cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Growth opportunities, short-term market pressure, and dual-class share structure

Abstract We test the hypothesis that dual-class shares can help managers focus on the implementation of long-term projects while avoiding short-term market pressure. Consistent with this idea, we find that dual-class firms face lower short-term market pressure (fewer transient or short-term institutional holdings, a lower probability of being taken over, and lower analyst coverage) than propensity-matched single-class firms. Dual-class firms also tend to have more growth opportunities (higher sales growth and R&D intensity). The dual-class share structure increases the market valuation of high growth firms, in contrast to the finding in the literature that dual-class firms trade at lower valuations. To address endogeneity concerns, we evaluate a sample of dual-class share unifications and find that growth opportunities decline while short-term market pressure increases after share unifications.
Can We Learn Anything About Pleading Changes from Existing Data

Abstract In light of the gateway role that the pleading standard can play in our civil litigation system, measuring the empirical effects of pleading policy changes embodied in the Supreme Court's controversial Twombly and Iqbal cases is important. In my earlier paper, Locking the Doors to Discovery , I argued that in doing so, special care is required in formulating the object of empirical study. Taking party behavior seriously, as Locking the Doors does, leads to empirical results suggesting that Twombly and Iqbal have had substantial effects among cases that face Rule 12(b)(6) motions post- Iqbal . This paper responds to potentially important critiques of my empirical implementation made by the FJC's Joe Cecil and Professor David Engstrom. An additional contribution of the present paper is to elucidate some important challenges for empirical work in civil procedure. First, researchers should carefully consider which covariates belong in statistical models, while also taking care in assessing the empirical importance of controlling for covariates. Second, data collection protocols should be designed with behavioral assumptions in mind. But third, researchers should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good: even data protocols that are less than perfectly designed may be broadly useful.
Time-consistent protection with learning by doing

Abstract Can a government induce efficiency gains in his domestic industry by protecting it against foreign competition? Would such trade protection be time consistent? The present paper builds a dynamic equilibrium model that accounts for learning-by-doing effects that link firms’ strategies over time. The model shows that the existence of dynamic economies of scale suffices to overcome the traditional government's lack of commitment of its tariff policy. This paper compares the infinite horizon Markov perfect equilibrium of this game with the dynamic equilibrium under commitment as well as the static Nash equilibrium. Equilibrium strategies are derived in closed form by solving a linear-quadratic differential game. Optimal trade policy involves higher tariff levels than in the static setup in order to account for future gains in efficiency. Under reasonable assumptions, the unique stable MPE is characterized by a domestic price and tariff that decrease as experience accumulates, thus supporting the future liberalization of trade as an equilibrium feature of this dynamic game.
Management of the loss reserve accrual and the distribution of earnings in the property-casualty insurance industry ☆

Abstract We document that property-casualty insurers with small positive earnings understate loss reserves relative to insurers with small negative earnings. Furthermore, loss reserves are managed across the entire distribution of earnings, with the most income-increasing reserve accruals reported by small profit firms, and the most income-decreasing reserve accruals reported by firms with the highest earnings. We analyze this pattern separately for public, private, and mutual companies, and find that public companies and mutuals manage loss reserves to avoid losses, but that private companies do not. We also find evidence of reserve management to avoid losses by financially healthy and distressed firms.
Reclaiming the Right to Food as a Normative Response to the Global Food Crisis

The number of hungry in the world has crossed the one billion mark, a dubious milestone that has been attributed in large part to consecutive food and economic crises. Over ninety-eight percent of these individuals live in the developing world. Ironically, a great majority are involved in food production as small-scale independent food producers or agricultural laborers. These facts and figures signal a definitive blow to efforts to reduce global hunger and lift the world’s poorest from abject and dehumanizing poverty. They also bring to light the deep imbalance of power in a fundamentally flawed food system. This Comment explores both the urgency and paucity of the “right to food” as a legal and normative framework for addressing the current food crisis. It begins with an articulation of the contours and limits of the right to food under international human rights law. It then explores how powerful states, international financial institutions, and transnational corporations affect the right to food globally. The Comment concludes by addressing particular doctrinal challenges that are essential to reclaiming the right to food as a relevant normative framework under economic globalization.
Boards: Does one size fit all?

Abstract This paper reexamines the relation between firm value and board structure. We find that complex firms, which have greater advising requirements than simple firms, have larger boards with more outside directors. The relation between Tobin's Q and board size is U-shaped, which, at face value, suggests that either very small or very large boards are optimal. This relation, however, arises from differences between complex and simple firms. Tobin's Q increases (decreases) in board size for complex (simple) firms, and this relation is driven by the number of outside directors. We find some evidence that R&D-intensive firms, for which the firm-specific knowledge of insiders is relatively important, have a higher fraction of insiders on the board and that, for these firms, Q increases with the fraction of insiders on the board. Our findings challenge the notion that restrictions on board size and management representation on the board necessarily enhance firm value.
The Battle of Mars and Venus: Why Do American and European Attitudes toward International Law Differ

“International law is merely a magnifying mirror that reflects faithfully and cruelly the essence and logic of international politics. In a fragmented world, there is no ‘global perspective’ from which anyone can authoritatively assess, endorse, or reject the separate national efforts at making international law serve national interests above all. Like the somber universe of Albert Camus’ Caligula, this is a judgeless world where no one is innocent.” 3
Trade, Monitoring, and the ILO: Working To Improve Conditions in Cambodia's Garment Factories

The U.S.-Cambodia Bilateral Textile Trade Agreement, signed on January 20, 1999, was remarkable for its inclusion of a labor standards provision that created incentives for the Cambodian garment industry to bring itself into substantial compliance with international labor standards and Cambodian labor law. The labor standards provision provided the impetus for the creation of a novel program, to be operated by the International Labor Organization (ILO). This program combined trade-related incentives to enforce workers' rights with an unprecedented plan to have the ILO conduct factory-level monitoring of working conditions. This Article examines how the program was designed and implemented and evaluates the proposals and conceptions that preceded the final project document. This analysis provides a case study on how to construct and implement future programs that combine trade and factory monitoring to improve working conditions and enforce core labor rights along the global supply chain.
Empiricism and the Rising Incidence of Coauthorship in Law

The recent growth of empirical scholarship in law, which some have termed “empirical legal studies,” has received much attention. A less noticed implication of this trend is its potential impact on the manner of scholarly production in legal academia. A common prediction is that academic collaboration rises with scholarly specialization. As the complexity of a field grows, more and more diverse types of human capital are needed to make a contribution. This paper presents two tests of whether empiricism has spurred more co-authorship in law. First, the paper shows that the fraction of articles in the top fifteen law reviews that were empirical or co-authored (or both) trended upwards between 2000 and 2010. The increase in empirical articles accounted for a substantial share of the growth in co-authored articles, and the correlation between co-authorship and empiricism persisted after controlling for numerous other influences. Second, the paper examines the articles published since 1989 in two prominent, faculty-edited journals specializing in law & economics: the Journal of Legal Studies and the Journal of Law, Economics & Organization. Co-authored articles were far more common in these journals than in the general-interest, student-edited law reviews – a pattern which itself is consistent with the specialization hypothesis. The share of articles without empirical analysis or formal models in these journals plummeted over this period, while co-authorship rose sharply. These results support the view that specialization, and specifically the growth of empirical scholarship, has contributed to the trend of co-authorship in legal academia.
Sympathetic arousal moderates self-reported physiological arousal symptoms at baseline and physiological flexibility in response to a stressor in generalized anxiety disorder

Compared to controls, individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) often fail to exhibit expected changes in physiological arousal in response to laboratory stressors. Nevertheless, individuals with GAD often report significant subjective arousal. We sought to assess the degree of sympathetic arousal in individuals with GAD and controls and the impact such arousal had on self-reported physiological arousal and response to an emotional challenge. Degree of baseline sympathetic arousal moderated the self-report of physiological arousal in non-comorbid GAD at baseline such that within this group, higher levels of sympathetic arousal predicted reports of heightened physiological arousal compared to controls. Overall, individuals with GAD exhibited no significant changes in arousal in response to the emotional challenge. However, basal sympathetic arousal moderated degree of change such that non-comorbid GAD participants low in baseline sympathetic arousal exhibited changes in arousal similar to controls in response to the stressor. That basal sympathetic arousal moderated both self-reported arousal at baseline and sympathetic response to a stressor suggests important physiological heterogeneity in GAD, wherein only those individuals with heightened tonic sympathetic arousal report accompanying symptoms and display diminished sympathetic reactivity.
Cy Pres: A Promise Unfulfilled

The author argues for expanded use of the cy pres power to reform failing charitable organizations. The basic thesis is that once a gift has been put into the charitable realm, every effort should be made to keep it there by use of this power. Thus, the settlor of a charitable trust would keep strict "dead hand control" over the gift only until it fails and modification must be sought. While modification via cy pres should seek to stay close to settlor's initial intent, it is still society's need for the funds that ultimately guides what modification is made within that intent. Furthermore, no expression in the trust of the settlor's intent via a gift over or reverter, should block by pres application to the original charitable gift. Cy pres should "trump" these alternative intents.
Rent stabilization and the long-run supply of housing

Abstract This paper examines the impact of moderate rent controls on the construction and replacement of urban housing. It studies a common form of rent regulation that limits rent growth to below-market increases but permits landlords to set the base rent at free market levels and allows them to re-set rents when the incumbent tenant vacates, after which rents are re-controlled (‘vacancy decontrol–recontrol’). One of the primary insights is that neither the timing nor the density of construction is affected by rent stabilization when base rents are perfectly flexible. Allowing landlords to set the initial contract rent lets them capture the benefits to the renter of rent stabilization. Perfect capitalization of rent stabilization into a higher base rent provides the landlord with a free market rate of return and thus does not distort development activity. However, redevelopment of land will be hastened because rent stabilization complemented by vacancy decontrol–recontrol increases the difference between rents before and after redevelopment, increasing the opportunity costs of postponing redevelopment. Extensions include an analysis of other common rent regulations and the impact of rent stabilization on the urban rent gradient.
TRADE REMEDIES AND WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION DISPUTE SETTLEMENT: WHY ARE SO FEW CHALLENGED?

Antidumping and related trade remedies are the most popular policy instruments that many of the largest importing countries in the World Trade Organization system use to restrict international trade. While such trade remedies are also frequent targets of dispute settlement activity under the WTO, given that Panel and Appellate Body rulings have almost invariably found that some aspect of each reviewed remedy was inconsistent with WTO obligations, an open research question is why aren’t more remedies targeted by dispute settlement? This paper provides a first empirical investigation of the trade remedy and WTO dispute settlement interaction by focusing on determinants of WTO members’ decisions of whether to formally challenge U.S. trade remedies imposed between 1992 and 2003. We provide evidence that it is not only the size of the economic market at stake and the capacity to retaliate under potential Dispute Settlement Understanding-authorized sanctions that influence the litigation decision of whether to formally challenge a measure at the WTO. We also find that if the negatively affected foreign industry has the capacity to directly retaliate through a reciprocal antidumping investigation and measure of its own, its government is less likely to pursue the case on its behalf at the WTO. This is consistent with the theory that potential complainants may be avoiding WTO litigation in favor of pursuing reciprocal antidumping and hence “vigilante justice.”
Health and development.

Good health enables individuals to be active agents of change in the development process both within and outside the health sector. Increased investment in health requires public action and mobilisation of resources but it also brings individuals opportunities for social and political participation in health-system reform and implementation. Agency is critical for development overall and for the development and sustainability of effective health systems and individuals should have the opportunity to participate in political and social choice about public policies that affect them. These key elements are part of an alternative way of thinking about health and development and several points are relevant to this view. (excerpt)
Changing the Modal Law School: Rethinking U.S. Legal Education in (Most) Schools

This essay argues that discussions of educational reform in U.S. law schools have suffered from a fundamental misconception: that the education provided in all of the American Bar Association-accredited schools is roughly the same. A better description of the educational opportunities provided by ABA-accredited law schools would group the schools into three rough clusters: the “elite” law schools, the modal (most frequently occurring) law schools, and the precarious law schools. Because the elite law schools do not need much “reforming,” 2 the better focus of reform would concentrate on the modal and precarious schools; however, both elite and modal law schools could benefit from some changes to help law students move from understanding the theoretical underpinnings of law to understanding how to translate those underpinnings into practice. “Practice” itself is a complex concept, requiring both an understanding of the law and an understanding of how to relate well to others. Because law students may not understand how to relate well to those with different backgrounds from their own, law schools should do more to explain how one’s perspective is both limiting and mutable. Too many law schools suggest that students can “see” different perspectives by, essentially, merely thinking harder. The essay 1. Gordon Silver Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Many thanks to the University of Edinburgh and its conference, Beyond Text in Legal Education (June 20-21, 2009), at which I first presented an earlier version of this paper, and to Rachel Anderson, Jack Ayer, Zenon Bankowski, Peter Bayer, Bernie Burk, Maks Del Mar, Randy Gordon, Jennifer Gross, Jeff Lipshaw, Paul Maharg, Nettie Mann, Morris Rapoport, and Jeff Van Niel. 2. My allegation that elite law schools don’t need much reforming stems from my experience that students at the elite schools matriculate at law school having received a good education already. They probably could be left alone with some law books and some law review articles and do a decent job of teaching themselves. The faculty members at elite schools, of course, can—and do—add to their students’ education, but there’s a lot less remedial work that they must do first. 1120 PENN STATE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 116:4 concludes with some suggestions regarding possible reforms of U.S. legal education, focusing primarily on the modal law schools.
Smart Agents: When Lower Search Costs for Quality Information Increase Price Sensitivity

Recent consumer research suggests that lowering search costs for quality information reduces consumer price sensitivity by creating greater perceived differentiation among brands (e.g., Kaul and Wittink 1995; Lynch and Ariely 2000). We argue that lowering quality search costs by smart agents can have the opposite effect on differentiation and price sensitivity. Smart agents screen through a universe of alternatives, recommending only a handful well‐matched to the customer’s quality preferences. In this research, we ask and answer the following questions: In markets in which price and quality are uncorrelated, will the use of screening agents increase or decrease prices paid compared to searching from an unordered list of options? Will increasing the size of the store’s underlying assortment increase or decrease prices paid when options have been screened on quality? In markets where higher priced goods have higher quality, will the use of screening agents increase or decrease prices paid and quality selec...
Corruption, social judgment and culture: An experiment

Abstract Modern societies rely on both formal and social mechanisms to enforce social norms of behavior. Formal enforcement mechanisms rely on monetary or other tangible incentives while social enforcement mechanisms rely on some form of social judgment involving informal sanctions. We experimentally investigate the extent to which social observability and the possibility of social judgment affect individuals’ decisions to engage in corruption at the expense of others. We are also interested in the degree to which culture matters. We use a laboratory experiment with a sample of individuals who live in the U.S. but are also characterized by cultural heterogeneity due to the immigration of their ancestors to the U.S. We find that the possibility of social judgment reduces corruption only among individuals who identify culturally with countries characterized by low levels of corruption. Our findings suggest that the effectiveness of social enforcement mechanisms is at least partly dependent on the sociocultural norms prevailing in the target population.
Distribution and Market Share

Abstract This paper presents findings from a census of more than 79,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) in 37 consumer packaged goods categories totaling $55 billion in annual revenue. It shows that, in 86 percent of product categories, the relationship between market share and retail distribution is increasing and convex at the SKU level. The degree of convexity is greater in categories with higher revenues and more concentration in market shares. The relationship is also typically convex within leading brands’ SKU portfolios, showing that the “double jeopardy” phenomenon of low share and distribution not only affects small brands competing against market leaders, it also affects low-share SKUs within a category leader's product line. Holdout evidence shows that the distribution/share relationship within a brand's portfolio of existing SKUs usually holds for new SKUs as well. We explain how knowledge of the distribution/share relationship can help to improve a brand's go-to-market decisions for new SKUs.
Cosmopolitan Democracy and the Rule of Law

The ongoing process of globalization calls out for novel forms of transnational liberal–democratic decision–making. In this spirit, David Held and a group of interlocutors (especially Daniele Archibugi) propose an ambitious model of “cosmopolitan democracy.” Although the proponents of cosmopolitan democracy are right to insist that transnational liberal democracy must avoid the dangers of an excessively centralized world–state, their own efforts to do so ultimately fail. The weaknesses of their ideas about the notion of the “rule of law“ generate unforeseen theoretical difficulties for their account. Any transnational network of liberal–democratic governance worth defending will need to do a better job preserving a substantial quotient of traditional rule of law virtues.
Common and Sidorenko Linear Equations

A linear equation with coefficients in $\mathbb{F}_q$ is common if the number of monochromatic solutions in any two-coloring of $\mathbb{F}_q^n$ is asymptotically (as $n \to \infty$) at least the number expected in a random two-coloring. The linear equation is Sidorenko if the number of solutions in any dense subset of $\mathbb{F}_q^n$ is asymptotically at least the number expected in a random set of the same density. In this paper, we characterize those linear equations which are common, and those which are Sidorenko. The main novelty is a construction based on choosing random Fourier coefficients that shows that certain linear equations do not have these properties. This solves problems posed in a paper of Saad and Wolf.
Crossing Eight Mile: Juries of the Vicinage and County-Line Criminal Buffer Statutes

Several state statutes allow the state to choose the county in which to prosecute a person who allegedly committed a crime near a county line. Because these buffer statutes apply even in cases where the location of the crime is not in doubt, they are inappropriate on two levels. First, they are needless as a matter of policy; other statutes solve all of the problems that buffers purport to address, but without the detrimental effects. Second, they conflict with the principle-traditional in some states but constitutionally required in others-of trial by a jury of the vicinage, i.e., from the neighborhood in which the crime was committed. While theorists have recently argued that local juries are important because they allow communities to govern themselves, courts' treatment of buffer statutes makes it clear that, in practice, vicinage is not considered from this community-centered perspective. INTRODUCTION 272 I. PREVALENT AND POINTLESS: THE HISTORY AND PRACTICE OF CRIMINAL COUNTY-LINE BUFFER STATUTES 275 A. Defmition of Tenns: Vicinage, Venue, and Jurisdiction ..... 276 B. Current Laws and Their Use 276 Map A 280 C. A Brief History of Buffer Statutes 282 D. Other Jurisdiction and Venue Statutes "At the Margins" .... 287 E. Justifications for, and Problems with, Buffer Statutes ......... 291 II. CRIMES OF THE PERIPHERY, WRIES OF THE VICINAGE 296 A. Juries of the Vicinage 296 1. English Experience 296 2. Colonial Underpinnings 298 3. American Experience 301 Map B 309 B. Evaluating the Vicinage Right 311 C. Buffer Statutes and Vicinage 316 1. Working Around Vicinage Provisions 317 • Associate Professor of Law, Michigan State University College of Law. A.B., University of Michigan, 1994; J.D., Yale University, 1997. Thanks to Adam Candeub, Julian Cook, Jonathan Kay, Gerard Magliocca, and Jorge Souss for their helpful comments and suggestions, to Sara Kalt and Benjamin Kalt for their patience, and to Dmitri Bartenev, Jane Edwards, Lance Werner, and the research staff at the MSUCL library for their outstanding research assistance.
Declining Industries and Persistent Tariff Protection

The paper uses a political economy framework to explain the empirical observation that trade protection is persistent. The assumptions that are shown to generate endogenous tariff persistence in the model are quite plausible: agents are uncertain about future prices, tariffs are affected by political pressure, and producers of the import–competing good own sector–specific human capital that may be lost if they exit the industry. The model also reveals that, under the conditions listed above, industries decline gradually in response to a price shock even when producers do not face increasing costs of adjustment.
Disability Law and the Disability Rights Movement for Transpeople

Existing disability law is fairly successful at protecting transsexual people from legal discrimination, but the stigma and medicalization of disability prevent further efforts that could make disability a more useful frame for transgender activism. Furthermore, disability law is underinclusive in that genderqueers and others for whom a diagnosis of gender identity disorder (GID) is impractical cannot access current disability law protections. Still, the disability rights movement can offer possible legal change and can provide important narratives for reimagining differences and rethinking accommodations that will create less restrictive disability and other civil rights law to protect transgender and transsexual people in the long term. This Note imagines a new disability law, which defines disability socially, centers on self-identification, and changes the legal landscape of antidiscrimination protections for trans and gender-variant communities.
THE LABOR SUPPLY RESPONSE TO (MISMEASURED BUT) PREDICTABLE WAGE CHANGES

Most panel data studies of intertemporal labor supply assume classical measurement error. Recent validation studies refute this assumption. In this study I address nonclassical measurement error explicitly. I use data on males from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Validation Study to purge measurement error from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. I find a large amount of predictable wage variation in the data, even after allowing for measurement error. However, there is almost no labor supply response to these predictable wage changes. Therefore, failure to control for nonclassical measurement error cannot explain the low estimated labor supply elasticities in other papers.
"Thank God for the lawyers": some thoughts on the (mis)regulation of scientific misconduct.

This essay, adapted from Peter W. Morgan & Glenn H. Reynolds, "The Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business and Society," looks at some celebrated scientific misconduct cases from the 1990s, and discusses how legal norms, scientific norms, and bureaucratic norms often clash, and sometimes produce significant injustice.
Constituency Size and Support for Trade Liberalization: An Analysis of Foreign Economic Policy Preferences in Congress

Studies of the political economy of trade frequently rely on the assumption that the larger a policy maker’s constituency, the more supportive of free-trade that policy maker will be. Large constituencies are supposed to yield concern for the national interest and provide insulation from particularistic, protectionist interests. This assumption, though, has rarely been directly tested. This article does so by leveraging the variation in district size within the U.S. Congress. This article statistically examines a dataset of roll-call votes on trade legislation from 1994 to 2004 to determine the effect of constituency size and alternative explanations for legislative preferences on foreign economic policy and finds no evidence of the effect of constituency size.
Decision usefulness of whole-asset operating lease capitalizations

Abstract Monson (2001) and Hepp and Scoles (2012) argue that some leased assets should be capitalized at the assets' purchase price (whole-asset value) rather than at the present value of future minimum lease payments (right-of-use asset value). The argument is based in part on the notion that the assets under lease generate future income not the obligation related to future lease payments. To test the notion we compare associations between capitalizations representing whole asset values and current and future return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) with capitalizations representing right-of-use asset values and current and future ROA and ROE. Our results indicate that the whole-asset annuity values are incrementally associated with future ROA and ROE over right-of-use asset values. We interpret our results to suggest that the current practice of capitalizing future lease payments does not fully reflect the income generation provided by leased assets.
Mass political interest (or apathy) in urban China

Abstract Based on our reassessment of existing studies on political interest and apathy in various societies, we argue the urgent need for a more systematic and focused examination of mass political interest—as psychological involvement in politics—in China. Utilizing data collected from a public opinion survey conducted in Beijing, China in late 1995, we intend to shed some light on the level and sources of political interest in contemporary China. Contrary to the prevalent argument that most Chinese are politically apathetic, we have found that there was a rather high level of political interest within our sample. We have also found that both conventional variables (i.e. age, gender, education, income, political efficacy, and dissatisfaction with government performance) and variables unique to the Chinese setting (i.e. being a farmer, becoming a private entrepreneur, joining the Chinese Communist Party and holding leading position in the party/government) have significant effects on the levels of political interest.
Quasi-oracle estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects

Flexible estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects lies at the heart of many statistical challenges, such as personalized medicine and optimal resource allocation. In this paper, we develop a general class of two-step algorithms for heterogeneous treatment effect estimation in observational studies. We first estimate marginal effects and treatment propensities in order to form an objective function that isolates the causal component of the signal. Then, we optimize this data-adaptive objective function. Our approach has several advantages over existing methods. From a practical perspective, our method is flexible and easy to use: In both steps, we can use any loss-minimization method, e.g., penalized regression, deep neural networks, or boosting; moreover, these methods can be fine-tuned by cross validation. Meanwhile, in the case of penalized kernel regression, we show that our method has a quasi-oracle property: Even if the pilot estimates for marginal effects and treatment propensities are not particularly accurate, we achieve the same error bounds as an oracle who has a priori knowledge of these two nuisance components. We implement variants of our approach based on penalized regression, kernel ridge regression, and boosting in a variety of simulation setups, and find promising performance relative to existing baselines.
The empirical status of the subculture of violence thesis.

This article reviews some of the existing literature bearing on the subculture of violence thesis (Wolfgang, 1958), reports the results of a re-analysis of survey data collected for the President's Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, and presents new data on peer esteem and social psychological correlates of fighting among males in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is concluded that although the subculture of violence thesis has not been definitively tested, the weight of the evidence is against it.
Gender Matters: Making the Case for Trans Inclusion

The transgender communities are producing an important and nuanced critique of our gender system. For community members, the project is self-constitutive and, therefore, has an immediacy that also marks the efforts of other marginalized groups who have attempted to make sense of the world through description, interrogation, and ultimately a program for transformation. The transgender project also has universalizing elements because, existing within the gender system, each one of us embodies a particular gender articulation. It is through this articulation that we define ourselves in relation to the gender we were assigned at birth, the gender we choose, the gender we create, the gender we reject, the gender we are, and the gender we are assumed to be. Lesbian and gay advocacy organizations officially began to incorporate transgender issues in the late 1990s, as signaled by the now ubiquitous “T” that appears at the end of the popular acronym “LGBT.” However, the resulting alliance has been an uneasy one and the incorporation has been partial. The feminist reception to transgender issues has been arguably
Social Security Reform: Sovereign Wealth Funds as a Model for Increasing Trust Fund Returns

INTRODUCTION 99 I. POLITICAL OPPOSITION TO GOVERNMENT INVESTMENT 102 II. POLITICAL ECONOMY AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE 104 III. FUNDING CRISIS AS A CATALYST FOR CHANGE 108 A. Social Security Funding Crisis 108 B. Trust Fund Diversified Portfolio Returns 110 IV. GRADUAL ADOPTION OF GOVERNMENT INVESTMENT AS A POLICY INITIATIVE 113 V. SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS: PRE– AND POST– FINANCIAL CRISIS 117 A. New Class of Financial Intermediary 118 B. Global Macroeconomic Stability and Sustainability .... 121 C. Regulation, Voluntary Standards, and the Dangers of Protectionism 123 1. Existing US Regulations 123 2. Proposals–Decoupling Voting Rights 125 3. Codes of Conduct 126 4. Increased Regulation and Protectionism 128 D. Post–Financial Crisis Shifts in Attitude 129
E-book pricing and vertical restraints

This paper empirically analyzes how the use of vertical price restraints has impacted retail prices in the market for e-books. In 2010, five of the six largest publishers simultaneously adopted the agency model of book sales, allowing them to directly set retail prices. This led the Department of Justice to file suit against the publishers in 2012, the settlement of which prevents the publishers from interfering with retailers’ ability to set e-book prices. Using a unique dataset of daily e-book prices for a large sample of books across major online retailers, we exploit cross-publisher variation in the timing of the return to the wholesale model to estimate its effect on retail prices. We find that e-book prices for titles that were previously sold using the agency model decreased by 18 percent at Amazon and 8 percent at Barnes & Noble. Our results are robust to different specifications, placebo tests, and synthetic control groups. Our findings illustrate a case where upstream firms prefer to set higher retail prices than retailers and help to clarify conflicting theoretical predictions on agency versus wholesale models.
Between Law and Culture: Rwanda's Gacaca and Postcolonial Legality

This article recounts a clash between an establishment international nongovernmental organization (NGO), Amnesty International, and the government of Rwanda over the meaning of international human rights norms in a postconflict society. It offers a critical perspective on the mainstream human rights community's due process critique of Rwanda's gacaca—a system of over ten thousand local judicial bodies modeled on a precolonial communal dispute resolution the Rwandan government introduced to process the over one hundred twenty thousand suspects crowding its prisons following the 1994 genocide. This moment of norm contestation offers a lens to broader problems facing the human rights regime. It argues that Amnesty International's legalistic approach to the gacaca prevents it from appreciating its unique postcolonial hybrid form, and that other approaches, such as the one adopted by Penal Reform International, are perhaps better models for human rights praxis in the developing world.
Cartel pricing dynamics in the presence of an antitrust authority

Cartel pricing is characterized when firms are concerned about creating suspicions that a cartel has formed. Balancing concerns about maintaining the stability of the cartel with those of avoiding detection, the cartel may either (i) gradually raise price to its steady-state level or (ii) gradually raise price and then have it decline to its steady-state level. Antitrust laws may have a perverse effect as they make cartel stability easier and thus allow for higher cartel prices.
Earnings Conference Call Content and Stock Price: The Case of REITs

Using computer based content analysis, we quantify the linguistic tone of quarterly earnings conference calls for publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). After controlling for the earnings announcement, we examine the relation between conference call tone and the contemporaneous stock price reaction. We find that the tone of the conference call dialogue has significant explanatory power for the abnormal returns at and immediately following quarterly earnings announcements. The question and answer portion of the conference calls dominates prepared managerial introductory remarks in explanatory significance. Furthermore, an overall positive tone in the conference call discussion between management and analysts is found to nearly offset the damaging effects of a negative earnings surprise.
Institutional stock trading on loan market information

Abstract One of the most important developments in the corporate loan market over the past decade has been the growing participation of institutional investors. As lenders, institutional investors routinely receive private information about borrowers. However, most of these investors also trade in public securities. This leads to a controversial question: Do institutional investors use private information acquired in the loan market to trade in public securities? This paper examines the stock trading of institutional investors whose portfolios also hold loans. Using the Securities and Exchange Commission filings of loan amendments, we identify institutional investors with access to private information disclosed during loan amendments. We then look at abnormal returns on subsequent stock trades. We find that institutional participants in loan renegotiations subsequently trade in the stock of the same company and outperform trades by other managers and trades in other stocks by approximately 5.4% in annualized terms.
Approximations to Optimal k‐Unit Cycles for Single‐Gripper and Dual‐Gripper Robotic Cells

We consider the problem of scheduling operations in bufferless robotic cells that produce identical parts using either single-gripper or dual-gripper robots. The objective is to find a cyclic sequence of robot moves that minimizes the long-run average time to produce a part or, equivalently, maximizes the throughput. Obtaining an efficient algorithm for an optimum k-unit cyclic solution (k ≥ 1) has been a longstanding open problem. For both single-gripper and dual-gripper cells, the approximation algorithms in this paper provide the best-known performance guarantees (obtainable in polynomial time) for an optimal cyclic solution. We provide two algorithms that have a running time linear in the number of machines: for single-gripper cells (respectively, dual-gripper cells), the performance guarantee is 9/7 (respectively, 3/2). The domain considered is free-pickup cells with constant intermachine travel time. Our structural analysis is an important step toward resolving the complexity status of finding an optimal cyclic solution in either a single-gripper or a dual-gripper cell. We also identify optimal cyclic solutions for a variety of special cases. Our analysis provides production managers valuable insights into the schedules that maximize productivity for both single-gripper and dual-gripper cells for any combination of processing requirements and physical parameters.
Tracing Value-Added and Double Counting in Gross Exports†

This paper proposes an accounting framework that breaks up a country’s gross exports into various value-added components by source and additional double-counted terms. Our parsimonious framework bridges a gap between official trade statistics ( in gross value terms) and national accounts (in value-added terms), and integrates all previous measures of vertical specialization and value-added trade in the literature into a unified framework. To illustrate the potential of such a method, we present a number of applications including re-computing revealed comparative advantages and the magnifying impact of multi-stage production on trade costs. (JEL E01, E16, F14, F23, L14) As different stages of production are now regularly performed in different countries, intermediate inputs cross borders multiple times. As a result, traditional trade statistics become increasingly less reliable as a gauge of the value contributed by any particular country. This paper integrates and generalizes the many attempts in the literature at tracing value added by country and measuring vertical specialization in international trade. We provide a unified conceptual framework that is more comprehensive than the current literature. By design, this is an accounting exercise, and does not directly examine the causes and the consequences of global production chains. However, an accurate and well-defined conceptual framework to account for value added by sources is a necessary step toward a better under standing of all these issues. Supply chains can be described as a system of value-added sources and destinations. Within a supply chain, each producer purchases inputs and then adds value, which is included in the cost of the next stage of production. At each stage, the value added equals the value paid to the factors of production in the exporting country. However, as all official trade statistics are measured in gross terms, which
China's National Innovation System in Transition

Through a brief examination of China's science and technology history since the 1950s, this study suggests that the role of state is crucial for understanding the development, restructuring, and performance of China's innovation system. It traces the evolution of that system from a centrally controlled, segregated system geared toward weapons development during China's pre-reform period into one (since the early 1980s) oriented increasingly toward production of civilian goods, and seeking heightened enterprise participation and greater cooperation among industries, universities, and the government. Despite the reorientation of the system, the paper demonstrates the Chinese government's persistent role in guiding the changes. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers, H50, O31, O32. 1 figure, 72 references.
Experimental Evidence of Pooling Outcomes Under Information Asymmetry

Operational decisions under information asymmetry can signal a firm’s prospects to less informed parties, such as investors, customers, competitors, and regulators. Consequently, managers in these settings often face a trade-off between making an optimal decision and sending a favorable signal. We provide experimental evidence on the choices made by decision makers in such settings. Equilibrium assumptions that are commonly applied to analyze these situations yield the least cost separating outcome as the unique equilibrium. In this equilibrium, the more informed party undertakes a costly signal to resolve the information asymmetry that exists. We provide evidence, however, that participants are much more likely to pursue a pooling outcome when such an outcome is available. This result is important for research and practice because pooling and separating outcomes can yield dramatically different results and have divergent implications. We find evidence that the choice to pool is influenced by changes in t...
Audit Firm Industry Specialization as a Differentiation Strategy: Evidence from Fees Charged to Firms Going Public

This paper examines IPO audit fees to assess the use of industry specialization as a differentiation strategy by audit firms. We extend existing theory on the impact of industry specialization on audit fees by incorporating Porter's (1985) theory of competition and differentiation. We suggest that market share enables audit firms to gain competitive advantages in terms of cost and service. However, the impact of such advantages on fees depends on whether the audit firm has successfully differentiated itself from competitors within client industries. Our results indicate that as audit firm industry market share increases without a differentiation in market share, the audit fee charged for a given IPO decreases. In the context of Porter (1985), this result suggests that the client is able to bargain for a portion of the auditor's cost savings because the audit firm has not successfully differentiated itself from competitors. In contrast, we show that audit firms that possess significantly higher market shar...
Where Has the Trend Gone? An Update on Momentum Returns in the U.S. Stock Market

Prior studies have found broad-based support for the efficacy of trading strategies based on momentum in stock returns. More recent studies, however, have noted a declining benefit relative to that identified in seminal studies on momentum. These recent studies, however, primarily examined time periods ending prior to or immediately following the 2008 financial crisis. Thus, we extend this line of research by exploring the profitability of momentum trading in the U.S. equity markets over the broader 1986 to 2015 time period. Our results for the earlier part of our sample period (i.e., 1986–2006) fall in line with previous studies, as we find a monotonic relationship between decile portfolios formed based on their prior six-month performance and subsequent twelve-month holding period excess returns. In contrast, when we evaluate more recent periods (i.e., 2007–2015 and 2010–2015), we find dramatically different results. In particular, alphas for the winner portfolio, which have historically been the highest, are actually negative during both subperiods. Furthermore, the curvature of the recent portfolio return distribution is clearly no longer monotonic. Rather, it follows a more inverted U-shaped curve from the winner portfolio (P1) to the loser (P10) portfolio, with excess returns cresting around the fifth decile portfolio (P5). In fact, we find that the risk-adjusted returns of the winner portfolio (P1) are significantly less than those of the middle portfolio (P5) for both recent subperiods. These results suggest that individual and institutional investors seeking to profit from traditionally based momentum trading strategies may need to rethink their approaches.
Supply Chain Contracts That Prevent Information Leakage

This paper determines categories of contracts that facilitate vertical information sharing in a supply chain while precluding horizontal information leakage among competing newsvendors. We consider...