cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A Case Study in U.S. Government Financial Management in Cross‐Disciplinary Teams

Following the example of the private sector, the public sector in the United States has been undergoing process-reengineering, most notable in the Federal Government with the National Performance Review (NPR). The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) asked its overseas missions for volunteer participation as Country Experimental Laboratories (CELs) during USAID's NPR efforts. USAID/ Senegal, in French West Africa, became a CEL in the spring of 1994. The reengineering, occurring over a two-year period, created multi-disciplinary teams centered around Strategic Objectives (SOs). This article describes the experience and lessons learned from developing and implementing financial management policies and procedures to support the SO Teams, while concurrently ensuring that accountability requirements were met. The article uses the case study format, delineating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats faced by the Mission Controller, the trade-offs between the decentralization of program management and accountability, and the organizational relationships established to reengineer the financial management processes at USAID/Senegal.
The Persistence of White Privilege

Most discussions of white privilege emphasize the individual benefit to the holder of privilege. Yet dynamics beyond the individual combine to reinforce and reinvent white privilege. Socio-cultural factors operate in conjunction with material forces, enabling whites to self-perpetuate as a dominant racialized identity. Material forces such as the distribution of societal goods and resources, the division of labor, and immigration policies, create a world that privileges whiteness. Socio-cultural factors, including discursive practices, patterns of behavior, and the thinking patterns that language creates, further strengthen white privilege, contributing to its endurance. This article focuses on four socio-cultural factors that reinforce white privilege: (1) the contemporary cultural push to colorblindness; (2) the sleight of mind that typifies the relation between an individual and groups in American culture; (3) a comfort zone in whiteness, which includes whiteness as the fabric of daily life for whites and white participation in the construction of race from a white-privileged viewpoint; and (4) the tendency for holders of white privilege to take back the center in discourse, turning attention away from potentially uncomfortable conversations about race toward an emphasis on white concerns and issues. The article concludes by considering the relevance of privilege to law, demonstrating how an analysis of privilege would illuminate legal facts patterns and further social justice.
The case for the traditional classroom

Abstract Criticisms of higher education and tight budgets have increased pressure on instructors to consider new pedagogical methods, including classroom experiments and online or hybrid/online courses. This study analyzes the impact of different pedagogical methods in six sections of macroeconomic principles taught during the 2011–2012 academic year. A traditional lecture/discussion control section is compared with experimental sections that used an extensive class simulation and two hybrid online sections that met only once per week during the regular semester. Students in simulation sections scored on average nearly five percent worse on the post-test, although those who participated the most did score higher. Students in the hybrid online sections scored nearly ten percent lower than students in the control section. These results indicate that instructors and administrators should be wary of unproven methods, especially online instruction.
Explaining asset pricing puzzles associated with the 1987 market crash

Abstract The 1987 market crash was associated with a dramatic and permanent steepening of the implied volatility curve for equity index options, despite minimal changes in aggregate consumption. We explain these events within a general equilibrium framework in which expected endowment growth and economic uncertainty are subject to rare jumps. The arrival of a jump triggers the updating of agents' beliefs about the likelihood of future jumps, which produces a market crash and a permanent shift in option prices. Consumption and dividends remain smooth, and the model is consistent with salient features of individual stock options, equity returns, and interest rates.
Magna Carta, the Rule of Law and the Limits on Government

This paper surveys the legal tradition that links Magna Carta with the modern concepts of the rule of law and the limits on government. It documents that the original understanding of the rule of law included substantive commitments to individual freedom and limited government. Then, it attempts at explaining how and why such commitments were lost to a formalist interpretation of the rule of law from 1848 to 1939. The paper concludes by arguing how a revival of the substantive commitments of the rule of law is central in a project of reshaping modern states.
Optimal trade policy, equilibrium unemployment, and labor market inefficiency

Why do politicians advocate trade protections to save domestic jobs when neoclassical trade models suggest that small open economies should implement free trade? The novel insight of this paper is that trade protections can be rationalized as a second-best policy that improves the domestic welfare when the equilibrium unemployment is different from the constrain-efficient unemployment. To understand the puzzle, I incorporate a Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides frictional labor market into the standard Heckscher-Ohlin model of international trade. The model offers four main findings. First, when the relative price of the labor (capital)-intensive good increases, equilibrium unemployment decreases (increases). Second, a labor market in a competitive equilibrium is constrained-efficient when the Hosios condition is satisfied. Third, a capital-abundant country with inefficiently high unemployment may experience welfare losses from trade. Conditional on having the same observed trade share, a labor-abundant country with inefficiently high unemployment have extra welfare gains from international trade. Finally and importantly, when the labor market in a small open economy generates inefficiently high equilibrium unemployment, the optimal trade policy is to raise the domestic price of its labor-intensive goods (an import tariff in a capital-abundant country and an export subsidy in a labor-abundant country). Free trade is optimal only when a labor market is initially efficient. The model predictions are supported by patterns of tariffs in WTO member countries.
How Important Is Precautionary Saving

We estimate how much of the wealth of a sample of PSID respondents is held because some households face more income uncertainty than others. We begin by solving a theoretical model of saving, which we use to develop appropriate measures of uncertainty. We then regress measures of wealth on our measures of uncertainty, and find evidence that households engage in precautionary saving. Finally, we simulate the wealth distribution that our empirical results imply would prevail if all households had the same uncertainty as the lowest-uncertainty group. We find that between 39 and 46 percent of wealth in our sample is attributable to the extra uncertainty that some consumers face compared to the lowest-uncertainty group.
Patient Advocacy Organizations: Institutional Conflicts of Interest, Trust, and Trustworthiness

Patient advocacy organizations (PAOs) advocate for increased research funding and policy changes and provide services to patients and their families. Given their credibility and political clout, PAOs are often successful in changing policies, increasing research funding, and increasing public awareness of medical conditions and the problems of their constituents. In order to advance their missions, PAOs accept funding, frequently from pharmaceutical firms. Industry funding can help PAOs advance their goals but can also create conflicts of interest (COI). Research indicates that bias may occur, even among well-meaning professionals, when people and organizations have financial COI. Industry funding may therefore influence PAOs to act in ways that favor the interests of their donors, which may increase the risk of harm to patients. This article extends the analysis developed in the Institute of Medicine report, Conflicts of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice, and applies the analysis to understand PAOs and their relationships with industry. It argues that the preferred goal of institutional COI policies should not be to promote trust, but to promote trustworthiness and appropriately placed trust.
Sequential static-Dynamic Hedging for Long-term Derivatives

Abstract This paper presents a new methodology for hedging long-term financial derivatives written on an illiquid asset. The proposed hedging strategy combines dynamic trading of a correlated liquid asset (e.g. the market index) and static positions in market-traded options such as European puts and calls. Moreover, since most market-traded options are relatively short-term, it is necessary to conduct the static hedge sequentially over time till the long-term derivative expires. This sequential static-dynamic hedging strategy leads to the study of a stochastic control problem and the as-sociated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman PDEs and variational inequalities. A series of transformations allow us to simplify the problem and compute the optimal hedging strategy.
A Strategy for Launching the Euro

Abstract This paper analyzes the constraints European Union law places on the 1 January 1999 choices of irrevocably fixed conversion rates between the Euro and the currencies of EMU members states. Current EU legislation, notably the Maastricht treaty, requires that the bilateral currency conversion factors implied by the 1 January 1999 choices equal closing market exchange rates on 31 December 1998. Given that legal constraint, there still exist several strategies for choosing the relative prices of EMU member currencies against the Euro. Unfortunately, most of these have potentially damaging side effects. One approach, based on official Stage 2 offers of contingent Euro forward contracts with value dates at the start of Stage 3, allows a highly credible preannouncement of the bilateral currency conversion factors to be set at the start of EMU. That approach assumes, however, that no prospective EMU members can withdraw between their selection in May 1998 and the start of Stage 3.
The Short and Long-Run Labor Market Effects of Age Eligibility Rules: Evidence from Women’s Professional Tennis

Age is often used in law and public policy as a low-cost proxy for competency, maturity, and ability. Age is also used in numerous sport (and non-sport) labor markets to determine workplace eligibility. We exploit the enactment of the women’s professional tennis minimum age rule (AR) in 1995 to estimate the effects of ARs on short-run and long-run labor market outcomes. We find very limited evidence that the AR has had any systematic beneficial effect on players’ career longevity or success. Our results suggest that sport governing bodies should (re-)evaluate the efficacy and necessity of “one size fits all” age eligibility rules.
Consumption taxes and precautionary savings

Financing government spending through lump sum taxes does not distort capital when markets are complete but tends to increase precautionary savings under market incompleteness. Using flat consumption taxes instead leaves precautionary savings unaffected, provided certain conditions on utility are met.
Recent Trends in Empirical Finance

Empirical finance is in crisis. The profession’s most important discovery tool is historical simulation; yet, according to the author, most backtests and time series analyses published in journals are flawed. The problem is well known to professional statistics and mathematics organizations, which have publicly criticized the misuse of mathematical tools among finance researchers. In this article, the author points to three problems and proposes four practical solutions. In an attempt to overcome the challenges posed by multiple testing and selection bias, the author emphasizes the need to move from an individual-centric to a community-driven research paradigm. Technologies that derive peer P-values can correct low retraction rates. Stronger theoretical foundations and closer ties with financial firms would help prevent false discoveries.
Does Changing Economic Well-Being Shape Resentment About Inequality in China?

The political consequences of income inequality in China have attracted increasing attention among researchers, and conventional wisdom states that economic development can mitigate negative views on inequality. I investigate the effects of subjective and objective changes in economic well-being on public opinion concerning income inequality based on a 2004 Chinese national survey. On the one hand, I find weak evidence of a negative correlation between perceived better economic well-being and negative opinion about inequality in China. On the other hand, I identify consistent evidence of a negative correlation between objective intergenerational upward mobility and negative views about inequality. It is worth noting that while the effect of intergenerational upward mobility is large, it is unable to completely reverse negative views about inequality among Chinese citizens. Hence, I suggest that economic development plays only a limited role in mitigating anger about inequality in China.
How Marriage Became Optional: Cohabitation, Gender, and the Emerging Functional Norms

In 1953, sociologist Ray E. Baber confidently asserted that the “opportunity which marriage affords for constant and complete companionship with the person most loved, with the full sanction of society, is its greatest single attraction.”1 Another mid-20th century text, Paul H. Landis’ “Making the Most of Marriage”, referred to the “long-accepted idea that marriage is the natural state for adults.”2 Landis noted that marriage “has a more prominent place in both our aspirations and realizations than ever before in American history.”3 His sociology text equated marriage with the drive to establish family life. Several headings in his chapter on “Needs Fulfilled
Hayek, Cassel, and the origins of the great depression

Abstract We revisit the origins of the Great Depression by contrasting the accounts of two contemporary economists, Friedrich A. Hayek and Gustav Cassel. Their distinct theories highlight important, but often unacknowledged, differences between the international depression and the Great Depression in the United States. Hayek's business cycle theory offered a monetary overexpansion account for the 1920s investment boom, the collapse of which initiated the Great Depression in the United States. Cassel's warnings about a scarcity gold reserves related to the international character of the downturn, but the mechanisms he emphasized contributed little to the deflation or depression in the United States.
Sustainable Development as a Framework for National Governance

At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, the nations of the world committed themselves to an ambitious plan for achieving sustainable development (Agenda 21) and a set of principles to guide that effort (Rio Declaration). This Article addresses the meaning of sustainable development in three ways. First, it synthesizes Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration, and other texts into a conceptual framework for national governance. While these texts address international governance, they focus more on national governance. No such exposition of the sustainable development framework appears in the literature. Second, this Article argues that sustainable development provides a powerful and attractive set of tools for reinvigorating national governance. It would make governance more economically efficient, more socially productive and more environmentally protective. As a framework for governance, sustainable development also provides a response to many current trends that undermine the legitimacy and effectiveness of national governments in general, particularly globalization of the economy and the free market ideology that has become more prevalent since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Indeed, sustainable development provides an alternative to that ideology. Finally, the Article identifies unresolved issues in the sustainable development framework. These include the comparative responsibilities of developed and developing countries, high consumption of materials and energy by developed countries, the role of international trade, and the substantial commitment most governments already have made to unsustainable economic activities. Much of the framework's value is in the important issues it forces us to confront.
Mediating Community-AI Interaction through Situated Explanation: The Case of AI-Led Moderation

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become prevalent in our everyday technologies and impacts both individuals and communities. The explainable AI (XAI) scholarship has explored the philosophical nature of explanation and technical explanations, which are usually driven by experts in lab settings and can be challenging for laypersons to understand. In addition, existing XAI research tends to focus on the individual level. Little is known about how people understand and explain AI-led decisions in the community context. Drawing from XAI and activity theory, a foundational HCI theory, we theorize how explanation is situated in a community's shared values, norms, knowledge, and practices, and how situated explanation mediates community-AI interaction. We then present a case study of AI-led moderation, where community members collectively develop explanations of AI-led decisions, most of which are automated punishments. Lastly, we discuss the implications of this framework at the intersection of CSCW, HCI, and XAI.
Mediator: Towards a negotiation support system

Abstract Mediator is a negotiation support system (NSS) based on evolutionary systems design (ESD) and database-centered implementation. It supports negotiations by consensus seeking through exchange of information and, where consensus is incomplete, by compromise. The negotiation problem is shown — graphically or as relational data in matrix form — in three spaces as a mapping from control space to goal space and (through marginal utility functions) to utility space. Within each of these spaces the negotiation process is characterized by adaptive change, i.e., mappings of group target and feasible sets by which these sets are redefined in seeking a solution characterized by a single-point intersection between them. This concept is being implemented in Mediator , a data-based micro-mainframe NSS intended to support the players and a human mediator in multi-player decision situations. Each player employs private and shared database views, using his/her own micro-computer decision support system enhanced with a communications manager to interact with the mediator DSS. Sharing of views constitutes exchange of information which can lead towards consensus. The human mediator can support compromise, as needed, through use of solution concepts and/or concession-making procedures in the NSS model base. As a concrete example, we demonstrate the use of the system for group car buying decisions.
Surrogate Decision-Making Standards for Guardians: Theory and Reality

This Article addresses the two theoretical reference points used by the law to frame how guardians should make decisions for incapacitated persons—the substituted judgment standard and the best interest standard. Simply stated, the substituted judgment standard directs the guardian to choose the alternative that the incapacitated person would have chosen if still able to make decisions. The best interest standard, by contrast, directs the guardian to choose the alternative that produces the greatest good or benefit for the incapacitated person. Neither standard, however, is clear-cut when implemented. For example, when attempting to use substituted judgment, how should a guardian determine what the incapacitated person would have chosen? The spectrum of possibilities includes prior written directions, past conversations with the person before incapacitation, current conversations with the incapacitated person, and what the guardian knows about that person’s values and preferences. Even when prior written directions exist to guide a guardian, the guardian might reasonably question whether those directions would be different if the incapacitated person had known at the time of writing all of the relevant information about current circumstances.
Price Level Determinacy with an Interest Rate Policy Rule and Rational Expectations

Abstract This paper reconsiders a result obtained by Sargent and Wallace namely, that price level indeterminacy obtains in their model if the monetary authorities adopt a feedback rule for the interest rate rather than the money stock. It is shown that the indeterminacy vanishes if the interest rate rule is chosen so as to have a desired effect on the expected quantity of money demanded. This holds even if considerable weight is given, in the choice of a rule, to the aim of smoothing interest rate fluctuations.
The Use of the Corporate Monitor in SEC Enforcement Actions

This paper addresses the SEC’s recent use of the corporate monitor as ancillary relief in its enforcement actions. The corporate monitor represents the latest example of the SEC seeking to shift its enforcement responsibilities to the public companies it regulates. Focusing on the role played by the corporate monitor imposed by the SEC in its enforcement action brought against WorldCom, this paper considers some of the dangers posed by the use of the corporate monitor, such as the whether the appointment of a corporate monitor constitutes impermissible overreaching by the SEC. The paper recognizes that the corporate monitor can be an effective weapon against securities fraud, but cautions that, given the dangers inherent in its use, the SEC should seek a corporate monitor only in rare cases and publish guidance explaining when it will seek this remedy. Moreover, courts should develop clear standards limiting their judicial discretion to order this extraordinary ancillary remedy. The Use of the Corporate Monitor in SEC Enforcement Actions Jennifer O’Hare* * Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law; B.S.E., The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; J.D., The George Washington School of Law. The author wishes to thank the participants in Brooklyn Law School’s Symposium on New Models in Securities Law Enforcement, as well as Joan MacLeod Heminway and participants at the University of Tennessee College of Law faculty workshop, for their helpful comments on this paper. ______________________________________________________________________________
An Economic History of Zoning and a Cure for its Exclusionary Effects

The paper outlines the 20th-century history of American zoning to explain how home-owners came to dominate its content and administration in most jurisdictions. Zoning's original purpose was to protect home-owners in residential areas from devaluation by industrial and apartment uses that had been made footloose by trucks and buses around 1910-20. Completion of the interstate highway system around 1970 made jobs and employees so mobile that suburbs adopted growth controls to stem the tide. If zoning is indeed a substitute for home-value insurance, it seems worthwhile to investigate the possibility of home-equity insurance to reduce the demand for exclusionary zoning.
The function of punishment in the "civil" commitment of sexually violent predators.

Two experiments find that support for civil commitment procedures for sexually violent predators is based primarily upon the retributive rather than incapacitative goals of respondents. Two discrete samples composed of students (N = 175) and jury-eligible citizens (N = 200) completed experimental surveys assessing their support or opposition to scenarios in which a sexual predator was to be released after completing his criminal sentence. Respondents were sensitive to likelihood of recidivism only when the initial sentence was sufficiently punitive. When initial sentence was lenient, respondents strongly supported civil commitment without regard to future risk. Results are discussed in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Kansas v. Hendricks (1997) on the constitutionality of civil commitment laws for sexually violent predators. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Insecure American: Economic Experiences, Financial Worries, and Policy Attitudes

Even before the sharp downturn that began in 2007, many Americans were concerned about economic risks. Yet this widespread public concern has not been matched by attention from political scientists regarding how citizens experience and understand the economic risks they face or how those experiences and understandings shape their views of public policy. We develop here an argument about the role of personal economic experiences in the formation of policy attitudes that we validate using a distinctive opinion survey of our own design, fielded not long after the onset of the Great Recession. The survey tracks citizens' economic experiences, expectations, and policy attitudes within multiple domains of risk (employment, medical care, family, and wealth arrangements). These investigations show that economic insecurity systematically and substantially affects citizens' attitudes toward government's role. Citizens' economic worries largely track exposure to substantial economic shocks. Citizens' policy attitudes in turn appear highly responsive to economic worries, as well as to the experience of economic shocks—with worries and shocks creating greater support for government policies that buffer the relevant economic risk. Attitudes seem most affected by temporally proximate shocks, shocks befalling households that have weak private safety nets, and shocks occurring within the domain most relevant to the policy in question, though attitudes are also (more weakly) correlated with shocks in other domains. The magnitude of these associations rivals partisanship and ideology and almost always exceeds that for conventional measures of socio-economic status. Given the long-term increase in economic insecurity and current sluggish recovery, understanding how insecurity shapes citizens' policy attitudes and political behavior should be a major concern of political science.
Information Uncertainty and the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift Anomaly: Insights from REITs

This is the first study to examine the post-earnings-announcement drift anomaly in a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) context. The efficient markets hypothesis suggests that unexpected earnings should be fully incorporated into asset prices soon after being publicly announced. We hypothesize that publicly announced earnings signals may be more certain for REITs due to the presence of a parallel (private) asset market, suggesting less drift for REIT stocks. However, we find a large REIT drift component that is both statistically and economically significant. Furthermore, while the initial earnings surprise response is more muted for REITs, we find that the magnitude of the drift is significantly larger for REITs than for ordinary common stocks (NonREITs). Thus, information does not appear to move between the private and public asset markets in such a way as to render REIT earnings signals more certain than NonREIT earnings signals.
Thinking Like a Statistician: The Report of the American Statistical Association Committee on Training in Statistics in Selected Professions

In 1983, a subcommittee of the American Statistical Association issued a report describing existing programs for educating law students in statistics and offering recommendations for improving these programs. This article summarizes that report.
Corporate Acquisitions, Diversification, and the Firm's Lifecycle

Agency theories predict that older firms make value-destroying acquisitions to benefit managers. Neoclassical theories predict instead that such firms make wealth-increasing acquisitions to exploit underutilized assets. Using IPO cohorts, we establish that, while younger firms make more related and diversifying acquisitions than mature firms, the acquisition rate follows a U-shape over firms’ life cycle. Consistent with neoclassical theories, we show that acquiring firms have better performance and growth opportunities and create wealth through acquisitions of nonpublic firms throughout their life. Consistent with agency theories, older firms experience negative stock price reactions for acquisitions of public firms.
Capital Structure Swaps and Shareholder Wealth

We show how capital structure swaps can increase the wealth of a firm's long-term shareholders when a firm's debt or equity is misvalued. We review the conventional rule that a firm should issue equity and use the proceeds to retire outstanding debt (an equity-for-debt swap) when equity is overvalued, or repurchase equity with proceeds of new debt (a debt-for-equity swap) when equity is undervalued. We also analyse the more complex case where a firm's debt and equity are both undervalued, showing the optimal swap may be to issue undervalued equity, contrary to the conventional rule.
The Rise of Effective States in Europe

This review article examines the development of state capacity—the extractive and productive power of states— in European history. To explain the historical evolution of state capacity, I focus on the role of political innovations. I relate state capacity improvements to long-run economic growth and the establishment of twentieth-century welfare states. The article concludes with historical lessons for developing nations today. “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” James Madison (1788, p. 257)
The PTSD Checklist—Civilian Version: Reliability, Validity, and Factor Structure in a Nonclinical Sample

Objectives We examined the reliability, validity, and factor structure of the posttraumatic stress diorder (PTSD) Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C; Blanchard, Jones-Alexander, Buckley, & Forneris, 1996) among unselected undergraduate students. Participants Participants were 471 undergraduate students at a large university in the Eastern United States and were not preselected based on trauma history or symptom severity. Results The PCL-C demonstrated good internal consistency and retest reliability. Compared with alternative measures of PTSD, the PCL-C showed favorable patterns of convergent and discriminant validity. In contrast to previous research using samples with known trauma exposure, we found support for both 1-factor and 2-factor models of PTSD symptoms. Conclusions Overall, the PCL-C appears to be a valid and reliable measure of PTSD symptoms, even among nonclinical samples, and is superior to some alternative measures of PTSD. The factor structure among nonclinical samples may not reflect each of the PTSD symptom “clusters” (i.e., reexperiencing, avoidance/numbing, and hyperarousal). © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Clin. Psychol. 00:1–15, 2012.
Fallen Angels and Price Pressure

We examine price pressure in a setting where trades occur because of regulations and when information effects are absent. Our study of fallen angel bond sales by insurance-companies shows that price pressure is negligible, if not nonexistent. We attribute our results to the fact that trades occur when fundamentals are unchanged and dealers know that the sales are not motivated by private information about future returns. Our results confirm the prediction of several theoretical models that sellers will benefit from a higher price when they are able to separate themselves out to dealers as uninformed. Consistent with following a strategy of sunshine trading (as in Admati and Pfleiderer [1991]), we find that insurers do not attempt to hide their trades by selling bonds before they are downgraded.
Evaluating the impact of criminal laws on HIV risk behavior

Criminal law is one of the regulatory tools being used in the United States to influence risk behavior by people who have HIV/AIDS. Several different types of laws have been or could be used in this way These include: HIV-specific exposure and transmission laws — i.e., laws that explicitly mention and exclusively apply to conduct by people with HIV; public health statutes prohibiting conduct that would expose others to communicable diseases and/or sexually transmitted diseases (STDs); and general criminal laws governing attempted murder and assault.
‘Mobile’izing Agricultural Advice Technology Adoption Diffusion and Sustainability

We examine the role of management in agricultural productivity, by evaluating a mobile-phone based agricultural advice service provided to farmers in India. Demand for advice is high; and advice changes practices, increasing yields in cumin (28%) and cotton (8.6%, for a sub-group receiving reminders). Information spreads, as non-treated farmers with more treated peers change practices and lose less to pest attacks. Though willingness to pay for the service is low, the value of the information externality exceeds the subsidy that would be necessary to operate the service. We estimate each dollar spent on the service yields a $10 private return. JEL Classification Numbers: O12, O13, Q16
Brand Values and Capital Market Valuation

Brand value estimates are significantly positively related to prices and returns, incremental to accounting variables. Questionable brand value estimate reliability underlies lack of financial statement recognition for brands. Findings suggest estimates are relevant and sufficiently reliable to be reflected in share prices. Simultaneous equations estimation reveals inferences are unaffected by potential bias resulting from simultaneity between brand value estimates and equity market value. Brand value estimates are positively associated with advertising expense, operating margin, and market share. Yet, brand value estimates provide significant explanatory power for prices incremental to these variables, and to recognized brand assets and analysts earnings forecasts.
Human Rights Education in Small Schools in India

In the past three decades, the rise of human rights education (HRE) in global educational policy discourse and practice has paralleled the unrelated rise of small, independently run schools internationally that operate separately from government structures, whether they be private, charter, religious, or affiliated with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This essay examines the intersection of these two phenomena — small schools and human rights education — in India to understand better how the praxis of human rights is infused into schools in distinct ways based on the ideology of the respective school’s founders, donors, teachers, and families.
Risk Management Failures: What Are They and When Do They Happen?

The difficulties of the past year have convinced many observers that current risk management practices are deeply flawed, and that such flaws have contributed greatly to the current financial crisis. In this paper, the author challenges this view by showing the need to distinguish between flawed assessments by risk managers and corporate risk-taking decisions that, although resulting in losses, were reasonable at the time they were made. In making this distinction, the paper also identifies a number of different ways that risk management can fail. In addition to choosing the wrong risk metrics and misidentifying or mismeasuring risks, risk managers can fail to communicate their risk assessments and provide effective guidance to top management and boards. And once top management has used that information to help determine the firm's risk appetite and strategy, the risk management function can also fail to monitor risks appropriately and maintain the firm's targeted risk positions. But if risk management has been mistakenly identified as the culprit in many cases, current risk management practice can be improved by taking into account the lessons from financial crises past and present. In particular, such crises have occurred with enough frequency that crisis conditions can be modeled, at least to some extent. And when models reach their limits of usefulness, companies should consider using scenario planning that aims to reveal the implications of crises for their financial health and survival. Instead of relying on past data, scenario planning must use forward-looking economic analysis to evaluate the expected impact of sudden illiquidity and the associated feedback effects that are common in financial crises.
The Trademark as a Novel Innovation Index

When studying the relationship that exists between entrepreneurship and intellectual property, patents receive the most scholarly attention. The attention makes sense when we consider that patents are closely associated with technical progress, grant temporary monopolies that incentivize investment in research & development (R&D), and function as vectors of technological dissemination in and of themselves. In a number of industries however, conventional forms of innovation often associated with patenting are minimal or missing altogether, and require us to look elsewhere to discern innovative behavior.This Essay highlights novel applications for trademark law to entrepreneurial activity in low-technology industries and low-financing locations around the world. This Essay illustrates both functions through the examination of trademark application activity in China as opposed to European industrialized nations at various points over the past thirty years. This Essay then discusses the many ways by which trademarks can impact the life-cycle of firms engaged in everything from social networking to men’s fragrances. In doing so, this Essay explores the varied relationship trademarks have with entrepreneurial activity in developed and developing nations, as well as in high and low technology industries. The result is a novel look at novel behavior, taking us beyond the Silicon Valley hacker house and into the farmhouses of China, the public houses of Ireland, and the fashion houses of Germany.
Absolute order in general linear groups

This paper studies a partial order on the general linear group GL(V) called the absolute order, derived from viewing GL(V) as a group generated by reflections, that is, elements whose fixed space has codimension one. The absolute order on GL(V) is shown to have two equivalent descriptions, one via additivity of length for factorizations into reflections, the other via additivity of fixed space codimensions. Other general properties of the order are derived, including self-duality of its intervals. Working over a finite field F_q, it is shown via a complex character computation that the poset interval from the identity to a Singer cycle (or any regular elliptic element) in GL_n(F_q) has a strikingly simple formula for the number of chains passing through a prescribed set of ranks.
Rules, Standards, Sentencing, and the Nature of Law

Sentencing law and practice in the United States can be characterized as an argument about rules and standards. Whereas in the decades prior to the 1980s when sentencing was largely a discretionary activity governed only by broad sentencing standards, a sentencing reform movement in the 1980s transformed sentencing practice through the advent of sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum provisions. As a result, sentencing became far less standard-like and far more rule-like. Although reform proponents believed that this “rulification” of sentencing would reduce unwarranted sentencing disparities and enhance justice, it is far from clear that these goals were achieved. Indeed, the debate between sentencing reformers and their critics is a paradigmatic illustration of the limits of relying upon modifications of legal form to enhance substantive justice. Building upon the work of legal theorists who have considered the rules versus standards conundrum, this article uses sentencing law as a lens to view some of the fundamental perplexities that bedevil law’s grander aspirations—for determinacy, fairness, even coherence itself. Because, it is argued, refinements in legal form will never achieve the substantive goals to which law strives, the Essay urges a turn away from formal equality and toward a conception of sentencing justice that is centered on process values such as respect for those affected by sentencing decisions, concern that all voices be adequately heard, and decision making that reflects the considered moral judgment of the decision maker.
Computation as economics

Abstract We use computers to study economics, but few people realize that we can use economics to study and design computational systems. The reason is that computer networks can be regarded as a community of processes that in their interactions, strategies and lack of perfect knowledge face the same issues as people in markets. This paper describes how computers have evolved to a point where economics approaches are useful for designing them and understanding their dynamics. Examples are given of existing computer systems that use market mechanisms and of novel phenomena, such as clustered volatility, that we uncovered when studying their evolution.
Financial aid, debt management, and socioeconomic outcomes: Post-college effects of merit-based aid

Abstract Prior research has demonstrated that financial aid can influence both college enrollments and completions, but less is known about its post-college consequences. This study is the first to link college and financial aid information to credit bureau data later in life, enabling us to examine the impacts of grant aid on homeownership, neighborhood characteristics, and credit outcomes. We use a regression-discontinuity (RD) strategy to identify causal effects of the WV PROMISE scholarship, a broad-based state merit aid program, up to 10 years after college-entry. The RD is imperfect because our sample is limited to college students and the scholarship program increased enrollment, but there is little evidence of selection on observables at the threshold. We find that scholarship recipients near the test score cutoff for eligibility are more likely to earn a graduate degree, are more likely to own a home and live in higher-income neighborhoods. Effects on annual earnings and credit outcomes are similarly positive, but imprecise. These positive effects are primarily due to substantial reductions in time to degree, rather than to reduced student debt upon graduation.
On the Reliability of Trusting

This article presents a model of trust in which a Principal chooses either to trust or monitor an Agent who, in turn, chooses either to honor or exploit that trust. The Principal's decision of whether to trust or monitor is based on the relative temptation an Agent faces to exploit the Principal's trust, which comprises two elements - the environmental incentives the Agent faces and the personal characteristics of the Agent. The model is used to develop a reliability condition that the Principal uses to assess the likelihood that trust placed in an Agent will be honored.
Internal Labor Markets and Worker Quits

This article uses establishment-level data to explore the impact of internal labor markets on worker quits. Quits are lower where job ladders are long, pay growth from the bottom to the top of job ladders is high, and seniority is used as a criterion for promotion. Using a system of internal promotion without a commitment to seniority is associated with higher worker quits. These results hold true even when controlling for the specific human capital skills of workers, suggesting that personnel factors other than specific training are responsible both for the existence of internal labor markets and for the impact of internal labor markets on worker quits.
Are family firms more tax aggressive than non-family firms?

Abstract Taxes represent a significant cost to the firm and shareholders, and it is generally expected that shareholders prefer tax aggressiveness. However, this argument ignores potential non-tax costs that can accompany tax aggressiveness, especially those arising from agency problems. Firms owned/run by founding family members are characterized by a unique agency conflict between dominant and small shareholders. Using multiple measures to capture tax aggressiveness and founding family presence, we find that family firms are less tax aggressive than their non-family counterparts, ceteris paribus. This result suggests that family owners are willing to forgo tax benefits to avoid the non-tax cost of a potential price discount, which can arise from minority shareholders’ concern with family rent-seeking masked by tax avoidance activities [Desai and Dharmapala, 2006. Corporate tax avoidance and high-powered incentives. Journal of Financial Economics 79, 145–179]. Our result is also consistent with family owners being more concerned with the potential penalty and reputation damage from an IRS audit than non-family firms. We obtain similar inferences when using a small sample of tax shelter cases.
Retuning the Harmonization of EU Asylum Law: Exploring the Need for an EU Asylum Appellate Court

As part of its continuing efforts toward integration, the European Union is harmonizing its Member States' asylum laws and procedures. This process began at the Tampere Summit in 1999, and its first stage ended May 1, 2004 at the Brussels Summit. Despite official EU rhetoric calling for absolute respect of the right to seek asylum, a lack of political will has hobbled the work thus far and has led to the enshrining of the lowest minimum standards for refugee protection. These minimum standards give Member States far too much room to continue the unnecessarily restrictive asylum policies they have pursued in the last decade, and in the opinion of many civil society and human rights organizations, the legislation adopted thus far is woefully unacceptable.This Comment takes as its starting point the adoption of the first five pieces of harmonized legislation and proposes constructive solutions to compensate for the inadequate results of the May 2004 negotiations in Brussels. Specifically, an EU-wide asylum appellate court could assist the Member States in completing the work they started by creating a comprehensive harmonization that is consistent with international obligations to protect refugees.
The Information Content of Realized Losses

Examining the trades of company insiders, I find that a sale of stock at a loss is a much more negative signal about future returns than is a sale of stock at a gain. I consider a range of explanations for my results and find that the evidence is most consistent with the idea that investors derive direct disutility from selling a stock at a loss. Since selling a stock at a loss is painful, an investor who sells at a loss must have particularly negative information. This result offers a novel measurement of the strength of the disposition effect. Received December 7, 2015; editorial decision December 18, 2017 by Editor Robin Greenwood. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.