cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
What judges and lawyers think about the testimony of mental health experts: a survey of the courts and bar.

The testimony of mental health experts is often important evidence considered by criminal courts in determining issues arising throughout the adjudicative process, but not all evidence provided by experts is equally valid or probative. Using a hypothetical insanity defense case, we compared the preferences of Virginia judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys for different types of forensic mental health evidence, including descriptive and diagnostic testimony, testimony about relevant research and actuarial data, and ultimate issue testimony. In addition, we determined their preferences for different types of mental health professionals. Four key findings emerged. First, many participants preferred that psychiatrists, rather than psychologists or other mental health professionals, conduct forensic evaluations for the court. Second, while participants were interested in most types of mental health evidence, they were primarily interested in clinical diagnosis, followed by an analysis of whether the condition met the relevant legal threshold, and an ultimate opinion on the legal issue. Third, participants were less interested in research or actuarial evidence. Fourth, participants differed in their evidentiary preferences in ways that reflect their respective roles in the adversary system. The findings suggest that while courts and attorneys find traditional clinical testimony useful in criminal cases, they also favor ultimate issue testimony, and view research data or statistically based information as less helpful. Mental health professionals should consider how to educate the courts and bar about the dangers inherent in over-reliance on the conclusory legal testimony of mental health experts, the utility of scientific data as such information becomes more routinely introduced as evidence at trial, and the expertise available from various mental health professionals.
Financial reporting and firm valuation: relevance lost or relevance regained?

In this study, I examine whether balance sheet and income statement numbers have lost or regained their relevance over the last 30 years. Institutional and macroeconomic factors like the global tre...
Curvature-Driven Wrinkling of Thin Elastic Shells

How much energy does it take to stamp a thin elastic shell flat? Motivated by recent experiments on the wrinkling patterns of floating shells, we develop a rigorous method via $$\Gamma $$ -convergence for answering this question to leading order in the shell’s thickness and other small parameters. The observed patterns involve “ordered” regions of well-defined wrinkles alongside “disordered” regions whose local features are less robust; as little to no tension is applied, the preference for order is not a priori clear. Rescaling by the energy of a typical pattern, we derive a limiting variational problem for the effective displacement of the shell. It asks, in a linearized way, to cover up a maximum area with a length-shortening map to the plane. Convex analysis yields a boundary value problem characterizing the accompanying patterns via their defect measures. Partial uniqueness and regularity theorems follow from the method of characteristics on the ordered part of the shell. In this way, we can deduce from the principle of minimum energy the leading order features of stamped elastic shells.
Can bio‐inspired information processing steps be realized as synthetic biochemical processes?

We consider possible designs and experimental realizations in synthesized rather than naturally occurring biochemical systems of a selection of basic bio-inspired information processing steps. These include feed-forward loops, which have been identified as the most common information processing motifs in many natural pathways in cellular functioning, and memory-involving processes, specifically, associative memory. Such systems should not be designed to literally mimic nature. Rather, we can be guided by nature's mechanisms for experimenting with new information/signal processing steps which are based on coupled biochemical reactions, but are vastly simpler than natural processes, and which will provide tools for the long-term goal of understanding and harnessing nature's information processing paradigm. Our biochemical processes of choice are enzymatic cascades because of their compatibility with physiological processes in vivo and with electronics (e.g., electrodes) in vitro allowing for networking and interfacing of enzyme-catalyzed processes with other chemical and biochemical reactions. In addition to designing and realizing feed-forward loops and other processes, one has to develop approaches to probe their response to external control of the time-dependence of the input(s), by measuring the resulting time-dependence of the output. The goal will be to demonstrate the expected features, for example, the delayed response and stabilizing effect of the feed-forward loops.
The Impact of Physical Education on Obesity among Elementary School Children

In response to the dramatic rise in childhood obesity, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other organizations have advocated increasing the amount of time that elementary school children spend in physical education (PE) classes. However, little is known about the effect of PE on child weight. This paper measures that effect by instrumenting for child PE time with the state's mandated minimum number of minutes of PE, using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) for 1998-2004. Results from IV models indicate that PE lowers BMI z-score and reduces the probability of obesity among 5th graders. This effect is concentrated among boys; we find evidence that this gender difference is partly attributable to PE being a complement with other physical activity for boys, whereas they are substitutes for girls. This represents some of the first evidence of a causal effect of PE on youth obesity, and thus offers at least some support for the assumptions behind the CDC recommendations. We find no evidence that increased PE time crowds out time in academic courses or has spillovers to achievement test scores.
Interlocutory Review by Agreement of the Parties: A Preliminary Analysis

Although the nineteenth century’s final judgment rule no longer represents an absolute barrier to interlocutory appellate review, scholars disagree about what should take its place. Some favor a regime of discretionary interlocutory review, with power conferred on appellate courts to select issues that warrant intervention. Others reject discretionary review as a waste of appellate resources and call upon the rule makers to identify specific categories of non-final orders that always warrant review. While the Supreme Court’s collateral order doctrine bears some similarity to this process of categorization, the Court may have called a halt to the judicial recognition of new categories in its 2009 decision in Mohawk Industries, Inc. v. Carpenter. In this Article, we suggest a new approach to interlocutory review that combines elements of discretion and categorization. We argue that the district court should be empowered to certify a question for interlocutory review (categorically) whenever the parties to the litigation so agree (in the exercise of joint discretion). Drawing on the case-selection literature, we show that the parties will often share a financial interest in interlocutory review where they recognize that a decisive issue of law will survive any trial court disposition. Where the costs of preparing the case for trial are substantial and the risks of appellate invalidation significant, the parties have more to gain than lose through appellate review. What’s more, the orders chosen by agreement of the parties make good candidates for immediate appellate review. Agreed-upon review will occur only as to issues that the parties regard as presenting close questions that the
Inclusion Through Exclusion: Explosion or Implosion?

This essay seeks to destabilise some of the nationalist and racial premises of conventional discourses and debates surrounding "inclusion" and "exclusion," with particular reference to their currency for the politics of (im)migration (and race) in contemporary Europe. This interrogation of those presuppositions unfolds through a critique of the complacencies and complicities of Jurgen Habermas's remarks on "multiculturalism," not so much in order to contribute to any presumably exhaustive dissection of Habermas's philosophical corpus, as such, but rather because his discourse around these preoccupations seems highly symptomatic and thus revelatory of the larger malaise with which this thematic issue is concerned.
Online or in Person? Examining College Decisions to Reopen during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Fall 2020

When coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became a major impediment to face-to-face college instruction in spring 2020, most teaching went online. Over the summer, colleges had to make difficult dec...
London calling: Nonlinear mean reversion across national stock markets

Abstract This paper revisits empirical evidence of mean reversion of relative stock prices in international stock markets. We implement a strand of univariate and panel unit root tests for linear and nonlinear models of 18 national stock indices from 1969 to 2016. Our major findings are as follows. First, we find strong evidence of nonlinear mean reversion of the relative stock price with the UK index as the reference, calling attention to the stock index in the UK, but not with the US index. Our results imply an important role of the local common factor in the European stock markets. Second, panel tests yield no evidence of linear and nonlinear stationarity when the cross-section dependence is considered, which provides conflicting results from those of the univariate tests. Last, we show how to understand these results via dynamic factor analysis. When the stationary common factor dominates nonstationary idiosyncratic components in small samples, panel tests that filter out the stationary common factor may yield evidence against the stationarity null hypothesis in finite samples. We corroborate this conjecture via extensive Monte Carlo simulations.
Large shareholders and credit ratings

Abstract This paper addresses regulatory concerns that large shareholders of credit rating agencies can influence the rating process. Unlike Standard & Poor's, which is a privately held division of McGraw-Hill, Moody's is a public company listed on the NYSE. From 2001 to 2010, Moody's has two shareholders, Berkshire Hathaway and Davis Selected Advisors, which collectively own about 23.5% of Moody's. Moody's ratings on bonds issued by important investee firms of these two stable large shareholders are more favorable relative to S&P, as well as Fitch, ratings. We exploit Moody's initial public offering in 2000 to address endogeneity and to mitigate concerns that the results are driven by issuer characteristics or by the greater informativeness of Moody's ratings. S&P's parent, McGraw-Hill, has a large shareholder for much less time, and some weak evidence exists that S&P ratings are relatively more favorable toward the owners of McGraw-Hill. These findings are consistent with regulatory concerns about the ownership and governance of rating agencies, especially those that are publicly listed.
Unconstrained strategies and the variance-kurtosis trade-off

In this article, we study unconstrained strategies through a respecification of classic mean-variance utility and, as a reference implementation, a long-only strategy based on Canadian and US bond markets. First, we capture the underlying economic forces that drive benchmark indices in the two economies as orthogonal components of yields. We find that bond indices in the two markets are sensitive to components that account for lesser total yield variability. Next, we develop a new polynomial utility function that captures the kurtosis effects found in the sensitivities to lower-eigenvector components. In our unconstrained strategy, excess kurtosis triggers portfolio adjustments and the resulting returns outperform those of traditional mean-variance optimization. The respecified utility function introduces iso-risk contour lines that account for abrupt adjustments of portfolios to eigenvectors of hidden influence.
Management compensation and the managerial labor market

Abstract The papers in this volume and briefly summarized in this introduction document that: (1) executive compensation is positively related to share price performance: (2) poor firm performance is associated with increased executive turnover; (3) managers choose accounting accruals in ways that increase the value of their bonus awards; (4) the adoption of new short- and long-term executive compensation plans and golden parachutes are associated with positive share price reactions; (5) the death of a firm's founder is associated with positive share price reactions; and (6) managers are less likely to make merger bids that lower their stock prices when they hold more stock in their firm. These findings are interpreted as generally supporting the view that executive compensation packages help align managers' and shareholders' interests.
Making Disclosure Work for Start-Up Employees

Equity-based compensation of startup employees is attracting growing and skeptical attention in academia and the media. Legal and finance scholars have raised concerns that employees are misinformed regarding the value of their equity grants in a manner that could distort their employment and investment decisions. This Article addresses these emerging concerns by articulating a theoretical and practical framework for the regulation of start-up employees’ human capital investments. This framework balances the confidentiality interests of employers with employees’ need for ongoing and realistic valuation of the return on their labor. Start-ups commonly rely on Rule 701 of the Securities Act to grant equity-based compensation to their employees without registering these securities with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This Article describes the flaws of the current regulation and proposes concrete amendments including (1) replacing the requirement to disclose the issuer’s financial statements with a requirement to disclose fair market valuation and exit waterfall analysis; (2) changing the threshold that triggers the enhanced disclosure requirement from when the company issues equity-based compensation exceeding $10 million within a twelve month period, to when the company issues securities to at least 100 employees, and these securities aggregately convey over 10% ownership in any class of shares; and (3) advancing the timing of the disclosure from its current post-employment stage to the offer letter stage.
Hyper-incarceration as a Multidimensional Attack: Replying to Angela Harris Through The Wire

Angela Harris’s article in this symposium makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of hyper-incarceration. She argues, quite persuasively, that the term “gender violence” should be understood broadly to include men’s individual and structural violence against other men. She then considers what we ought to do about the incredible increase in incarceration, mostly of racial minority men, over the past 40 years. She terms this “mass incarceration” and argues that it is best dealt with by a shift from “restorative justice” to “transformative justice.” Whereas restorative justice emphasizes bringing together various elements of the community to repair the harm done by a crime, transformative justice goes further by emphasizing the racist and heteropatriarchal forces leading to the crime and preventing the healing of both the harm doer and communities.It is hard to criticize Angela Harris. She is, after all, a founder of critical race theory and critical race feminism. Her article in this symposium demonstrates the depth of her insights and clarity of her expression. Nonetheless, I want to challenge Harris on one point and extend her analysis on another. First, for reasons I will explain, I believe it is crucial for scholars to start referring to so-called “mass incarceration” as “hyper-incarceration.” Second, I want to extend Harris’s analysis of the multidimensionality of identities by means of a case study of how class operates during the drug war era, as depicted in the critically acclaimed HBO drama The Wire.To establish those arguments, this essay proceeds as follows. Part I explains the importance of the term “hyper-incarceration.” Part II defines a multidimensional masculinities approach to the relationships among identities, culture, and law. Part III uses an analysis of The Wire to argue that identity theorists should pay greater attention to capitalism. Part IV concludes that addressing hyper-incarceration requires simultaneously reducing the stigma attached to racial minority men and rebuilding economic structures in the inner-city.
A search cost model of obfuscation

This article develops models in which obfuscation is individually rational for oligopolistic firms. Firms sell a homogeneous good to rational consumers who incur search costs to learn prices. Search costs are endogenized by allowing obfuscation—firms have an unobservable action that increases the time needed to learn their price. One model involves search costs convex in shopping time. We show that slight convexity can dramatically alter the equilibrium price distribution. A second model examines an informational linkage between current and future search costs: consumers are uncertain about a component of search costs. Here, a signal-jamming mechanism can lead to equilibrium obfuscation.
Stable Tariffs and Retaliations

A two-country, two-commodity model of trade is considered to reformulate the tariff retaliations. It is known that tariff retaliations lead to a Nash-equilibrium, a non-free-trade outcome. However, the negotiation process underlying the Nash equilibrium does not capture the notion of retaliation properly. We use the “contingent threat situation” to reformulate tariff retaliations. In this context, we show that the free trade is a stable outcome. More surprisingly, this interesting result is also valid for the “Johnson case,” where one country is better off under the tariff-ridden Nash equilibrium compared to free trade.
Do Effects of Client Preference on Accounting Professionals' Information Search and Subsequent Judgments Persist with High Practice Risk?

Prior research indicates that audit and tax professionals' judgments are influenced by their client's preferences, both directly and indirectly (via information search). In an experiment with tax professionals as participants, we examine whether high practice risk (i.e., exposure to monetary and nonmonetary costs of making inappropriate recommendations) mitigates these effects. We find that, when facing a client with low practice risk, professionals' search is biased in a manner that leads judgments to be consistent with client preference; however, search is less biased when facing a client with high practice risk, and resulting judgments are less consistent with client preference. We also find that, after controlling for the impact of information search, professionals tend to adjust their recommendations away from the client‐preferred position, regardless of practice risk. This study sheds light on the direct and indirect paths by which client preference and practice risk affect professionals' judgments.
The impact of monetary policy on local housing markets: Do regulations matter?

This paper shows that monetary policy has uneven impacts on local housing markets, and that the magnitude of the impacts are correlated with housing supply regulations. We apply the linearized present value model, which allows the log rent–price ratio to be decomposed into the expected present values of all future real interests rates, real housing premia, and real rent growth, to the housing markets in 23 US metropolitan statistical areas. Based on the indirect inference bias-corrected VAR estimates, we find that MSAs that are more regulated have (i) a higher variance in the log rent–price ratio, (ii) a larger share of the variance explained by real interest rate, and (iii) a stronger impulse response of house price to the real interest rate shock.
Common Law, Civil Law, and the Challenge from Federalism

This short article hast two parts. The first one consists of biographical considerations about the life of the remarkable, late Saul Litvinoff, formerly a professor of law at Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University. The bulk of the article explores the challenge posed by federalism for civil law jurisdictions. The argument is made that the diversity of legislations in a federal country belonging to the civil law world (such as Argentina) conspires against a desirable uniformity in the law.
Network Interconnection and Takings

Seeking to encourage competitive markets or further other policies, courts and regulators have mandated interconnection between telephone networks and other communications networks. For instance, courts and regulators mandated interconnection between AT&T and the competitive long-distance companies in the 1980s and between the incumbent Bell monopolists and the competitive local exchanges under the 1996 Telecommunications Act. It is generally assumed that these mandatory interconnection regimes require intercarrier payments to avoid a taking under the Fifth Amendment. This legal belief has led in part to burdensome regulatory access charge and intercarrier payment regimes. In light of recent economic proposals claiming that under some conditions efficient interconnection requires no intercarrier payments, this Article asks whether interconnection without payment constitutes a taking. Drawing on the history of common carriage law and examining the historical property rights of telephone and other communications industries, the Article concludes that interconnection without payment can be consistent with constitutional requirements.
A Broad Attack on Overbreadth

Under the free speech overbreadth doctrine, a litigant is allowed to bring a facial challenge to a statute despite the fact that the application of the statute to the litigant under the facts of the case does not violate the Constitution. The litigant argues that the entire statute should be struck down because the statute could be applied unconstitutionally in certain hypothetical fact patterns. The overbreadth doctrine is a dramatic departure from “the traditional rules governing constitutional adjudication.” The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that “constitutional rights are personal and may not be asserted vicariously.” However, under the overbreadth doctrine a litigant is allowed to challenge the constitutionality of a statute even if the application of the statute to the litigant does not violate the litigant's personal constitutional rights. Furthermore, courts typically avoid, if possible, considering the constitutionality of a statute on its face. Yet, under the overbreadth doctrine courts aggressively pursue the opportunity to consider whether the statute in question should be struck down in its entirety, even though the case could theoretically be decided by ruling that the litigant's constitutional right to freedom of speech was not violated. Finally, although there is presently much discussion over the proper standard for a court to apply when it considers a facial attack on a statute, it is clear that the standard used by the courts in considering a facial attack under the overbreadth doctrine is substantially different than the normal standard for facial challenges. Since the relatively recent adoption of the free speech overbreadth doctrine, the Supreme Court has struggled to apply the doctrine, often attempting to limit the doctrine by enacting various limitations on when it should be applied. Meanwhile, academic commentators have generally applauded the doctrine; some have even proposed that the doctrine be extended to cases involving other constitutional rights beyond freedom of speech. There is extensive debate, both in the courts and by commentators, over whether the Supreme Court has already extended the overbreadth doctrine to abortion cases. Recently, the Court seemed to concede that it has applied an overbreadth analysis in contexts outside the Free Speech Clause. There has been no academic discussion calling for the Supreme Court to abandon the overbreadth doctrine. That is the purpose of this Article.
The Discursive Failure in Comparative Tax Law

Tax comparatists tend to bemoan the grim status of their chosen field. Complaints are aimed both at the scarcity of decent comparative legal tax scholarship, and at the lack of a theoretical foundation for the study of comparative tax law. The purpose of this Article is to portray a more sanguine, yet critical, view of this field. Sanguine, since a sympathetic reading of contemporary comparative tax scholarship demonstrates that there is more than enough such scholarship to generate a lively debate on comparative tax works and their methodologies. Critical, since all of these works fail to produce even the faintest form of paradigmatic discourse. The result is that contemporary academic literature in comparative tax law contains strongly conflicting arguments, running parallel courses, without ever engaging each other. In this Article, I try to construct a framework for a coherent and vigorous academic discourse on comparative taxation. I do so by placing existing comparative tax scholarship in the context of pivotal debates within general comparative law, and point out the abundant contradicting arguments in the field of comparative tax law. One cannot help but wonder how is it that tax comparatists have failed to support or rebut each other’s positions. One possible reason for this lack of engagement is perhaps that it enables tax comparatists to rest comfortably in the warm confines of their own scholarship without being bothered by questions regarding their methodological — and consequently their ideological - stances. Finally, for the sake of a debate, I offer my own views by responding to a recent article authored by Carlo Garbarino.
Did the Glorious Revolution contribute to the transport revolution? Evidence from investment in roads and rivers

Transport infrastructure investment increased substantially in Britain between the seventeenth and eighteenth century. This paper argues that the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 contributed to transportation investment by reducing uncertainty about the security of improvement rights. It shows that road and river investment was low in the 1600s when several undertakers had their rights violated by major political changes or decrees from the King. It also shows that investment permanently increased after the Glorious Revolution when there was a lower likelihood that undertakers had their rights voided by acts. Together the evidence suggests that the political and institutional changes following Glorious Revolution made rights to improve infrastructure more secure and that promoters and investors responded to greater security by proposing and financing more projects.
Systemic risk mitigation in financial networks

Abstract We propose a multi-period clearing framework, where the level of systemic risk is mitigated through the provision of liquidity assistance. The interbank liability network evolves stochastically over time, and assets of defaulted banks are sold to qualified banks within the network through a first-price sealed-bid auction. We find that policies targeting systemically important banks are more effective in core-periphery network structures, whereas those maximizing the total liquidity in the system are preferred in random network configurations. We assess sensitivity of systemic risk to variations in interbank liabilities as well as to their correlation structure.
The Demand for Financial Statements in an Unregulated Environment: An Examination of the Production and Use of Financial Statements by Privately Held Small Businesses

ABSTRACT: We examine the financial reporting practices of small privately held businesses that are not subject to SEC regulation. Specifically, we determine the factors associated with the production and use of financial statements for firms that have discretion in the preparation of financial statements and do not face the demands of public equity markets. In addition, for firms that prepare financial statements, we determine the factors associated with the sophistication of the financial statements in terms of whether the financials are compiled, reviewed, and/or audited by a professional accountant and whether the firm produces accrual‐based financial statements. Finally, we examine the potential benefits afforded firms producing financial statements, having audited financial statements, and having accrual‐based financial statements. We find that firms with audited financial statements benefit in the form of greater access to credit and that firms with accrual‐based financial statements benefit in the ...
REIT Short Sales and Return Predictability

We examine REIT short sale transactions and show REITs are shorted less frequently than non-REITs. Results also show short sellers are less able to predict negative future returns for REITs, relative to non-REITs, which is consistent with increased pricing efficiency for REITs and suggests REIT assets are more transparent. In a broader context, these results suggest differences in transparency across asset types influence the effectiveness of short selling. Results showing REIT short sellers are contrarian imply traders target REITs that are performing well instead of underperforming REITs, suggesting restrictions on REIT short sales should be re-evaluated.
Stochastic Taxation and Asset Pricing in Dynamic General Equilibrium

Abstract Tax rates have fluctuated considerably since federal income taxes were introduced in the U.S. in 1913. This paper analyzes the effects of stochastic taxation on asset prices in a dynamic general equilibrium model. Stochastic taxation affects the after-tax returns of both risky and safe assets. Whenever taxes change, bond and equity prices adjust to clear the asset markets. These price adjustments affect assets with long durations, such as equities and long-term bonds, more than short-term assets. Under plausible conditions, investors require higher term and equity premia as compensation for the risk introduced by tax changes.
Savings and the terms of trade under borrowing constraints

The authors examine the extent to which permanent terms-of-trade shocks have an asymmetric effect on private savings. Using a simple three-period model, they show that if households expect to face binding constraints on borrowing in bad states of nature (when the economy is in a long trough rather than a sharp peak). Savings rates will respond asymmetrically to favorable movements in the permanent component of the terms of trade - in contrast with the predictions of conventional consumption-smoothing models. They test the asymmetric effects of terms-of-trade disturbances using an econometric model that controls for various standard determinants of private savings. The results - based on panel data for non-oil commodity exporters of Sub-Saharan Africa for 1980-96 (a group of countries for which movements in the terms of trade have traditionally represented a key source of macroeconomic shocks) - indicate that increases in the permanent component of the terms of trade (measured using three alternative filtering techniques) indeed tend to be associated with higher rates of private savings.
Reputation Nation: Law in an Era of Ubiquitous Personal Information

INTRODUCTION 1668 I. THE REPUTATION REVOLUTION AND THE LAW 1670 A . Existing Scholarship on Consumer Information and Discrimination ........ 1675 B. Landlord-Tenant Law 1677 C. Antidiscrimination Law 1682 D. Jury Selection 1688 E. Medical Diagnosis and Treatment 1695 F. Insurance 1698 G. Immigration Law 1699 H. Consumer Protection Law 1706 II. WHEN TO USE INFORMATION POLICY? 1710 A. Of Carrots, Sticks, Curtains, and Search Lights 1711 B. Animus-Based Discriminators and Pretext 1712 C. False Information 1713 D. Too Much Reputation 1717 E. Kings in Disguise 1719 F. Who Is the Appropriate Information Provider? 1720 III. A NORMATIVE FRAMEWORK 1723 A. Some Thoughts About the Desirability of an Information Strategy 1724 B. Incidence 1726 C. Social Meaning 1730 D. Price Discrimination 1732 E. The "Am I Hot or Not?" Society 1734 CONCLUSION 1736 INTRODUCTION It is a June evening in the City of Light, and the sun is setting on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore. As the last remaining customers in a posh boutique finish their browsing and stride toward the cashiers, a beleaguered saleswoman places a "closed" sign in the window. Meanwhile, other employees begin readying the facilities for a private shopping event that is to occur momentarily. Just then, a small group of American tourists approaches the front door, seeking admittance. The saleswoman refuses to let them in, insisting that the store is closed, notwithstanding the presence of customers inside. Harsh words are spoken, pleas for admittance are ignored, and the humiliated Americans eventually retreat to their hotel rooms clutching unspent Euros. This episode, or something like it, surely occurs each day in Paris. It's hardly news. But on the evening in question, the episode generated international headlines, and for good reason. The rebuffed tourists included Oprah Winfrey, one of America's most famous, beloved, and wealthy women.1 Pundits debated whether race and national origin played a part in the saleswoman's behavior and argued over whether it was reasonable for Oprah and her entourage to request admittance after normal business hours. …
Employees’ Subjective Valuations of Their Stock Options: Evidence on the Distribution of Valuations and the Use of Simple Anchors*

Although prior research presents employees‘ subjective valuations of their stock options as being either below or above firms‘ opportunity cost of issuing options, we examine subjective valuations in terms of their distribution around cost. We argue that variation of subjective valuations within this distribution is at least partly attributable to employees‘ failure to fully incorporate the timevalue component of options and their tendency to, instead, anchor on readily-available components of option value. Using both ―real-world‖ and experiment data, we show that a significant proportion of both employees (30 percent) and experiment participants (47 percent) anchor on three readily-available values, two of which lie below cost (zero value, intrinsic value) and one of which lies above (stock price). We further find that a stock option education program aimed at mitigating the tendency to disregard the time-value component leads to a significant change in valuations (in terms of both median values and dispersion) and lower reliance on simple anchors. Education in the form of cognitive feedback has a greater effect on subjective valuations of additional options with differing characteristics as compared to education in the form of outcome feedback on the original option holdings.
The Importance of Circulating and Presenting Manuscripts: Evidence from the Accounting Literature

Editors exhort authors to circulate and present their working papers to colleagues before submitting them to journals (Zimmerman 1989; Green et al. 2002). Authors heeding such advice are said to increase the likelihood of getting their work published and making their research, once published, more influential (Zimmerman 1989). While evidence regarding these matters is of keen importance to authors, editors, and administrators, no research exists showing that circulating and presenting manuscripts increases their probability of being accepted in accounting journals or, when published, their influence on stimulating other research. I present such evidence by perusing acknowledgments in premier accounting journals. I examine the relation between circulating and presenting manuscripts and the probability of acceptance by relating acknowledgments of 305 papers submitted to The Accounting Review during June 2002–May 2003 to the editor's reject versus revise and resubmit decision. I examine the relation between ...
Rebuilding the Closet: Bowers v. Hardwick, Lawrence v. Texas, and the Mismeasure of Homosexual Historiography

In an effort to engage in such specification, this paper will first address the mischaracterization of history in Bowers, which portrays the historic legal and ecclesiastical penalties of what the Court labels as "homosexual activities" as a continuous, unitary narrative extending from the halls of the Emperors Theodosius and Justinian to the legislative assembly rooms of Georgia and Texas. This illusory perspective portrays the criminalization of sodomy (and therefore the identity of homosexuality itself) as an impossible cultural continuum. The impossibility of this continuum lies not only in its implicit assumption that states and other lawmaking entities throughout history shared the same cultural, moral, religious, and legal principles, but also in its unqualified adoption of the secular state as the successor to religious authority and the seamless secular synthesizing of penitential prohibitions against sexual sin into secular prohibition against sexual crime. This paper will not only demonstrate that the Bowers conception of history as a continuum is in reality a series of discrete communal units, but will also show that the confines of this continuum emphasize only the horizontal progression of time, quashing significant differences in the authority of the entities who enact the laws and more importantly in the laws themselves. This paper will then elaborate upon other broader difficulties with the Bowers decision - difficulties that are characteristic of many homosexual historiographies. The first of these conundrums, the erroneous assumption that sodomy statutes of past centuries were a former species of anti-homosexual legislation, arises from the historic implications of the Court's conflation of homosexual status with the act of sodomy. The second and third of these topics, the collapse of morality into legality and the subsequent collapse of the legal into the social, also necessarily follow from the Court's collapse of status into act. Each of these three conflated concepts will be addressed in the context of the prior historical discussion of legislation prohibiting same-sex activity from Republican Rome to modern America. The paper will then describe how Bowers' faulty historiography was not merely a series of uninformed generalizations but a conscious strategy dictated by the Court's originalist platform that was developed to uphold the majority's interpretation of Georgia's anti-sodomy statute. Finally, the paper will conclude by explicating what impact the language of Lawrence v. Texas will have on future constructions of homosexuality and its histories.
Legal systems, information asymmetry, and firm boundaries: Cross-border choices to diversify through mergers, joint ventures, or strategic alliances

We examine how the organizational structure for diversification decisions involving firms from different countries is affected by the institutional context of the target country. Our theoretical analysis suggests that, as legal systems improve and information asymmetry is reduced, a transition from relational, “firm-like” arrangements to arm's length, “market-like” arrangements takes place. If institutions continue to improve, eventually a threshold is crossed after which arm's length deals edge out internal firm contracting. We provide an empirical test of the model using the sample of international strategic alliances, joint ventures and cross-border mergers involving US firms. Our empirical findings support the predictions of the theory. In addition, we document that US companies entering organizational structures predicted by our model are associated with greater abnormal returns around deal announcements.
Political Advocacy By Nonprofit Organizations: A Strategic Management Explanation

Nonprofit organizations serve as a voice for their constituent publics in the political arena, even though advocacy practices remain outside their core mission. Some nonprofits embrace their advocacy roles and engage in these activities frequently, while others choose to avoid these activities altogether. What organizational capacities enable nonprofits to pursue an advocacy agenda? Drawing on theoretical perspectives in organizational behavior, public management, and political science, we propose a strategic management explanation of nonprofit advocacy. Using survey data from nonprofit organizations in Michigan, we test an empirical model in which factors of organizational learning, structure, resource dependence, and resource competitiveness contribute to nonprofits' advocacy activities. Findings suggest that experience with collaborative networking, productive exchange relations with funding principals, representation of lobbying skills at the managerial level, dependence on government resources, and c...
Colonialism and Industrialization: A Critique of Lewis:

This article critiques W. Arthur Lewis’s economic explanation of the division of the world into industrial and agricultural countries. His claim that industrialization in the tropics was held back by small markets and adverse factoral terms of trade is flawed and lacks empirical support. His rejection of the imperialist origins of poverty is poorly argued, and his claim that colonial policies did not differ from policies of sovereign countries is not supported even by his own evidence. He also ignores the strong correlation between loss of sovereignty and poor growth performance.
An Atemporal Microeconomic Theory and an Empirical Test of Price-Induced Technical Progress

An exhaustive comparative statics analysis of a general price taking cost-minimizing model of the firm operating under the influence of price-induced technical progress is carried out from a dual vista. The resulting refutable implications are observable and thus amenable to empirical verification, and take on the form of a symmetric and negative semidefinite matrix. Using data from individual cotton gins in California’s San Joaquin Valley, we empirically test the complete set of implications of the price-induced technical progress theory using both classical and Bayesian statistical procedures. We find that the data are fully consistent with the atemporal, cost-minimizing, price-induced microeconomic theory of technical progress.
Corporate investment and changes in GAAP

This paper investigates whether changes in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) affect corporate investment decisions. Using a sample containing forty nine changes in GAAP, I find that changes in accounting rules affect investment decisions. I then examine two mechanisms through which changes in GAAP affect investment. First, I find that changes in GAAP affect investment, particularly R&D expenditures, when firms have financial covenants that are affected by changes in GAAP. Second, I find evidence suggesting that the process of complying with some changes in GAAP alters managers’ information sets and consequently changes their investment decisions, particularly their capital and R&D expenditures and, to a weaker extent, their acquistion expenditures. This paper contributes to the literature on the real effects of accounting by providing evidence that accounting rules affect investment decisions even when the rule change does not concern the measurement and reporting of investment, and by documenting specific mechanisms through which the relation manifests.
Trends in Corporate Governance

The popular press and scholarly studies have noted a number of trends in corporate governance. This article addresses, from a theoretical perspective, whether these trends are linked. And, if so, how? The article finds that a trend toward greater board diligence will lead, sometimes through subtle or indirect mechanisms, to trends toward more external candidates becoming CEO, shorter tenures for CEOs, more effort/less perquisite consumption by CEOs (even though such behavior is not directly monitored), and greater CEO compensation. An additional prediction is that, under plausible conditions, externally hired CEOs should have shorter tenures, on average, than internally hired CEOs.
Libertarianism and resistance to civil asset forfeiture to the state

This article describes the procedural rules regarding civil asset forfeiture of private property to the state. It argues that domestic civil asset forfeiture to the state is a violation of citizens’ constitutional right to property and examines the problem of asset forfeiture from a libertarian perspective.
A predictive discrete-continuum multiscale model of plasticity with quantified uncertainty

Abstract Multiscale models of materials, consisting of upscaling discrete simulations to continuum models, are unique in their capability to simulate complex materials behavior. The fundamental limitation in multiscale models is the presence of uncertainty in the computational predictions delivered by them. In this work, a sequential multiscale model has been developed, incorporating discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) simulations and a strain gradient plasticity (SGP) model to predict the size effect in plastic deformations of metallic micro-pillars. The DDD simulations include uniaxial compression of micro-pillars with different sizes and over a wide range of initial dislocation densities and spatial distributions of dislocations. An SGP model is employed at the continuum level that accounts for the size-dependency of flow stress and hardening rate. Sequences of uncertainty analyses have been performed to assess the predictive capability of the multiscale model. The variance-based global sensitivity analysis determines the effect of parameter uncertainty on the SGP model prediction. The multiscale model is then constructed by calibrating the continuum model using the data furnished by the DDD simulations. A Bayesian calibration method is implemented to quantify the uncertainty due to microstructural randomness in discrete dislocation simulations (density and spatial distribution of dislocations) on the macroscopic continuum model prediction (size effect in plastic deformation). The outcomes of this study indicate that the discrete-continuum multiscale model can accurately simulate the plastic deformation of micro-pillars, despite the significant uncertainty in the DDD results. Additionally, depending on the macroscopic features represented by the DDD simulations, the SGP model can reliably predict the size effect in plasticity responses of the micropillars with below 10% of error.
Understanding Corporate Compliance and Wrongdoing in Interdisciplinary Context

The prevention of wrongdoing, both civil and criminal, is a growing preoccupation of businesses. The academic study of such compliance and potential wrongdoing is also a growth industry. However, much like a decentralized firm with various subunits that do not communicate efficiently with each other, academic research across fields has remained in various silos. Insights, both empirical and theoretical, in economics, finance, accounting, strategy/management and law often cover similar issues regarding compliance and corporate wrongdoing. While the frameworks, data and specific research questions may vary across disciplines, overall work in one field does not cross over into others to better inform research across each of these fields. This essay introduces new research into the topic of corporate compliance and wrongdoing in interdisciplinary context.
On the elasticities of harvesting rules

Abstract In this paper, we rank the relative importance of the exogenous parameters upon the optimal harvesting size in a stochastic rotation problem. We show that when the tree growth follows geometric Brownian motion, the harvesting size is most elastic to the harvesting cost, followed by the interest rate, and is least elastic to the parameters of tree growth. Similar ranking holds for the linear growth case. In both cases the harvesting size is increasing and concave in the harvesting cost, bounded between two parallel lines. The harvesting decision is made according to a stochastic extension of the Faustmann formula.