cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Detecting Adversarial Examples in Learning-Enabled Cyber-Physical Systems using Variational Autoencoder for Regression

Learning-enabled components (LECs) are widely used in cyber-physical systems (CPS) since they can handle the uncertainty and variability of the environment and increase the level of autonomy. However, it has been shown that LECs such as deep neural networks (DNN) are not robust and adversarial examples can cause the model to make a false prediction. The paper considers the problem of efficiently detecting adversarial examples in LECs used for regression in CPS. The proposed approach is based on inductive conformal prediction and uses a regression model based on variational autoencoder. The architecture allows to take into consideration both the input and the neural network prediction for detecting adversarial, and more generally, out-of-distribution examples. We demonstrate the method using an advanced emergency braking system implemented in an open source simulator for self-driving cars where a DNN is used to estimate the distance to an obstacle. The simulation results show that the method can effectively detect adversarial examples with a short detection delay.
Risk Transfer with Interest Rate Swaps

This paper proposes Entity-Netted Notionals (ENNs) as a metric of interest rate risk transfer in the interest rate swap (IRS) market. Unlike the ubiquitous metric of notional amount, ENNs normalize for risk and account for the netting of longs and shorts within counter party relationships. Using regulatory data for U.S.-reporting entities, the size of the market measured by notional amount is $231 trillion, but, measured by ENNs, is only $13.9 trillion 5-year swap equivalents, which is the same order of magnitude as other large U.S. fixed income markets. This paper also quantifies the size and direction of IRS positions across and within various business sectors. Among the empirical findings are that 92% of entities using IRS are exclusively long or exclusively short. Hence, the vast majority of market participants are prototypical end users, and the extensive amount of netting in the market is attributable to the activity of relatively few, larger entities. Finally, some sector-specific empirical findings are inconsistent with widespread, prior beliefs. For example, pension funds and insurance companies are typically thought to be long IRS to hedge their long-term liabilities, and these sectors are indeed net long, but approximately 50% of individual entities in these sectors are actually net short.
The normalized volume of a singularity is lower semicontinuous

We show that in any $\mathbb{Q}$-Gorenstein flat family of klt singularities, normalized volumes are lower semicontinuous with respect to the Zariski topology. A quick consequence is that smooth points have the largest normalized volume among all klt singularities. Using an alternative characterization of K-semistability developed by Li, Liu and Xu, we show that K-semistability is a very generic or empty condition in any $\mathbb{Q}$-Gorenstein flat family of log Fano pairs.
Modeling Communication Networks in a Real-Time Simulation Environment for Evaluating Controls of Shipboard Power Systems

Interest by the U.S. Navy in the development and deployment of advanced controls in future shipboard platforms has motivated the development of the Controls Evaluation Framework (CEF) for use in investigating dynamics present in complex automated systems. This paper reports on the implementation and investigation of a communication network component within the CEF. This implementation is designed to augment the CEF’s available feature set, permitting the exploration of various communication conditions on advanced control performance. Results obtained from controller hardware-in-the-loop testing are presented and analyzed to demonstrate performance characteristics pertaining to the implemented module.
STEP inhibition prevents Aβ-mediated damage in dendritic complexity and spine density in Alzheimer’s disease

Loss of dendritic spines and decline of cognitive function are hallmarks of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Previous studies have shown that AD pathophysiology involves increased expression of a central nervous system-enriched protein tyrosine phosphatase called STEP (STriatal-Enriched protein tyrosine Phosphatase). STEP opposes the development of synaptic strengthening by dephosphorylating substrates, including GluN2B, Pyk2, and ERK1/2. Genetic reduction of STEP as well as pharmacological inhibition of STEP improve cognitive function and hippocampal memory in the 3×Tg-AD mouse model. Here, we show that the improved cognitive function is accompanied by an increase in synaptic connectivity in cell cultures as well as in the triple transgenic AD mouse model, further highlighting the potential of STEP inhibitors as a therapeutic agent.
In Harm’s Way: Family Separation, Immigration Enforcement Programs and Security on the US-Mexico Border

The Consequence Delivery System (CDS) is a suite of border and immigration enforcement programs designed to increase the penalties associated with unauthorized migration in order to convince people...
Religion and AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa: Unbundling Religious Institutions

Evidence of relationships between religious affiliation and the African AIDS pandemic is found in the medical, religion, and sociology literatures. In particular, studies have shown that predominantly Christian countries tend to have higher HIV rates than predominantly Muslim countries. These relationships have been largely unexplored by economists and we seek to identify underlying institutions using a panel of up to 43 sub-Saharan African countries for 1990–2010. Catholic antagonism towards condom use has often but proposed, but we report that the protestant (rather than the Catholic) population share drives the Christianity/HIV correlation. (Also, condom use actually correlates positively with HIV prevalence, though reverse causation likely plays a role.) Male circumcision rates have a large negative effect on HIV prevalence. While male circumcision has been linked to Islam in this context, we report that the male circumcision effect is robust to controlling for the Christian population share while the correlation of HIV prevalence and the Muslim population share is not. There is no significant relationship between an index of social regulation of religion and HIV prevalence.
Did Okun’s law die after the Great Recession?

This paper estimates Okun’s law, focusing on piecewise non-linearity in the form of structural breaks and threshold dynamics, and obtains regime-dependent as well as threshold-dependent changes in the unemployment rate. We employ an autoregressive distributed lag version of Okun’s law in first differences, which allows for delayed reactions of the unemployment rate to output growth. Applied to U.S. data over 1949Q1–2015Q4, the empirical analysis characterizes Okun’s law as a three-regime relationship with the first structural break coinciding with the 1973 oil price shock, and the second structural break immediately following the end of the Great Recession. We find support for threshold dynamics in each regime, which suggests that Okun’s law follows complex non-linear dynamics. Okun’s law, as a linear and constant “rule of thumb,” breaks down in each of the three regimes. In each regime, the unemployment rate responds asymmetrically to changes in output. In sum, Okun’s law died during the Great Recession. Only time will tell whether resurrection is feasible.
American constitutionalism and democratic virtue

Neither the historical tradition of American constitutionalism nor those who have theorized about it have promoted political or theoretical designs hospitable to the valorization or promotion of democratic virtue. This article illustrates this point by canvassing practical interpretations of the American constitution, from the document of 1787–1791 to Bush v. Gore, and theoretical interpretations from Madison to Rawls, Dworkin, Ackerman, Elster, Holmes, and other contemporary theorists of liberal constitutionalism and natural law. Exposing these roadblocks to the theory and practice of democratic virtue in America, it argues, provides a critical corrective to current debates about the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy.
A First Look at the Accuracy of the CRSP Mutual Fund Database and a Comparison of the CRSP and Morningstar Mutual Fund Databases

This paper examines problems in the CRSP Survivor Bias Free U.S. Mutual Fund Database ~CRSP, 1998! and compares returns contained in it to those in Morningstar. The CRSP database has an omission bias that has the same effects as survivorship bias. Although all mutual funds are listed in CRSP, return data is missing for many and the characteristics of these funds differ from the populations. The CRSP return data is biased upward and merger months are inaccurately recorded about half the time. Differences in returns in Morningstar and CRSP are a problem for older data and small funds.
Causes and barriers to increases in economic freedom

We investigate the causes of increases in economic freedom by examining a cross section of countries from 1990 to 2010 and examining factors that have previously been associated with increases in freedom alongside other factors which have been found to be important for growth. We find that higher initial GNI per capita is associated with larger subsequent increases in economic freedom and countries are less likely to improve their freedom the higher their initial level of freedom, energy exports, and ethnolinguistic fractionalization. When we test subsamples, we find that little explains changes in freedom in countries with high levels of initial freedom, initially high incomes, and that did not receive foreign aid.
Nonlinearity and intraday efficiency tests on energy futures markets

Using high frequency data, this paper first time comprehensively examines the intraday efficiency of four major energy (crude oil, heating oil, gasoline, natural gas) futures markets. In contrast to earlier studies which focus on in-sample evidence and assume linearity, the paper employs various nonlinear models and several model evaluation criteria to examine market efficiency in an out-of-sample forecasting context. Overall, there is evidence for intraday market inefficiency of two of the four energy future markets (heating oil and natural gas), which exists particularly during the bull market condition but not during the bear market condition. The evidence is also robust against the data-snooping bias and the model overfitting problem, and its economic significance can be very substantial.
Infinitely repeated games in the laboratory: four perspectives on discounting and random termination

This paper compares behavior under four different implementations of infinitely repeated games in the laboratory: the standard random termination method [proposed by Roth and Murnighan (J Math Psychol 17:189–198, 1978)] and three other methods that de-couple the expected number of rounds and the discount factor. Two of these methods involve a fixed number of repetitions with payoff discounting, followed by random termination [proposed by Sabater-Grande and Georgantzis (J Econ Behav Organ 48:37–50, 2002)] or followed by a coordination game [proposed in (Andersson and Wengstrom in J Econ Behav Organ 81:207–219, 2012; Cooper and Kuhn in Am Econ J Microecon 6:247–278, 2014a)]. We also propose a new method—block random termination—in which subjects receive feedback about termination in blocks of rounds. We find that behavior is consistent with the presence of dynamic incentives only with methods using random termination, with the standard method generating the highest level of cooperation. Subject behavior in the other two methods display two features: a higher level of stability in cooperation rates and less dependence on past experience. Estimates of the strategies used by subjects reveal that across implementations, even when the discount rate is the same, if interactions are expected to be longer defection increases and the use of the Grim strategy decreases.
A Partial Integral Equation (PIE) representation of coupled linear PDEs and scalable stability analysis using LMIs

Abstract We present a new Partial Integral Equation (PIE) representation of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) in which it is possible to use convex optimization to perform stability analysis with little or no conservatism. The first result gives a standardized representation for coupled linear PDEs in a single spatial variable and shows that any such PDE, suitably well-posed, admits an equivalent PIE representation, defined by the given conversion formulae. This leads to a new prima facie representation of the dynamics without the implicit constraints on system state imposed by boundary conditions. The second result is to show that for systems in this PIE representation, convex optimization may be used to verify stability without discretization. The resulting algorithms are implemented in the Matlab toolbox PIETOOLS, tested on several illustrative examples, compared with previous results, and the code has been posted on Code Ocean. Scalability testing indicates the algorithm can analyze systems of up to 40 coupled PDEs on a desktop computer.
Diasporas and Economic Development: A Review of the Evidence and Policy

The paper reviews recent literature on the economics of migration and diasporas, focusing on economic gains and opportunities that these diasporas could represent for home countries. In addition, the paper discusses policies aimed at leveraging this “diaspora capital.”
Bargains followed by bargains: When switching costs make markets more competitive.

In markets where consumers have switching costs and firms cannot price-discriminate, firms have two conflicting strategies. A firm can either offer a low price to attract new consumers and build future market share or a firm can offer a high price to exploit the partial lock-in of their existing consumers. This paper develops a theory of competition when overlapping generations of consumers have switching costs and firms produce differentiated products. Competition takes place over an infinite horizon with any number of firms. This paper shows that the relationship between the level of switching costs, firms' discount rate, and the number of firms determines whether firms offer low or high prices. Similar to previous duopoly studies, switching costs are likely to facilitate lower (higher) equilibrium prices when switching costs are small (large) or when a firm's discount rate is large (small). Unlike previous studies, this paper demonstrates that the number of firms also determines whether switching costs are pro- or anticompetitive, and with a sufficiently large (small) number of firms switching costs are pro- (anti-) competitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Judicial Review of Copyright Term Extension Legislation

In adopting the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), Congress acceded to the demands of noncreative heirs and assignees of old but unexpired copyrights for extension of the period of copyright protection by twenty years. This legislation thus allows these copyright owners twenty more years to collect royalties and control performance and dissemination of the covered works. At the same time, Congress extended the term prospectively for works created in the future. Both prospective and retroactive term extensions, but particularly the latter, raise the question of the scope of congressional power under Article I, Section 1, Clause 8 of the Constitution (the “Intellectual Property Clause”). Specifically, does such legislation conflict with the congressional power “to promote the Progress of Science” and does it ignore the constitutional restriction on that power mandating that exclusive rights granted under the Clause endure only for “limited Times”? Lurking beneath these substantive issues of constitutional law, however, is the question of who decides them. Congress, evidently, has made the decision that the CTEA comports with its powers under
Science and Industry: Tracing the Flow of Basic Research through Manufacturing and Trade

This paper describes flows of basic research through the US economy during the late 20th century. In addition, the paper studies the effect of the flows on scientific papers in industries and fields. This article differs from others in its use of measures of science rather than technology. Together, its results present a picture of the structure of basic research flows in a modern, science-intensive economy. Basic research flows are large within petrochemicals and drugs, and within software and communications. Flows of chemistry, physics, and engineering are common throughout all industries – biology and medicine are almost confined to petrochemicals and drugs; and computer science is nearly as restricted to software and communications. In general, basic research flows are more concentrated within scientific fields than within industries. Our findings concerning the production of scientific papers indicate that the effect of a 1% change in academic R&D spillovers significantly exceeds that of industrial s...
Who Pays the Corporate Tax in a Global Economy

The theory of corporate tax incidence suggests that corporate taxes are more likely to harm labor in a globally integrated economy. However, a review of the prior empirical work in this area fails ...
Inference in Long‐Horizon Event Studies: A Bayesian Approach with Application to Initial Public Offerings

Statistical inference in long-horizon event studies has been hampered by the fact that abnormal returns are neither normally distributed nor independent. This study presents a new approach to inference that overcomes these difficulties and dominates other popular testing methods. I illustrate the use of the methodology by examining the long-horizon returns of initial public offerings (IPOs). I find that the Fama and French (1993) three-factor model is inconsistent with the observed long-horizon price performance of these IPOs, whereas a characteristic-based model cannot be rejected. Copyright The American Finance Association 2000.
“Solution-Focused Risk Assessment”: A Proposal for the Fusion of Environmental Analysis and Action

ABSTRACT For 30 years, more attention and resources have been expended on dissecting problems (risk assessment) than on evaluating actual solutions that reduce risks. The basic dogma holds that risk assessment must precede risk management. But there is an opposite and perhaps better way: the opening question should not be “How bad is the problem?” but “How good are the solutions we might apply to the problem?” Rethinking risk assessment in this context offers three classes of benefits over the status quo. First, it can help break the endless cycle of analysis: when the goal is to know enough to decide, rather than to know everything, natural stopping points emerge. Second, it can lead to more decisions that actually achieve risk reduction, rather than pronouncements about how much risk reduction would be optimal. Third, it can highlight ways to resolve multiple risks simultaneously, avoid needless and tragic risk-risk tradeoffs, and involve affected stakeholders in debating what should be done. Arguably, ...
Constructive and Classical Models for Results in Economics and Game Theory

A standard approach in economic theory is to use a formal language to prove results about an economy or a game. In this paper, model theory is used to examine interpretations of such results. The particular focus is on constructive theorems, since results established by constructive methods are valid for many different interpretations, whereas classical theorems are valid more narrowly. I discuss why non-classical models may be of interest and also describe applications of model theory to economics in classical contexts, e.g. non-standard analysis. The paper advocates a viewpoint suggesting that constructive models are tools for studying worlds in which agents’ knowledge of the world is incomplete.
Ensuring Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility Through Vertical Integration and Horizontal Sourcing

Firms have recently vertically integrated with suppliers to ensure corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) in sourcing. We investigate the conditions under which CSER concerns will...
What Makes Us Click? Demonstrating Incentives for Angry Discourse with Digital-Age Field Experiments

There is substantial evidence that political actors can incorporate emotional content into their messages with an eye toward evoking politically relevant behaviors. In particular, many studies highlight anxiety as effective in eliciting interest and information seeking. This finding raises the question of why many appeals seem geared to evoke not anxiety, but rather anger. I point to reasons why anger might evoke information seeking under at least some conditions. Then, in a new type of field experiment, I induce feelings of anger and anxiety and passively measure the effects on information seeking. Across three studies, I find anger, evoked alone, to increase information seeking to a large degree—substantially increasing web users’ proclivity to click through to a political website. The results suggest that anger can engage and speak to psychological incentives for political communication, under some conditions, to employ angry rhetoric.
Analyst information acquisition via EDGAR

We identify analysts’ information acquisition patterns by linking EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval) server activity to analysts’ brokerage houses. Analysts rely on EDGAR in...
Causation and Causal Inference in Epidemiology

Concepts of cause and causal inference are largely self-taught from early learning experiences. A model of causation that describes causes in terms of sufficient causes and their component causes illuminates important principles such as multi-causality, the dependence of the strength of component causes on the prevalence of complementary component causes, and interaction between component causes. Philosophers agree that causal propositions cannot be proved, and find flaws or practical limitations in all philosophies of causal inference. Hence, the role of logic, belief, and observation in evaluating causal propositions is not settled. Causal inference in epidemiology is better viewed as an exercise in measurement of an effect rather than as a criterion-guided process for deciding whether an effect is present or not.
A Blueprint for Change

This Article discusses the financial viability of law schools in the face of massive structural changes now occurring within the legal industry. It then offers a blueprint for change – a realistic way for law schools to retool themselves in an attempt to provide our students with high quality professional employment in a rapidly changing world. Because no institution can instantaneously reinvent itself, a key element of my proposal is the “12% solution.” Approximately 12% of faculty members take the lead on building a competency-based curriculum that is designed to accelerate the development of valuable skills and behaviors prized by both legal and nonlegal employers. For a variety of practical reasons, successful implementation of the blueprint requires law schools to band together in consortia. The goal of these initiatives needs to be the creation and implementation of a world-class professional education in which our graduates consistently and measurably outperform graduates from traditional J.D. programs.
Scalar Properties, Binary Judgments

In the moral realm, our deontic judgments are usually (always?) binary. An act (or omission) is either morally forbidden or morally permissible.1 Yet the determination of an act's deontic status frequently turns on the existence of properties that are matters of degree. In what follows I shall give several examples of binary moral judgments that turn on scalar properties, and I shall claim that these examples should puzzle us. How can the existence of a property to a specific degree demarcate a boundary between an act's being morally forbidden and its not being morally forbidden? Why aren't our moral judgments of acts scalar in the way that the properties on which those judgments are based are scalar, so that acts, like states of affairs, can be morally better or worse rather than right or wrong? I conceive of this inquiry as operating primarily within the realm of normative theory. Presumably it will give aid and comfort to consequentialists, who have no trouble mapping their binary categories onto scalar properties. For example, a straightforward act utilitarian, for whom one act out of all possible acts is morally required (and hence permissible) and all others morally forbidden, can, in theory at least, provide an answer to every one of the puzzles I raise. And, in theory, so can all other types of act and rule consequentialists. They will find nothing of interest here beyond embarrassment for their deontological adversaries. The deontologists, however, must meet the challenges of these puzzles. And for them, the puzzles may raise not just normative questions, but questions of moral epistemology and moral ontology. Just how do we know that the act consequentialist's way of, say, trading off lives against lives is wrong? For example, do we merely intuit that taking one innocent, uninvolved person's life to save two others is wrong? Can our method of reflective equilibrium work if we have no theory by which to rationalize our intuitions? And what things in the world make it true, if it is true, that one may not make the act consequentialist's tradeoff? I do not provide any answers to these questions any more than I provide answers to the normative ones. But they surely lurk in the background.
Did Conservatism in Financial Reporting Increase after the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act? Initial Evidence

In this paper, we investigate the change in managerial discretion over financial reporting following the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (hereafter SOX). We document an increase in conservatism in financial reporting following SOX and the resulting requirement by the SEC that financial statements be certified by firms' CEOs and CFOs. First, we find that firms report lower discretionary accruals after SOX than in the period preceding SOX. Second, based on the Basu (1997) measure of conservatism, we find that firms incorporate losses more quickly than gains when they report income in the post‐SOX period. These results are obtained with alternative estimation and measurement approaches and after controlling for potentially confounding variables. This empirical evidence suggests that SOX and the resultant SEC certification requirement may have altered management's discretionary reporting behavior to make it more conservative.
Nonprofit tax exemptions and market structure: The case of fitness centers

Nonprofits are increasingly present in industries with a large for-profit sector, raising questions about their competitive advantage afforded by the nonprofit tax exemption. We estimate an equilibrium model of market structure for recreation/fitness centers to assess whether nonprofit and for-profit firms compete directly for the same customer base. Our results suggest that the two ownership types serve independent markets. Consequently, nonprofits do not meaningfully crowd out for-profit competitors. We find that local property taxes, as a proxy for a firm’s tax burden, significantly affect for-profit entry and that nonprofit entry would fall by 25%, without affecting for-profit entry, if the same property tax liability was imposed.
FOSTERING SUSTAINABLE COMPLEXITY IN THE MICROFINANCE INDUSTRY: WHICH WAY FORWARD?

The microfinance movement has gained tremendous popularity over the past thirty years, but it is still far from meeting its full potential. The industry stands at a crossroads between increased commercialization and increased philanthropic aid. Standard economic discourse does little to resolve the debate. F. A. Hayek's concept of the "extended order" sheds new light on how we might understand the future development of microfinance.
SUPER-HEDGING AMERICAN OPTIONS with SEMI-STATIC TRADING STRATEGIES under MODEL UNCERTAINTY

We consider the super-hedging price of an American option in a discrete-time market in which stocks are available for dynamic trading and European options are available for static trading. We show that the super-hedging price π is given by the supremum over the prices of the American option under randomized models. That is, π =sup(ci,Qi)i∑iciϕQi, where ci ∈ ℝ+ and the martingale measure Qi are chosen such that ∑ici = 1 and ∑iciQi prices the European options correctly, and ϕQi is the price of the American option under the model Qi. Our result generalizes the example given in Hobson & Neuberger (2016) that the highest model-based price can be considered as a randomization over models.
Economic coordination in environments with incomplete pricing

Simple observation presents two stylized facts that call for integration into a single explanatory framework. One fact is that societies reflect generally though certainly not perfectly coordinated patterns of activity. The other fact is that only a subset of those activities is coordinated with the direct assistance of market prices. Price-theoretic explanations of how prices serve to secure economic coordination are thus incomplete because contemporary environments feature significant expanses of territory where market pricing has little presence. We refer in this respect to territory occupied both by non-profit enterprises and by political enterprises. In this paper we explore how societal coordination can occur when market pricing covers but a subset of the range of economic activities within a society. A key feature of our explanation is the network architecture of enterprises within a society.
Systemic Risk Oversight and the Shifting Balance of State and Federal Authority over Insurance

The state-based model of U.S. insurance regulation has been remarkably enduring to date, in part because the traditional rationales for a greater federal role – efficiency, uniformity, and consumer protection – have not succeeded in displacing it. However, the 2008 financial crisis, the federal government’s unprecedented bailouts of parts of the insurance sector, and the need for a coordinated international approach radically shifted the debate about the proper allocation of power between the federal government and the states by supplanting traditional concerns about efficiency, uniformity, and consumer protection in insurance with a new federal mission to control systemic risk. Unprepared and ill-equipped to counter this shift, the states face the biggest threat to their domination of U.S. insurance regulation in years. Already, the federal government has made inroads into insurance regulation for purposes of systemic risk oversight. That federal presence creates several openings for a broader federal role in insurance than just regulation of systemically important insurers. For instance, solvency regulation, which traditionally has been reserved to the states, increasingly could be subsumed under the rubric of systemic risk. Over time, other types of federal incursions could include higher reporting requirements for insurers, regulation of discrete, systemically risky activities (regardless of an insurer’s size), oversight of captive reinsurers, and greater consolidated supervision of insurance groups.
Villagers and Popular Resistance in Contemporary China

It is hardly novel to say that post-Mao rural China has seen considerable economic growth and commercialization; what is less well known, however, is that recent reforms have also, in some villages, been accompanied by worsening mass-elite relations (Tang Jinsu and Wang Jianjun, 1989; Li Xiwen, 1989; Wang Zhenyao, 1991a, 1991b). As newly autonomous farmers become more demanding, rural cadres in many locales are finding it increasingly difficult to govern.' Lacking reliable, institutionalized means to obtain funds and ensure acceptance of their commands, many grassroots leaders all too frequently turn to coercion; in response, angered villagers sometimes rise up and engage in various, often spirited forms of resistance. The result is that violent clashes and rural unrest have grown in recent years such that, in some
The method of endogenous gridpoints for solving dynamic stochastic optimization problems

This paper introduces a method for solving numerical dynamic stochastic optimization problems that avoids rootfinding operations. The idea is applicable to many microeconomic and macroeconomic problems, including life cycle, buffer-stock, and stochastic growth problems. Software is provided.
The Federal Government's Implied Guarantee of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's Obligations: Uncle Sam Will Pick Up the Tab

This article provides the most comprehensive statutory analysis to date of the federal government's implied guarantee of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's financial obligations. Fannie and Freddie together have $4.45 trillion in mortgage-related obligations. The magnitude of their obligations can only be understood in comparison to the amount of outstanding U.S. government debt - $5.04 trillion. Given the ongoing meltdown of the residential mortgage market, it is important that the implied guarantee be understood for what it is, a contingent liability of the federal government. After explaining the nature of the implied guarantee and the risks that it poses, the article argues that Fannie and Freddie should be privatized and that the implied guarantee be terminated. This article is timely both because of the spreading crisis in the mortgage markets and because Congress is currently considering legislation to increase regulation of Fannie and Freddie. Even if enacted, this legislation does not go nearly far enough to protect the American taxpayer from the consequences of having to bail out these two companies. And if the federal government were to fail to bail them out, the world's financial markets will face a financial crisis that could easily dwarf the 1994 Mexican peso collapse, the 1997 East Asian "flu" and the 1998 Russian bond default, the last of which triggered the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management.
The Puzzle of Alfarabi's Parallel Works

Scholars disagree about the correct interpretation of Alfarabi's Political Regime and Virtuous City, treatises that have striking similarities, yet notable differences. For some, the treatises encapsulate Alfarabi's philosophy; for others, they express only politically salutary opinions. Both interpretations fail to explain why he wrote parallel works. If both reflect Alfarabi's genuine philosophic doctrines, why did he compose separate but parallel treatises, both written when his philosophy was mature? Alternatively, if the treatises are political or rhetorical, why did Alfarabi compose two versions, and why did he choose these two accounts rather than others? To answer these questions, I discuss several overarching differences between the treatises, concluding that each work has an inner coherence and develops a distinctive narrative. I offer suggestions to account for the works’ distinctive orientations, both to persuade doubtful readers of their philosophic significance and to suggest to both groups of scholars reasons for their systematic differences.
A Tentative Detection of the Cosmic Infrared Background at 3.5 μm from COBE/DIRBE Observations

Foreground emission and scattered light from interplanetary dust (IPD) particles and emission from Galactic stellar sources are the greatest obstacles to determining the cosmic infrared background (CIB) from diffuse sky measurements in the ~1-5 μm range. We use ground-based observational limits on the K-band intensity of the CIB in conjunction with sky maps obtained by the Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) on the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite to reexamine the limits on the CIB at 1.25, 3.5, and 4.9 μm. Adopting a CIB intensity of 7.4 nW m−2 sr−1 at 2.2 μm, and using the 2.2 μm DIRBE sky map from which the emission from the IPD cloud has been subtracted, we create a spatial template of the Galactic stellar contribution to the diffuse infrared sky. This template is then used to subtract the contribution of the diffuse Galactic stellar emission from the IPD emission-subtracted DIRBE sky maps at 1.25, 3.5, and 4.9 μm. The DIRBE 100 μm data are used to estimate the small contribution of emission from interstellar dust at 3.5 and 4.9 μm. Our method significantly reduces the errors associated with the subtraction of Galactic starlight, leaving only the IPD emission component as the primary obstacle to the detection of the CIB at these wavelengths. The analysis leads to a tentative detection of the CIB at 3.5 μm with an intensity of νIν={9.9+0.312[ν0ICIB(ν0)-7.4]} ± 2.9 nW m−2 sr−1, where ν0ICIB(ν0) is the CIB intensity at 2.2 μm in units of nW m−2 sr−1. The analysis also yields new upper limits (95% confidence limit) on the CIB at 1.25 and 4.9 μm of 68 and 36 nW m−2 sr−1, respectively. The cosmological implications of these results are discussed in this Letter.
The Regulation of Mutual Fund Debt

This Article offers the first general examination of mutual fund capital structure regulation under the Investment Company Act of 1940. Such an examination is long overdue, because American mutual funds collectively hold $12 trillion in assets—about as much as the commercial banking industry—and regulation constrains their use of debt capital very tightly. The Article reaches two conclusions: First, the regulation of mutual funds’ capital structure is incoherent. Although we might imagine several purposes for this regulation, such as limiting risks to investors and the financial system and preventing investor confusion, the regulation is not actually consistent with these purposes. It does both too much and too little to achieve them. Second, although at present the only type of security mutual funds can issue is common stock, there is no compelling reason why they should not also be allowed to issue debt securities. Debt securities might benefit investors by offering a safer and more stable alternative to the common stock of money market funds. Unlike shares in money market funds, debt securities could offer fixed interest rates and the safety of senior priorities. Such a proposal is clearly feasible, because mutual funds already borrow from banks and derivative counterparties and they issued debt securities without problems in the era before regulation.
Self-Censorship and the First Amendment

Self-censorship refers to the decision by an individual or group to refrain from speaking and to the decision by a media organization to refrain from publishing information. Whenever an individual or group or the media engages in self-censorship, the values of the First Amendment are compromised, because the public is denied information or the expression of ideas that the public would have received were it not for the self-censorship. It should not be surprising, therefore, that the principles, doctrines and precedents of what I have referred to as “the law of the First Amendment” are designed to prevent self-censorship due to the fear of governmental sanctions against expression. Self-censorship due to the fear of governmental sanctions against expression may be denominated “self-censorship bad.”At the same time, the First Amendment also embodies a right to silence, and the right to remain silent is also a value of the First Amendment. The values embodied in the First Amendment right to silence support self-censorship in the sense that an individual or group may decide to refrain from speaking and the media may decide to refrain from publishing, because they believe that the public interest is better served by the decision to refrain from speaking than by the decision to speak and by the decision to refrain from publishing than by the decision to publish. This form of self-censorship may be denominated “self-censorship good.”In this writing, we will first discuss “self-censorship bad.” Here we will discuss the principles, doctrines and precedents of the First Amendment that are designed to prevent self-censorship due to the fear of governmental sanctions against expression. We will see that in their totality, these principles, doctrines and precedents comprise a major part of the “law of the First Amendment,” and stand as a bulwark against “self-censorship bad.” We will then discuss “self-censorship good” in the context of media organizations exercising their editorial discretion to refuse to publish certain information. Here will use two examples. The first is the refusal of the media to identify victims of rape and other sexual offenses. The second is the refusal of the media to disclose certain information on ground that the disclosure of the information would cause serious harm to the national security. In this connection, we will review at length the process by which the media makes the decision to refuse to disclose information on national security grounds. We will conclude by relating “self-censorship bad” and “self-censorship good” to the values of the First Amendment and the function of the First Amendment in the Nation’s constitutional system.
Force Reduction, Base Closure, and the Indirect Effects of Military Installations on Local Employment Growth

Abstract This study examines the indirect effects of military installations on county–level private employment, and specifically the special cases of base closure under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) proceedings of 1988, 1991, 1993, and 1995. Local employment impacts are considered within a partial adjustment construct of the changes model, a specification that facilitates the decomposition of defense personnel changes into their positive, negative, and BRAC–related components. The latter two components are subsequently examined for asymmetric effects attributable to ordinary force drawdown on the one hand, and base closure on the other. Also considered are the specific effects of direct federal assistance as well as facilities conversion and reutilization within BRAC communities.
Privacy Revisited: GPS Tracking as Search and Seizure

Part I of this Article discusses the facts in People v. Weaver, the majority and dissenting opinions in the Appellate Division, Third Department, and the majority and dissenting opinions in the Court of Appeals. Part II addresses the question that has yet to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court - whether GPS tracking of a vehicle by law enforcement constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. Part III addresses the separate question that the Court of Appeals did not address - whether the surreptitious attachment of a GPS device to a vehicle constitutes a seizure under the Fourth Amendment. The Article concludes that law enforcement’s use of a GPS device to track the movements of a vehicle continuously for an extended period of time is a serious intrusion into a motorist’s reasonable expectation of privacy that constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, although the issue is somewhat murkier, the attachment of the GPS to a vehicle may constitute a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.
Market orientation, knowledge competence, and innovation

This study focuses on two dimensions of market orientation and the corresponding dimensions of market knowledge competence: i.e., the customer and competitor dimensions. We examine whether customer and competitor orientations are transmuted into market-based innovation either directly, or through customer and competitor knowledge competencies indirectly. The findings support that knowledge competencies are indeed mediators of the positive relationships between orientations and market-based innovation. Also, market-based innovation mediates the positive relationships between customer and competitor knowledge competencies and overall firm performance. A cross-country comparison reveals that, in the U.S. as compared to Chinese firms, customer (or competitor) orientation leads to both higher customer (or competitor) knowledge competence and enhanced market-based innovations; in other words, the model's relationship strengths are greater in U.S. firms, indicating that they are better able to leverage customer (or competitor) orientation to obtain performance consequences
Valuing a homeland security policy: Countermeasures for the threats from shoulder mounted missiles

This paper reports estimates for the ex ante tradeoffs for three specific homeland security policies that all address a terrorist attack on commercial aircraft with shoulder mounted missiles. Our analysis focuses on the willingness to pay for anti-missile laser jamming countermeasures mounted on commercial aircraft compared with two other policies as well as the prospect of remaining with the status quo. Our findings are based a stated preference conjoint survey conducted in 2006 and administered to a sample from Knowledge Networks’ national internet panel. The estimates range from $100 to $220 annually per household. Von Winterfeldt and O’Sullivan’s (2006) analysis of the same laser jamming plan suggests that the countermeasures would be preferred if economic losses are above $74 billion, the probability of attack is larger than 0.37 in 10 years, and if the cost of the measures is less than about $14 billion. Our results imply that, using the most conservative of our estimates, a program with a cost consistent with their thresholds would yield significant aggregate net benefits.
FORGING A NEW IDENTITY: THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF DIVERSITY IN CIVIL WAR COMBAT UNITS FOR BLACK SLAVES AND FREEMEN

By the end of the Civil War 186,017 black men had served in the Union Army, roughly three-quarters of whom were former slaves. Because most black soldiers were illiterate farm workers, the war exposed them to a much broader world. Their wartime experience depended upon their peers, their commanding officers, and where their regiment toured and affected their later life outcomes. In the short run the combat units benefited from company homogeneity, which built social capital and minimized shirking, but in the long run men's human capital and acquisition of information was best improved by serving in example, service in World War II and the Vietnam War lowered later earnings because of lost labor market experience, whereas employment during mobilization for World War II permanently raised women's labor force participation rates and lowered both men's and women's wages because of the increase in women's labor supply.' Less is known about the effects of past wars. Brevet Major General Alving C. Voris wrote that the Civil War "has greatly interrupted my line of business."2 Other soldiers, however, may have gained from their Civil War service because it exposed them to a much broader world. This was particularly true for black soldiers, many of whom where illiterate farm workers when they entered the army and over three-quarters
On the Wings of a Fantasy

Sociologist Timothy McGettigan argues that science is the most effective means ever invented to transform fantasies into reality. He discusses how DARPA stimulates scientific progress by challenging scientists to pursue fantasies, and nowhere is this better illustrated than in the 100 Year Starship project.
Structural reform litigation: remedial bargaining and bureaucratic drift

Initiated by interest groups representing the interest of a class of agency clients, structural reform litigation shapes the administration of important policy domains, particularly in the social s...
Managing new‐style currency crises: the swan diagram approach revisited

The new-style currency crises that have afflicted a number of developing and emerging economies of late are characterised by sudden stops in capital inflows and adverse balance sheet effects. Given the potential high costs of these crises, there remains an ongoing debate on how they might best be managed when they do arise. This paper argues that the age-old Swan diagram, appropriately modified, is able to provide useful insights into how a country might manage a new-style crisis via a combination of adjustment (which involves expenditure switching and reducing polices) and financing. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.