cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Equity Incentives and Long‐Term Value Created by SG&A Expenditure*

In this paper we investigate how incentives affect managers’ input resource expenditure decisions and how firms make equity grant decisions considering managerial behavior. Focusing on selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenditure, we first document that SG&A expenditure creates future value that varies across firms and industries. We hypothesize and find that new equity incentives lead to an increase in SG&A expenditure in companies where SG&A creates a high future value. The extent to which long-term incentives impact managers’ expenditure decisions depends on the future value it creates. We also find that firms with high level of SG&A spending grant more new equity incentives when SG&A creates more future value. The evidence is consistent both with managers making rational investment decisions in response to new equity incentives and with firms making efficient grant decisions based on managers’ expected behavior. Overall, this study documents the importance of considering the future value created by input resource expenditure in examining the association between equity incentives and managerial spending behavior.
The global financial crisis: How similar? How different? How costly?

Abstract This paper provides a brief analysis of three major questions raised in the context of the recent global financial crisis. First, how similar is the crisis to previous episodes? We argue that the crisis featured some close similarities to earlier ones, including the presence of credit and asset price booms fueled by rapid debt accumulation. Second, how different is it from earlier episodes? We show that, as much as it displayed some similarities with previous cases, it also featured some significant differences, such as the explosion of opaque and complex financial instruments in a context of highly integrated global financial markets. Third, how costly are recessions that followed these types of crises? Although the latest episode took a very heavy toll on the real economy, we argue that this was not a surprising outcome. In particular, historical comparisons indicate that recessions associated with periods of deep financial disruptions result in much larger declines in real economic activity. We discuss the implications of these findings for economic and financial sector policies and future research.
An Improved Panel Unit Root Test Using GLS-Detrending

University of CincinnatiAugust 2004This paper o⁄ers a panel extension of the unit root test proposed by El-liott, Rothenberg and Stock (1996). More speci–cally, the proposed approachallows for heterogeneous serial and contemporaneous correlation, while –xingtherateofconvergencetobehomogeneousacrossseries. Thenewtestdemon-strates signi–cantly better –nite sample-power properties than the Levin, LinandChu(2002) ortheIm, PesaranandShin(2003) tests, especiallyforhighlypersistent series. An application to the real exchange rate convergence illus-trates the impact of such improvements. Analysing the post Bretton Woodsperiod, the new test provides strong and reliable evidence of PurchasingPower Parity.JEL classi–cation: C12, C15, C32, C33
The Presidency and Political Equality

When black Americans and white Americans want the president to do different things, who wins? When low-income earners prefer different government action than do middle and high-income earners, whose preferences are reflected in presidential behavior? Recent studies show that congressional behavior often most closely follows the preferences of the white and the wealthy, but we know relatively little about presidential behavior. Since the president and Congress make policy together, it is important to understand the extent of political equality in presidential behavior. We examine the degree to which presidents have provided equal representation to these groups over the past four decades. We compare the preferences of these groups for federal spending in various budget domains to presidents’ subsequent budget proposals in those domains from 1974 to 2010. Over this period, presidents’ proposals aligned more with the preferences of whites and high-income earners. However, Republican presidents are driving thi...
On the Historical School of Jurisprudence

Legal theory has tended to treat the Historical School as a poor relation, but it has important contributions to make. Developed in opposition to the one-size-fits-all form of natural law that eventuated in the Code Napoleon, it attributes law to a Volksgeist, the spirit of a people, as developed in the peculiar historical experience of that people. The original German proponents of the school had trouble explaining the reception of Roman law in Germany, but despite the importation of technical elements from without, a people's laws are in fact part of their culture and of their spiritual heritage as these authors claimed. People have enough in common worldwide so that some elements appear in almost all legal systems (hence what the Romans called jus gentium) but one size does not fit all, and the laws of different peoples are subject to historical change as other aspects of their culture are. Deliberate legislative intervention is not always necessary, and not always sufficient to bring such changes about.
On Protecting Children from Speech

When freedom of speech comes into conflict with the protection of children, how should this conflict be resolved? What principles should guide such deliberations? Can one rely on parents and educators (and more generally on voluntary means) to protect children from harmful cultural materials (such as Internet pornography and violent movies) or is government intervention necessary? What difference does historical context make for the issue at hand? Are all minors to be treated the same? What is the scope of the First Amendment rights of children in the first place? These are the questions here explored.
Subsidiarity in the Tradition of Catholic Social Doctrine

The violent efforts of the eighteenth and nineteenth century revolutionaries to dissolve the social order led the Catholic Church to discern and articulate the principle of subsidiarity. In Catholic social doctrine, social justice is the demand that the common good be realised through societies, institutions, and groups. Derivative of social justice is the principle of subsidiarity or subsidiarity function, which has two aspects. Negatively, it is a principle of non-absorption of lower societies by higher societies, above all by the state. Positively, subsidiarity demands that when aid is given to a particular society, it be for the purpose of encouraging and strengthening that society. Societies are opportunities for activities by which rational agents achieve perfections proper to their nature, specifically by causing good in others through solidarity. The activities of the heterogeneous and pluriform whole that is the commonwealth must be harmonized with regard to the common good. In Catholic social doctrine, subsidiarity is not a principle of devolution or smallness of scale.
The Case for Online Obscurity

On the Internet, obscure information has a minimal risk of being discovered or understood by unintended recipients. Empirical research demonstrates that Internet users rely on obscurity perhaps more than anything else to protect their privacy. Yet, online obscurity has been largely ignored by courts and lawmakers. In this Article, we argue that obscurity is a critical component of online privacy, but it has not been embraced by courts and lawmakers because it has never been adequately defined or conceptualized. This lack of definition has resulted in the concept of online obscurity being too insubstantial to serve as a helpful guide in privacy disputes. In its place, courts and lawmakers have generally found that the unfettered ability of any hypothetical individual to find and access information on the Internet renders that information public, and therefore ineligible for privacy protection. Drawing from multiple disciplines, this Article develops a more focused, clear, and workable definition of online obscurity: information is obscure online if it lacks one or more key factors that are essential to discovery or comprehension. We have identified four of these factors: (1) search visibility, (2) unprotected access, (3) identification, and (4) clarity. This framework could be applied as an analytical tool or as part of an obligation. Viewing obscurity as a continuum could help courts and lawmakers determine if information is eligible for privacy protections. Obscurity could also serve as a compromise protective remedy: instead of forcing websites to remove sensitive information, courts could mandate some form of obscurity. Finally, obscurity could form part of an agreement where Internet users bound to a “duty to maintain obscurity” would be allowed to further disclose information so long as they kept the information generally as obscure as they received it.
Legislative Success in a Small World: Social Network Analysis and the Dynamics of Congressional Legislation

We examine the social network structure of Congress from 1973 to 2004. We treat two Members of Congress as directly linked if they have cosponsored at least one bill together. We then construct explicit networks for each year using data from all forms of legislation, including resolutions, public and private bills, and amendments. We show that Congress exemplifies the characteristics of a “small world” network and that the varying small-world properties during this time period are related to the number of important bills passed.
Total factor productivity differences: Appropriate technology vs. efficiency

Abstract Recent development and growth accounting studies have established that total factor productivity is an important source of cross-country differences in income levels and growth rates. This paper makes two contributions. First, it examines the sensitivity of the development accounting results to the Cobb–Douglas specification of the production function. Second, within the Cobb–Douglas framework, it weighs evidence of the two alternative explanations of total factor productivity differences: the inefficiency view and the appropriate technology view. To accomplish these tasks, the world production frontier is estimated using a nonparametric deterministic approach known as data envelopment analysis. I find that the fraction of income differences explained by physical and human capital increases from 32% to 55% when departing from the Cobb–Douglas assumption. There is also evidence consistent with the appropriate technology view; countries with an inadequate mix of inputs are unable to access the most productive technologies. Moreover, the world technology frontier appears to be shifting out faster at input combinations close to that of the RD it explains 43% of output variation in 1995, and its importance has increased over time.
Two Decades of Behavioral Research on Analytical Procedures: What Have We Learned?

SUMMARY: This paper presents a comprehensive review of behavioral research on external auditors' use of analytical procedures published over the past two decades. We frame our review around four phases of the analytical procedures process: develop an expectation, establish a tolerable difference, compare the expectation to the recorded amount and investigate significant differences, and evaluate explanations and corroborative evidence. We find that while considerable research has focused on auditors' performance of the latter phases of the analytical procedures process (i.e., investigate significant differences and evaluate explanations and evidence), relatively less research has focused on the initial phases of the process (i.e., setting expectations and establishing thresholds). We also find that prior research has primarily focused on the preliminary and substantive analytical procedure settings with little research examining auditors' judgments and decisions when using analytical procedures at the ove...
A mass-conserving 4D XCAT phantom for dose calculation and accumulation

Purpose: The XCAT phantom is a realistic 4D digital torso phantom that is widely used in imaging and therapy research. However, lung mass is not conserved between respiratory phases of the phantom, making detailed dosimetric simulations and dose accumulation unphysical. A framework is developed to correct this issue by enforcing local mass conservation in the XCAT lung. Dose calculations are performed to assess the implications of neglecting mass conservation, and to demonstrate an application of the phantom to calculate the accumulated delivered dose in an irregularly breathing patient. Methods: A displacement vector field (DVF) between each respiratory state and a reference image is generated from the XCAT motion model and its divergence is calculated and used to correct the lung density. A series of phantoms with regular and irregular breathing (based on patient data) are generated and modified to conserve mass. Monte Carlo methods are used to simulate conventional and SBRT treatment delivery. The calculated dose is deformed and accumulated using the DVF. Results from the mass-conserving and original XCAT are compared. A 4DCT is simulated for the irregularly breathing patient, and a 4DCT-based dose estimate is compared with the accumulated delivered dose. Results: The presented framework successfully conserves mass in the XCAT lung. The spatial distribution of the lung dose was qualitatively changed by the use of a mass conservation in the XCAT; however, the corresponding DVH did not change significantly. The comparison of the delivered dose with the 4DCT-based prediction shows similar lung metric results, however dose differences of 10% can be seen in some spatial regions. Conclusions: The XCAT phantom has been successfully modified so that it conserves lung mass during respiration, enabling it to be used as a tool to perform dose accumulation studies in the lung without relying on deformable image registration. Neglecting mass conservation can result in erroneous spatial distributions of the dose in the lung. Using this tool to simulate patient treatments reveals differences between the planned dose and the calculated delivered dose for the full treatment. The software is freely available from the authors.
Information Ethics and the Library Profession

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Core Value of the Library Profession Selection, Bias, and Neutrality Classification and Labeling Children's Access to Information Conclusion References
Detecting Doctrines: The Case Method and the Detective Story

Many scholars have compared legal judgments with detective stories, and have suggested that law professors should teach cases in a way that reflects the structure of detective fiction. This essay explores that analogy, arguing that detective fiction’s asserted concern with the logical analysis of clues helps to show why exponents of legal doctrine would look to this genre as a model. Detective stories changed in the late nineteenth century, for the first time organizing their narrative structure around the use of clues, and hence claiming to promote logical reasoning in a way that allowed the reader to compete with the detective in solving the mystery. This explanation echoes the rationales offered by the advocates of the case method when it was first being endorsed around the same time. Law teaching changed similarly, moving from the methods of lecture and memorization to an approach that required students to navigate a narrative medium (the case) and to discover its essential components on their own. These two developments, in literature and law, stem from a common source - the emergence of new scientific methods aimed at tracing visible effects back to their hidden causes, exemplified by Charles Lyell’s work in geology and Charles Darwin’s work in evolution. When the early advocates of the case method talked about legal science, they emphasized scientific values such as coherence, clarity, and consistency, but an equally important aspect of the enterprise received much less rhetorical emphasis - namely, the method itself, which reflected the forms of scientific inquiry exemplified by Lyell and Darwin.This essay explores those connections by considering various historical and structural analogies between the case method and the detective story. Part I takes up the changes in legal education associated with Christopher Columbus Langdell at Harvard, and discusses the intellectual roots of the case method, the justifications offered in its support, and the narrative tendencies that it relies on and promotes. Part II turns to the origins of the modern detective story near the end of the nineteenth century, and shows how the genre developed from the same scientific background as the case method. This section then examines in greater detail some of the ways in which case-method pedagogy may be said to cultivate the same habits as detective fiction, and concludes with some examples in which courts have expressly invoked the analogy to describe their own procedures or have crafted doctrines with the aid of propositions borrowed from detective stories. Part III considers some examples of detective fiction, pursuing the analogy further by asking why lawyers often figure as detectives in these stories. Finally, in a short conclusion, I discuss the analogy’s implications by considering the emergence, around the turn of the nineteenth century, of a doctrinal approach that discovered underlying rights behind express constitutional guarantees.
Institutions, markets and men's and women's wage inequality: Evidence from Ukraine

Abstract This paper determines the extent to which the introduction of markets and new institutions determine changes in men's and women's wage inequality between 1986 and 2003, using Lemieux's decomposition method [Lemieux, Thomas, 2002. Decomposing changes in wage distributions: A unified approach. Canadian Journal of Economics 35, 646–688] and micro data from the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS). The rise in inequality is driven by changes in wage premiums, especially in inter-industry differentials, and unobservable characteristics. Changes in the composition of the labor force contribute to a reduction in overall wage inequality of men; but to an increase in inequality in the top half of women's wage distribution. We attribute this to the larger exodus of low skilled workers. The institution of the minimum wage plays an important role in lowering the growth in inequality, more for women than for men. Going forward, if the government wants to ameliorate the effects of market forces on wage inequality, it should recognize the importance of maintaining the value of, and compliance with, the minimum wage. Journal of Comparative Economics 34 (2) (2006) 200–227.
Directors' Informational Role in Corporate Voluntary Disclosure: An Analysis of Directors from Related Industries

Boards of directors play their role in corporate governance by advising and/or monitoring managers. In the corporate disclosure literature, prior research has documented directors' monitoring role, yet empirical evidence on directors' advising role is limited. Since the advising role often entails information transfer, we examine directors who concurrently serve as directors or executives in the firms' related industries (DRIs) and hence possess valuable information about the firms' external operating environment. We hypothesize and find that more DRIs on boards are associated with more accurate management forecasts. This association is stronger when firms face greater uncertainty, and holds in settings where DRIs are unlikely to monitor managers, suggesting a distinct advising role of DRIs. Our study highlights directors' role as information suppliers and advisors who help shape corporate voluntary disclosure. Role informationnel des administrateurs dans la communication d'information facultative : le cas des administrateurs de secteurs connexes En matiere de gouvernance d'entreprise, les conseils d'administration jouent leur role en conseillant les dirigeants et (ou) en exercant sur eux une surveillance. Parmi les ecrits portant sur la communication d'information par les entreprises, de precedentes etudes ont mis en evidence le role de surveillance des administrateurs, mais les donnees empiriques relatives a leur role de conseil sont limitees. Puisque le role de conseil suppose souvent un transfert d'information, les auteurs s'interessent aux administrateurs qui jouent de front les roles d'administrateurs ou de cadres dans des societes de secteurs connexes (ASC) et possedent donc de precieux renseignements au sujet de l'environnement d'exploitation externe de ces societes. Ils emettent et confirment l'hypothese selon laquelle la presence d'un plus grand nombre d'ASC au sein des conseils d'administration est associee a une exactitude accrue des previsions de la direction. Cette association est plus marquee lorsque les societes sont exposees a davantage d'incertitude, et elle se maintient dans les circonstances ou les ASC sont peu susceptibles d'exercer une surveillance sur les dirigeants, ce qui laisse supposer l'existence d'un role de conseil distinct des ASC. L'etude met en lumiere le role des administrateurs a titre de fournisseurs d'informations et de conseillers contribuant a etablir le profil de la communication d'information facultative par les societes.
Is Labor Market Mismatch a Big Deal in Japan

This paper estimates Japanese labor market mismatch between 2000 and 2019 by using the method of Sahin et al. (“Mismatch Unemployment.” The American Economic Review 104 (11): 3529–64, 2014). We quantify contract-type (regular or non-regular), employment-type (full or part-time), and occupational mismatch and their respective contributions to changes in unemployment. All three types of mismatch show a countercyclical pattern, sharply increasing during the global financial crisis (GFC), but slowly declining during the recovery. Contract-type and occupational mismatch accounted for a significant portion of the rise in the unemployment rate during the GFC, each accounting for around 30 and 20–40 percent, respectively. Employment-type mismatch, on the other hand, accounted for much less–at around 15 perecent of the rise in unemployment for the same period.
Best Evidence and the Wayback Machine: Toward a Workable Authentication Standard for Archived Internet Evidence

This Note addresses the use of archived Internet content obtained via the Wayback Machine, a service provided by the Internet Archive that accesses the largest online digital collection of archived Web pages in the world. Given the dynamic nature of the World Wide Web, Internet content is constantly changed, amended, and removed. As a result, interim versions of Web pages have limited life spans. The Internet Archive indexes and stores Web pages to allow researchers to access discarded or since-altered versions. In the legal profession, archived Web pages have become an increasingly helpful form of proof. Intellectual property enforcers have recognized the value of the Internet Archive as a tool for tracking down infringers, but evidence from the Internet Archive has rarely been admitted at trial. This Note surveys the handful of judicial opinions and orders that comment on the admission of Internet Archive evidence and explores the conflict underlying these approaches. As an alternative to the courses they have taken, this Note urges courts to treat the introduction of archived Web pages as implicating a best evidence issue in addition to an authentication question. Under this approach, courts would decide using evidence sufficient to the purpose, but not necessarily admissible at trial, whether the archived page qualifies as a 'duplicate' of a page that once appeared on the Web. Beyond that, courts would apply authentication standards already developed to decide whether a reasonable jury could find, based only on admissible evidence, whether proffered evidence accurately represents the page stored on the Internet Archive server and, if necessary, whether the original page accurately represented material placed on the originating site by the site’s owner or operator. With this additional step, reliable evidence from the Wayback Machine can become as easily admitted as any other Internet-derived proof.
Should Education be Publicly Provided

This study suggests that a subsidy in the form of public provision has the potential to be the most efficient educational policy because it stimulates investment in human capital, which would otherwise be inefficiently low because of distortionary income taxation and possible external benefits. Moreover, it can potentially do this without grossly distorting the mix of investments in human capital. Other policies do not have the potential to achieve both these ends without introducing additional, perhaps overwhelming, problems. Thus public provision of education appears to provide incentives for human capital accumulation which are more efficient than any other feasible policy.
Three Problems (and Two Solutions) in the Law of Partnership Formation

This Article considers several foundational questions concerning the formation of general partnerships, a topic that has received little modern attention and that is governed largely by classical axioms rather than adaptive modern considerations. Its three main topics concern (1) the timing of partnership formation, (2) the aggregation of multiple distinct questions under the single heading of “partnership formation,” and (3) the rarely challenged proposition that general partners ought to be liable for partnership obligations, a doctrine that is surprisingly at odds with the rest of modern business-entity law.
The First Patent Litigation Explosion

The twenty-first century “patent litigation explosion” is not unprecedented. In fact, the nineteenth century saw an even bigger surge of patent cases. During that era, the most prolific patent enforcers brought hundreds or even thousands of suits, dwarfing the efforts of today’s leading “trolls.” In 1850, New York City and Philadelphia alone had ten times more patent litigation, per U.S. patent in force, than the entire United States in 2013. Even the absolute quantity of late-nineteenth-century patent cases bears comparison to the numbers filed in recent years: the Southern District of New York in 1880 would have ranked third on the list of districts with the most patent infringement suits filed in 2014 and would have headed the list as recently as 2010. This Article reveals the forgotten history of the first patent litigation explosion. It first describes the rise of large-scale patent enforcement in the middle of the nineteenth century. It then draws on new data from the archives of two leading federal courts to trace the development of patent litigation from 1840 to 1910 and to outline the scale, composition, and leading causes of the litigation boom. Finally, the Article explores the consequences of this phenomenon for the law and politics of the patent system. The effects of the litigation explosion were profound. The rise of large-scale patent assertion provides a new explanation for patent law’s crucial shift from common law to equity decision making in the middle of the nineteenth century. And at its height, the litigation explosion produced a political backlash that threatened to sweep away the patent system as we know it. Recovering the history of patent law during this formative and turbulent era offers fresh perspectives on the patent reform debates of today. author. Associate Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School. This Article has benefited from the generous comments of David Abrams, Shyam Balganesh, Gaia Bernstein, Megan Braun, Robert Brauneis, Eric Claeys, Michael Clemente, Anisha Dasgupta, Rochelle Dreyfuss, John Duffy, Jeanne Fromer, Tomas Gomez-Arostegui, Brian Howard, Camilla Hrdy, Brian Lee, Mark Lemley, Oskar Liivak, Adam Mossoff, William E. Nelson, Sean O’Connor, Ben Picozzi, Michael Risch, Mark Schultz, Brad Snyder, Katherine Strandburg, Kara Swanson, and participants in the 2015 N.Y.U. Tri-State Region IP Workshop, the 2014 Intellectual Property Scholars’ Conference, and the 2013-14 Edison Fellowship Program at George Mason University School of Law. Research for the Article was supported by Princeton University’s Program in Law and Public Affairs, by Brooklyn Law School, and by a Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship from the George Mason University School of Law. Michael Gorwitz, Joshua Greenberg, Andrew Kummer, and Elizabeth McCall provided invaluable research assistance. Thanks to the editors of the Yale Law Journal for rigorous and insightful editing. the first patent litigation explosion 849 article contents
Fighting on Christmas: brawling as self-governance in rural Peru

This paper analyzes the Peruvian highland tradition of Takanakuy, a public brawling ritual occurring each Christmas to resolve conflicts between local community members. We argue that Takanakuy provides an effective way for locals to resolve disputes that Peru's formal judicial system is unable or unwilling to settle. Using insights from ethnographic fieldwork, journalistic articles, reports, and academic sources, we find that brawling during Takanakuy encourages social cooperation by preventing potential violence and offering community members a credible mechanism of law enforcement in an orderly fashion with social acceptance.
Academic peer effects with different group assignment policies : residential tracking versus random assignment

This paper studies the relative academic performance of students tracked or randomly assigned to South African university dormitories. Tracked or streamed assignment creates dormitories where all students obtained similar scores on high school graduation examinations. Random assignment creates dormitories that are approximately representative of the population of students. Tracking lowers students' mean grades in their first year of university and increases the variance or inequality of grades. This result is driven by a large negative effect of tracking on low-scoring students' grades and a near-zero effect on high-scoring students' grades. Low-scoring students are more sensitive to changes in their peer group composition and their grades suffer if they live only with low-scoring peers. In this setting, residential tracking has undesirable efficiency (lower mean) and equity (higher variance) effects. The result isolates a pure peer effect of tracking, whereas classroom tracking studies identify a combination of peer effects and differences in teacher behavior across tracked and untracked classrooms. The negative pure peer effect of residential tracking suggests that classroom tracking may also have negative effects unless teachers are more effective in homogeneous classrooms. Random variation in peer group composition under random dormitory assignment also generates peer effects. Living with higher-scoring peers increases students' grades and the effect is larger for low-scoring students. This is consistent with the aggregate effects of tracking relative to random assignment. However, using peer effects estimated in randomly assigned groups to predict outcomes in tracked groups yields unreliable predictions. This illustrates a more general risk that peer effects estimated under one peer group assignment policy provide limited information about how peer effects might work with a different peer group assignment policy.
IMPERFECT ENFORCEMENT, FOREIGN INVESTMENT, AND FOREIGN AID

The lack of a supranational legal authority that can enforce private contracts across borders makes debt repayment in an international setting contingent on borrowers' willingness to pay rather than ability to pay. This market failure (i.e., inadequate enforcement) causes investment to fall short of its unconstrained level. This paper examines how foreign aid affects a country's willingness to honor private investment agreements. We consider two types of aid: technical assistance and loan subsidies. We show that when enforcement is inadequate, aid has the following effects: (i) it reduces default risk, promotes capital flows, and can, in principle, restore investment to its unconstrained level; (ii) when default risk is high, aid can increase the welfare of both the recipient and the donor country. Thus, foreign aid serves as an enforcement mechanism in an international setting. This provides a nonaltruistic rationale for foreign aid. Finally, we discuss the implications of providing bilateral versus multilateral aid (e.g., by individual countries versus multilateral organizations).
The Effect of Employer‐Sponsored Education on Job Mobility: Evidence from the U.S. Navy

We examined the impact of employer-sponsored part-time college education on job mobility, using the case of the Tuition Assistance (TA) program of the U.S. Navy. We used two modeling approaches—a bivariate probit model of job mobility and TA usage that accounts for the endogeneity of TA usage, and a propensity score model. The results from both models showed that TA usage significantly decreases the probability of staying in the Navy.
Maybe It Should just be Called Federal Fraud: The Changing Nature of the Mail Fraud Statute

This Article reviews the history of the mail fraud statute and the provisions early relationship to protecting the mails from misuse. It then analyzes the Supreme Court's contradictory opinions that have sought to explain the relationship between the fraudulent scheme and the mailing. The Article evaluates the effect of Congress's two most recent amendments to the statute: first, a new statute that in large part overturned the Supreme Court's restrictive interpretation in McNally of the scheme to defraud element by the adoption the right of honest services provision; second, a 1994 amendment that sheds the last vestige of limitation on the mail fraud statute to protect the integrity of the mails. The Article addresses important interpretive issues that courts should consider in determining how far Congress intended to extend federal jurisdiction over fraudulent schemes. I recommend the proper scope of federal jurisdiction for fraudulent schemes involving the use of interstate carriers that comports with the language chosen by Congress in expanding the statute. I conclude that Congress has effectively enacted the Federal Fraud Statute without debate or even consideration of the need for such a provision.
An Autopsy of Cooperation: Diamond Dealers and the Limits of Trust-Based Exchange

Both academic and popular representations of the diamond industry describe trust-based relations that sustain trade and support the industry’s private arbitration system. In recent years, however, trust among merchants has eroded, and merchants have correspondingly lost confidence in the industry’s arbitration. This article describes the events that have led to the breakdown of cooperative trust in the industry and derives lessons regarding the nature and limits of reputation-based exchange in the modern economy.
Crossroads and Signposts: The ADA Amendments Act of 2008

Although the apparent purpose of the 2008 amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is solely to broaden the ADA’s protected class, the manner in which the amendments achieve this purpose erodes the statute’s explicit textual support for understanding persons with disabilities as a politically subordinated minority. The amendments also strengthen the statutory link between the biological severity of a person’s disability and that person’s right to sue for ADA accommodations. Accordingly, for some courts, the amendments will reinforce the perception that the ADA differs from traditional civil rights law. Federal courts’ understanding of the ADA’s relationship to traditional civil rights law will shape courts’ resolution of unresolved questions about the ADA’s scope. Because the ADA, as amended, will now enable more plaintiffs to proceed past the preliminary question of membership in the ADA’s protected class, federal courts will soon be forced to confront broad questions about the ADA’s application. Resolution of these questions will largely turn on courts’ understanding of the conceptual relationship between the ADA and traditional civil rights statutes, an underlying question that the recent amendments will unintentionally shape.
Retail Energy Prices and Consumer Expenditures

In the absence of a major disruption in spending by consumers and firms, the effects of energy price shocks on the economy will be small. In this paper, we quantify the direct effect on real consumption of (1) unanticipated changes in discretionary income, (2) shifts in precautionary savings, and (3) changes in the operating cost of energy-using durables. We also evaluate the evidence for asymmetries in the response of real consumption that would be expected, for example, if shifting expenditure patterns cause sectoral reallocations. Formal tests do not reveal compelling evidence for asymmetries in the response of consumer spending, aggregate unemployment, or consumer expectations. The absence of a reallocation effect in particular, despite a comparatively large effect of energy price shocks on the consumption of new domestically produced automobiles, is consistent with the small share of the U.S. auto industry in domestic real GDP and employment. It is also consistent with the symmetric behavior of real consumption in 1979 (when energy prices rose sharply) and in 1986 (when they fell equally sharply). This finding has important implications for theoretical models of the transmission of energy price shocks. Our analysis also sheds light on the declining importance of energy price shocks for the U.S. economy. We not only document the extent to which consumption aggregates have become less responsive to energy price shocks since the mid-1980s, but we trace the declining importance of energy price shocks relative to the 1970s to changes in the composition of U.S. automobile production and the declining overall importance of the U.S. automobile sector.
On Bond Portfolio Management

This paper describes a new method of bond portfolio optimization based on stochastic string models of correlation structure in bond returns. The paper shows how to approximate correlation function of bond returns, compute the optimal portfolio allocation using Wiener-Hopf factorization, and check whether a collection of bonds presents arbitrage opportunities.
Food Insecurity or Poverty? Measuring Need-Related Dietary Adequacy

We examine the extent to which food insecurity questions and the standard poverty measure are correlated with various dietary and physiologic outcomes. Our findings suggest that the correlations vary tremendously by age. We find that the food insecurity questions are correlated with the dietary outcomes of older household members, but that they are not consistently related to the diets of children. In contrast, poverty predicts dietary outcomes among preschoolers. Among adults, both poverty and food insecurity questions are good predictors of many dietary outcomes.
A Martingale Representation for Matching Estimators

Matching estimators are widely used in statistical data analysis. However, the large sample distribution of matching estimators has been derived only for particular cases. This article establishes a martingale representation for matching estimators. This representation allows the use of martingale limit theorems to derive the large sample distribution of matching estimators. As an illustration of the applicability of the theory, we derive the asymptotic distribution of a matching estimator when matching is carried out without replacement, a result previously unavailable in the literature. In addition, we apply the techniques proposed in this article to derive a correction to the standard error of a sample mean when missing data are imputed using the “hot deck,” a matching imputation method widely used in the Current Population Survey (CPS) and other large surveys in the social sciences. We demonstrate the empirical relevance of our methods using two Monte Carlo designs based on actual datasets. In these M...
Restrictions on Political Activity by Judges in Japan and the United States: The Cases of Judge Teranishi and Justice Sanders

In the late 1990s, similar dramas relating to political activity by judges were playing out on opposite sides of the Pacific. A Japanese decision concerned Teranishi Kazushi, an assistant judge of the Sendai District Court, and an American decision related to Richard Sanders, a newly sworn-in justice of the Washington State Supreme Court. Both attended gatherings with distinctly political agendas. Both made brief remarks implying, but never directly stating, their support for the agendas presented. Both were censured for having engaged in impermissible political activity. Both appealed those censures, ultimately as far as the Grand Bench of the Supreme Court of Japan and the Washington State Supreme Court, respectively. The decisions examined nearly the same set of factors and followed similar reasoning.But the final outcomes were different. In a ten-to-five decision, the Japanese Supreme Court upheld Teranishi's censure, but the Washington State Supreme Court unanimously overturned Sanders' censure. This Essay begins by setting out the basic facts of the two cases. After briefly examining the respective outcomes and legal reasoning, the Essay proceeds to a comparative examination of the procedures and the basic stance of the two systems.
The impact of CEO turnover on equity volatility

This study investigates the effect on stock‐price volatility of a significant event in the life of the firm, a change in its CEO. We find significant, long‐lived increases in volatility following CEO turnover after controlling for firm characteristics and marketwide volatility. These increases are larger after forced departures and outside successions following voluntary departures. Stock prices also respond more strongly to earnings announcements following turnovers. These results are consistent with more informative signals of value driving the increased volatility, helping resolve two sources of uncertainty: possible changes in the firm's strategy and doubt about the successor CEO's ability.
Earnings management through real activities manipulation

I find evidence consistent with managers manipulating real activities to avoid reporting annual losses. Specifically, I find evidence suggesting price discounts to temporarily increase sales, overproduction to report lower cost of goods sold, and reduction of discretionary expenditures to improve reported margins. Cross-sectional analysis reveals that these activities are less prevalent in the presence of sophisticated investors. Other factors that influence real activities manipulation include industry membership, the stock of inventories and receivables, and incentives to meet zero earnings. There is also some, though less robust, evidence of real activities manipulation to meet annual analyst forecasts.
Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law

• Progress Is Made Implementing U.S.-Russia Framework for Eliminating Syrian Chemical Weapons• United States Advocates for Syrian Peace Conference• United States Extends Deadline for Signing of Bilateral Security Agreement with Afghanistan• China Announces New Air Defense Identification Zone over East China Sea, PromptingU.S. Response• United States and Six Other States Reach Interim Agreement on Iranian Nuclear Program
Economic and demographic factors in U.S. alcohol demand: A growth-accounting analysis

During the 1980s, per capita consumption of absolute ethanol in the U.S. declined by 14 percent. In 1979, consumption was 2.94 gallons per capita compared to 2.52 gallons in 1989. The objective of this paper is to explain the decline in consumption, both for total ethanol and by beverage. The historical growth of ethanol demand is decomposed into several components, with emphasis on the role of relative prices, real income, and demographic factors. Using the Rotterdam model of a demand system, I first estimate the conditional demand for ethanol for each of the three beverages (beer, wine, distilled spirits). Second, I estimate the composite demand for total ethanol. Both sets of estimates are obtained using quarterly data for the period 1974–90. The estimates are tested for conformity with the theoretical restrictions of homogeneity, symmetry, and negativity. The decomposition analysis indicates a positive net effect for the combined impact of autonomous trend, real income growth, and relative price changes, both for total ethanol and each of the three beverages. The negative growth of per capita ethanol consumption is attributable to an increase in the proportion of the population aged 65 and over and a simultaneous decline in the proportion of the population aged 18–29.
Planning for a Bull Market for Wetlands

Wetlands potentially play an important role in conserving rare species, alleviating water pollution, reducing greenhouse gases, mitigating wetland losses and producing biofuels. This makes wetlands a valuable asset, but few standards exist on evaluating these potential uses. This paper discusses some of the types of wetland-based projects that government agencies may be asked to evaluate and the wide range of issues that may need to be addressed in these evaluations. Government officials should realize that leaving wetlands alone may not be an option since the wetlands themselves are transforming due to climate change. A thorough analysis of the reliability the project's potential impact is essential, preferably financed by the potential developer but conducted by independent experts. Scientists may not be able to predict the final outcome of these projects; therefore, adaptive management with periodic results may be a necessary approach. Scientists, planners and lawyers should focus on ways to ensure that future regulations will encourage projects for wetlands management that meet a variety of important objectives. Public scrutiny of these projects should be timely and comprehensive to ensure that project developers comply with all regulatory guidance.
An Originalism for Foreign Affairs

Originalism and foreign affairs are both popular topics of current scholarly inquiry. Much of the recent work on foreign affairs focuses on history, but it generally does not fully engage debates on originalism as a method of modern constitutional interpretation. Most scholarship that defends originalism as a methodology has said little explicitly about how it relates to foreign affairs: this literature is replete with references to cases such as Roe v. Wade and
Debating the Socialist Calculation Debate: A Classroom Exercise.

Abstract: The author describes a classroom exercise that introduces the Socialist Calculation Debate (SCD) to undergraduate economics students. The SCD concerns an issue that remains one of the most consequential of the 20th century— the belief in the superiority of socialism and central planning over capitalism and the free market. The exercise presents the SCD in an active learning atmosphere by requiring the students to read, interpret, and discuss the writings of three notable participants in the debate—Ludwig von Mises, Oskar Lange, and Friedrich Hayek. He discusses the format and objectives of the exercise, required and optional readings, and current relevance of the SCD.
Time and Entrepreneurship

Temporal dynamics are at the heart of entrepreneurship. This Special Issue of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice presents a collection of papers focused on the intersection of time and entreprene...