cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A systematic analysis of the beta hairpin motif in the Protein Data Bank

The beta hairpin motif is a ubiquitous protein structural motif that can be found in molecules across the tree of life. This motif, which is also popular in synthetically designed proteins and peptides, is known for its stability and adaptability to broad functions. Here we systematically probe all 49,000 unique beta hairpin substructures contained within the Protein Data Bank (PDB) to uncover key characteristics correlated with stable beta hairpin structure, including amino acid biases and enriched inter-strand contacts. We find that position specific amino acid preferences, while seen throughout the beta hairpin structure, are most evident within the turn region, where they depend on subtle turn dynamics associated with turn length and secondary structure. We also establish a set of broad design principles, such as the inclusion of aspartic acid residues at a specific position and the careful consideration of desired secondary structure when selecting residues for the turn region, that can be applied to the generation of libraries encoding proteins or peptides containing beta hairpin structures. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Fixed-k Inference for Conditional Extremal Quantiles

We develop a new extreme value theory for repeated cross-sectional and longitudinal/panel data to construct asymptotically valid confidence intervals (CIs) for conditional extremal quantiles from a...
Shallow-circuit variational quantum eigensolver based on symmetry-inspired Hilbert space partitioning for quantum chemical calculations

The authors report a graph-clustering algorithm for partitioning the Hilbert space associated with a qubit Hamiltonian.
The New Race: Speeding Up Climate Change Innovation

The threat posed by climate change has finally been recognized, and governments have begun taking actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to attempt to mitigate the potential damage. While government regulations may require reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, insufficient technology exists to achieve the necessary reductions without severe economic consequences. Encouragement of the development and dissemination of technologies related to emissions reductions will be a crucial aspect of any climate change policy. Current intellectual property law, however, does not provide sufficient encouragement for this necessary innovation. Thus, as others have proposed, modification of existing intellectual property systems is a way to further encourage innovation. The creation of a green technology program for protecting environmental technologies that includes relaxation of the non-obvious patentability requirement in conjunction with a shorter period of protection may be part of a solution. This should be combined with a compulsory licensing program that values technologies by their environmental potential. Current databases which are maintained by the EPA should be expanded to increase awareness of technologies, and the expertise of both the EPA and the USPTO should be utilized in determining whether environmental inventions should receive protection under the program.
Oil crisis, energy-saving technological change and the stock market crash of 1973–74☆

The market value of U.S. corporations was nearly halved following the oil crisis of October 1973. Real energy prices more than doubled by the end of the decade, increasing energy costs and spurring innovation in energy-saving technologies by corporations. This paper uses a neo-classical growth model to quantify the impact of the increase in energy prices on the market value of U.S. corporations. In the model, corporations adopt energy-saving technologies as a response to the energy price shock and the price of installed capital falls due to investment irreversibility. The model calibrated to match the subsequent decline in energy consumption in the U.S. generates a 24% decline in market valuation - accounting for nearly half of what is observed in the data.
PROTECTING CONSUMERS FROM ZOMBIE-DEBT COLLECTORS

The debt-collection business is booming, led by a dramatic increase in the sale and collection of defaulted debts. Annually, debt buyers purchase more than $100 billion in debt (based on the debts’ face value). In a typical debt purchase, buyers pay only a small fraction of face value; in return, they receive extremely limited and often inaccurate information. Many of the debts that buyers seek to recover are dead debts because they never existed, or are no longer enforceable by operation of law. Consumers who receive communications from debt buyers often complain about mistaken identity and identity theft, because they did not incur the alleged debts. Other debt-collection issues arise when debt buyers seek to recover debts that have previously been paid or settled, discharged in bankruptcy, or have become time-barred because the collection period under the statute of limitations has expired. By obtaining judgments, or persuading consumers to pay a portion of these debts, acknowledge these debts, or enter into new agreements, collectors can resurrect and enforce dead or non-existent debts. The media has labeled these resurrected debts as “zombie debts.” 1 Just as the zombies in movies come back from the dead to terrorize individuals, dead
Contract Design and the Shading Problem

Despite recent advances in our understanding of contracting behavior, economic contract theory has yet to identify the principal causes and effects of contract breach. In this Essay, I argue that opportunism is a primary explanation for why commercial parties deliberately breach their contracts. I develop a novel variation on opportunism that I identify as “shading;” a behavior that more accurately describes the vexing problems courts face in rooting out strategic behavior in contract litigation. I provide some empirical support for the claim that shading behavior is both pervasive in litigation over contract breach and extremely difficult for generalist courts to detect, and I offer an explanation for why this is so. In contrast to courts of equity in pre-industrial England, generalist courts today are tasked with the challenge of interpreting contracts in a heterogeneous global economy. This has left generalist courts incapable of identifying with any degree of accuracy which of the litigants is behaving strategically. I advance the claim that ex ante design by commercial parties is more effective in deterring opportunism in litigation than ex post evaluation of the contractual context by generalist courts. I illustrate this claim by focusing on the critical roles of uncertainty and scale in determining how legally sophisticated parties, both individually and collectively, design their contracts. By deploying sophisticated design strategies tailored to particular environments, parties are able both to reduce the risk of shading and to cabin the role of the decision maker tasked with policing this difficult to verify behavior. I conclude that judges and contract theorists must attend to the unique characteristics of the contracts currently being designed by sophisticated parties because it is the parties, and not the courts, that reduce the risks of opportunistic shading in contract adjudication.
Institutional Recalibration and Judicial Delimitation

Throughout American history, a peculiar and recurrent disjunction has often arisen between the substance of transformative reforms and the decidedly less-radical governing arrangements that arise in the aftermath of reform. To account for this disjunction, this article puts forth a theory of postreform “recalibration.” Political processes of recalibration are the means by which vague, indeterminate principles of reform are given operational meaning and translated into new governing arrangements. This article illuminates recalibration processes by examining two case-studies: African American rights in the post-Reconstruction era of the 1870s and 1880s, and labor rights in the post–New Deal era of the late 1930s. Finally, the article also highlights the crucial role of the Supreme Court in recalibration processes and sets forth a theory of judicial behavior as driven by an institutional interest in stability.
Monetary Instrument Problem Revisited: The Role of Fiscal Policy

The monetary instrument problem is examined in an endowment economy model with various stochastic disturbances, with minimizing the variance of inflation as the policy objective. Following current developments in the theory of fiscal determination of the price level, for different monetary policies, active or passive fiscal policy is specified to guarantee a unique equilibrium. The responses of inflation to various structural disturbances in the constant money growth rate-passive fiscal (the active monetary-passive fiscal regime, or the conventional regime where Ricardian equivalence and Quantity Theory of Money hold) and the constant interest rate-active fiscal regime (the passive monetary-active fiscal regime, or the regime where fiscal policy determines the price level) are explained based on monetary and fiscal policiesƒy role in financing government deficit changes and satisfying the government budget constraint in each regime, which is different from the explanations of past research following Poole. One of interesting findings is that an increase in the steady state real value of nominal government debts (bonds) reduces the variance of inflation in the passive monetary-active fiscal regime.
Civil Liberties and the Terrorism Prevention Paradigm: The Guilt by Association Critique

2. Tavia Smith, Shoe Bomber Richard Reid to Serve Life Sentence for Trying to Blow up an Airplane, NPR MORNING EDITION, Jan. 31, 2003, 2003 WL 4856067. 3. Except as otherwise indicated, the following account derives from United States v. Goba, 240 F. Supp. 2d 242 (W.D.N.Y. 2002) (relating substance of Galab's plea agreement); United States v. Goba, 220 F. Supp. 2d 182 (W.D.N.Y. 2002) [hereinafter Goba I]; Plea Agreement, United States v. Mosed, No. 02-CR-214-S (W.D.N.Y. 2002) [hereinafter Mosed
Elite collective agency and the state

The paper explores how elites can develop capacity for collective agency through coordination.. The challenge for elites is to simultaneously deter the state from abusing power while at the same time relying on it to discipline defectors in their midst..The basic insight holds that the credibility of the state's threats depends on the cost of carrying them out, which elites can control. The elites can coordinate by being compliant when the ruler's threats serve their collective interest, which by reducing the cost of carrying them out make them more credible. On the other hand, their coordinated non-compliance has the opposite effect...
Common Law, Civil Law, and the Administrative State: From Coke to "Lochner"

In . .. most [states] on the Continent of Europe, the . . . rules . .. stand, to a large extent, in the form of positive statutes, or Codes, enacted by the arbitrary power of the sovereign, or by the authority of the legislative assembly, where such a body exists . .. [cod(fication] is a characteristic feature in those [states] which have a despotic origin, or in which despotic power, absolute or qualified, is, or has been, predominant.
Shorting Down Value: The Toxic Effect of Insufficient Internal Liquidity

This paper demonstrates analytically how short sellers can put non-transitory downward pressure on the stock market prices and intrinsic values of companies that need to raise external capital because of insufficient internal liquidity. The model helps explain anomalous empirical findings in the extant literature on negative returns to stocks subjected to heavy shorting activity. The implications of the model also supply normative justification for the sizable cash reserves held by corporations and their reluctance to raise external capital. The equity pricing effects implied by the model are illustrated for a large empirical sample of companies negatively impacted by heavy short sales. Empirical tests are also conducted in this research that provide evidence consistent with the theory.
On and off China's turnpike

A reorientation towards emphasis on consumption has become a major issue in China, raising the question of the relationship between economic growth and the composition of output. The issue is addressed here, using insights from economic growth theories. These theories indicate that concentration on capital goods production generates the most rapid overall growth. With short-term deviations and without explicit reference to any theory, Chinese practice in the past seems to have conformed. A shift to emphasizing output of consumption goods while resulting in an overall growth slowdown, will improve consumer welfare, suggesting the benefits of shifting to this criterion of economic success.
Adapting to Climate Change: Who Should Pay

In Massachusetts v. EPA,2 the Supreme Court, for the first time, acknowledged the reality of climate change. The state of Massachusetts brought suit to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) refusal to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from automobiles.3 To gain standing, the State had to demonstrate that it was injured by climate change.4 Central to its claim of injury was the allegation that sea level rise, caused by climate change, had already begun to eat away at its coastlines and would increasingly do so in the future.5 The State also cited the funds that it would be required to spend to ameliorate the im-
What Explains Differences in Smoking, Drinking, and Other Health-Related Behaviors?

We explore economic model of health behaviors. While the standard economic model of health as an investment is generally supported empirically, the ability of this model to explain heterogeneity across individuals is extremely limited. Most prominently, the correlation of different health behaviors across people is virtually zero, suggest that standard factors such as variation in discount rates or the value of life are not the drivers of behavior. We focus instead on two other factors: genetics; and behavioral-specific situational factors. The first factor is empirically important, and we suspect the second is as well.
An Efficient Approach for Pricing Spread Options

Spread options are options whose payoff is based on the difference in the prices of two underlying assets. The price of a spread option is the (discounted) double integral of the option payoffs over the risk-neutral joint distribution of the terminal prices of the two underlying assets. Analytic expressions for the values of spread puts and calls in a Black-Scholes environment are not known, and various numerical algorithms must be used. This article presents an accurate and efficient approach for pricing European-style spread options on equities, foreign currencies, and commodities. The key to the approach is to recognize that the joint density of the terminal prices of the underlying assets can be factored into the product of univariate marginal and conditional densities, and that an analytic expression for the integral of the option payoffs over the conditional density is available. The remaining integration amounts to valuing the payoff function given by the results of the first integration. This payoff function is approximated by a portfolio of ordinary puts and calls, and valued accordingly. The approach is more accurate than existing bivariate binomial schemes, and fast enough for practical applications. It also allows for accurate and efficient computation of the partial derivatives of the option price, i.e., the Greek letter risks.
Predictive inference under model misspecification with an application to assessing the marginal predictive content of money for output

In this chapter we discuss model selection and predictive accuracy tests in the context of parameter and model uncertainty under recursive and rolling estimation schemes. We begin by summarizing some recent theoretical findings, with particular emphasis on the construction of valid bootstrap procedures for calculating the impact of parameter estimation error on the class of test statistics with limiting distributions that are functionals of Gaussian processes with covariance kernels that are dependent upon parameter and model uncertainty. We then provide an example of a particular test which falls in this class. Namely, we outline the so-called Corradi and Swanson (CS: 2002) test of (non)linear out-of-sample Granger causality. Thereafter, we carry out a series of Monte Carlo experiments examining the properties of the CS and a variety of other related predictive accuracy and model selection type tests. Finally, we present the results of an empirical investigation of the marginal predictive content of money for income, in the spirit of Stock andWatson (1989), Swanson (1998), Amato and Swanson (2001), and the references cited therein. We find that there is evidence of predictive causation when in-sample estimation periods are ended any time during the 1980s, but less evidence during the 1970s. Furthermore, recursive estimation windows yield better prediction models when prediction periods begin in the 1980s, while rolling estimation windows yield better models when prediction periods begin during the 1970s and 1990s. Interestingly, these two results can be combined into a coherent picture of what is driving our empirical results. Namely, when recursive estimation windows yield lower overall predictive MSEs, then bigger prediction models that include money are preferred, while smaller models without money are preferred when rolling models yield the lowest MSE predictors.
Usage-Based Pricing and Demand for Residential Broadband

We estimate demand for residential broadband using high-frequency data from subscribers facing a three-part tariff. The three-part tariff makes data usage during the billing cycle a dynamic problem, thus generating variation in the (shadow) price of usage. We provide evidence that subscribers respond to this variation, and we use their dynamic decisions to estimate a flexible distribution of willingness to pay for different plan characteristics. Using the estimates, we simulate demand under alternative pricing and find that usage-based pricing eliminates low-value traffic. Furthermore, we show that the costs associated with investment in fiber-optic networks are likely recoverable in some markets, but that there is a large gap between social and private incentives to invest.
The Dating Game: Do Managers Designate Option Grant Dates to Increase their Compensation?

We provide evidence of two variants of a dating game that entails picking a grant date ex post, that is, after the board's compensation decision is made: back-dating (picking a date before the board decision date), and forward-dating (waiting after the board decision date to observe the stock price behavior). Consistent with back-dating, we find stock return behavior around the grant date to be positively related to reporting lag. In the promptly reported sample, we find stock return behavior and the pattern of reporting lags consistent with forward-dating. Our calculations show that managers can obtain economically significant benefits by playing the dating game.
In Search of Lost Revenue : Why Restoring Fiscal Soundness After a Crisis is Harder Than it Looks

This note argues that because fiscal deficit after a crisis owe much to a drop in tax revenues and a sluggish revenue growth, its adjustment has to rely more on revenue augmentation than commonly thought. Cutting extra spending in the wake of the crisis would not balance the book, while a natural growth of tax revenue after the recovery may take a long time before financing the pre-crisis level of expenditure. Faced with unpopular choices, the government may implicitly prefer seeing higher inflation.
The role of securitization in bank liquidity and funding management

Abstract This paper studies the role of securitization in bank management. I propose a new index of “bank loan portfolio liquidity” which can be thought of as a weighted average of the potential to securitize loans of a given type, where the weights reflect the composition of a bank loan portfolio. I use this new index to show that by allowing banks to convert illiquid loans into liquid funds, securitization reduces banks' holdings of liquid securities and increases their lending ability. Furthermore, securitization provides banks with an additional source of funding and makes bank lending less sensitive to cost of funds shocks. By extension, the securitization weakens the ability of the monetary authority to affect banks' lending activity but makes banks more susceptible to liquidity and funding crisis when the securitization market is shut down.
Uncovered Interest Parity and Monetary Policy Near and Far from the Zero Lower Bound

Relying upon a standard New Keynesian DSGE, we propose an explanation for two empirical findings in the international finance literature. First, the unbiasedness hypothesis — the proposition that expost exchange rate depreciation matches interest differentials — is rejected much more strongly at short horizons than at long. Second, even at long horizons, the unbiasedness hypothesis tends to be rejected when one of the currencies has experienced a long period of low interest rates, such as in Japan and Switzerland. Using a calibrated New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, we show how a monetary policy rule can induce the negative (positive) correlation between depreciation and interest differentials at short (long) horizons. The tendency to reject unbiasedness for Japan and Switzerland even at long horizons we attribute to the interaction of the monetary reaction function and the zero lower bound.
Legal Protection in Retail Financial Markets

We model a retail financial institution that outsources its advice services to an intermediary, making the two parties jointly responsible for consumers’ experience with the products. In this context, courts that enforce state-contingent legal rules are necessary in order to avoid market breakdowns. To maximize social welfare, the government implements a system of penalties that depends on product characteristics and on the firm’s relative ability to control quality. This legal system emphasizes reliable advice over transaction pace. Furthermore, the implicit team structure of the firm and its intermediary prevents self-regulation from achieving the same social efficiency. (JEL G18, G28, D11, D18, L51, K20) Retail financial markets are unique in that the majority of consumers who participate have an incomplete understanding of the products that are available and are generally uninformed about prices in the industry (e.g., NASD Literacy Survey 2003). In fact, in the language of the Securities Act of 1933, public investors are described as those who are “unable to fend for themselves.” Participation at the household level,
Deep Network With Approximation Error Being Reciprocal of Width to Power of Square Root of Depth.

A new network with super-approximation power is introduced. This network is built with Floor (⌊x⌋) or ReLU (max{0,x}) activation function in each neuron; hence, we call such networks Floor-ReLU net...
Fiscal federalism in rentier regions: Evidence from Russia ☆

Desai, Raj M., Freinkman, Lev, and Goldberg, Itzhak—Fiscal federalism in rentier regions: Evidencefrom RussiaWhen does sub-national ﬁscal autonomy prompt regional growth and recovery and, under what condi-tions, does it have adverse effects? We argue that unearned income streams, particularly in the form ofrevenues from natural resource production or from budgetary transfers from the central government, trans-form regions dependent on these income sources into rentier regions. Governments in these regions canuse local control over revenues and expenditures to shelter certain ﬁrms, i.e., natural resource producersor loss-making enterprises, from market forces. Using ﬁscal data from 80 Russian regions from 1996 to1999, we test this hypothesis in both cross-sectional and panel speciﬁcations. Our results indicate that taxretention, which is a proxy for ﬁscal autonomy, has had a positive effect on regional reform and investmentsince the break-up of the Soviet Union. However, we also ﬁnd that this effect decreases as rentable incomestreams to regions increase. Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (4) (2005) 814–834. Edmund A. WalshSchool of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 37th & O Streets, NW, Washington, DC 20057, USA;The World Bank, Washington, DC 20433, USA.
The IOLA Fund and LSC Restrictions

Interest on Lawyer Trust Account (IOLTA) programs in this country were created in response to the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) funding cutbacks in the 1980s and have in the years since become a key source of support for civil legal services programs. In 1997, IOLTA programs across the country provided approximately $108 million compared to LSC's fiscal year 1998 $274.4 million. While the LSC is a national program with national standards, funding priorities, systems, and procedures, the IOLTA community is a decentralized, state-based group of funders who are defined as much by their differences as by their similarities. Because every IOLTA program is a variation on those that came before, it reflects not only the template shared by replicated models, but the unique character, complexities and concerns of each state.
Household Ratio Guidelines for the Amount of Investments

Some textbooks suggest using financial ratios to provide simple indicators of whether households are making appropriate decisions. However, ratios related to the appropriate level of investment assets are not common, and not standardized. We investigate three investment ratios mentioned in textbooks: the Capital Accumulation Ratio, the ratio of investments to annual income, and the ratio of investments to total assets. We conduct a regression on respondent evaluation of the adequacy of retirement income, among households in the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances. The ratio of investments to total assets has the strongest relationship to adequacy, controlling for household characteristics.
Constitutional Isolationism and the Limits of State Separation of Powers as a Barrier to Interstate Compacts

Interstate compacts are a longstanding and increasingly important mechanism for establishing, managing, enforcing, and coordinating regulation. Compacts address an array of issues, including political boundaries, common resource allocation, and environmental regulations, reflecting the need to deal with the state and local regulatory approach cooperatively and providing uniformity in approaches to many regulatory problems without locking states into a federal solution. Since Congress must approve such compacts,' states entering into compacts typically do so against the backdrop of some federal law. Yet federal law rarely speaks to which branch of government within a state-the executive or legislative-has the power to negotiate compacts on behalf of a state. In this Essay, I address the question of which branch of state government ought to have the authority to negotiate interstate compacts-a question of state separation of powers. Recent case law interpreting the Wisconsin Constitution in the context of Indian gambling compacts provides a particularly fertile ground for exploring this question, as it illustrates how courts are struggling to find a way to allow state executive officials greater autonomy to negotiate interstate compacts. Part II illustrates how traditional notions of separation of powers under state constitutions can be understood to pose a barrier to executive branch negotiation of interstate compacts, using a recent Wisconsin case as a springboard for discussion. Part III illustrates how
THE MATCHING PRINCIPLE REVISITED

This paper reassesses the significance of the concept of matching expenses to revenues as an accounting principle. We compare and contrast the historical views of authoritative bodies and the various scholars and practitioners who analyze this subject, drawing implications for future standard setting. Through this historical retrospective on matching, which includes a review of more contemporary research and thought, we find that matching as an approach to income measurement can be helpful in forecasting earning power. Consequently, we conclude that matching should be retained as a long-standing fundamental accounting principle in standard-setting and in practice.
Digital dark matter and the economic contribution of Apache

Abstract Researchers have long hypothesized that research outputs from government, university, and private company R&D contribute to economic growth, but these contributions may be difficult to measure when they take a non-pecuniary form. The growth of networking devices and the Internet in the 1990s and 2000s magnified these challenges, as illustrated by the deployment of the descendent of the NCSA HTTPd server, otherwise known as Apache. This study asks whether this experience could produce measurement issues in standard productivity analysis, specifically, omission and attribution issues, and, if so, whether the magnitude is large enough to matter. The study develops and analyzes a novel data set consisting of a 1% sample of all outward-facing web servers used in the United States. We find that use of Apache potentially accounts for a mismeasurement of somewhere between $2 billion and $12 billion, which equates to between 1.3% and 8.7% of the stock of prepackaged software in private fixed investment in the United States and a very high rate of return to the original federal investment in the Internet. We argue that these findings point to a large potential undercounting of the rate of return from IT spillovers from the invention of the Internet. The findings also suggest a large potential undercounting of “digital dark matter” in general.
The Puzzling Parameters of the Foreign Law Debate

This paper engages with the debate about the use of foreign law in constitutional interpretation in the United States. It discusses the doctrinal, jurisprudential and methodological implications of the use of foreign law. The study is divided into a part on situations of consensus among the legal systems of the world (the types of cases for which Jeremy Waldron sought a modern revival of the category of jus gentium) and situations of "piecemeal" comparisons in which no such consensus exists. The paper discusses some of the strongest objections to the use of foreign law, including those based on democracy and self-government.
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff: A Quantitative Assessment

In the two years after the imposition of the Smoot-Hawley tariff in June 1930, the volume of U.S. imports fell over 40%. To what extent can this collapse of trade be attributed to the tariff itself versus other factors such as declining income or foreign retaliation? Partial and general equilibrium assessments indicate that the Smoot-Hawley tariff itself reduced imports by 4-8% (ceteris paribus), although the combination of specific duties and deflation further raised the effective tariff and reduced imports an additional 8-10%. A counterfactual simulation suggests that nearly a quarter of the observed 40% decline in imports can be attributed to the rise in the effective tariff (i.e., Smoot-Hawley plus deflation).
The First Water-Privatization Debate: Colorado Water Corporations in the Gilded Age

Contemporary debates over the worldwide trend toward privatization of water systems and supplies have a historical precedent in the controversies that raged in Gilded Age America over the control of irrigation-canal systems by easternand foreign-owned corporations. This Article shows how the law developed in Colorado in this period advanced the agrarian ideal of wide distribution of property in water by carrying forward the principles of the appropriation doctrine. The involvement of corporations funded by outside capital in Western water projects was seen as a threat to the contemporary yeoman ideal of small, family farms, an ideal that many hoped would solve the social and economic ills of the time. This Article discusses several concrete legal issues that arose in Colorado in the 1880s and ‘90s, demonstrating how the principle of public ownership of water and the use requirement were applied to curtail the power of water corporations and preserve the profits of irrigated agriculture for small-scale farmers. In conclusion, the Article discusses several implications of this early western water-corporation law. First, it calls into question the view of Gilded Age law as primarily serving the interests of the wealthy and powerful. Second, it challenges the common typology of property, in which private property is opposed with public, demonstrating that these two ideas can be in harmony, with the more important dichotomy dividing widespread, diffuse ownership from concentrated ownership. Finally, the Article briefly points to several implications of this history for today’s water-privatization controversies.
Accounting restatements and information risk

We examine the association between accounting restatements and the pricing of information risk. Using the Fama and French three-factor model augmented with discretionary and innate information risk factors, we find a significant increase in the factor loadings on the discretionary information risk factor for restatement firms after a restatement announcement. The increase in factor loadings results in an increase in the estimated cost of capital, which is cross-sectionally associated with the short-window price reaction to restatements. We study several potential determinants of the change in information risk pricing and find evidence consistent with the restatement initiator (auditor vs. firm management) and the number of times a firm restates affecting the change in the pricing of discretionary information risk. We also find an increase, of smaller magnitude, in the pricing of discretionary information risk for non-restatement firms in the same industries as the restatement firms, consistent with an information transfer effect.
Regional variation in acceptance of Indonesia's family planning program

Indonesia's family planning program is regarded as a major success.Survey data from 1997 reveal that rates of contraceptive use vary dramatically amongIndonesia's 27 provinces, from a high of 67 percent of ever married women currently using contraceptives in the province of North Sulawesi, to a low of 19 percent current users in East Timor and28 percent in Aceh. This study uses both a quantitative analysis of the 1997 Indonesia Demographic and Health Survey, and a qualitative study carried out in July of 2000 to understand regionalvariation. The study identified a small number of factors that show a clear relation with levels of contraceptive use. Media exposure and education are the strongest and most consistent predictors of levels of contraceptive use, and appear to be the surest strategies for promoting family change. But the study also showed that the process of social change is subjectto culturally and historically specific local factors whose presence and importance is difficult to predict. Our study of regional variation in contraceptive use illustrates the range and complexityof obstacles faced by Indonesia's leaders in attempting to forge a single nation fromsuch a diverse and far-flung population. Although the creation of Indonesia in the space of just half a century is a monumental achievement, the project is clearly not yet complete.
Contracting Over Liability: Medical Malpractice and the Cost of Choice

Contractual liability proponents claim that states can best reform malpractice liability by allowing patients to contract over, and out of, liability. Proponents assert that informed patients would be better off if allowed to contract over liability than they would if states reformed malpractice liability directly because informed patients would contract for the rules that maximize their welfare. Proponents also claim states reforming malpractice liability could only benefit patients by including a right to contract out of liability. This article demonstrates that these claims are incorrect. Proponents’ faith in informed contracting rests on the incorrect premise that patients obtain the same net benefit from liability imposed by contract as from malpractice liability imposed by the state. Patients who benefit from the deterrence that malpractice liability provides are worse off if required to contract over liability because contractual liability is a fundamentally different, less beneficial, form of liability. Contractual liability is less beneficial and more costly than state-imposed malpractice liability because it is plagued by four inefficiencies: Collective goods, time inconsistency, adverse selection, and network externality problems. Thus, far from expanding choices, the move to contractual liability could hurt patients by forcing them into a form of liability that is both less valuable and more expensive, thereby creating inefficient, welfare-reducing, incentives to waive the right to impose liability by contract for patients who would have benefited from state-imposed liability. This conclusion holds whether patients negotiate liability contracts directly with individual physicians or accept standard form contracts governing malpractice liability offered by their health insurers.
Rescuing Judicial Accountability from the Realm of Political Rhetoric

The article examines the threat to judicial independence from political calls for more judicial accountability. The author begins by defining judicial accountability and discussing its purposes before breaking the concept down into three categories: institutional accountability, behavioral accountability, and decisional accountability. This process reveals that in the judicial accountability family, there is but one discrete sub-species, situated in the decisional accountability genus, that does not further accountability's proper purpose and is therefore conceptually problematic: direct political accountability for competent and honest judicial decision-making error that the politicians desire and a serious threat to judicial independence. The critical question becomes one of classification: how does one distinguish honest disagreements as to applicable facts and law, for which direct political accountability is inappropriate, from deliberate usurpations of political power, which are properly subject to sanction? In order to determine the difference between honest judicial mistakes and dishonorable usurpations of power, the author argues that the judge's state of mind must be the principal factor, and that in cases of decision-making error, the presumption should be that the judge in question was competent and honest, absent extrinsic evidence to the contrary.
Generalized Modeling Approaches to Risk Adjustment of Skewed Outcomes Data

There are two broad classes of models used to address the econometric problems caused by skewness in data commonly encountered in health care applications: (1) transformation to deal with skewness (e.g., ordinary least square (OLS) on ln(y)); and (2) alternative weighting approaches based on exponential conditional models (ECM) and generalized linear model (GLM) approaches. In this paper, we encompass these two classes of models using the three parameter generalized Gamma (GGM) distribution, which includes several of the standard alternatives as special cases-OLS with a normal error, OLS for the log-normal, the standard Gamma and exponential with a log link, and the Weibull. Using simulation methods, we find the tests of identifying distributions to be robust. The GGM also provides a potentially more robust alternative estimator to the standard alternatives. An example using inpatient expenditures is also analyzed.
Dealer financial conditions and lender-of-last-resort facilities☆

Abstract We examine the financial conditions of dealers that participated in two of the Federal Reserve's lender-of-last-resort (LOLR) facilities—the Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) and the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF)—that provided liquidity against a range of assets during 2008–2009. Dealers with lower equity returns and greater leverage prior to borrowing from the facilities were more likely to participate in the programs, borrow more, and, in the case of the TSLF, at higher bidding rates. Dealers with less liquid collateral on their balance sheets before the facilities were introduced also tended to borrow more. The results suggest that both financial performance and balance sheet liquidity play a role in LOLR utilization.
Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Generalized Itô Processes with Discretely Sampled Data

This paper considers the parametric estimation problem for continuous-time stochastic processes described by first-order nonlinear stochastic differential equations of the generalized Ito type (containing both jump and diffusion components). We derive a particular functional partial differential equation which characterizes the exact likelihood function of a discretely sampled Ito process. In addition, we show by a simple counterexample that the common approach of estimating parameters of an Ito process by applying maximum likelihood to a discretization of the stochastic differential equation does not yield consis
Coherence and Conditionality in European Foreign Policy : Negotiating the EU-Mexico Global Agreement

The EU–Mexico Global Agreement is one of the most comprehensive agreements ever made by the EU with a non-European country, and the first pact that Mexico has ever accepted that conditions the relationship on respect for democracy and human rights. This article explains why the EU insisted on such political conditions in the agreement, and why Mexico ultimately accepted the EU's terms after initially refusing them. As the economic case is only moderately compelling, we focus instead on the Commission's unique capacity to manipulate key elements of the negotiation process. The article also highlights the growing importance of two principles governing the EU's external relations - coherence and political conditionality – and how those principles might further expand the EU's global political influence.
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep: Work-Related Sleep Deficits and the Theology of Leisure

This Article considers whether Catholic social thought can sustain public policies in favor of rest and renewal with a force comparable to the contribution it has made to other workplace rights. In particular, the Article traces the theological contributions of John Paul II and Josef Pieper. The Article provides an overview of the clinical knowledge concerning sleep deficits in relationship to current practices in scheduling shift work. Finally, the Article suggests that the right to rest is ill-protected by statutory laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act. Moreover, relying on fear of tort liability as a tool to motivate employers to adopt rest-friendly policies is a strategy fraught with too many contingencies to seem entirely reliable. The practice of virtue, as understood in the Catholic social thought tradition, requires more of an employer than simply choosing business practices that meet minimum requirements of local law or that prove to be effective instruments to achieve a particular end. Instead, the values of Catholic social thought require employers to take a leap of faith by creating humane work schedules not because they are legal or useful but because they respect human dignity. In sum, while arguments grounded on the desire to avoid liability or to achieve efficient goals may prove persuasive, Catholic social thought supports these arguments by refocusing attention on the party on whom all work depends: the human person - someone, not something.
Competition and Human Capital Accumulation: A Theory of Interregional Specialization and Trade

Abstract We consider a model with several regions whose technological ability and factor endowments are identical and in which transport costs between regions are non-negligible. Nonetheless, certain goods are sometimes produced by multiple firms, all of which are located in the same region. These goods are then exported from the regions in which their production is agglomerated. Regional agglomeration of production and trade stem from two forces. First, competition between firms for the services of trained workers makes it easier for workers to recoup the cost of acquiring industry-specific human capital. Second, the technology of production is more efficient when plants are larger than a minimum efficient scale and local demand is insufficient to support several firms of that scale. We also study the policy implications of our model.
Caveat Blogger: Blogging and the Flight from Scholarship

These comments were delivered to the “Symposium on Bloggership” held at Harvard Law School on April 28, 2006. Professor Randy Barnett discusses the pros and cons of blogging by legal scholars.
Ask for Help, Uncle Sam: The Future of Global Tax Reporting

The emerging U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act or “FATCA” system provides an innovative model for the future of offshore information reporting. But its bank-to-residence government, or B2G, model lacks a good enforcement mechanism, because the U.S. lacks jurisdiction over the non-U.S. banks and other foreign financial institutions targeted by the FATCA rules. In contrast, European nations’ approach to the problem of offshore information reporting takes a bank-to-bank governing jurisdiction-to-residence government, or B2G2G approach. This puts banking jurisdiction governments squarely in the middle of the reporting system. The FATCA implementation project should seek non-U.S. government cooperation. Despite the possibility that FFIs or local auditors might adopt FATCA for reputational signaling reasons, the U.S. should open the possibility of successful traditional enforcement by presenting FATCA as a model for automatic global information reporting and building other nations’ cooperation in the project. The greater involvement of non-U.S. governments could take several forms, including direct assumption of reporting responsibility, assistance in the project of reconciling FATCA’s requirements with client confidentiality rules, inclusion of FATCA compliance in criteria for government inspection of non-U.S. banks or auditors, or adoption of parallel due diligence and/or reporting requirements.U.S. administrators of FATCA can use several tactics to persuade non-U.S. governments to cooperate with the global information reporting project of FATCA. First, they could keep FATCA implementation as simple as possible. Second, they could offer similar reporting on non-U.S. holders of U.S. accounts at least on a reciprocal basis, and perhaps in the treaty context. Finally, they could consider side payments to non-U.S. governments to induce them to support the FATCA project.