cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A SEMIPARAMETRIC APPROACH TO MIXED OUTCOME LATENT VARIABLE MODELS: ESTIMATING THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN COGNITION AND REGIONAL BRAIN VOLUMES

Multivariate data that combine binary, categorical, count and continuous outcomes are common in the social and health sciences. We propose a semiparametric Bayesian latent variable model for multivariate data of arbitrary type that does not require specification of conditional distributions. Drawing on the extended rank likelihood method by Hoff [Ann. Appl. Stat. 1 (2007) 265–283], we develop a semiparametric approach for latent variable modeling with mixed outcomes and propose associated Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation methods. Motivated by cognitive testing data, we focus on bifactor models, a special case of factor analysis. We employ our semiparametric Bayesian latent variable model to investigate the association between cognitive outcomes and MRI-measured regional brain volumes.
Social Media, Public School, Teachers, and the First Amendment

Education officials around the country are grappling with issues surrounding public school teachers’ use of social media. Typically concerned that social media makes it easier for teachers to engage in inappropriate communications with their students, officials have adopted guidelines that prohibit K-12 teachers from using social media to communicate with their students for noncurricular purposes. In addition, teachers are frequently punished for content they or others post on social media even when their students and the school community were not the intended audience. Current doctrine leaves unclear how much authority schools have to restrict their teachers’ use of social media to communicate with their students or to control what teachers post online.This Article contends that these issues involving social media magnify pre-existing problems with the First Amendment doctrine governing public employees generally and teachers in particular and argues that the doctrine needs significant revisions and clarifications. The Court’s decision under Garcetti v. Ceballos to strip public employees of their First Amendment rights for speech made “as employees” pursuant to their official job duties should be construed narrowly so that it applies only when teachers communicate with their students for school-related purposes. Furthermore, teachers should not have to demonstrate that their speech involves a matter of public concern to be entitled to First Amendment protection. Instead, this Article argues that in cases involving noncurricular speech that relates to the workplace, courts should apply a robust version of the Pickering balancing test that recognizes the value of teacher expression even when it does not involve a matter of public concern and that does not permit a hostile community reaction to figure into the calculus. In cases involving non-school-related expression, this Article contends that courts should abandon the balancing test and instead give the speech presumptive constitutional protection that can be overcome only if school officials can demonstrate a significant nexus between that speech and the teacher’s fitness and ability to perform professional duties.With the First Amendment doctrine governing public school teachers reformed in this way, broad social media bans that restrict or prohibit a teacher’s use of social media to communicate with students for non-school-related purposes would be unconstitutional, and the ability of school officials to punish teachers for their online expression would not be as virtually unlimited as it currently is.
Connected Coordination: Network Structure and Group Coordination

Networks can affect a group’s ability to solve a coordination problem. We use laboratory experiments to study the conditions under which groups of participants can solve coordination games. We inve...
Congressional Parties and Civil Rights Politics from 1933 to 1972

The reversal in the parties’ positions on civil rights is widely viewed as one of the most important political transformations in the last century. Drawing upon new indicators of members’ support for civil rights—which more effectively gauge preferences than do the roll-call-based measures analyzed in previous studies—we show that northern Democrats displaced northern Republicans as the leading advocates of civil rights in the House beginning in the mid-1940s, and that the gap gradually increased thereafter. Rather than a relatively sudden change driven by national party elites, we argue that the civil rights realignment was a response to the two parties’ coalitional partners.
Welfare enhancing regulation exemptions

Sanctions for regulation violations are used to deter conduct which could potentially result in great social harms. This practice over-deters low-risk entities and under-deters high-risk entities, which leads to social losses. This paper analyzes whether and how such social losses can be mitigated. I show that this can be achieved by allowing regulatees to purchase passes exempting them from regulations at appropriate prices, although they remain liable for any harm they cause.
Does Coordinated Presentation Help Credit Analysts Identify Firm Characteristics

We present 60 experienced credit analysts with financial information for two firms: one that mainly outsources production and one that does not. We find that analysts are better able to identify firm characteristics that make an outsourcer more creditworthy when those characteristics are presented in the same general section of a financial report; either on the face of the financial statements or in the footnotes. Such coordinated presentation reduces the cognitive load necessary for integrating the related information and forming a meaningful mental model of each firm. Our results suggest that if standard setters are going to require more detailed disclosures, coordinated presentation of related decision-useful information in the same section of a firm’s financial report may benefit users, regardless of whether the information is recognized on the face of the financial statements or disclosed in the notes. Supplemental analysis cautions standard setters, however, to consider whether requiring more detailed disclosures provides an incremental benefit over how firm’s disclose information today.
Beyond Apocalypse and Apology: A Moral Defense of Abortion

The movement to preserve and advance reproductive freedom is suffering the consequences of a great victory. The establishment of the constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade was a monumental step that changed the lives of American women. Girls grow up today under the mantle of Roe, never having known a world in which illegal, unsafe, degrading and sometimes fatal abortions were the norm. That is a cause for celebration as Roe turns 30. It is also, however, a cause of complacency. Complacency corrodes all freedoms. It is particularly dangerous to reproductive freedom because opponents of the right are single-minded and fervent to the point of fanaticism. Their crusade has fueled three decades of incremental restrictions that make it risky or burdensome to get an abortion and, for some women, block access altogether. Understandably, the prochoice movement has grown frustrated with the unending onslaught, and the public, numb. The movement's responses to this conundrum have varied over time and among its many spokespersons. Yet two recurring approaches  to jolt the public by forecasting Roe's reversal and to court reluctant supporters by steering wide of abortion altogether  are problematic. Being clear, straightforward and unabashed about the importance of reproductive freedom, and realistic about the impending threats, offers the strongest chance for rebuilding public support. This article first critiques what the authors call the apocalyptic and apologetic approaches to defending abortion rights. It then presents the most compelling reasons to support the right to abortion.
What’s the Harm in Issuer-Licensed Insider Trading?

There is growing support for the claim that issuer-licensed insider trading (when the insider’s firm approves the trade in advance and has disclosed that it permits such trading pursuant to published guidelines) is economically efficient, and morally harmless. But for the last 35 years many scholars and the U.S. Supreme Court have relied on “The Law of Conservation of Securities” to rebut claims that insider trading can be victimless. This law is purported to show that every act of insider trading, even those licensed by the issuer, causes an identifiable harm to someone. This essay argues that the Law of Conservation of Securities is not helpful to answering the moral question of whether insider trading is a victimless crime because it either proves too much or too little. It either proves that all profitable trades (or profitable trade omissions) in advance of firms’ material disclosures are morally impermissible (an absurdity), or it tells us nothing at all about the moral permissibility of such trades. Of course, once the Law of Conservation of Securities is neutralized, other moral criticisms of issuer-licensed insider trading that rely on this law also fail. Professor Leo Katz’s claim that morality does not permit one to consent to a system that openly allows issuer-licensed insider trading is offered as one example of an argument that fails once considered in light of a proper understanding of the Law of Conservation of Securities.
Information and Knowledge: Austrian Economics in Search of its Uniqueness

The Austrian School of Economics since WWII has increasingly claimed a unique position within the scientific community of economists. This paper argues that the most persuasive way to make this claim to uniqueness is to focus on the distinction scholars in the Austrian tradition place between information and knowledge in their work. In other words, it is the epistemic-cognitive turn that the Austrian school took in the wake of the socialist calculation debate that separates the school from other branches of neo-classicism within economic science that constitutes its best case for analytical uniqueness.
Modified Distribution-Free Goodness-of-Fit Test Statistic

Covariance structure analysis and its structural equation modeling extensions have become one of the most widely used methodologies in social sciences such as psychology, education, and economics. An important issue in such analysis is to assess the goodness of fit of a model under analysis. One of the most popular test statistics used in covariance structure analysis is the asymptotically distribution-free (ADF) test statistic introduced by Browne (Br J Math Stat Psychol 37:62–83, 1984). The ADF statistic can be used to test models without any specific distribution assumption (e.g., multivariate normal distribution) of the observed data. Despite its advantage, it has been shown in various empirical studies that unless sample sizes are extremely large, this ADF statistic could perform very poorly in practice. In this paper, we provide a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon and further propose a modified test statistic that improves the performance in samples of realistic size. The proposed statistic deals with the possible ill-conditioning of the involved large-scale covariance matrices.
Resistance Is Not Futile: Harnessing the Power of Counter-Offensive Tactics in Legal Persuasion

A core competency for people working in law or business is the ability to influence and persuade: People need to become expert at getting others to agree, to go along, and to give in. The potential “targets” of one’s influence throughout a given workday are seemingly endless and include clients and customers, co-counsel, opposing counsel, supervisors, direct reports, contractors, subcontractors, consultants, secretaries, judges, juries, witnesses, police officers, court personnel, and others. Moreover, that influence is largely exerted through words spoken and behaviors exhibited within the context of a negotiation. And yet, leading academics have argued that the vast majority of academic writing on negotiation has ignored the element of interpersonal influence. This Article was written to help correct this glaring omission.
Disparaging Trademarks: Who Matters

For more than a century, non-majority groups have protested the use of trademarks comprised of or containing terms referencing the group — albeit for various reasons. For those trademarks that are offensive to targeted groups, some may argue that the market will solve. In other words, some may assume that purchasers in the marketplace will respect the objection, there will be insufficient purchases of the product under the mark, and the mark will disappear. However, objections raised by smaller populations in the United States often fall on deaf ears, and the marks continue to be used in the marketplace. The Washington NFL football team trademarks are an example. Under the 1946 Lanham Act, Congress added a prohibition against registering disparaging trademarks, which could offer protection to non-majority groups targeted by the use of trademarks offensive to members of the group. The prohibition remained relatively unclear, however, and relatively rarely applied in that context until a group of Native Americans petitioned to cancel the Washington NFL team’s trademarks as either scandalous (meaning offensive to the general population) or disparaging (meaning offensive to the referenced group). In clarifying the appropriate test for disparaging, however, the decision makers have overly analogizing the two prohibitions, rendering the disparaging registration prohibition less effective in protecting non-majority groups from offensive trademarks.This Article seeks to clarify the history, purpose, and utilization of the disparaging registration prohibition. In so doing, the Article also seeks to detangle the scandalous and disparaging registration prohibitions and refocus the disparaging registration prohibition on a broader and necessary purpose, which is to protect non-majority voices from the numerous harms caused by stereotyping and by rendering painful terms commonplace but no less painful.
Changing Inequality in Markets for Workplace Amenities

Among U. S. industries where earnings rose relatively from 1979–1995, injury rates declined relatively. Obversely, during the 1960s narrowing interindustry wage differentials were associated with an increase in the relative risk of injury in high-wage industries. Evidence from the NLSY suggests similar results among full-time workers between 1988 and 1996. Between 1973 and 1991 the disamenity of evening/night work was increasingly borne by low-wage male workers. Changing earnings inequality has understated changing inequality in the returns to work. Assuming skill-neutral changes in the cost of reducing these disamenities, estimates of the implied income elasticities of demand for amenities are well above unity.
The Small Laws: Eliot Spitzer and the Way to Insurance Market Reform

In 2004, the property-casualty insurance industry was roiled by a scandal unparalleled in its history, with the world's largest insurance broker, Marsh & McLennan, accused of defrauding customers by rigging bids to maximize its own profits. In addition to its sensational bid-rigging charges, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's October 2004 suit against Marsh challenged insurers' long-established practice of paying insurance brokers and agents (or producers) additional compensation contingent on their sales volume and the profitability of their risks. Spitzer argues that such contingent commissions are not adequately disclosed to insurance buyers and can have anticompetitive effects. Indeed, in Spitzer's view, a broad spectrum of financial arrangements entered into by carriers and independent producers threaten the competitiveness of the P&C insurance market. But I argue that, rather than promoting competition, an industry-wide ban on contingent compensation might instead undermine the financial stability of small insurance agencies in communities throughout America. Ironically, this could well lead to the further consolidation of insurance brokerage business in large global firms like Marsh. Indeed, the state of affairs that first drew Attorney General Spitzer's attention--large commercial insurance brokers allegedly manipulating the market for their own benefit--was the result of nothing so much as the coupling of time-honored sales incentive practices developed on Main Street, USA with an unprecedented level of market power attained by a few global mega-brokers following a consolidation spree in the 1990s. It would be an expensive mistake, however, to jump from that observation to the conclusion that all contingent compensation of all insurance producers is necessarily harmful to insurance consumers. This article (i) traces the history of Attorney General Spitzer's investigation into insurance market practices, (ii) offers an overview of producer compensation practices as they have evolved in the U.S. P&C market, (iii) outlines recent regulatory and legislative responses to the Spitzer investigation, and (iv) suggests a simple, voluntary reform that would increase transparency for insurance consumers while avoiding the pitfalls likely to attend more draconian solutions.
Predicting Eye Movements from Deep Neural Network Activity Decoded from fMRI Responses to Natural Scenes

Computational models of selective spatial attention can reliably predict eye movements to complex images. However, researchers lack a simple way to measure covert representations of spatial attention in the brain and their link to overt eye movement behavior, especially in response to natural scenes. Here, we predict eye movement patterns from spatial priority maps reconstructed from brain activity measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). First, we define a computational spatial attention model using a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) pretrained for scene categorization. Next, we decode CNN unit activity from fMRI activity and reconstruct spatial priority maps by applying our computational spatial attention model to decoded CNN activity. Finally, we predict eye movements in a subsequent behavioral experiment within and between individuals using reconstructed spatial priority maps. These results demonstrate that features represented in CNN unit activity can guide spatial attention and eye movements, providing a crucial link between CNN models, brain activity, and behavior.
Match Bias in Wage Gap Estimates Due to Earnings Imputation

About 30% of workers in the Current Population Survey have earnings imputed. Wage gap estimates are biased toward zero when the attribute being studied (e.g., union status) is not a criterion used to match donors to nonrespondents. An expression for “match bias” is derived in which attenuation equals the sum of match error rates. Attenuation can be approximated by the proportion with imputed earnings. Union wage gap estimates with match bias removed are presented for 1973–2001. Estimates for recent years are biased downward 5 percentage points. Bias in gap estimates accompanying other non–match criteria (public sector, industry, etc.) is examined.
The Constitutional Imbalance

The modem American judiciary bears little resemblance to the institution created by the Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Alexander Hamilton-a leading spokesperson for the Federalist forces that emerged victorious from the founding debates-famously predicted that thejudiciary would be the least dangerous of the three branches of government. We know now that Hamilton and the Federalists were wrong on this forecast. We also know that the Anti-Federalists were right. Indeed, the Anti-Federalists-an influential group of American founding statesmen who withheld their assent from the Constitution for various reasons correctly presaged the future path of the American judiciary. Contemporary thinkers have echoed the cautionary words of the Anti-Federalists, arguing that the modern American judiciary has upset the constitutional balance that sustains the American project of democracy. According to one scholar, the judiciary has freely inserted itself into the political thicket, eroding the political question doctrine that once ensured that the voice of the people would be heard.2 According to another scholar, the judiciary has mooted popular discourse on important issues of conscience before those deliberations have even begun to bud. Still another argues that the judiciary has commandeered public institutions to substitute the people's judgment with its own.4 These and other increasingly frequent detours
Beyond Corporate Reputation: Managing Reputational Interdependence

Guest editors' introduction of a special issue dedicated to advancing understanding of how a firm's reputation is influenced by the actions of other firms and advancing methods of managing this interdependence. It introduces the topic of reputational interdependence, summarizes the five articles and two book reviews that compose the special issue, synthesizes the findings of these articles and ties them to other literatures, and suggests directions for future research.
Earnings management and investor protection: an international comparison

This paper examines systematic differences in earnings management across 31 countries. We propose an explanation for these differences based on the notion that insiders, in an attempt to protect their private control benefits, use earnings management to conceal firm performance from outsiders. Thus, earnings management is expected to decrease in investor protection because strong protection limits insiders’ ability to acquire private control benefits, which reduces their incentives to mask firm performance. Our findings are consistent with this prediction and suggest an endogenous link between corporate governance and the quality of reported earnings.
Psychopathy and accounting students’ attitudes towards unethical professional practices

Abstract Psychopathy is a personality trait characterized by deficits of conscience and empathy, leading to callous attitudes and manipulative behavior, and is one of the “Dark Triad” of personality variables, along with Machiavellianism and narcissism. It has gained some attention in accounting literature, and clearly has serious implications for fraud and unethical behavior by accountants and auditors—arguably more so than other dark personality traits. Using a national sample of accounting students, this study documents the levels of psychopathy, the correlations with certain attitudes about unethical professional practices, and the potential trend across academic class level. Comparisons are made to previous samples of college students, accounting faculty, prisoners, and the general population. The responses of individuals high on the scale are described to offer insight into the attitudes and beliefs of those individuals. Implications for accounting education and opportunities for further research are discussed.
On the Consumption of Negative Feelings

How can the hedonistic assumption (i.e., people's willingness to pursue pleasure and avoid pain) be reconciled with people choosing to expose themselves to experiences known to elicit negative feelings? We assess how (1) the intensity of the negative feelings, (2) positive feelings in the aftermath, and (3) the coactivation of positive and negative feelings contribute to our understanding of such behavior. In a series of four studies, consumers with either approach or avoidance tendencies (toward horror movies) were asked to report their positive and/or negative feelings either after (experiment 1) or while (experiments 2, 3A, and 3B) they were exposed to a horror movie. We demonstrate how a model incorporating coactivation principles and enriched with a protective frame moderator (via detachment) can provide a more parsimonious and viable description of the affective reactions that result from counterhedonic behavior.
Law and Legal Theory in the History of Corporate Responsibility: Corporate Personhood

This Article, the first of a multipart project, addresses the nature of corporate personhood, one area where law has played a central role in the history of corporate responsibility in the United States. The treatment will be illustrative, not exhaustive. Consistent with the theme of the larger project, the Article serves to make the simple but important point that a full historical understanding of corporate responsibility requires an appreciation of the law’s significant, if ultimately limited, contribution to the longstanding American quest for more responsible corporate conduct. On one hand, the spheres of law and corporate responsibility, although clearly complementary, might be seen as distinct, in both theory and practice. Law, after all, mandates—with the state’s full sanctioning power behind it—compliance with specified standards of behavior. Apart from a decision to comply or disobey, there is no real exercise of discretion in choosing to abide by the law. “Responsible” conduct, on the other hand, presupposes the freedom to engage in or refrain from certain conduct. Viewed this way, corporate responsibility concerns can be seen as picking up precisely where legal strictures leave off. Consequently, a history of corporate responsibility could be written while being largely unmindful of law and legal theory.
Risk-based supervision of pension funds in Australia

This paper examines the development of risk-based supervision of pension funds in Australia. The large number of pension funds has meant that since the inception of pension fund supervision in the early 1990's the regulator has sought to identify high risk funds and focus its attention on these funds. However, the regulator developed a more sophisticated risk-rating model, known as PAIRS/SOARS, in 1992 in order to apply a more disciplined and consistent ratings methodology. Four reasons are given for the move towards more sophisticated risk-based supervision: 1) creation of an integrated supervisor which allowed the use of techniques used in banking and insurance to be adopted for pension fund; 2) the need to better use available supervisory resources; 3) several pension fund failures; and 4) concerns about industry weaknesses. Supervisory techniques used particularly in the banking industry, such as universal licensing, 'fit and proper' assessment, and risk management requirements were adopted for the pension sector between 2004 and 2006. The paper provides an outline of the PAIRS/SOARS risk-rating model which was also adopted. It observes that the approach provides an analytical discipline to risk assessment, strengthens the link between risk assessment and supervisory response, and allows better targeting of supervisory resources.
Bankruptcy’s Corporate Tax Loophole

Imagine you are a company with a failing business that is drowning in debt. On the bright side, you also possess a very valuable asset. This asset is unique because, unlike most assets, if you liquidate the business through a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, it will be extinguished and its value will not be realized by any shareholders or creditors. On the other hand, even if you substantially liquidate the business using Chapter 11, you can, thanks to an extraordinary ambiguity in the law, preserve this valuable asset. Even better, you can direct the value of this asset to your preferred stakeholders — whether they are shareholders or creditors — rather than have the asset’s value allocated among stakeholders according to bankruptcy’s absolute priority rule. You can do this because you have the most information about this valuable asset and because bankruptcy law and courts effectively ignore its existence, leaving you to allocate its value as you see fit. What is this unique asset? Valuable tax attributes, including net operating losses and credit carryovers. This scenario is not purely hypothetical; Solyndra and Washington Mutual, among others, have effectively used Chapter 11 to divert the value of tax losses and credits to a select group of shareholders and creditors in contravention of bankruptcy‘s distributional norms. This Article recommends statutory revisions to the tax and bankruptcy laws to remove the unintended tax advantage and thus neutralize the tax consequences of corporate restructuring decisions.
Institutional investor cliques and governance

Abstract We examine the impact of investor coordination on governance. We identify coordinating groups of investors (cliques) as those connected through the network of institutional holdings. Clique members vote together on proxy items: a one standard deviation increase in clique ownership more than doubles votes against low quality management proposals. We use the 2003 mutual fund trading scandal to show that this effect is causal. These findings suggest coordination strengthens governance via voice. Coordination, however, also weakens governance via threat of exit. Clique owners exit positions more slowly, and firm value responds negatively to liquidity shocks when clique ownership is high.
Monetary Policy and Asset Prices: Does 'Benign Neglect' Make Sense?*

The link between monetary policy and asset price movements has been of perennial interest to policy makers. In this paper we consider the potential case for pre-emptive monetary restrictions when asset price reversals can have serious effects on real output. First, we present some stylized facts on boom‐bust dynamics in stock and property prices in developed economies. We then discuss the case for a pre-emptive monetary policy in the context of a stylized framework with collateral constraints in the productive sector. We find that whether such a policy is warranted depends on the economic conditions in a complex, nonlinear way. The optimal policy cannot be summarized by a simple policy rule of the type considered in the inflationtargeting literature.
Taxes, High-Income Executives, and the Perils of Revenue Estimation in the New Economy

This paper attempts to help explain the unforecasted, excess' personal income tax revenues of the last several years. Using panel data on executive compensation in the 1990s, it argues that because the gains on most stock options are treated as ordinary income for tax purposes, rising stock market valuations are directly tied to non-capital gains income. This blurred line between capital and wage income for has affected tax revenue in three ways, at least for these high-income people. First, stock performance has directly affected the amount of ordinary income that people report by influencing their stock option exercise decisions. Second, the presence of options gives executives more flexibility in changing the timing of their reported income and appears to make them much more sensitive to the short-run timing of tax changes, even accounting for the stock market changes of the period. Third, because of the tax rules on options, changing the capital gains tax rate, as the U.S. did in the late 1990s, can lead individuals to exercise their options early to convert the expected future gains into lower-taxed forms. The data show significant evidence of each of these effects and in all three cases, executives working in the new' economy and high-technology sectors(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Subjectivity and the Weighting of Performance Measures: Evidence from a Balanced Scorecard

This study examines how different types of performance measures were weighted in a subjective balanced scorecard bonus plan adopted by a major financial services firm. Drawing upon economic and psychological studies on performance evaluation and compensation criteria, we develop hypotheses regarding the weights placed on different types of measures. We find that the subjectivity in the scorecard plan allowed superiors to reduce the “balance” in bonus awards by placing most of the weight on financial measures, to incorporate factors other than the scorecard measures in performance evaluations, to change evaluation criteria from quarter to quarter, to ignore measures that were predictive of future financial performance, and to weight measures that were not predictive of desired results. This evidence suggests that psychology‐based explanations may be equally or more relevant than economicsbased explanations in explaining the firm's measurement practices. The high level of subjectivity in the balanced scorec...
(Debt) Overhang: Evidence from Resource Extraction

I study the empirical importance of debt overhang using a unique dataset on resource extraction firms, which provides ex ante measures of investment opportunities and important variation in the terms of a firm's obligations. In particular, unsecured reclamation liabilities create overhang that is costly to resolve and induces firms to forgo and postpone positive NPV investments. Traditional debt, in contrast, imposes few overhang-related investment distortions. These results show that: (i) the overhang problem is potentially large and applies more broadly to a firm's non-debt liabilities; and (ii) overhang problems associated with traditional debt can be avoided through contracting and debt composition.
State Regulation of Nonpublic Schools: Does the Tie Still Bind?

This article addresses the issue of "school choice" and, through surveys of state departments of education, evaluates the degree of parental choice actually available in the Nation's private schools. By means of a longitudinal study, the author compares the level of state regulation over private schools from state to state and discusses trends observable over a 15-year period.The article provides a brief overview of constitutional issues raised by state regulation, presents a synopsis of existing regulatory schemes, and discusses some of the reasons for, and concerns raised by, various types of public control. The article concludes that limited state oversight of private education is clearly constitutional, but that most states do not regulate such schools as stringently as they legally could, and that there is a growing trend among the states toward substantial deregulation.
Bayesian Inference and Portfolio Efficiency

A Bayesian approach is used to investigate a sample's information about a portfolio's degree of inefficiency. With standard diffuse priors, posterior distributions for measures of portfolio inefficiency can concentrate well away from values consistent with efficiency, even when the portfolio is exactly efficient in the sample. The data indicate that the NYSE-AMEX market portfolio is rather inefficient in the presence of a riskless asset, although this conclusion is justified only after an analysis using informative priors. Including a riskless asset significantly reduces any sample's ability to produce posterior distributions supporting small degrees of inefficiency.
Regulating Three-Dimensional Printing: The Converging Worlds Of Bits And Atoms

Three-dimensional printing is invading society, bringing with it the ability to “print” objects (atoms) from computer files (bits). Posting a computer CAD file of an object (an illegal gun or an infringing shoe) to the internet essentially makes the physical object available to the world. The technology portends dramatic shifts in manufacturing, trade, medicine, and more, and will require a legal regime that integrates the legal concepts governing the digital and physical worlds. This Article represents the first broad descriptive and normative study of this technology and its multivalent effects on law. The Article separates truly novel legal issues raised by 3D printing from issues for which the current regulatory regime is well designed. After identifying novel legal issues, the Article builds on a rich literature set of regulatory and compliance literature to construct an integrated regulatory regime to govern 3D printing. It then applies this regime to the world of 3D printing, describes the political economy of 3D printing technology, and discusses specific regulatory challenges brought about by the digitization of physical goods. As a guiding theme, this Article argues that the nascent but promising state of 3D printing technology necessitates a flexible and iterative regulatory response.
Federal regulation and aggregate economic growth

We introduce a new time series measure of the extent of federal regulation in the U.S. and use it to investigate the relationship between federal regulation and macroeconomic performance. We find that regulation has statistically and economically significant effects on aggregate output and the factors that produce it—total factor productivity (TFP), physical capital, and labor. Regulation has caused substantial reductions in the growth rates of both output and TFP and has had effects on the trends in capital and labor that vary over time in both sign and magnitude. Regulation also affects deviations about the trends in output and its factors of production, and the effects differ across dependent variables. Regulation changes the way output is produced by changing the mix of inputs. Changes in regulation offer a straightforward explanation for the productivity slowdown of the 1970s. Qualitatively and quantitatively, our results agree with those obtained from cross-section and panel measures of regulation using cross-country data.
Involuntary Acts and Criminal Liability

Human actions may misfire or reveal defects in a variety of ways. They may be done in ignorance, accidentally, compulsively, or under duress. And when we note the presence of such qualifications, our tendency is to mitigate the agent’s responsibility for the action or to excuse its performance entirely. But when actions misfire in some even more basic way (as a result of an epileptic seizure, say) we are tempted not just to mitigate or excuse, but to say that no true human action has been performed at all. We appear to be confronted with nothing more than an event or a mere happening, and talk of excuse here seems to make no more sense than would talk of excusing a rock for falling on one’s head.
Decomposition of book-to-market and the cross-section of returns for Chinese shares ☆

Abstract In this paper, we show that the book-to-market decomposition described in Fama–French (2008) significantly improves the predictive power of the estimation for an important emerging market, viz, Chinese shares. Second, we show that this improvement comes mainly from the change in book equity and not from the change in price. The predictive power of the change in book equity is most pronounced for large stocks, for stocks listed on Shenzhen Exchange, for stocks with low book-to-market (or growth stocks), and for Class B shares. Net Share Issue and Momentum add no explanatory power to the predictive regressions.
Life without parole for juvenile offenders: Public sentiments.

The United States Supreme Court recently abolished mandatory life in prison without parole (LWOP) for juvenile offenders, holding that the practice is inconsistent with the eighth amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause, and its “evolving standards of decency” jurisprudence. The Court explicitly left open the question of whether nonmandatory LWOP is consistent with these constitutional standards. This article examines the public’s sentiment concerning juvenile LWOP. An online sample (n = 599) weighted to be representative of the U.S. population was queried about juvenile LWOP as a general policy and in response to a specific case in which they had to impose a prison sentence on a juvenile convicted of murder. The age of the juvenile was experimentally manipulated as either 12 or 16. Overall, 31% of participants favored juvenile LWOP as a general policy while 55% were willing to impose juvenile LWOP in a specific case. The age of the juvenile moderated this effect, such that participants were more willing to impose LWOP on a 16-year-old than a 12-year-old both as a general policy matter and in the specific case. A majority of participants were consistent in their preferred punishment across both the general and specific inquiries, including 30% who selected LWOP. Political affiliation was the only demographic variable that predicted consistency in preferred punishment. Additionally, participants who consistently endorsed juvenile LWOP placed greater emphasis on retribution and deterrence as goals of punishment while individuals who evidenced inconsistent punishment preferences placed a greater emphasis on rehabilitation.
Does Form Follow Function? Academic Law Libraries' Organizational Structures for Collection Development

While academic law libraries devote a large portion of their budgets to creating and maintaining their collections, little has been written about the organizational structures for the full range of collection development functions in these libraries. To explore this issue, the ALL-SIS Collection Development Committee surveyed nineteen academic law libraries, asking detailed questions about the libraries� collection development practices and organizational structures, with the aim of defining what organizational forms best support collection development functions. This article begins by defining collection development functions, and reviewing law library literature examining organizational structures for collection development. The article then presents the findings of the in-depth survey, analyzes the results, and recommends best practices emerging from the survey responses.
Economic Determinants and Information Environment Effects of Earnouts: New Insights from SFAS 141(R)

Contingent considerations (earnouts) in acquisition agreements provide sellers with future payments conditional on meeting certain conditions. Prior research provides evidence that acquiring firms use earnouts to minimize agency costs associated with acquisitions. Using earnout fair value information, recently mandated by SFAS 141(R), we provide new insights into the economic determinants to include earnout provisions in acquisition agreements, including motivations to resolve moral hazard and adverse selection problems, bridge valuation gaps, and retain target firm managers. We document variations in initial earnout fair value estimates and earnout fair value adjustments that correspond with these underlying motivations. We also provide evidence that target managers stay longer with the firm after the acquisition when earnouts are included primarily to retain target managers. Finally, we demonstrate that earnout fair value adjustments required by SFAS 141(R) provide valuable information to market participants and are negatively associated with the likelihood of contemporaneous and future goodwill impairments.
Tests of microstructural hypotheses in the foreign exchange market

Abstract Data in this paper support both the inventory-control and asymmetric-information approaches to microstructure theory. Strong evidence of an inventory-control effect on price is new. The transactions dataset chronicles a trading week of a spot foreign exchange dealer whose daily volume averages over $1 billion. In addition to controlling inventory with his own price, the dealer also lays off inventory at other dealers' prices and through brokers. These results highlight the importance of inventory-control theory in understanding trading in this market.
Crossing the Implementation Line: The Mutual Constitution of Technology and Organizing Across Development and Use Activities

A growing number of studies suggest that technological change and organizational change must be closely linked at the microsocial level of analysis. However, most extant research has explicitly linked technological change to activities surrounding a technology’s development and organizational change to activities surrounding a technology’s use. This article suggests that when researchers view technological and organizational change as discontinuous events separated by the act of implementation, they di scredit the important role that organizations play in the development of technologies, and that the material features of technologies play in the process of organizing. To overcome this empirically inaccurate tendency we must cross the artificial empirical and theoretical divide, which I term the implementation line existing between our studies of technology development and use. In so doing, I outline a framework that treats technological and organizational change as mutually constitutive in nature.
CORRELATED DEFAULTS IN INTENSITY-BASED MODELS

This paper presents an intensity-based model of correlated defaults with application to the valuation of defaultable securities. The model assumes that the intensities of the default times are driven by common factors as well as other defaults in the system. A recursive procedure called the “total hazard construction” is used to generate default times with a broad class of correlation structures. This approach is compared to standard reduced-form models based on conditional independence as well as alternative approaches involving copula functions. Examples are given for the pricing of defaultable bonds and credit default swaps of the regular and basket type.
Poverty Tourism, Justice, and Policy

Should poverty tourism be subject, on moral grounds, to specific policy constraints? This article responds to the question by testing poverty tourism against the ethical guideposts of compensation justice, participative justice, and recognition justice, and two case descriptions, favela tours in Rocinha and garbage dump tours in Mazatlan. It argues that the complexity of the social relationships involved in the tours requires policy-relevant research and solutions.
The Hague Principles and the Choice of Non-State "Rules of Law" to Govern an International Commercial Contract

In March 2015, the Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts were adopted by the Hague Conference on Private International Law. More than five years in the making, these Principles reflect a broad international consensus on party autonomy, recognizing that parties to international commercial contracts should have the freedom to designate the law governing their contractual relationship. In so doing, the Principles recognize that parties can also designate non-State law, called "rules of law" in the Principles, following the terminology current in arbitration statutes and regulations. Moreover, the Principles provide that such a choice of non-State law should be operative before State courts and not only, as is currently the case, before arbitral tribunals. This article traces the drafting history behind the rule on non-State law in the Principles, considers its justification, examines the challenges that it may pose in practice and how these might be addressed.
Do dividends matter more in declining markets

Abstract We find dividends do matter to shareholders, but more in declining markets than advancing ones. Dividend-paying stocks outperform non-dividend-paying stocks by 1 to 2% more per month in declining markets than in advancing markets. These results are economically and statistically significant and robust to many risk adjustments and across industries. In addition, we find an asymmetric response to dividend changes based on market conditions: dividend increases matter more in declining markets than advancing ones. Tests indicate that results are not due to more profitable firms and appear not to be caused either by free cash flow or signaling explanations. We also find that it is the existence of dividends, and not the dividend yield, that drives returns' asymmetric behavior relative to market movements.