a view of the world that economists generally do not share. This paper attempts to identify several alternative frameworks for analysis within which some of their criticisms may be understood, with the ultimate aim of extracting testable implications that differ from standard models. Three such alternative models are suggested, all of which focus mainly on the behaviour of owners and managers of corporate capital: an anti-labour model, in which capitalists are willing to sacrifice some of their own profits for the chance to make labour worse off; a labour-monopsony model in which capitalists co-operate globally to increase profits by depressing wages; and an international political economy model in which capitalists use their resources to influence the political process for more than just obtaining import protection. This third framework, which is not spelled out in any detail here, has capitalists seeking policies such as export subsidies and other means of promoting market access, and it also has them influencing the international negotiations that set the rules of international agreements and organisations, such as the NAFTA and WTO. Examples of the latter sort of influence are discussed.
Response to Moul's Comments on “The Likely Magnitude, Extent, and Duration of an Iraq-UN War”

Moul's comments on my accurate forecast of the magnitude of the Iraq-UN War (Cioffi-Revilla 1991a), "an event 5.0 ≤ magnitude ≤ 6- will occur" (p. 389), comments written more than 2 years after the referent events and my forecast of those events, deserve close scientific scrutiny. Although on the surface his comments seem engaging and challenging, and indeed some analysts may choose to agree philosophically with Moul, in the end I have decided to respond because Moul's charges are scientifically unfounded and they misconstrue the core purpose of my study. By ground rules, my response must be brief, covering only three major points. Elsewhere I have already explained in greater depth the principal reasons for the accuracy of my forecast (Cioffi-Revilla 1991b).
Domestic Judicial Institutions and Human Rights Treaty Violation

Democratic and autocratic states routinely violate their international agreements protecting human rights. Scholars typically link ratification and compliance behavior theoretically but test their models separately; however, if the behaviors are jointly determined then we should treat them that way empirically. We consider how domestic judiciaries influence the joint choice to ratify and comply with international human rights regimes. Using data on the ratification status of states under the Convention Against Torture (CAT), states’ torture practices, and a series of measures of judicial effectiveness, we examine whether legal institutions are likely to constrain state behavior and by implication raise the costs of ratification.
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: LOOSE ENDS

Abstract The article addresses three aspects of the humanitarian intervention doctrine. It argues, first, that the value of sovereignty rests on the justified social processes of the target state – the horizontal contract. Foreign interventions, even when otherwise justified, must respect the horizontal contract. In contrast, morally objectionable social processes (such as the subjection of women) are not protected by sovereignty (intervention, of course, may be banned for other reasons). In addition, tyrants have no moral protection against interventions directed at them. Second, the article addresses the internal legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. It concludes that the liberal state may only use voluntary soldiers (either the voluntary army or mercenaries) to conduct humanitarian intervention. Conscription for that purpose is not permissible. The article shows that the long-standing criticism of mercenaries stems from a romantic prejudice and is thus unfair. Third, the article makes a distinction ...
Analyzing Prison Sex: Reconciling Self-Expression with Safety

This article examines the complexity of prison sex and the challenges that it raises in the context of recently enacted United States legislation, specifically the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). It begins by identifying a range of prisoner interests in enhanced sexual expression. These interests are described below in an attempt to disentangle prisoners' rights in sexual expression from states' legitimate interests in regulating that expression. This article also directs policymakers and decision makers to mine international documents and human rights norms that recognize the necessity of punishment and at the same time outline a standard for the safety of individuals in custody, the protection of human dignity, and the acknowledgement of the right to sexual self-expression. Ultimately, many prisons do not have legitimate interests in prohibiting prisoner sexual expression and should use their scarce resources to protect prisoners from nonconsensual and coercive sex by staff or other inmates.
Channel Stuffing with Short-Term Interest in Market Value

We study how a manager's short-term interest in the firm's market value may motivate channel stuffing: shipping excess inventory to the downstream channel. Channel stuffing allows a manager to report sales in excess of demand in order to influence investors' valuation of the firm. We apply an inventory model that highlights the potential role of inventory in the manager's channel stuffing and the investors' valuation strategies. Sales in our model are constrained by available inventory. Our model yields a semiseparating and semipooling equilibrium contingent on the initial inventory level: When the demand is lower than a threshold that depends on and is below the initial inventory level, the manager pads sales by a part of the excess inventory and releases the inflated sales report. The investors “correct” the reported sales and are able to infer perfectly the firm's value. When the demand reaches or exceeds this threshold, the manager pads any excess inventory to the sales and reports the initial inventory is sold out, which censors large demand realizations. Then the investors only infer the real demand is no less than the threshold and value the firm accordingly by expectation. Channel stuffing can influence the inventory decision, too. We find both over-and underinvestment in the initial inventory can arise in our model. We discuss empirical and managerial implications of our findings. This paper was accepted by Paul H. Zipkin, operations and supply chain management.
Pouring oil on fire: interest deductibility and corporate debt

This paper investigates the role of tax incentives towards debt finance in the buildup of leverage in the nonfinancial corporate (NFC) sector, using a large firm-level dataset. We find that so-called debt bias is a significant driver of leverage, for both small and medium-sized enterprises and larger firms, with its effect accounting for up to a quarter of total leverage. These findings support the tradeoff theory of capital structure. We furthermore explore what firm traits affect these results, documenting how the strength of this effect differs with firm size, the availability of collateral, income and income volatility, cash flow, and capital intensity. We conclude that leveling the playing field between debt and equity finance through tax policy reform would decrease NFC leverage.
Sex in and out of Intimacy

The state has long attempted to regulate sexual activity by channeling sex into various forms of state-supported intimacy. Although commentators and legal scholars of diverse political perspectives generally believe such regulation is declining, the freedom to engage in diverse sexual activities has not been established as a matter of law. Instead, courts have extended legal protection to consensual sexual acts only to the extent such acts support other state interests, most often marriage and procreation. Although Lawrence v. Texas altered some aspects of that vision, it reinscribed others by suggesting that sexual activity should be protected from state interference only to the extent it promotes enduring intimate relationships. This sex-in-service-to-intimacy paradigm devalues both sexual activity that lacks intimacy and intimate relationships that lack sex and reinforces a gendered view of sexuality and intimacy – one that assumes that women value intimacy over sex and that sex is the primary avenue through which men can become emotionally intimate. This Article challenges the single vision of sexual intimacy reinforced by Lawrence, arguing that the state should independently protect both intimate relationships and sexual interactions. Other legal scholars have argued that intimate sexual relationships should be protected outside of marriage, or that sex and marriage should be separated from state support for families. This Article extends the deconstructive project to intimacy in general, arguing that sex should be decoupled in the legal sphere from both domestic relationships and other traditional forms of emotional intimacy, thus rejecting the dominant, almost sacred, understanding that the most important relationships between adults should always be both sexual and emotionally intimate. In place of that understanding, the Article explores alternative constructions of the value of sex in non-intimate circumstances and the value of intimate relationships in the absence of sex. At the same time, the Article contends that sex can maintain its relational and generally intimate character even if it is not always tied to emotional intimacy, as sex could become intimate and intimacy could become sexual in new ways. Sex might even eventually lose its status as an exceptional activity with unique values and dangers. As long as sex retains its exceptional status, however, the Article argues that sexual association is deserving of the same protection extended to intimate association. Therefore, the Article concludes by considering how the values furthered by alternative constructions of sex and intimacy could support a constitutional right to engage in consensual sexual activity without regard to intimacy.
Pluralistic Ignorance and Political Correctness: The Case of Affirmative Action

The pressure to appear politically correct can have important consequences for social life. In particular, the desire to appear politically correct, and to avoid being seen as racist, sexist, or culturally insensitive, can lead people to espouse publicly support for politically correct issues, such as support for affirmative action, despite privately held doubts. Such discrepancies between public behavior and private attitudes, when accompanied by divergent attributions for one's own behavior and the identical behavior of others, can lead to pluralistic ignorance. Two studies investigated pluralistic ignorance with respect to affirmative action among undergraduates. Their survey responses indicate that people overestimate their peers' support for affirmative action and underestimate their peers' opposition to affirmative action, that people's ratings of the political correctness of supporting affirmative action are correlated with their overestimation of support for affirmative action, and that people view their own attitudes toward affirmative action as unique.
The Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle

When catastrophic outcomes are possible, it makes sense to take precautions against the worstcase scenarios — the Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle. This principle is based on three foundations: an emphasis on people’s occasional failure to appreciate the expected value of truly catastrophic losses; a recognition that political actors may engage in unjustifiable delay when the costs of precautions would be incurred immediately and when the benefits would not be enjoyed until the distant future; and an understanding of the distinction between risk and uncertainty. The normative arguments are illustrated throughout with reference to the problem of climate change; other applications include avian flu, genetic modification of food, protection of endangered species, and terrorism.
Discussion in the Security Council on Environmental Intervention in the Ukraine

Professor Malone uses a fictional discussion to illustrate real events that occurred in the Security Counsel concerning environmental intervention in Ukraine. The facts mentioned in the discussion are from documented sources held by the author and are confirmed up until February 7, 1994.
Implications Of Changes In Tax Rates For Firm Debt Levels: Evidence From The 1986 Tax Reform Act

In a recent paper, Jalbert (2002) develops and tests valuations equations for firms that are subject to pass-through taxation and for firms that are subject to double taxation. This work is extended by Jalbert and Dukes (2003) who examine the implications of a zero percent tax rate on dividend income. In this paper, we extend this line of work by developing equations for the implied changes in firm capital structure around a change in tax regime. The results show that firms change their capital structures in predictable ways when tax rates change. These results are important for determining likely changes in firm policy around future tax regime changes.
Reporting Internal Control Deficiencies in the Post-Sarbanes-Oxley Era: The Role of Auditors and Corporate Governance

This study addresses the role of audit committees and auditors in the reporting of internal control deficiencies after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). We find that a higher number of meetings of the audit committee, lesser proportion of ‘financial experts’ in the audit committee, and more auditor changes characterize firms that report weaknesses in their internal controls compared to firms with no weaknesses. Prior restatements of financial statements are also higher for firms that report weaknesses in internal controls. These results obtain after controlling for a variety of firm characteristics such as complexity of operations, profitability, and growth. Our results underscore the importance of governance characteristics beyond general firm characteristics in examining the reporting of internal control weaknesses. SUMMARY
Institutional investors, shareholder activism, and earnings management

Abstract The widespread practice of earnings management adversely impacts the quality of financial reports and increases information asymmetries between owners and managers. The present study investigates the effect of shareholder activism (as expressed by the proxy proposals sponsored by shareholders), and monitoring by the largest institutional owner on earnings management. Our longitudinal analyses indicate that the number of shareholder proposals received by firms is positively related to subsequent earnings management, yet concurrently, monitoring by the largest institutional owners is negatively related to earnings management. Our findings shed light on the equivocal results reported by prior research regarding the impact of shareholder activism on firm performance, on one hand, and ownership monitoring and performance, on the other.
Understanding Firms' Customer Satisfaction Information Usage

Abstract Despite theoretical and empirical research linking a firm's business performance to the satisfaction of its customers, knowledge of how firms collect and use customer satisfaction information is limited. The authors investigate firms' customer satisfaction information usage (CSIU) by drawing on in-depth interviews, a focus group of managers, and the existing literature. They identify key characteristics of the major processes involved in firms' CSIU and compare the CSIU practices revealed in their fieldwork with widely held normative theory prescriptions. They also identify variations in CSIU among the firms in the fieldwork and uncover factors that may help explain the observed differences.
Reexamining the Distribution of Wealth in 1870

This paper uses data on real and personal property ownership collected in the 1870 Federal Census to explore factors influencing individual wealth accumulation and the aggregate distribution of wealth in the United States near the middle of the nineteenth century. Previous analyses of these data have relied on relatively small samples, or focused on population subgroups. By using the much larger sample available in the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) we are able to disaggregate the data much more finely than has previously been possible allowing us to explore differences in inequality across space and between different population groups. The data provide strong support for the hypothesis that American industrialization during the nineteenth century resulted in increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth.