cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
DEMUTUALIZATION AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE OF STOCK EXCHANGES

Securities exchanges all over the world are demutualizing and converting from non-profit mutual organizations to for-profit, investor owned corporations. Several exchanges have become publicly traded companies and are listed on the exchange itself. The dramatic changes in the organizational form of the exchanges reflect major changes in their business environment caused by intense global competition and advances in technology. Some of the traditional sources of revenue, such as listing fees, membership fees, and sale of information services and market data are becoming less important. Transactions fee will continue to be one of the most important sources of revenue and exchanges that can attract liquidity will succeed. Exchanges are adding new products and services to expand their revenue base. Typically, exchanges have operated as self-regulatory organizations and the new organizational structure has raised a number of regulatory issues. There are concerns about the inherent conflict of interest between the business operations and the regulatory obligations. However, demutualized exchanges argue that enforcing a good regulatory framework is critical to an exchange's commercial success.
Law on the Front Lines: Pushing the Boundaries of "Marriage"

This article (written in 2010) is a scholarly narrative exploring the consequences of same-sex marriage for a couple that moved to a non-recognition state (prior to 2015's Supreme Court Decision in Obergefell). Based on a presentation made November 12, 2010, at the St. John's University School of Law Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development 18th Symposium, "Legal, Secular, and Religious Perspectives on Marriage Equality/Marriage Protection/Same-Sex Marriage."
Resolving the Intrinsic C IV Absorption in the Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 3516

We observed the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 3516 with the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope, and obtained UV spectra at a resolution of λ/Δλ ≈ 20,000 in the redshifted C IV λ1549 region. The intrinsic C IV absorption in the core of the broad emission line is resolved for the first time into four distinct kinematic components, which are all blueshifted, relative to the systemic radial velocity of the host galaxy. Two components are narrow (~20 and ~30 km s-1 FWHM) and at small radial velocities (-90 and -30 km s-1, respectively), and could arise from the interstellar medium or halo of the host galaxy. The two broad components are centered at radial velocities of -380 and -150 km s-1, have widths of 130 and 210 km s-1 FWHM, respectively, and most likely arise in outflowing gas near the active nucleus. At the times of observation, 1995 April 24 and 1995 October 22, there was no evidence for the variable absorption component at a higher outflow velocity that disappeared some time after 1989 October. The cores of the broad C IV absorption components are very close to zero intensity, indicating that the absorption regions are extended enough to occult completely the broad C IV emitting region (which is ~9 light-days in extent). The total column density of the C IV absorption is substantially larger than that measured by Kriss et al. from contemporaneous Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT) spectra, but we agree with their conclusion that the UV absorption is too strong to arise primarily from the X-ray warm absorber region. The GHRS observations, separated by six months, reveal no appreciable changes in the equivalent widths or radial velocities of any of the absorption components, although a change in the column density of either broad component at a level ≤25% cannot be ruled out, because the lines are highly saturated. At present, we know of two Seyfert galaxies, NGC 3516 and NGC 4151, with complex multiple absorption zones, which can remain stable in column density and velocity field over timescales of months to years.
When Does Regulation Distort Costs? Lessons from Fuel Procurement in U.S. Electricity Generation

This paper evaluates changes in fuel procurement practices by coal- and gas-red power plants in the United States following state-level legislation that ended cost-of-service regulation of electricity generation. I nd that deregulated plants substantially reduce the price paid for coal (but not gas), and tend to employ less capital-intensive sulfur abatement techniques relative to matched plants that were not subject to any regulatory change. Deregulation also led to a shift toward more productive coal mines. I show how these results lend support to theories of asymmetric information, capital bias, and regulatory capture as important sources of regulatory distortion.
Climate Change and Discounting the Future: A Guide for the Perplexed

The Reg-Markets Center focuses on understanding and improving regulation,market performance, and government policy. The Center provides analyses of keyissues aimed at improving decisions in the public, private and not-for-profitsectors. It builds on the success of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center. The viewsexpressed in this publication are those of the authors.ROBERT HAHN
Climate Change, Forests and Federalism: Seeing the Treaty for the Trees

Despite numerous attempts over the past two decades—including, most recently, the Copenhagen climate discussions in late 2009—international forest and climate negotiations have failed to produce a legally binding treaty addressing global forest management activities. This failure is due in large part to a lack of U.S. leadership. Though U.S. participation in ongoing forest and climate negotiations is essential, scholars have not fully explored the potential limiting effects of federalism on the United States’ treaty power in the area of forest management. Such an exploration is necessary given the debate among constitutional law scholars regarding the scope of the treaty power, the United States’ history of invoking federalism to inhibit treaty formation and participation, and the constitutional reservation of primary land use regulatory authority for state and local governments. This Article argues that due to great uncertainty surrounding the question of whether federalism limits the federal government’s ability to enter into and implement a legally binding treaty directly regulating forest management activities via prescriptive mechanisms, any binding treaty aimed at forests should include voluntary, market-based mechanisms—like REDD, forest certification, and ecosystem service transaction programs—to facilitate U.S. participation and avoid challenges to treaty implementation in the United States.
Felonia Felonice Facta : Felony and Intentionality in Medieval England

This paper explores the meaning of the word “felony” in thirteenth and fourteenth century England, i.e., during the first two centuries of the English criminal trial jury. To compile a working definition of felony, the paper presents examples of the language of felony drawn from literary and religious sources, in addition to considering the word’s more formulaic appearance in legal records. The paper then analyzes cases ending in acquittal or pardon, highlighting the factors that might take a criminal case out of the realm of felony. It suggests that the very definition of felony and felonious behavior—and thus the essence of criminal responsibility—may be bound up with the idea of mens rea during this period. The paper aims to uncover broader societal understandings of the nature of guilt and innocence, and to highlight connections and disconnections between the formal criminal law of felony, with its heavy emphasis on capital punishment, and popular and ecclesiastical understandings of culpability.
The Brain of the College Athlete

These remarks, presented at a 2012 DePaul symposium on college athletes, explore the link between rule infractions and the continuing development of students' brains. As the higher order mental functions -- including the ability to regulate emotions and respond to "hot" stimuli -- may not develop fully until the mid-20's, one explanation for why athletes violate NCAA rules for seemingly irrational reasons may have to with brain science. This could have implications for how universities counsel and communicate with student-athletes about compliance issues.
The Impact of CFOs’ Incentives and Earnings Management Ethics on their Financial Reporting Decisions: The Mediating Role of Moral Disengagement

Despite regulatory reforms aimed at inhibiting aggressive financial reporting, earnings management persists and continues to concern practitioners, regulators, and standard setters. To provide insight into this practice and how to mitigate it, we conduct an experiment to examine the impact of two independent variables on CFOs’ discretionary expense accruals. One independent variable, incentive conflict, is manipulated at two levels (present and absent)—i.e., the presence or absence of a personal financial incentive that conflicts with a corporate financial incentive. The other independent variable is CFOs’ earnings management ethics (“EM-Ethics,” high vs. low), measured as their assessment of the ethicalness of key earnings management motivations. We find that incentive conflict and EM-Ethics interact to determine CFOs’ discretionary accruals such that (a) in the presence of incentive conflict, CFOs with low (high) EM-Ethics tend to give into (resist) the personal incentive by booking higher (lower) expense accruals; and (b) in the absence of an incentive conflict, CFOs with low (high) EM-Ethics tend to give into (resist) the corporate incentive by booking lower (higher) expense accruals. We also find support for a mediated-moderation model in which CFOs’ level of EM-Ethics influences their moral disengagement tendencies which, in turn, differentially affect their discretionary accruals, depending on the presence or absence of incentive conflict. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
Those dishonest goldsmiths

London's seventeenth-century goldsmiths are routinely said to have pioneered fractional-reserve banking in England by clandestinely lending coin they were supposed to store – that is, by embezzling their clients. I draw upon both contemporary testimony and contemporary English law to show that the goldsmiths were almost certainly innocent of the crime for which they are so often accused. I then go on to speculate that the myth of the embezzling goldsmith may have its roots in confusion of that crime with (1) crimes other than embezzlement of which goldsmiths were accused by their contemporaries and (2) embezzlement of stored coin not by goldsmiths but by the British crown and by some merchants' servants.
Design and Implementation of Pay for Performance

A large, mature and robust economic literature on pay for performance now exists, which provides a useful framework for thinking about pay for performance systems. I use the lessons of the literature to discuss how to design and implement pay for performance in practice.
Trust in independence: The identities of economists in business magazines, 1945-1970.

The cultural authority of social science hinges on its public representation. In postwar United States of America, the business media were influential promoters of the appreciation of economics. This essay examines the work of a journalist and editor, Leonard S. Silk, and a magazine, Business Week, to reveal how trust in economics was established in the 1960s. Electing a cast of representatives of the economics profession, the media examined their biography, character and social identity. Economists were first assigned the identity of assistants to business planning, as forecasters. Soon after, economists were represented as experts on the fiscal management of the economy, as government advisers. Overall, trustworthiness in the media was a measure of the perceived independence of economists from their employers and from ideology.
A Way Forward for Tax Law and Economics?A Response to Osofsky's "Frictions,Screening, and Tax Law Design"

This Essay responds to Leigh Osofsky's, "Who’s Naughty and Who’s Nice? Frictions, Screening, and Tax Law Design." Osofsky’s analysis suggests that tax rules might be designed so as to take account both of heterogeneity in taxpayers’ tax planning proclivities and of taxpayer characteristics relevant for distribution. By designing tax rules so as to create frictions that differentially impose higher costs on those taxpayers who are more successfully circumventing existing taxes we can perhaps reform our tax system so as to better achieve equitable distribution at lower efficiency costs. This Essay argues that Osofsky's analysis is generally correct and that it potentially suggests a path toward a more useful law and economics analysis of detailed tax rules.
Do campaign contributions from farmers influence agricultural policy? Evidence from a 2008 farm bill amendment vote to curtail cotton subsidies.

This article studies the political activities of individual cotton farmers and cotton political action committees (PACs) by exploiting a vote to amend the 2008 Farm Bill. Using a simultaneous model, I estimate reduced form equations for donations from cotton farmers and cotton PACs using tobit models, which instrument donations in the probit vote equation to control for the hypothesized endogeneity between campaign contributions and legislative votes. I find evidence that cotton farmers, like cotton PACs, contribute to legislators representing a median cotton farming constituency. I find no evidence that contributions from cotton farmers or cotton PACs significantly affected the vote decision.
Is Corporate Law Experiencing Its Own "Groundhog Day"?

Contemporary corporate law enjoys a rich, albeit contentious, discourse. Perhaps no single element of that discourse is more contentious than the discussion of corporate purpose. Its roots may be traced at least as far back as the immediate post-Depression era debate between Adolf Berle and Merrick Dodd. Yet, even after that legendary debate began eight decades ago, is contemporary corporate law any further ahead in establishing a definitive understanding of corporate purpose? While the names have changed and the arguments have been restructured, in many ways corporate law’s antagonistic perspectives and vicious debates over corporate purpose remain mired in much the same situation that existed in the time of Berle and Dodd. This scenario is highly reminiscent of the movie Groundhog Day, where weatherman Phil Connors is stuck in a recurring loop where he wakes up each successive morning reliving the same day again and again. The relevance of that movie to the issue of corporate purpose lies in what Phil learned from his reliving the same day over and over again, which ultimately allowed him to exit the cycle. This article asks whether contemporary corporate law is doomed to reside permanently in its own time loop, or can it, like Phil Connors, expand its horizons and discover how to extricate itself from its (indirectly) self-imposed purgatory?
The Dynamic Relationship Between Housing Prices and the Macroeconomy: Evidence from OECD Countries

This paper studies the dynamic relationship among house prices, income and interest rates in 15 OECD countries. We find that any disequilibrium in the long-run cointegrating relationship among these variables is corrected by the subsequent movement in house prices in most of these countries. This error-correction property of house prices implies that most of the variations in house prices are transitory, as compared to the movements in income and interest rates that are permanent, suggesting that the short-run movements in house prices are independent of the movements in income and interest rates. The results suggest that only the permanent movement in house prices, income and interest rates are associated with each other. We also find that the correlation in house price cycles across different OECD countries has changed over time with the highest correlation during the boom period of 1998–2005.
WAL‐MART, LEISURE, AND CULTURE

This essay contributes to the debate about the alleged spillover effects associated with Wal-Mart’s growth. Combining county-level data on Wal-Mart entry and location from 1985 through 1998 with individual-level data on leisure activities, we estimate a positive relationship between Wal-Mart penetration and participation in activities involving inputs that can be bought at Wal-Mart. The relationship between Wal-Mart penetration and activities that do not involve inputs that can be bought at Wal-Mart is negative in most cases but may be positive or zero for “cultural” activities such as attending classical music concerts and visiting art galleries. The evidence is consistent with the thesis that deeper Wal-Mart penetration expands consumption possibilities. (JELA13, D00, C12, Z11, Z13)
Trust, Personal Moral Codes, and the Resource-Advantage Theory of Competition: Explaining Productivity, Economic Growth, and Wealth Creation

Scholars agree that societal-level moral codes that promote social trust also promote wealth creation. However, what specific kinds of societal-level moral codes promote social trust? Also, by what specific kind of competitive process does social trust promote wealth creation? Because societal-level moral codes are composed of or formed from peoples’ personal moral codes, this article explores a theory of ethics, known as the “Hunt-Vitell” theory of ethics, that illuminates the concept of personal moral codes and uses the theory to discuss which types of personal moral codes foster trust and distrust in society. This article then uses resource-advantage (R-A) theory, one of the most completely articulated dynamic theories of competition, to show the process by which trust-promoting, societal-level moral codes promote productivity and economic growth. That is, they promote wealth creation.
Inequality, transfers and growth : new evidence from the economic transition in Poland

This paper analyzes the evolution of inequality in Poland during the economic transition that began in 1989-1990. Using microdata from the Household Budget Surveys, we find that, after a brief spik...
A River Runs Through It: The Future of the Columbia River Treaty, Water Rights, Development, and Climate Change

The Columbia River Treaty (Treaty) has served successfully as an instrument for flood control and hydropower in the Columbia River Basin (Basin) since 1961. Today, different uses such as restoring fish populations, agricultural irrigation, and providing drinking water demand a share of the Basin’s shrinking water supply. As early as 2014, negotiations for the next Treaty can begin. The United States and Canada will need to update the instrument and transition from a focus on disaster mitigation and electrical production to a flexible basin-wide, transboundary water-management organization that can dynamically balance new goals for the use of the Basin’s water.
Plebiscites, Fiscal Policy and the Poor: Learning from US Experience with Direct Democracy

Many countries are contemplating direct political participation as a way of giving marginalised people more say in national fiscal policies. The United States is a natural laboratory for studying how large-scale direct democracy actually works in this regard. Every state allows voters to decide certain ballot questions about how to raise and spend public revenue. The 100-year record shows, however, that state-wide plebiscites fail to produce uniformly equitable or financially sustainable government budgets, or to mobilise low-income groups to defend their economic interests. When called upon to make decisions about state government spending, the electorate is apt to disregard any hardship for poor people. Traditional political parties and advocacy organisations are usually a more promising avenue for promoting anti-poverty budgets.
Director Networks and Credit Ratings

We explore the effect of director social capital, directors with large and influential networks, on credit ratings. Using a sample of 11,172 firmâ€ year observations from 1999 to 2011, we find that larger board networks are associated with higher credit ratings than both firm financial data and probabilities of default predict. Nearâ€ investment grade firms improve their forwardâ€ looking ratings when their board is more connected. Last, we find that larger director networks are more beneficial during recessions, and times of increased financial uncertainty. Our results are robust to controls for endogeneity. Tests confirm that causality runs from connected boards to credit ratings.
Photobiological Effects at Earth's Surface Following a 50 pc Supernova

Abstract We investigated the potential biological impacts at Earth's surface of stratospheric O3 depletion caused by nearby supernovae known to have occurred about 2.5 and 8 million years ago at ab...
The Role of Activist Hedge Funds in Financially Distressed Firms

In this paper I investigate the role of activist hedge funds in the restructuring of a sample of 469 firms that attempted to resolve distress either out of court, in conventional Chapter 11, or via prepackaged restructuring. Activist hedge funds strategically gain a position of influence in the restructuring of economically viable firms with contracting problems that prevent efficient restructuring without outside intervention. I find that hedge fund involvement is associated with a higher probability of completing prepackaged restructurings, faster restructurings, and greater debt reduction. Overall, the evidence in this article suggests that activist hedge funds can create value by enabling more efficient contracting.
Government Purchases and Relative Prices in a Two‐Country World*

The effects of government expenditures on the terms of trade, the real exchange rate, and the real interest rate are examined in a three-goods (importables, exportables, and nontradables), two-country, inter-temporal, optimizing model. Temporary spending increases on tradable or nontradable goods may raise or lower the world return on internationally traded bonds and may improve or worsen the current account of the country undertaking the fiscal expansion. The paper's results also shed light on the theoretical determinants of the co-movement between the terms of trade and the real exchange rate in response to changes in fiscal policies.
Imports as a cause of injury: The case of the U.S. steel industry

Abstract This paper develops a method for assessing whether or not imports have been the most significant cause of injury to a U.S. industry. Such a determination is required under the 'escape clause' provisions (Section 201) of the Trade Act of 1974. The method is applied to the case of the U.S. steel industry, which recently petitioned the I.T.C. for import relief. We find that relief is not warranted if the relevant period is taken to be 1976–1983, as specified in the industry's petition. The results are less clear for the shorter period from 1979 to 1983.
Constitutional Fictions and Meritocratic Success Stories

L.H. LaRue demonstrates in his book, Constitutional Law as Fiction, that, at least in the realm of constitutional law, there is no simple correspondence between fiction and falsehood, or fact and truth. Partial or fictive accounts of our constitutional history, even when they are riddled with inaccuracies, may state deep truths about our world, and accurate recitations of historical events may be either intentionally or unintentionally misleading in the extreme. According to LaRue, the Supreme Court engages in a form of storytelling or myth-making that goes beyond the inevitably partial narratives of fact and precedent. The Supreme Court also tells stories about our collective past - our political and social history - to support the results for which it argues. Nevertheless, LaRue makes clear that criticism of this sort is not his mission. He believes that the Court's misreadings and mistellings of the historical record, like courts' misreadings of fact and precedent, are inevitable and not altogether undesirable. In his book, LaRue shows that the Court uses these stories, which are most assuredly about our past, not so much to tell us the truth about that past, but to establish what might be thought of as foundational myths which then render our constitutional law persuasive. It is therefore a mistake to criticize or even praise these judicially created stories solely by reference to their historical accuracy. Rather - and precisely because they are fiction (or myth), and in some sense are written and intended to be taken as such - they should be evaluated as fiction (or myth). We need ask of these stories not whether they are historically accurate but whether they are true or false as stories, whether they illuminate something important about our lives that the complexities, ambiguities, and uncertainties of historical truth would obscure. This Essay has three parts. In the first part, I will provide a somewhat different account to the question at the heart of LaRue's book: the nature of the "truth" about our society that a judicially authored "story" might possess when that story purports to be about our past, but actually departs in significant particulars from historical fact. In the second part of this Essay, I examine some of the costs attached to this general practice both on and off the Court." In the third and final part of this Essay, I will explore one sort of more or less true story used by the Supreme Court to buttress its affirmative action jurisprudence.
Principles of U.S. Family Law

What explains U.S. family law? To answer this question, this Article undertakes a conceptual analysis of the legal practices that govern families. This analysis has yet to be done, and its absence hamstrings constructive thought on our family law. The Article develops a typology that conceptualizes U.S. family law and exposes its underlying principles: First, it identifies the significant elements, or rules, of family law. Second, it demonstrates that these rules reflect or embody four important concepts - conjugality, privacy (familial as well as individual), contract, and parens patriae. Finally, it shows that the concepts of family law in turn embody two distinct underlying principles - Biblical naturalism and liberal individualism. From these powerful principles, we can derive modern U.S. family law: they explain what our family law is. With this deepened understanding of its structure, the Article next evaluates family law as the expression of it principles. It concludes that each principle is individually flawed; and, taken together, they are too often in unproductive tension. They thus doom U.S. family law to incoherence and must be revised. At a minimum, this Article seeks to launch a much-needed debate in family law on whether our current foundational principles are desirable, or even defensible. More ambitiously, the Article aims to ground a new jurisprudence of family law that better reflects the social goals and needs of contemporary U.S. society.
The New Governance and the Challenge of Litigation Bylaws

Corporate governance mechanisms designed to ensure that managers act in shareholders’ interest have evolved dramatically over the past forty years. “Old governance” mechanisms such as independent directors and performance-based executive compensation have been supplemented by innovations that give shareholders greater input into both the selection of directors and ongoing operational decisions. Issuer boards have responded with tools to limit the exercise of shareholder power both procedurally and substantively. This article terms the adoption and use of these tools, which generally take the form of structural provisions in the corporate charter or bylaws, the “new governance.”Delaware law has largely taken a hands-off approach to the new governance. The courts have policed shareholder innovations that interfere unduly with board authority and have invalidated board innovations that are extreme or adopted for an inequitable purpose. For the most part, however, the law has deferred to private ordering – leaving individual firms to structure their governance mechanisms as they see fit, with market discipline forming the primary constraint. In 2015, however, the Delaware legislature responded to the growth of bylaws designed to control the extent of shareholder litigation with an unusual step; it amended the statute to impose mandatory limits on litigation bylaw and charter provisions that went beyond the constraints imposed by the Delaware courts and that could not be altered by individual firms. It is difficult to reconcile the legislature’s action in light of Delaware’s traditional deference to the courts and the market.This article argues that the legislature’s response to litigation bylaws is best understood as a mandate that corporations who seek to avail themselves of Delaware law by incorporating within the state submit to the full package of Delaware corporate law – a package that includes both statutory provisions and oversight by the Delaware courts. In that light, the legislation should not be understood as signalling an intention to subject the new governance to greater oversight.
Italy: toward a growth-friendly fiscal reform

Published in late 2017, the Italian medium-term fiscal plan aims to achieve structural balance by 2020, although concrete, high-quality measures to meet the target are yet to be specified. This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion by (1) assessing spending patterns to identify areas for savings; (2) evaluating the pension system; (3) analyzing the scope for revenue rebalancing; and (4) putting forward a package of spending cuts and tax rebalancing that is growth friendly and inclusive, could have limited near-term output costs, and would achieve a notable reduction in public debt over the medium term. Such a package could help the authorities balance the need to bring down public debt and, thus, reduce vulnerabilities while supporting the economic recovery.
Compelling Interests and Contraception

On the eve of Griswold v. Connecticut’s fiftieth anniversary, employers are bringing challenges under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to federal laws requiring them to include contraception in the health insurance benefits that they offer their employees. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, five Justices asserted that the government has compelling interests in ensuring employees access to contraception, but did not discuss those interests in any detail. In what follows, we clarify those interests by connecting discussion in the Hobby Lobby opinions and the federal government’s briefs to related cases on compelling interests and individual rights in the areas of race and sex equality. The government’s compelling interests, we argue, are best understood from within two horizons: they encompass not only core concerns of the community in promoting public health and facilitating women’s integration in the workplace, but also crucial concerns of the employees who are the intended beneficiaries of federal law’s contraceptive coverage requirement — interests that sound in bodily integrity, personal autonomy, and equal citizenship. Further, as we show, a full accounting of the government’s compelling interests attends both to their material and expressive dimensions. This more comprehensive account of the government’s compelling interests in providing employees access to contraception matters both in political debate and in RFRA litigation as courts determine whether the government has pursued its interests by the least restrictive means. The more comprehensive account offered here is less susceptible to compromise and tradeoffs than is an account focused only on material interests in public health and contraceptive cost.
Limiting the Equal Protection Clause Roberts Style

Evoking Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court recently decided that the school boards in Jefferson County, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington could not voluntarily do what federal courts once routinely ordered in the name of Brown: consider race or ethnicity for the purpose of increasing student integration. While this outcome might have been the same under the Rehnquist Court, the Roberts Court in reaching that conclusion indicated a very different approach to the Equal Protection Clause and Brown v. Board of Education than that of the Rehnquist Court. The Rehnquist Court typically utilized an interestbalancing approach to the Equal Protection Clause that considered many values. The Roberts Court, on the other hand, has begun to minimize the Equal Protection Clause to concern only capitalizing individual treatment, to the detriment of other values. As a result, the Roberts Court has narrowed considerably the meaning of Brown v. Board of Education and calls into question the legitimacy of long-standing, bedrock school-desegregation principles.
PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLES IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

This article examines precautionary strategies of constitutional design and interpretation. In many contexts, constitutional actors and theorists justify rules of constitutional law as precautionary measures against various political risks, including the abuse of power by incumbent officials, dictatorship, majoritarian oppression, and biased adjudication. After providing an analytic taxonomy of such arguments, I examine criticisms of constitutional precautions offered by early proponents of national power such as Hamilton, Marshall and Story, and by New Dealers such as Frankfurter and Jackson. These critics argued that precautionary constitutionalism might be futile, might jeopardize other values, and might even prove perversely self-defeating, if and because the precautions create or exacerbate the very risks they were intended to prevent. Accordingly, these critics argued for a “mature position” that requires constitutional rulemakers to consider all relevant risks of action and of inaction. I identify a strictly negative but nonetheless valuable function of that approach: by laundering out one-sided arguments and placing all relevant risks before constitutional rulemakers, the mature position improves the process of constitutional design and interpretation.
A CONVICT PERSPECTIVE ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF PRISONERS

Convicts are rarely asked to comment on prison policy or procedure. They have little voice in correctional decisions. This essay attempts to give the men and women who live in cages a voice in how they are classified. This is no small issue for convicts. Although prisoners may not be considered “stakeholders” (as Berk et al. point out), they may stake their very lives on how they are classified and in which security level they are confined. Typically, new prisoners enter prison systems through “reception tenters” or in what the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) calls “Receiving and Departure.” Although intake procedures differ, they never receive a pleasant welcome. The prisoners arrive scared and worn, wearing handcuffs, belly chains, and dragging leg irons. Standing in line, they are ordered to strip, searched, sprayed or dusted with delousing chemical, issued clothes, and ordered to submit to a battery of token medical and psychological examinations administered by guards pretending to be medical staff. Convicts call this “kicking the tires.” If it’s not flat, don’t fix it. It makes no difference if the prisoner is HIV positive, ready to have another stroke, or near death. The line marches on. The new prisoners may spend weeks or months at the “reception center,” housed in cells or dormitories. Eventually, they are ordered to a classification meeting where an officer announces what has already been decided: their official security level and prison assignment. Some time later, they are transported to their new home: a penitentiary, correctional institution, or camp. Prisoner classification is reviewed once or more per year, depending on
How Do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets? Evidence from America's Second Generation

Sex ratios, i.e., relative numbers of men and women, can affect marriage prospects, labor force participation, and other social and economic variables. But the observed association between sex ratios and social and economic conditions may be confounded by omitted variables and reverse causality. This paper uses variation in immigrant flows as a natural experiment to study the effect of sex ratios on the children and grandchildren of immigrants. The flow of immigrants affected the second generation marriage market because second generation marriages were mostly endogamous, i.e., to members of the same ethnic group. The empirical results suggest that high sex ratios had a large positive effect on the likelihood of female marriage, and a large negative effect on female labor force participation. Perhaps surprisingly, the marriage rates of second generation men appear to be a slightly increasing function of immigrant sex ratios. Higher sex ratios also appear to have raised male earnings and the incomes of parents with young children. The empirical results are broadly consistent with theories where higher sex ratios increase female bargaining power in the marriage market.
A Positive Political Economic Theory of Environmental Federalization

This Article sets out a positive theory that explains the late twentieth-century federalization of American environmental law. On this theory, federalization occurred not because states had failed to regulate to reduce air and water pollution, but because older and heavily developed states moving toward such regulation gained a relative competitive advantage by imposing minimum standards on less developed and less polluted states (in the case of air), and by receiving subsidies from such regions (for water pollution reduction). The failure of federalization in the case of climate change is directly explained by this theory: the majority of states would be certain short and medium term net losers from such legislation.
Religious Experience in the Age of Digital Reproduction

This essay is based on a lecture delivered by Professor Gedicks at the St. John’s University College of Law on March 29, 2004, as part of the St. John’s Law Review Honorarium Lecture Series. We are grateful for the comments and criticisms of Travis Anderson, Jack Balkan, Lou Bilionis, David D ominguez, Jim Faulconer, Bill Marshall, John Orth, Doug Parker, and Jane Wise. We also benefitted from comments and criticisms at a workshop presentation of an earlier version of this paper to the Brigham Young University Law School faculty. Lee Andelin, Kristen Kemmer, and (especially) Kim Pearson provided excellent research assistance. Finally, we owe special thanks to David G regory, who encouraged Professor Gedicks to write on this topic, and was instrumental in generating the invitation to lecture on it.
The People's Welfare and the Origins of Corporate Reorganization: The Wabash Receivership Reconsidered

The 1884 receivership of the Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railway is widely regarded as a turning point in the development of corporate insolvency law. It is said to have created a “new-fashioned receivership,” which enabled debtors to initiate and, to a great extent, control receiverships. It is said that these new-fashioned receiverships facilitated reorganization of the insolvent firm at the expense of creditors' rights. An examination of the history of railroad receiverships reveals that for decades before 1884 judges allowed managers to initiate receiverships, appointed managers as receivers, and forced creditors to accept changes in their contractual rights. Judges also refused to extend reorganization procedures to corporations outside the railroad industry, justifying their special treatment of railroads on the grounds that the foremost obligation of railroads was to serve the public. Analysis of railroad bond prices supports the conclusion that creditors' rights were not transformed by the courts in the mid-1880s.
Determinants of foreign patents in China

Abstract This study examines patterns of foreign patents and their determinants in China from 1985 to 1999. It reveals that China’s patent system is not significantly different from those in most countries, though it is more oriented towards promoting technology diffusion rather than protecting inventors’ rights. Since China patent law came into force in 1985, foreign patents, as well as China’s domestic patents have been growing rapidly. The study confirms the substantial differences between foreign patents in China and China’s domestic patents revealed by previous studies. First, foreign patents primarily fall within the category of inventions, whereas the majority of Chinese domestic patents consist of utility models and industrial designs. Second, foreign patents in China are largely awarded to organizations, while individuals comprise the majority of Chinese domestic patentees. Third, foreign patents in China concentrate in a small number of advanced and newly industrialized economies (NIEs). In addition, this study finds that foreign patents in China are primarily driven by demand factors such as imports from the origin countries, while innovative capabilities of the origin countries or their distances from China are not very significant yet. Finally, this study reveals that innovative capabilities of foreign countries are starting to show significant impacts on their patents in China, particularly on inventions, indicating increasing competition in the Chinese market.
Norms and Enforcement: The Case Against Copyright Litigation

Drawing on socio-psychological literature and new data from an empirical study, this Article posits that copyright litigation faces an impossibility theorem: lawsuits against file sharers cannot simultaneously achieve effective deterrence and promote pro-copyright norms. Anti-copyright norms of file swappers are strengthened when the level of copyright enforcement increases, which results in more downloading whenever enforcement is temporarily suspended. Enforcement has an ambivalent effect on individuals who have no experience with file sharing. Severe sanctions do not have a counterproductive effect on copyright norms of such non-file sharers, yet exposure to information on copyright enforcement reinforces the expectation that others are downloading. The Article reflects on the lessons learned from the study, in particular with regard to the policy choices that regulators, courts, and copyright-dependent industries face when approaching the widespread use of copyrighted material on file-sharing networks. These options, including criminal prosecutions of digital piracy, copyright education, self-help strategies, and collective licensing, are evaluated in light of the interaction of deterrence and anti-copyright norms.
Fixing the Communications Failure

People's grasp of scientific debates can improve if communicators build on the fact that cultural values influence what and whom we believe, says Dan Kahan.
Blackberries and Barnyards: Patent Trolls and the Perils of Innovation

This Article provides context for the ongoing debate on opportunistic licensing (or patent troll) litigation by pointing out that the same phenomenon occurred in the nineteenth century with respect to design patents on farm tools. This previously unexplored episode shows that trolls (or sharks, as they were called then) explode when patents are extended to inventions that: (1) are cheap to acquire; (2) are hard for a defendant to substitute away from; and (3) evolve incrementally. Modern information technology and basic farm tools share these traits, albeit for different reasons. The Article then compares the remedies proposed in each era and concludes that curbing trolls through a comprehensive reform is bound to fail. A better approach would seek either to abolish software and business method patents or reduce the arbitrage spread by raising the maintenance fees charged to retain patents.
On Network Theory

Research on social networks has grown considerably in the last decade. However, there is a certain amount of confusion about network theory---for example, what it is, what is distinctive about it, and how to generate new theory. This paper attempts to remedy the situation by clarifying the fundamental concepts of the field (such as the network) and characterizing how network reasoning works. We start by considering the definition of network, noting some confusion caused by two different perspectives, which we refer to as realist and nominalist. We then analyze two well-known network theories, Granovetter's strength of weak ties theory [Granovetter, M. S. 1973. The strength of weak ties. Amer. J. Sociol.78(6) 1360--1380] and Burt's structural holes theory [Burt, R. S. 1992. Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Havard University Press, Cambridge, MA], to identify characteristic elements of network theorizing. We argue that both theories share an underlying theoretical model, which we label the network flow model, from which we derive additional implications. We also discuss network phenomena that do not appear to fit the flow model and discuss the possibility of a second fundamental model, which we call the bond model. We close with a discussion of the merits of model-based network theorizing for facilitating the generation of new theory, as well as a discussion of endogeneity in network theorizing.
IPO underpricing and outside blockholdings

Abstract Recent papers have proposed a link between underpricing of an initial public offering (IPO) and the resulting ownership structure of the firm. Brennan and Franks [J. Financ. Econ. 45 (1997) 391] hypothesize that IPO managers want to discourage new blockholdings to reduce the likelihood of being monitored. They show that underpricing encourages oversubscription, allowing discrimination against large blockholders. Conversely, Stoughton and Zechner [J. Financ. Econ. 49 (1998) 45] hypothesize that managers underprice to encourage investment by blockholders who provide monitoring services. We find that the link between underpricing and ownership structure is weak. Most firms have outside blocks in place at the IPO and retain them afterwards. In terms of acquiring new blockholders, there is no difference between firms that underprice and those that do not.
Economic geography and regional production structure: An empirical investigation

There are two principal theories of why countries or regions trade: comparative advantage and increasing returns to scale. Yet there is virtually no empirical work that assesses the relative importance of these two theories in accounting for production structure and trade. We use a framework that nests an increasing returns model of economic geography featuring ‘home market e⁄ects’ with that of Heckscher—Ohlin. We employ these trade models to account for the structure of regional production in Japan. We find support for the existence of economic geography e⁄ects in eight of nineteen manufacturing sectors, including such important ones as transportation equipment, iron and steel, electrical machinery, and chemicals. Moreover, we find that these e⁄ects are economically very significant. The latter contrasts with the results of Davis and Weinstein (1996, Does economic geography matter for interactional specialiazation?, NEBRd 5706), which found scant economic significance of economic geography for the structure of OECD production. We conclude that while economic geography may explain little about the international structure of production, it is very important for understanding the regional structure of production. ( 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Risk, Incentives, and Contracts: Partnerships in Rio de Janeiro, 1870–1891

We construct an individual-level data set of partnership contracts in late-nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro to study the determinants of contract terms. Partners with limited liability contributed more capital and received lower draws for private expenses and lower profit shares than their unlimited partners. Unlimited partners in turn received higher-powered incentives when they contracted with limited partners than when they contracted with unlimited partners. A reform that changed the relative bargaining power further improved the terms of unlimited partners in limited firms. These findings highlight the roles of risk, incentives, and bargaining power in shaping contracts.