cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Judged by the Company You Keep: An Empirical Study of the Ideologies of Judges on the United States Courts of Appeals

Although there has been an explosion of empirical legal scholarship about the federal judiciary, with a particular focus on judicial ideology, the question remains: how do we know what the ideology of a judge actually is? For federal courts below the U.S. Supreme Court, legal academics and political scientists have offered only crude proxies to identify the ideologies of judges. This Article attempts to cure this deficiency in empirical research about the federal courts by introducing a new technique for measuring the ideology of judges based upon judicial behavior in the U.S. courts of appeals. This study measures ideology, not by subjectively coding the ideological direction of case outcomes, but by determining the degree to which federal appellate judges agree and disagree with their liberal and conservative colleagues at both the appellate and district court levels. Further, through regression analysis, several important findings related to the Ideology Scores emerge. First, the Ideology Scores in this Article offer substantial improvements in predicting civil rights case outcomes over the leading measures of ideology. Second, there were very different levels and heterogeneity of ideology among the judges on the studied circuits. Third, the data did not support the conventional wisdom that Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush appointed uniquely ideological judges. Fourth, in general judges appointed by Republican presidents were more ideological than those appointed by Democratic presidents. Fifth, attendance at a higher-ranked law school was strongly correlated with liberalism on the bench for appointments of both Republican and Democratic presidents. Sixth, prior work experience in the government (outside the judiciary) indicated liberal judicial voting. * © 2010, Corey Rayburn Yung, Associate Professor of Law at John Marshall Law School. For their helpful comments and suggestions, I would like to thank Joshua Fischman, Judge Richard A. Posner, David L. Schwartz, attendees and co-panelists at the Midwest Political Science Association National Conference, and the audience at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law Colloquium. For their diligent research, work, and technical support, I would especially like to thank Robert Breslin, Daniel Calandriello III, Ramsey Donnell, Sandra Espisito, Christopher Hack, Miguel Larios, Raizel Liebler, Stephanie Lieberman, and James Yung. Lastly, I want to thank John Corkery, Ralph Ruebner, and John Marshall Law School, without whose incredible support, this project would not have been possible. 1134 Boston College Law Review [Vol. 51:1133
Lawyers at Mid-Career: A 20-Year Longitudinal Study of Job and Life Satisfaction

This study is the first to our knowledge to simultaneously measure the predictors of lawyers' satisfaction with their careers and the predictors of lawyers' satisfaction with their lives more broadly. One class of the University of Virginia School of Law was studied between their matriculation in 1987 and their graduation in 1990. All 360 living graduates of this class were contacted in 2007, with a response rate of 72.2 percent. Descriptive information was obtained and empirically validated measures of both career satisfaction and life satisfaction were administered. Respondents were found to have taken many diverse career paths, with most (85 percent) having changed jobs at least once, and half having changed jobs at least twice. Gender differences in the personal and professional lives of respondents were pervasive. Women graduates were far more likely than men to interrupt or forego full-time employment (39 percent vs. 1 percent), mainly in order to care for children, and were also more likely to have a spouse or partner employed full time outside the home (77 percent vs. 24 percent). Working conditions at large private law firms emerged as a significant problem for many respondents; half of those who started their careers in large firms left to go to a different type of employer. Finally, both career satisfaction and life satisfaction were found to be high, with 81 percent of the respondents satisfied with their decision to become a lawyer, and 86 percent satisfied with their lives more broadly.
Globalization and the decline in labor shares: Exploring the relationship beyond trade and financial flows

Abstract We employ data from up to 125 countries during the 1970–2009 period to explore the relationship between globalization and labor share. Existing studies report a negative relationship between trade and investment flows and labor shares. While we also find that economic flows are often negatively related to labor shares, measures of social globalization tend to be positively related to labor shares. While greater mobility of goods and capital may be associated with increases in capital's bargaining power, all else equal, greater flows of information, ideas, and people may increase the bargaining power of workers.
Did Late Nineteenth Century U.S. Tariffs Promote Infant Industries? Evidence from the Tinplate Industry

Did late-nineteenth-century U.S. tariffs promote infant industries? After earlier failures, the tinplate industry became established and flourished after receiving protection with the 1890 McKinley tariff. Treating producers' entry and exit decisions as endogenous, a probability model is estimated to determine the conditions under which domestic tinplate production will occur. Counterfactual simulations indicate that, without the McKinley duties, domestic tinplate production would have arisen about a decade later as U.S. iron and steel input prices converged with those in Britain. Although the tariff accelerated the industry's development, welfare calculations suggest that protection does not pass a cost-benefit test. T he United States rapidly industrialized in the late nineteenth century and, around the turn of the century, became not just a net exporter of manufactured goods for the first time, but the world's leading producer of such goods. This industrial expansion occurred during a period of high import tariffs, raising the question of whether protection contributed to the U.S. success in manufacturing by fostering the growth of infant industries. Agreeing with those who later found it difficult to rule out a possible beneficial role of tariffs during this period, Frank Taussig stated that "there is aprimafacie case for the protectionist,-again an apparent confirmation of the validity of the young industries argument,-from the nature and extent of the industrial development during the last two decades of the nineteenth century."' Taussig remained agnostic, however, because he recognized that the impact of protection can be determined only by answering a counterfactual question about how an industry would have developed in the absence of the tariff. This counterfactual is particularly important in considering the iron and steel industry, in which the strongest candidates for examples of "successful" protection have tended to be. America's abundance of natural re
Geoffrey Sidesteps Quill: Constitutional Nexus, Intangible Property and the State Taxation of Income

This article evaluates the correctness of the decison in Geoffrey, Inc. v. South Carolina Tax Commission, 437 S.E.2d 13 (S.C.), cert. denied, 510 US 992 (1993), which held that the "physical presence" standard for determining state tax jurisdiction, as articulated in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298 (1992), does not apply in the context of a corporate income tax.
Do rating agencies cater? Evidence from rating-based contracts

I examine whether rating agencies cater to borrowers with rating-based performance-priced loan contracts (PPrating firms). I use data from Moody׳s Financial Metrics on its quantitative adjustments for off-balance-sheet debt and qualitative adjustments for soft factors. In the cross-section and for borrowers experiencing adverse economic shocks, I find that these adjustments are more favorable for PPrating firms than for other firms, consistent with rating agencies catering to the PPrating borrowers. I find that this catering is muted in two circumstances when rating agencies׳ reputational costs are higher than usual: (1) near the investment grade and prime short-term rating thresholds and (2) when Fitch Ratings also provides a rating.
Reputations for toughness in patent enforcement: implications for knowledge spillovers via inventor mobility

‘Job hopping’ by engineers and scientists is widely heralded as an important channel for knowledge spillovers within industries. Far less is known, however, about the actions firms take to reduce the outward flow of knowledge through markets for skilled labor. This study investigates the efficacy of a lever that has received little research attention: corporate reputations for toughness in patent enforcement. Drawing on unique data on enforcement activity, intra-industry inventor mobility, and patent citations in the U.S. semiconductor industry, we find that a firm's litigiousness significantly reduces spillovers otherwise anticipated from departures of employee inventors, particularly when the hiring organizations are entrepreneurial ventures. Surprisingly, the deterrent effects of patent enforcement are similar in magnitude for firms located in California, a state characterized by open norms for knowledge trading, and firms headquartered in other U.S. states. The study sheds new light on the strategic actions firms use to prevent rivals from capturing value from their investments in human capital and research and development. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Best Evidence: The Role of Information in Domestic Judicial Enforcement of International Human Rights Agreements

Independent domestic courts play important roles in enforcing international human rights agreements, thereby providing a mechanism by which international institutions can affect government policy. Yet this enforcement power is constrained not only by independence but also by the courts' ability to overcome information problems. Domestic courts' enforcement power depends on information in two ways: the costs of producing legally admissible evidence of abuses and the applicable legal standards of proof. When countries ratify international agreements, judicial enforcement can improve government practices when evidence-production costs and standards of proof are low, but not otherwise. With respect to personal integrity rights violations, evidence is especially difficult to obtain, and standards of proof are high, meaning that the courts will not be able to constrain government practices. By contrast, evidence-production costs and standards of proof are lower for other civil rights violations, so courts will be able to prosecute offenders and bring governments into line with their international commitments. Consistent with this theory, I find that commitments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) have significantly improved governments' respect for the freedoms of speech, association, assembly, and religion. With respect to personal integrity rights, however, I find that commitments to the ICCPR have not improved government practices.
Law and Politics Reconsidered: A New Constitutional History of Dred Scott

This essay synthesizes recent writing on the constitutional history of slavery, featuring Mark Graber's Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (2006). It offers a historical and legal analysis of Dred Scott that attempts to clarify the roles of both law and politics in controversial judicial decisions. It joins Graber in rehabilitating Chief Justice Taney's Dred Scott opinion as a plausible implementation of a Constitution that was born in slavery and grew only more suffused with slavery over time. It integrates much recent writing on the social, political, and constitutional history of slavery to develop the context in which the Dred Scott opinions must be read. And it finds that Justice Curtis's celebrated dissent amounted to an unjudicial manipulation of the law, albeit for the higher purpose of striking at the political hegemony of the slaveholding class. This essay is an abridgement of a longer work (Leonard 2009) that offers, among other things, further analysis of the unjudicial character of Curtis's dissent.
Mission Impracticable: The Impossibility of Commercial Impracticability

The recent global financial crisis, accurately named the Great Recession, negatively affected almost every individual and company in the United States. Unprecedented debt levels, substantial unemployment, decreased spending, and lending freezes left many companies unable to perform their contractual obligations. To avoid damages for breach of contract, some of those companies unsuccessfully sought judicial excuse under the doctrine of commercial impracticability. An off-shoot of impossibility, commercial impracticability permits a court to excuse an obligor when her obligation under a contract becomes commercially impracticable. Contrary to the intent of the drafters of both UCC Article 2 and the Restatements (Second) of Contracts, judges narrowly construe and apply commercial impracticability relying on unfounded and irrelevant inquiries. The result is a confusing and unpredictable doctrine. Past articles have analyzed commercial impracticability in isolated spheres, focusing only on Article 2, a particular set of circumstances, a specific judicial decision, or a particular method of analysis. This article instead analyzes commercial impracticability in a more comprehensive manner then provides a recommendation that simplifies and clarifies commercial impracticability and unifies the application of the doctrine across contract law.
Collective Bargaining Rights and Police Misconduct: Evidence from Florida

Growing controversy surrounds the impact of labor unions on law enforcement behavior. Critics argue that unions impede organizational reform and insulate officers from discipline for misconduct. Yet collective bargaining tends to increase wages, which could improve officer behavior. We provide quasi-experimental empirical evidence on the effects of collective bargaining rights on violent incidents of misconduct. Our empirical strategy exploits a 2003 Florida Supreme Court decision (Williams), which conferred collective bargaining rights on sheriffs' deputies, resulting in a substantial increase in unionization among these officers. Using a Florida state administrative database of "moral character" violations reported by local agencies between 1996 and 2015, we implement a difference-in-difference approach in which police departments (which were unaffected by Williams) serve as a control group for sheriffs' offices (SOs). Our estimates imply that collective bargaining rights led to a substantial increase in violent incidents of misconduct among SOs, relative to police departments. The effect of collective bargaining rights is concentrated among SOs that subsequently adopted collective bargaining agreements, and the timing of the adoption of these agreements is associated with increases in violent misconduct. There is also some evidence consistent with a "bargaining in the shadow" effect among SOs that did not unionize.
The Decentering of the Global Firm

This paper describes recent changes in the relationship between firms and nation states. Firms are typically linked to the nation in which they began and are considered to have fixed national identities. While firms have reallocated various activities around the world in response to value creation opportunities, they have largely retained their national identities and their headquarter activities have remained bundled in their home countries. This characterisation is increasingly tenuous. Firms are redefining their homes by unbundling their headquarters functions and reallocating them opportunistically across nations. A firm’s legal home, its financial home and its homes for managerial talent no longer need to be co-located and, consequently, the idea of firms as national actors rooted in their home countries is rapidly becoming outdated. The implications for policymakers and researchers are outlined.
Placebo Tests of Conditional Conservatism

ABSTRACT Basu (1997) proposes a measure of financial reporting conservatism based on asymmetry in the conditional earnings/returns relation. Patatoukas and Thomas (2011) show upward bias in this measure, because a placebo—lagged earnings—also exhibits similar asymmetry. Ball, Kothari, and Nikolaev (2013a) and Collins, Hribar, and Tian (2014) propose alternative explanations for the bias and offer revised measures to overcome the bias. However, we find that both revised measures remain substantially upward-biased. In particular, a placebo based on lagged share price mimics time-series and cross-sectional variation observed for the revised measures. More generally, we find biases in the asymmetric timeliness specification because earnings, accruals, and other measures of performance are often related to second and higher moments of the distribution of returns. In addition to suggesting that the asymmetric timeliness specification be used with caution, our study illustrates the useful role placebos can play ...
The role of teacher quality in retention and hiring: Using applications to transfer to uncover preferences of teachers and schools

Many large urban school districts are rethinking their personnel management strategies, often giving increased control to schools in the hiring of teachers, reducing, for example, the importance of seniority. If school hiring authorities are able to make good decisions about whom to hire, these reforms have the potential to benefit schools and students. Prior research on teacher transfers uses career history data, identifying the school in which a teacher teaches in each year. When such data are used to see which teachers transfer, it is unclear the extent to which the patterns are driven by teacher preferences or school preferences, because the matching of teachers to schools is a two-sided choice. This study uses applications-to-transfer data to examine separately which teachers apply for transfer and which get hired and, in so doing, differentiates teacher from school preferences. Holding all else equal, we find that teachers with better pre-service qualifications (certification exam scores, college competitiveness) are more likely to apply for transfer, while teachers whose students demonstrate higher achievement growth are less likely. On the other hand, schools prefer to hire “higher quality” teachers across measures that signal quality. The results suggest that not only do more effective teachers prefer to stay in their schools but that schools are able to identify and hire the best candidates when given the opportunity © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
Insuring Against Private Capital Flows: Is It Worth the Premium? What Are the Alternatives?

Following an analysis of the forces behind the so-called "global capital flows paradox" observed in the era of advancing financial globalization, this paper sets out to investigate the opportunity costs of self-insurance through precautionary reserve holdings. We reject the idea of reserves as low-cost protection against the vagaries of global finance. And we also deny that arrangements giving rise to their rapid accumulation may be sustainable in the first place. Alternative policy options open to developing countries are explored, designed to limit both the risks of financial globalization and costs of insurance-type responses. We propose comprehensive capital account management as an alternative to full capital account liberalization. The aims of a permanent regulatory regime of capital controls, both with respect to the aggregate size and the composition of capital flows, are twofold. The first aim is to maintain sufficient macro policy space. The second aim is to assure a good micro fit of external e...
The Merits of Global Constitutionalism

Global constitutionalism is an agenda that identifies and advocates for the application of constitutionalist principles in the international legal sphere. Global constitutionalization is the gradual emergence of constitutionalist features in international law. Critics of global constitutionalism doubt the empirical reality of constitutionalization, call into question the analytic value of constitutionalism as an academic approach, and fear that the discourse is normatively dangerous because it is anti-pluralist, artificially creates a false legitimacy, and promises an unrealistic end of politics. This article addresses these objections. I argue that global constitutionalization is likely to compensate for globalization-induced constitutionalist deficits on the national level, that a constitutionalist reading of international law can serve as a hermeneutic device, and that the constitutionalist vocabulary uncovers legitimacy deficits of international law and suggests remedies. Global constitutionalism, therefore, has a responsibilizing and much-needed critical potential.
Local Obesity Prevalence and Corporate Policies

Consistent with prior findings that obese individuals tend to be more risk-averse and myopic, we find that firms located in areas with higher obesity rates invest less, grow more slowly, are less p...
CONSUMERS AND AGENCY PROBLEMS

Consumers solve many agency problems, by pointing out when they believe that agents have made mistakes. I consider the role that consumers play in inducing efficient behaviour by agents. I distinguish cases where consumers have similar preferences to the principal, from those where they diverge. In the former case, allowing consumer feedback improves allocations, and increasing consumer information is unambiguously beneficial. Where consumers disagree with principals over desired outcomes, which characterises many public sector benefits, consumers' feedback about the performance of agents can reduce welfare. This may result in efficiently restricting the ability of consumers to complain about agent performance.
Language, Deals and Standards: The Future of XML Contracts

eXtensible Markup Language (XML) structures information in documentary systems ranging from financial reports to medical records and business contracts. XML standards for specific applications are developed spontaneously by self-appointed technologists or entrepreneurs. XML’s social and economic stakes are considerable, especially when developed for the private law of contracts. XML can reduce transaction costs but also limit the range of contractual expression and redefine the nature of law practice. So reliance on spontaneous development may be sub-optimal and identification of a more formal public standard setting model necessary. To exploit XML’s advantages while minimizing risks, this Article envisions creating a publicly-oriented foundation to set XML-based standards for the private law of corporate contracts. The Article’s specific inquiry concerning corporate contracts illuminates XML’s broader implications, making the standard-setting model it contributes adaptable to other contexts. Subject Matters: Contracts (including E-Commerce); Corporate Law (including corporate law practice); Intellectual Property Law (including ownership of standards); Law & Economics (especially nexus of contracts, theory of the firm); Law & Technology (especially structured information systems).
The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking: Ideology and Institutionalization of a Moral Crusade

The issue of sex trafficking has become increasingly politicized in recent years due to the efforts of an influential moral crusade. This article examines the social construction of sex trafficking (and prostitution more generally) in the discourse of leading activists and organizations within the crusade, and concludes that the central claims are problematic, unsubstantiated, or demonstrably false. The analysis documents the increasing endorsement and institutionalization of crusade ideology in U.S. government policy and practice.
After Drye: The Likely Attachment of the Federal Tax Lien to Tenancy-by-the- Entireties Interests

On December 7, 1999, the United States Supreme Court unanimously decided Drye v. United States, a case likely to be a landmark in federal tax lien law. Drye clarified what had been muddied by previous Supreme Court and lower court decisions: the proper relation between state law and federal law in tax lien attachment cases. That clarification will permit-indeed, compel-greater analytical precision as future courts address tax lien cases. This Article discusses one such line of cases.
Consistency of Book-Tax Differences and the Information Content of Earnings

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the effect of tax planning and earnings management on the informativeness of book income and taxable income. We conduct two sets of tests documenting (1) the incremental effect of tax planning and earnings management on the informativeness of book and taxable income, and (2) the relation between the consistency of the book-tax difference and the informativeness of book and taxable income. The consistency of the book-tax difference depends on firm decisions regarding incremental earnings management and tax planning. Consistency of the book-tax difference is measured as the standard deviation of the discretionary component of the difference between book income and taxable income. Our results show that consistency of the book-tax difference, as a measure of the joint effect of earnings management and tax planning, is related to persistence of both book and tax income and has an incremental effect on information content of both book income and taxable income. JEL Classifications:...
Business Conditions and Economic Analysis: An Experiential Learning Program for Economics Students.

The authors describe the Business Conditions and Economic Analysis (BCEA) program developed at the University of Richmond. The BCEA program is an experiential learning format for economics students built on the success of student-managed investment funds (SMIF) in finance. In its initial implementation, the BCEA group conducts domestic and global macroeconomic analysis and industry studies to support the portfolio decisions of student fund managers. At a more mature stage, the BCEA program includes a Web-based publication for disseminating macroeconomic forecasts and special-topic articles written by BCEA and SMIF students. Generally, the BCEA program is a curricular extension for economics students seeking higher levels of rigor in their course work, academic distinction in economics, and refinement of competencies for careers in financial economics.
Do We Need a Human Right to a Healthy Environment

Melting ice, rising sea levels, and changing weather patterns attributable to climate change increasingly affect daily life for millions, and perhaps billions, of people. When the environment suffers, people suffer. Climate change increasingly interferes with the realization of fundamental, internationally recognized human rights — including the right to life, to health, to culture, to food, to self-determination, to property, and to development. The poorest and most vulnerable will suffer first, and perhaps most, but ultimately the crisis will reach all of us.Part 1 of this paper describes why human rights are increasingly being invoked in the context of environmental decision-making. Part 2 offers a brief introduction to the limitations of domestic and international environmental law that drive interest in using human rights to address environmental challenges. Part 3 surveys existing human rights that have been pressed into service for environmental ends, and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of using existing human rights norms to advance environmental goals. Part 4 describes the emerging norms coalescing around the human right to a healthy environment. This section re-analyzes existing human rights cases through an environmental rights lens to highlight what environmental rights might add to the existing body of human rights law and jurisprudence. Part 5 considers whether invoking human rights extends state ability to regulate the environmental conduct of non-state actors like transnational corporations. Finally, Part 6 returns to the introduction — putting human rights jurisprudence in the context of the scope and scale of the environmental problems we face.
Introduction—Forum Series on the Role of Institutions in Promoting Economic Growth

By the end of the 20th century it was obvious that earlier public policy models of economic development and poverty reduction were less effective than desired. As a consequence international institutions, devoted to promoting development throughout the world, began a reassessment of their aid programs and the general mode of thinking about the problem of underdevelopment. Along these lines, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) tapped the Institute for Research on the Informal Sector (IRIS) at the University of Maryland to administer a Forum Series on the Role of Institutions in Promoting Economic Growth. The aim of the Series was to improve both the self-understanding of the task of effectively aiding economic growth and development, and the effectiveness in the delivery of economic growth and development. The Swedish International Development Agency at roughly the same time commissioned a study from the researchers associated with The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis headed by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. Again the focus wa sa nintellectual reassessment of the role that institutions play in promoting or hindering economic growth and development (see Ostrom et al. 2002).
Presidential Power in Historical Perspective: Reflections on Calabresi and Yoo's the Unitary Executive

On February 6 and 7, 2009, more than three dozen of the nation’s most distinguished commentators on presidential power gathered in Philadelphia to explore themes raised by a book authored by Steven Calabresi and I co-authored reviewing the history of presidential practices with respect to the unitary executive. The conference honoring our book and the special journal issue bringing together the articles presented there provide a welcome opportunity both to look backwards on the history of our project and to look forwards at the questions yet to be answered.
An Empirical Model of Growth Through Product Innovation

Productivity dispersion across firms is large and persistent, and worker reallocation among firms is an important source of productivity growth. The purpose of the paper is to estimate the structure of an equilibrium model of growth through innovation. The model is a modified version of the Schumpeterian theory of firm evolution and growth developed by Klette and Kortum (2002). The data set is a panel of Danish firms than includes information on value added, employment, and wages. The model’s fit is good and the structural parameter estimates have interesting implications for the aggregate growth rate and the contribution of worker reallocation to it.
Super Kac–Moody 2‐categories

We introduce generalizations of Kac-Moody 2-categories in which the quiver Hecke algebras of Khovanov, Lauda and Rouquier are replaced by the quiver Hecke superalgebras of Kang, Kashiwara and Tsuchioka.
Navigating Tricky Ethical Shoals in Environmental Law: Parameters of Counseling and Managing Clients

This article explores some of the ethical situations that environmental and natural resource lawyers can encounter when counseling clients. It begins by exploring the Model Rule of Professional Conduct (MRPC) 2.1, regarding counsel’s role as “advisor,” which provides that appropriate client counseling refers not only to law, but also to moral, economic, social, and political factors, when making decisions. It also explores the environmental lawyer’s ability to withdraw from representation pursuant to MRPC 1.16. It places the obligations and options under these rules and other mandates in the environmental and natural resource context, and encourages attorneys practicing in the area to consider how best to apply these rules in their practice.
How International Law Works: Introduction

How International law works offers a theory to explain why states comply with their international legal obligations. It then applies that theory to the field of international law, testing the conventional wisdom on how international law operates and why it looks the way it does.
Informational size, incentive compatibility, and the core of a game with incomplete information

We study the ex ante incentive compatible core, and provide conditions under which the ex ante incentive compatible core is nonempty when agents are informationally small in the sense of McLean and Postlewaite (2002a, Econometrica, 70, 2421–2453).
Is Regionalism an Increasing Feature of the World Economy

Measuring the importance of regionalism in international trade is desirable but difficult. The number of regional trade agreements (RTAs) reported to the WTO or the proportion of world trade which is between countries in an RTA are frequently cited as evidence that regionalism is growing at an accelerating rate. This paper questions whether RTAs really are as important as the headline numbers suggest, or whether they just occupy an excessively large part of policymakers’ and economic journalists’ time. The main contributions are to analyse the number of RTAs and the share of world trade criteria in order to show why both are meaningless in the current world economy. The paper concludes that, although the extent of regionalism is difficult to measure and the desirability of individual RTAs is difficult to assess, the threat to the multilateral trading system does not appear to be as large as is often reported, because the long-term dynamics of RTAs lead either to state formation, which is important but rare, or to ineffectiveness, which is the fate of the vast majority of RTAs.
Reactor neutrino experiments: $\theta_{13}$ and beyond

We review the current-generation short-baseline reactor neutrino experiments that have firmly established the third neutrino mixing angle θ13 to be nonzero. The relative large value of θ13 (around 9°) has opened many new and exciting opportunities for future neutrino experiments. Daya Bay experiment with the first measurement of $\Delta m^2_{ee}$ is aiming for a precision measurement of this atmospheric mass-squared splitting with a comparable precision as $\Delta m^2_{\mu\mu}$ from accelerator muon neutrino experiments. JUNO, a next-generation reactor neutrino experiment, is targeting to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy (MH) with medium baselines (~ 50 km). Beside these opportunities enabled by the large θ13, the current-generation (Daya Bay, Double Chooz, and RENO) and the next-generation (JUNO, RENO-50, and PROSPECT) reactor experiments, with their unprecedented statistics, are also leading the precision era of the three-flavor neutrino oscillation physics as well as constraining new physics beyon...
Income convergence in the United States: a tale of migration and urbanization

We use nonparametric distribution dynamics techniques to reassess the convergence of per capita personal income (PCPI) across U.S. states and across metropolitan (metro) and nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) portions of states for the period 1969–2005. The long-run distribution of PCPI is bimodal for both states and metro/nonmetro portions. Furthermore, the high-income mode of the distribution across metro and nonmetro portions corresponds to the single mode of the long-run distribution across metro portions only. These results (polarization or club-convergence) are reversed when weighting by population. The long-run distributions across people are consistent with convergence. Migration and urbanization are the forces behind convergence.
PARADOXES (AND ORTHODOXIES) OF ASSIMILATION

The concept of assimilation, whether as outcome or process, conflates elements that are both empirical and ideological, ethno- graphic and ethnocentric. Conventional wisdom on the adaptation of immi- grants in America has conceived of "assimilation" prescriptively and not only descriptively, as a linear process of progressive adjustment to Ameri- can life. This conception is guided by an implicit deficit model: to get ahead immigrants need to learn how to "become American" and overcome their deficits with respect to the new language and culture, the new economy and society. As they shed the old and acquire the new over time, they surmount those obstacles and make their way more successfully-a homog- enizing process more or less completed by the second or third generation. Recent research findings, however, especially in the areas of immigrant health, mental health, ethnic self-identity and education, debunk such ethnocentric assumptions, often running precisely in the opposite direction of what is expectedfrom traditional perspectives. Some empirical examples are highlighted, focusing on paradoxes-on evidence that contradicts orthodox expectations-in order to identify areas that need conceptual, analytical, and theoretical refinement, including the need to spell out precisely and systematically what it is that is being "assimilated," by whom, under what circumstances, and in reference to what sector of Amer- ican society. The diversity of contcmporary immigrants to the United States, in terms of class, culture, color, and the contexts within which they are received, and their segmented modes of incorporation, raise new ques- tions about assimilationfrom what? to what? andfor what?
Manson v. Brathwaite Revisited: Towards a New Rule of Decision for Due Process Challenges to Eyewitness Identification Procedures

A major cause of wrongful convictions is mistaken eyewitness identification. The leading Supreme Court case governing due process challenges to identification procedures, Manson v. Brathwaite, is almost 30 years old, and does not account for decades of social science research on eyewitness identification. In fact, parts of the Manson test designed to ensure reliability run counter to research findings. In this piece, O'Toole and Shay describe the problems with the Manson test, and, drawing on a theoretical framework introduced by Professor Mitchell Berman and employed by Professor Kermit Roosevelt, propose a new rule of decision for due process challenges to identification procedures.
A Beautiful Lie: Exploring Rhinelander v. Rhinelander as a Formative Lesson on Race, Identity, Marriage, and Family

This essay explores the past and present social meanings of what occurred during a 1920s New York trial court case, Rhinelander v. Rhinelander. Rhinelander involved a claim by Leonard Kip Rhinelander, a white socialite, who filed for annulment of his marriage to Alice Beatrice Jones, a woman of racially ambiguous heritage. Leonard claimed that Alice committed fraud that went to the essence of their marriage by failing to inform him that she was of "colored" blood. According to legend, Leonard and Alice were madly in love, and Leonard filed the lawsuit only because of his father, who refused to accept the relationship. As the story goes, Leonard told Alice to fight the case to ensure that they could be together as husband and wife. Thus, it was a surprise when Alice chose not to "litigate" her whiteness but instead admitted that she was of "colored" descent and argued that Leonard was aware of her race before the marriage. The jury shockingly returned a verdict for Alice. Rhinelander is often read as a victory for race relations - a victory of a black working-class woman over a wealthy, white male socialite. This essay examines Rhinelander not as a racial victory, but instead as a testament to hierarchies of race in society, societal desire by Whites for legal recognition of the idea of biological race, and the "punishments," both legally and socially, that can be imposed upon those who dare to transgress racial boundaries of familial intimacy. Part I of this Essay describes the romance of Alice and Leonard Rhinelander and Leonard's actions in filing for an annulment of their marriage. It also details the event of the trial itself and explains the different trial strategies employed by the parties' attorneys in this complex legal battle. Part II focuses on the voice given to Alice, who never testified at trial, by exploring the reasons behind her attorney Lee Parsons Davis's chosen trial strategy for his client and the reasons why Davis was able to succeed in winning the case for Alice, a colored woman, against Leonard, a wealthy white socialite, in 1920s New York. Finally, Part III analyzes Alice's seeming powerlessness over selecting her own defense strategy and defining her own racial identity within the context of today's society. This Part also examines how these simultaneously flexible and inflexible, but exclusionary methods for classifying people according to race work to maintain racially segregated boundaries of love and intimacy in a way that continually fails to unpack cross-racial inequalities and merely stabilizes a pyramid of intimate relationships that leave black-white love at the bottom of the ladder. Overall, this Essay concludes by identifying how Rhinelander foreshadowed the continuing role of racial classifications in maintaining segregated lines of love and intimacy.
Corporate Transparency and Human Rights

This article uses information theory and game theory to look at ways to make corporate codes of conduct more effective in promoting human rights. It explores the benefits of transparency, and imports the concept of separating equilibrium from game theory. Using these concepts, one can create a system that will raise overall information costs selectively for those multinational corporations (MNC's) that ignore or abuse generally-accepted international human rights standards. Among the elements of such a system would be lowered information acquisition and verification costs for parties concerned with human rights issues, and elimination of certification systems that impose lower costs upon human rights violators than upon human rights respecters. Through these approaches, the costs of participation would be significantly lower for those MNC's that comply with human rights norms than those that do not, and MNC's would be put to the open choice of whether to participate in transparent reporting and code systems.
Collapsing exchange rate regimes: shocks and biases

Abstract Patterns in domestic credit creation stemming from inconsistent fiscal policies have received widespread attention for their role in aggrevating speculative attacks on central bank foreign exchange reserves and contributing to the collapse of exchange rate regimes. This paper acknowledges the importance of monetary and fiscal discipline, but also emphasizes the importance of other random shocks to the domestic money market, most notably shocks from external credit supplies and relative prices. Policies of the domestic fiscal authorities are only partial catalysts for speculative attacks on a currency. Expansion of domestic credit stemming from the monetization of fiscal imbalances may be dominated by involuntary domestic credit expansions which are necessitated by surprise shortages in supplies of external capital. Further, the unexpected availability of external capital translates into a lower net critical reserve floor, making the depletion of central bank reserves by a speculative attack more difficult to accomplish. Relative price shocks also randomize the demand for nominal money balances and therefore may also have a strong direct influence on the probability of an exchange regime collapse. Empirical studies of exchange rate crises that neglect these considerations will produce biased estimates of both expected collapse probabilities and anticipated post—collapse exchange rates.
Science as a map in technological search

A large body of work argues that scientific research increases the rate of technological advance, and with it economic growth. The precise mechanism through which science accelerates the rate of invention, however, remains an open question. Conceptualizing invention as a combinatorial search process, this paper argues that science alters inventors' search processes, by leading them more directly to useful combinations, eliminating fruitless paths of research, and motivating them to continue even in the face of negative feedback. These mechanisms prove most useful when inventors attempt to combine highly coupled components; therefore, the value of scientific research to invention varies systematically across applications. Empirical analyses of patent data support this thesis. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
NeuroDiff: scalable differential verification of neural networks using fine-grained approximation

As neural networks make their way into safety-critical systems, where misbehavior can lead to catastrophes, there is a growing interest in certifying the equivalence of two structurally similar neural networks - a problem known as differential verification. For example, compression techniques are often used in practice for deploying trained neural networks on computationally- and energy-constrained devices, which raises the question of how faithfully the compressed network mimics the original network. Unfortunately, existing methods either focus on verifying a single network or rely on loose approximations to prove the equivalence of two networks. Due to overly conservative approximation, differential verification lacks scalability in terms of both accuracy and computational cost. To overcome these problems, we propose NeuroDiff, a symbolic and fine-grained approximation technique that drastically increases the accuracy of differential verification on feed-forward ReLU networks while achieving many orders-of-magnitude speedup. NeuroDiff has two key contributions. The first one is new convex approximations that more accurately bound the difference of two networks under all possible inputs. The second one is judicious use of symbolic variables to represent neurons whose difference bounds have accumulated significant error. We find that these two techniques are complementary, i.e., when combined, the benefit is greater than the sum of their individual benefits. We have evaluated NeuroDiff on a variety of differential verification tasks. Our results show that NeuroDiff is up to 1000X faster and 5X more accurate than the state-of-the-art tool.
Destination taxation and evasion: Evidence from U.S. inter-state commodity flows

Tax evasion has been an important issue in the accounting literature for several decades, but the focus has been on corporate income taxes. We develop a new way to examine tax evasion that focuses on corporate transactions, rather than corporate profits. Specifically, we examine how commodity flows respond to destination sales taxes, allowing for tax evasion as a function of distance between trade partners. After accounting for transportation costs, we find that the effect of taxes decreases as distance increases. This is consistent with the notion that longer distances between trade partners hinder government oversight and increase the likelihood of successful tax evasion. Our results are robust with respect to outliers, strategic neighbor effects, information sharing agreements and other re-specifications. These results are important to policymakers because they evidence the difficulty of enforcing destination taxation in open economies such as U.S. states and the European Union.
Budgetary Incentives for Retail Activities at Military Bases

The Department of Defense (DoD) operates an extensive system of retail activities at military bases for active duty, retired, and reserve personnel and their families. DoD stores employ 96,000 civilian workers and sell $14 billion of goods and services annually at below-market prices. DoD resists efforts to reduce its role in retail activities, arguing that even within the United States stores with below-market prices are a cost-effective alternative to higher cash compensation for military personnel. This article examines the budgetary incentives that make inefficient, government-operated stores attractive to DoD and describes options that would change those incentives. Because most of DoD's retail stores are controlled by nonappropriated fund instrumentalities of the federal government, reforming those incentives could require changes in the treatment of these poorly understood federal entities.