cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Nonestablishment under God - The Nonsectarian Principle

Using as a point of reference the Ninth Circuit's assertion in Newdow v. United States Congress that "[a] profession that we are a nation 'under God' is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes," to a profession that we are a nation 'under Jesus,' a nation 'under Vishnu,' a nation 'under Zeus,' or a nation 'under no god,' this essay attempts to disentangle three themes that the modern discourse of religious freedom often conflates, with baneful effect. We can call these the public secularism principle, the neutrality principle, and the nonsectarian principle. The essay argues that the first two of these principles have exercised a pernicious influence over First Amendment jurisprudence: but the third, if it could be extracted so that its own distinctive virtues could be appreciated, might provide valuable mooring for what is at present a deeply disoriented discourse.
Corporate Social Responsibility in a Remedy-Seeking Society: A Public Choice Perspective

This Article applies the lessons of public choice theory to examine corporate social responsibility. The Article adopts a broad definition of corporate social responsibility activism to include both (1) those efforts that seek to convince corporations to voluntarily take into account corporate social responsibility in their own decision-making, and (2) the efforts to alter the legal landscape and expand legal obligations of corporations beyond traditional notions of harm and duty so as to force corporations to invest in interests other than shareholders and profits because they must comply with these new laws. After surveying the corporate social responsibility debate, this Article examines public interest-labeled groups (including corporate social responsibility groups) under a public choice lens and determines that they seek to maximize their budgets, maximize influence, maximize membership, secure their jobs, and in the case of corporate social responsibility sometimes directly effectuate wealth transfers into their organizations or constituencies (e.g., from shareholders to stakeholders). When rent-seeking for legal change is the more efficient use of corporate social responsibility advocates’ limited resources, those groups will invest in the creation of law. This Article pays special attention to a broad definition of rent-seeking that includes the investments made, through precedent-building litigation models, in the creation of legal liability regimes or realistic new threats of legal liability in an effort to obtain leverage over corporations in settlements or other negotiations designed to convince corporations to change behavior. According to studies on settlement dynamics, when novel new litigation theories start to survive motions to dismiss, corporate defendants have more incentives to settle to avoid harm to reputation or brand, in addition to avoiding adverse judgments. The Article concludes using the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) as a case study illustrating how the interest-group dynamic can play out in the development of a corporate social responsibility-driven liability regime. * Professor of Law, Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law. I am grateful for valuable research assistance from William Kelly, comments from Dean Tom Campbell, and the comments and support of Jennifer Spinella. Do Not Delete 3/18/2014 8:16 PM 414 Chapman Law Review [Vol. 17:2
Dr. Livingroom, I Presume

ABSTRACT: This case places students in the context of personal negotiations with a health care provider regarding the price of offered services. This short but rich case is intended to be administered and discussed in a single hour-and-fifteen-minute class session, and enables instruction and discussion on important accounting concepts such as relevance, opportunity cost, breakeven, pricing, and fairness—in a personal-services setting.
BLACK HOLE QUASINORMAL MODE SPECTROSCOPY WITH LISA

The signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) for black hole quasinormal mode sources of low-frequency gravitational waves is estimated using a Monte Carlo approach that replaces the all-sky average approximation. We consider an 11-dimensional parameter space that includes both source and detector parameters. We find that in the black hole mass range M ~ 4-7 × 106 M ☉ the S/N is significantly higher than the S/N for the all-sky average case, as a result of the variation of the spin parameter of the sources. This increased S/N may translate to a higher event rate for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). We also study the directional dependence of the S/N, show at which directions in the sky LISA will have greater response, and identify the LISA blind spots.
Identifying Confirmatory Bias in the Field: Evidence from a Poll of Experts

Laboratory experiments have established the existence of cognitive biases, but their explanatory power in real-world economic settings has been difficult to quantify. We evaluate the extent to which a cognitive bias, confirmatory bias, affects the opinions of experts in a real-world environment. In the Associated Press Top 25 College Football Poll, expert pollsters are tasked with assessing team quality, and their beliefs are treated week to week with game results that serve as signals about an individual team’s quality. We exploit the variation provided by actual game results relative to market expectations to develop a novel regression-discontinuity approach to identify confirmatory bias. We construct a data set that matches more than 20 years of individual game characteristics to poll results and betting market information and show that teams that slightly exceed and barely miss market expectations are exchangeable. The likelihood of winning the game, the average number of points scored by teams and th...
Bayesian Analysis of Stochastic Betas

We propose a mean-reverting stochastic process for the market beta. In a simulation study, the proposed model generates significantly more precise beta estimates than GARCH betas, betas conditioned on aggregate or firm-level variables, and rolling regression betas, even when the true betas are generated based on these competing specifications. Our model significantly improves out-of-sample hedging effectiveness. In asset pricing tests, our model provides substantially stronger support for the conditional CAPM relative to competing beta models and helps resolve asset pricing anomalies such as the size, book-to-market, and idiosyncratic volatility effects in the cross section of stock returns.
Frank Miller's Sin City College Football: A Game to Die for and Other Lessons about the Right of Publicity and Video Games

Table of ContentsI. Introduction 380II. Frank Miller's Sin City College Football: A Game to Die For 382III. Four Challenges 383A. How Will Federal First Amendment Protection Be Balanced Against State Right of Publicity Laws? 383B. How Will a Federal Standard Apply to the Variety of State Publicity Laws? 386C. Will Courts Continue to Treat "Name" and "Likeness" Differently than "Name and Likeness?" 388D. How Much Transformation is Enough Transformation to Warrant Independent Protection for a Second Work? 390IV. Conclusion 396I. IntroductionIn his excellent Note, Garrett Rice proposes a simple one-sentence test as a solution for applying the right of publicity to video games.1 He outlines the history of the right of publicity and discusses the seminal cases, both those prior to and during the video game era.2 He examines the three most commonly used tests, the Rogers test, the predominant use test, and the transformative use test and appropriately rejects the first two outright.3 The Rogers test just was not designed nor intended to apply to something as complex as a video game, and the predominant factors test has been correctly described as "subjective at best, arbitrary at worst."4The transformative use test, developed by the California Supreme Court in Comedy III Productions v. Gary Saderup, Inc.,5 (Rice proposes a "readily identifiable" standard: "A video game violates an individual's right of publicity if a person familiar with the individual would look at a video game character and know immediately that the character is definitively based on the real individual."8 Application of the test compares favorably with existing precedent. Rice applies it to five of the more recent video game cases with good results, yielding the same results as those found by the courts.9There remain, however, some larger issues that cast shadows on this still-developing area of law. I believe that there are four major challenges that still plague the balancing between and among the rights of publicity, the First Amendment, and copyright law.There is a great deal of First Amendment protection for both news reporting about public events, like football games, and for publicly available information, like the statistics generated by a football game.10 How will this federal protection be balanced against state right of publicity laws?State right of publicity laws vary greatly.* 11 Will a federal standard be able to apply to all the variations in these laws?Most right of publicity laws protect one's "name and likeness," and courts have traditionally treated it as one interest. Will courts continue the trend towards considering "name" and "likeness" as separate interests?"12Tests that attempt to balance interests involving the First Amendment and the right of publicity (or the First Amendment and copyright) generally look at how much transformation there is between the original work and the second work. Just how much transformation is enough transformation to warrant independent protection for the second item? …
Agencies Interpreting Courts Interpreting Statutes: The Deference Conundrum of a Divided Supreme Court

Plurality decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court demand interpretation, especially because they tend to occur when the Court faces important but divisive legal issues. Most courts, agencies, and scholars have assumed that federal agencies are in no better position than the lower federal courts when confronted with a potentially precedential Supreme Court plurality decision—that is, that the agency must construe the Justices’ various opinions in search of a controlling rationale. In so doing, however, the agency eschews any claim to Chevron deference, because it is no longer implementing a statute pursuant to congressionally delegated authority. Instead, it is merely an agency interpreting a court. This Article, in contrast, argues that pursuant to the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, federal agencies dealing with a Supreme Court plurality decision regarding either a statute that the agency implements or the agency’s prior interpretation of that statute have another option. In the right circumstances, these post-plurality agencies can invoke their original congressionally delegated authority to implement the statute and issue new regulations that should be entitled to Chevron deference. Postplurality agencies thus face a deference conundrum: they can defer to a fractured Supreme Court decision at the expense of their own claims to interpretive authority, or they can—admittedly with some risk in the next round of judicial review—reclaim interpretive deference for themselves. In assessing the existence of the deference conundrum, the exact character of the plurality decision is important. Thus, this Article includes a typology of Supreme Court plurality decisions involving agency-mediated statutes. When the Chevron/Brand X framework applies, however, it offers agencies the opportunity, and arguably duty, to eliminate the confusion and inconsistency that plurality decisions promote by issuing clarifying and nationally uniform rules. * Attorneys’ Title Professor of Law, Florida State University College of Law, Tallahassee, Florida. Please direct comments to: rcraig@law.fsu.edu. 2 Robin Kundis Craig Spring
Educating Ourselves Towards A Progressive (And Happier) Tax: A Commentary On Griffith's Progressive Taxation And Happiness

This Commentary addresses two questions raised by Professor Thomas D. Griffith's argument that progressive taxation improves people's subjective well-being by increasing their relative income. First, why do so many people oppose progressivity if it would make them happier? Second, can their opinions be changed in order to enhance their well-being by better aligning attitudes and true self-interests? This Commentary provides a dual-fold answer to the first question—opinion polls often overstate opposition to progressive taxation and much of that opposition is false in the sense that it is caused by ignorance, cognitive bias, and inflammatory rhetoric. After explaining why much opposition would disappear if people better understood progressive taxatioti, this Commentary then answers the second question affirmatively by proposing a national tax literacy campaign involving the government, media, and private industry. By increasing the public's knowledge of progressive taxation, such a broad-based educational effort would transform many hostile taxpayers into supportive ones and thereby align their attitudes with their self-interest.
The impact of location on firm growth

This Paper links the performance of new technology firms, measured in terms of growth, to geographic location. We introduce a model of firm growth that is specific to characteristics of the location as well as the firm and industry. The model is estimated using a new dataset identifying the growth performance of small technology-based firms. In fact, firm performance, as measured by employment growth, does appear to be influenced by locational characteristics as well as characteristics specific to the firm and the industry. In particular, the empirical evidence suggests that being located in an agglomeration rich in knowledge resources is more conducive to firm growth than being located in a region that is less endowed with knowledge resources. These results suggest the economic value of location as a conduit for accessing external knowledge resources, which in turn, manifests itself in higher rates of growth.
Global Concepts, Local Rules, Practices of Adjudication and Ronald Dworkin’s Law as Integrity

At the center of Ronald Dworkin's theory of law, "law as interpretation," is the method of constructive interpretation. On its face, constructive interpretation would appear to be no more than an interesting prescriptive theory of how Dworkin believes judges ought to determine the law in cases where the applicable law on the books fails to compel an inference to a single rule of decision. Dworkin, however, claims for constructive interpretation a far greater provenance. Without acknowledging the distinctiveness of these different phenomenon, Dworkin claims that constructive interpretation also identifies the current laws of a community and provides a global theory of the concept of law that applies universally as an alternative to H. L. A. Hart's global theory of the concept of law. This article sorts out these different phenomena and shows that constructive interpretation is not a sound descriptive theory for any of these phenomenon nor does it provide a useful prescriptive theory for reforming our practices in any of these areas.
Use of modern medical care for pregnancy and childbirth care : does female schooling matter ?

Controversy exists over whether the estimated effects of schooling on health care use reflect the influence of unobserved factors. Existing estimates may overstate the schooling effect because of the failure to control for unobserved variables or may be downwardly biased due to measurement error. This paper contributes to the resolution of this debate by adopting an instrumental variable approach to estimate the impact of female schooling on maternal health care use. A school construction program in Indonesia in the 1970s is used to construct an instrumental variable for education. The choice between use and non-use of maternal health services is estimated as a function of schooling and other variables. Data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey are used for this paper. Standard regression models estimated in the paper indicate that each additional year of schooling does indeed have a significant, positive effect on maternal health care use. Instrumental variable estimates of the schooling effect are larger. The results suggest that schooling has a positive impact on maternal health care use even after eliminating the effect of unobserved variables and measurement error. This paper moves beyond previous work on the impact of education on health care use by adopting an IV approach to address the problem of endogeneity and measurement error. IV methods have been used widely in the labour economics literature to examine the impact of schooling on wages and other labour market outcomes but rarely to estimate the effect of schooling on health outcomes.
On Teaching Advanced Legal Research

This article addresses the issues faced by instructors of courses in advanced legal research. Everyone teaching in this area must have a strategy for organizing the subject matter, drafting problems and assignments, constructing a syllabus, and planning and delivering a course designed to meet its stated goals. Most importantly, the instructor must give serious thought to the desired outcomes at which he or she aims. In this article, Professor Knott has categorized outcome targets into three levels: competency, fluency, and mastery. The instructor's decisions about desired outcomes will have implications for all aspects of course design and delivery. The article identifies and discusses these issues and provides a framework instructors can use when designing their own courses. Attached as appendices are specific examples of many of the kinds of materials discussed in the article, all drawn from material prepared for use in the author's advanced legal research classes.
Corporate governance as political insurance: firm-level institutional creation in emerging markets and beyond

What do we know about the politics of corporate governance in emerging markets? Although the state-level institutions have been amply explored, firm-level dynamics remain under-theorized. Complementing the orthodox emphasis on external finance as causal force behind the adoption of ‘minority shareholder protections’, the article outlines an alternative mechanism for firms operating in political settings with heightened risk of state intrusion. The Anglo-Saxon governance institutions can serve domestic managers as a strategy to build alliances with foreign stakeholders so as to counteract a dirigiste government. Empirically, the author seeks to explain the implementation of internationally accepted standards of corporate governance by Russia's big business between 1999 and 2004. The project disaggregates ‘corporate governance’ into specific institutions and examines their quality at the firm level. The causal inference links the shift in state policy vis-a-vis corporate property to the improved treatment of minority owners by the company insiders.
DO OLIGOPOLISTS POLLUTE LESS? EVIDENCE FROM A RESTRUCTURED ELECTRICITY MARKET*

Electricity restructuring has created the opportunity for producers to exercise market power. Oligopolists increase price by distorting output decisions, causing cross-firm production inefficiencies. This study estimates the environmental implications of production inefficiencies attributed to market power in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland electricity market. Air pollution fell substantially during 1999, the year in which both electricity restructuring and new environmental regulation took effect. I find that strategic firms reduced their emissions by approximately 20% relative to other firms and their own historic emissions. Next, I compare observed behavior with estimates of production, and therefore emissions, in a competitive market. According to a model of competitive behavior, changing costs explain approximately two-thirds of the observed pollution reductions. The remaining third can be attributed to firms exercising market power.
Pricing‐to‐Market: the Japanese Experience with a Falling Yen and the Asian Crisis

Abstract The paper examines whether Japanese exporters changed their strategic pricing behavior as a result of theproﬁt squeeze of the late 1980s. It shows that shocks such as the end-of-bubble, the prolonged yen depreci-ation, and the Asian crisis affected export prices. These effects, however, are too small to change the long-run equilibrium relation between sectoral export prices and their determinants. In particular, results suggestthat Japanese exporters are not using the depreciation of the yen to gain market share. 1. Introduction Between 1980 and 1992, the nominal effective exchange rate in Japan rose by 53%.This translates into a 90% real appreciation of the Japanese yen in the manufacturingsector. The traditional models would predict that with such a real appreciation rateand the loss of competitiveness, the tradable sector, which consists largely of manu-facturing, should collapse. However, when we look at the industrial productionnumbers in the manufacturing sector during the same period, we see an impressivegrowth of 40%.This phenomenon has been explained by the Japanese exporting ﬁrms’ strategicbehavior in their destination markets.When the yen rises, the Japanese ﬁrms lower theyen price of their exports and squeeze their proﬁt margins by reducing markups overcost (Gagnon and Knetter, 1995; Marston, 1990, 1991).This strategy, called pricing-to-market (PTM) by Krugman (1987), allows exporting companies to keep their share inthe international markets despite an appreciation of the domestic currency.
Prices and Price Dispersion on the Web: Evidence from the Online Book Industry

Using data collected between August, 1999, and January, 2000, covering 399 books, we examine pricing by thirty-two online United States-based bookstores. At the aggregate level, we find that both advertising and competitive structure had the predicted effects. More competition led to lower prices and to lower price dispersion. Holding competitive structure constant, more widely advertised items also had lower prices. At the firm level, we observe considerable heterogeneity in behavior. Firms had differentiated (or attempted to differentiate) on dimensions such as brand, price, and selection.
Private pensions, mortality risk, and the decision to annuitize

Abstract This paper examines household decisions about whether or not to annuitize retirement resources. A life-cycle model of consumption, implemented with the use of dynamic programming techniques, is used to construct a utility-based measure of annuity value for individuals and couples in the Health and Retirement Survey. Variation in the calculated ‘annuity equivalent wealth’ arises from differences in mortality risk, marital status, risk aversion, and the presence of pre-existing annuities such as Social Security. I find that a one-percentage point increase in the annuity equivalent wealth leads to nearly a one-percentage point increase in the ex ante probability of annuitizing balances in defined contribution pension plans. However, because much of the variation in the expected annuity decision is left unexplained by the life-cycle model, other factors are also analyzed. Health status and an individual’s time horizon for financial decision making are significant determinants of the decision. There is no evidence that bequest motives are an important factor in making marginal annuity decisions.
Firm Internationalization and the Cost of Debt Financing: Evidence from Non-Provisional Publicly Traded Debt

Recent research suggests that firm internationalization is associated with greater exchange rate risk and a higher cost of equity capital. However, there is no research on the relation between the level of firm international activity and the cost of debt financing. This study of? fers the first such empirical evidence using non-provisional public debt. Based on a sample of 2,194 U.S. firm year observations, we find that firms with greater levels of international activity have better credit ratings. We also find that the cost of debt financing is inversely related to the degree of firm internationalization beyond that incorporated in credit ratings. These results suggest that rating agencies do not fully incorporate firm international activ? ity in their analysis resulting in a downward bias in credit ratings for international firms. In aggregate, the results imply that failing to incorporate firm international activity in debt pricing leads to potential omitted variable problems.
What Wins Votes: Why Some Politicians Opt Out of Clientelism

In a context where clientelism is widespread, why do some politicians choose not to condition the delivery of goods and services to citizens on individual political behavior? I argue that the answer to this question lies in the heretofore unexamined electoral costs of clientelism: clientelism decreases support from nonpoor constituents even while it generates votes from among the poor. Taking into account these costs and other factors that shape politician incentives, I posit that the interaction between political competition and poverty will explain variation in clientelism. I test this claim using an original measure of clientelism that assesses mayoral involvement in social policy implementation in Argentine municipalities. The results of statistical analysis suggest that high levels of political competition are compatible with clientelism when poverty is also high. Only when high competition is coupled with low rates of poverty does clientelism decline.
The election law connection and U.S. federalism

A democratic federation's character may be importantly determined by the particular character of its electoral federalism. For the United States, “political safeguards” theorists provided foundational insights into the implications of interdependencies between state and federal officials, but were too casual in their remarks about election law as a de minimis contribution to federalism. In fact, the constitutional default of state legislative control over congressional redistricting and most other procedural election law has created powerful incentives for federal deference to state officials. This dependency may have created a tendency to respect the institutional prerogatives of state governments, though the relationship is dynamic and contingent, interacting with other factors such as the prevalence of divided party government at the national and state levels.
Payment Transactions Under the EU Payment Services Directive: A U.S. Comparative Perspective

A comparison between principal provisions of the European Union Payment Services Directive and Article 4A of the American Uniform Commercial Code.
On injective dimension of F‐finite F‐modules and holonomic D‐modules

We investigate injective dimension of $F$-finite $F$-modules in characteristic $p$ and holonomic $D$-modules in characteristic 0. One of our main results is the following. If, either $R$ is a regular ring of finite type over an infinite field of characteristic $p>0$ and $M$ is an $F_R$-finite $F_R$-module, or $R=k[x_1,\dots,x_n]$ where $k$ is a field of characteristic 0 and $M$ is a holonomic $D(R,k)$-module, then the injective dimension of $M$ is the same as the dimension of its support.
Buying Time: Real and Hypothetical Offers,

Abstract This article provides the results of a field test of contingent valuation estimates within a willingness to accept framework. Using dichotomous choice questions in telephone–mail–telephone interviews, we compare survey respondents' responses to real and hypothetical offers for the opportunity to spend time in a second set of interviews on an undisclosed topic. Five hundred and forty people were randomly split between the real and hypothetical treatments. Our findings indicate no significant differences between people's choices with real and hypothetical offers. Choice models were not significantly different between real and hypothetical offers.
Did technology transfer more rapidly East–West than North–South?

Abstract We offer evidence of the role of continental orientation in the historical diffusion of technologies. Diamond (1997) argued that technologies spread more slowly North–South (N–S) than East–West (E–W) for two reasons. First, it was relatively costly for individuals to transport innovations when experiencing N–S variations in climate. Second, some innovations (e.g., selectively bred seeds) would have been less likely to survive N–S movements. Continents with E–W orientation, then, were characterized by less costly and/or more successful sharing of technologies. We employ Comin’s et al. (2010) data on ancient and early modern levels of technology adoption in a spatial econometric analysis. Historical levels of technology adoption in a (present-day) country are related to its lagged level as well as those of its neighbors. The E–W spatial correlations are generally larger, more likely to be positive, and more likely to be statistically significant. While acknowledging that the difference between E–W and N–S effects is not significant in every estimation, taken together the results offer compelling support for the Diamond hypothesis.
Our Very Privileged Executive: Why the Judiciary Can (and Should) Fix the State Secrets Privilege

In United States v. Reynolds, the Supreme Court shaped the state secrets privilege (the “Privilege”) as one akin to that against self-incrimination. In recent litigation, the government has asserted the Privilege in motions for prediscovery dismissal, thus transforming the Privilege into a form of executive immunity. This Article argues that courts must step in to return the Privilege to a scope more in keeping with its status as a form of evidentiary privilege. After reviewing the doctrinal origin of the Privilege, this Article explores three types of issues implicated by the government’s invocation of the Privilege. The government, in calling for judicial deference to executive assertions of the Privilege, often relies on (1) separation of powers arguments or on (2) arguments sounding in institutional competence. Courts are often swayed by such arguments and thus give relatively little consideration to the (3) conflict of interest inherent in the government’s assertion of the Privilege and the impact of the successful invocation of the Privilege on the rights of individual litigants. This Article then proceeds to address arguments that Congress can provide a check on executive abuse of the Privilege. The Article argues that, assuming that Congress has constitutional authority, it lacks the will or the institutional competence to provide a proper solution to the problems raised by the Privilege. Instead, the Article contends that since courts created the Privilege, courts are best positioned to rein it in. The final section of the Article provides examples drawn from case law illustrating mechanisms whereby courts can protect state secrets while also giving litigants adverse to the government their day in court.
U.S. Monetary Policy Surprises and Currency Futures Markets: A New Look

Intraday currency futures prices react to both surprises in the federal funds target rate (the target factor) and surprises in the anticipated future direction of Federal Reserve monetary policy (the path factor) in similar magnitude, and the reaction is short-lived. Dollar-denominated currency futures prices drop significantly in response to positive surprises (i.e., unexpected increases) in the target and path factors, but have generally little response to negative surprises. A monetary policy tightening during expansionary periods leads to an appreciation of the domestic currency, while a monetary policy loosening during recessionary periods tends to have no significant impact.
An Engineer's Brief Introduction to Microwave Quantum Optics and a Single-Port State-Space Representation

Classical microwave circuit theory is incapable of representing some phenomena at the quantum level. To include quantum statistical effects, various theoretical treatments can be employed. Quantum input-output network (QION) theory is one such treatment. Another formalism, called SLH theory, incorporates scattering matrices ( S ), coupling vectors ( L ), and system Hamiltonians ( H ). These theoretical treatments require a reformulation of classical microwave theory. To make these topics comprehensible to an electrical engineer, we demonstrate some underpinnings of microwave quantum optics in terms of microwave engineering. For instance, we equate traveling-wave phasors in a transmission line ( $V_0^+$ ) directly to bosonic field operators. Furthermore, we extend QION to include a state-space representation and a transfer function for a single port quantum network. This serves as a case study to highlight how microwave methodologies can be applied in open quantum systems. Although the same conclusion could be found from a full SLH theory treatment, our method was derived directly from first principles of QION.
Mod, Man, and Law: A Reexamination of the Law of Computer Game Modifications

Discussion of the legal treatment of modifications to computer games - whether they should be considered derivative works and whether they can violate the shrinkwrap or clickwrap licenses the original games came with.
Judging National Security post-9/11: An Empirical Investigation

Many people believe that when national security is threatened, federal courts should defer to the government. Many other people believe that in times of crisis, citizens are vulnerable to a kind of “panic” that leads to unjustified intrusions on liberty. But to date, there is little information about what federal courts have actually done in this domain, especially in the period after the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the basis of a comprehensive study of relevant courts of appeals decisions in the aftermath of those attacks, this essay offers four findings. First, the invalidation rate is about 15 percent – low, but not so low as to suggest that federal courts have applied a broad rule of deference to government action. Second, the division between Republican and Democratic appointees is comparable to what is found in other areas of the law; contrary to reasonable expectations, there is no significant “compression” of ideological divisions in this domain. Third, and perhaps most strikingly, no panel effects are apparent here. Unlike in the vast majority of other areas, Republican and Democratic appointees do not appear to vote differently if they are sitting with Republican or Democratic appointees. Finally, judicial behavior cannot be shown to have changed over time. The invalidation rate is not higher in recent years than it was in the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks. Explanations are ventured for these various findings, with particular reference to the absence of discernible panel effects.
Quasi-Checks: An Apology for a Mutation of Negotiable Instruments

This essay deals with one of the persistent problems in the law of negotiable instruments, namely the legal phenomenon of so-called "quasi-instruments" (it focuses on quasi-checks and deals briefly with quasi-notes.) First, it supplies a formal definition for quasi-instruments. It then proceeds to analyze the real-world interests, concerns and risks associated with quasi-checks, dealing respectively with those risks that are germane to banks, payors, payees, and subsequent holders. It proceeds on three levels: analytic introduction of the phenomenon, including the UCC Article 3 "extension rule" that accords fully negotiable status to some quasi-instruments, but no to others; normative and relational analysis preand post-revision extension rule; and finally, a certain critique of the prevalent justification to the validation of quasi-instruments (mainly, streamlining banking practices and technology) and forwarding an alternative, relational justification (based on the reliance interests of payees and subsequent holders). The alternative justification calls for a more inclusive approach to quasi-instruments, in one sense favoring the extension rule of pre-revision UCC Article 3 over that of the postrevision (however, the post-revision policy is justified inasmuch as granting holder in due course status quasi-holders is concerned). The essay also makes the claim-made nowhere previously, as far as research could establish-that the post-revision extension rule of UCC Art. 3 contains a serious technical flaw. The fact that practice and application are by and large indifferent to this flaw is not so much a failure of scholarship or the judiciary, but instead indicates that once a satisfactory theoretical solution to the question of quasiinstruments is generally reached, technical failings in the relevant statute (here, UCC §3-104(c)) are relatively inconsequential. Other issues covered are the influence of Check 21 on quasi-instruments, Visiting scholar, Columbia University School of Law and senior lecturer, University of Haifa Law School (Israel). For his mentoring and friendship I am deeply indebted to Neil Cohen, whose weekly tutoring sessions ignited my interest in the intricacies of payment systems law, as well as to Larry Solan, Tony Sebok and Edward Janger for encouragement and advice. I am extremely grateful to the Columbia Law School, where this study was prepared, for wonderful hospitality in its vibrant and welcoming community. It is likewise a pleasure to thank Reinhard Zimmerman, director of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, for hospitality as well as sharing and exploring comparative insights. All websites cited are verified as of April 2007.
A Marketer'S Guide to Log-Linear Models for Qualitative Data Analysis:

This article presents a brief description of the development and use of log-linear models. Current research in areas of screening effects, partitioning chi-square statistics, stepwise procedures, a...
Heterogeneity in Values of Morbidity Risks from Drinking Water

This paper reports the stated preference values for reducing the morbidity risks from drinking water estimated using a nationally representative U.S. sample of 3,585 households. Based on the average annual gastrointestinal (GI) illness risk in the U.S. from drinking water of about 5 illnesses per 100 population, eliminating the GI risk has a median annual value per household of $219. The considerable heterogeneity in the values arises largely from differences in attitudes towards risk and price sensitivity. Using interval regressions, we find that valuations are greater for those who perceive a high personal risk, consume a large quantity of tap water, or are environmentalists. The paper explores several methodological issues pertaining to the iterative choice format involving a choice between two policies characterized by their cost and GI risk. The analysis adjusts for starting point effects by basing valuations on the tradeoffs that are estimated to prevail at the “equitable tradeoff rate,” which is the starting cost-water quality tradeoff rate that produces a 50–50 split in the initial policy choice between policies with greater tradeoff rates and policies with lower tradeoff rates. The heterogeneity in valuations is also explored by examining quantile regression results and the determinants of the unbounded valuation amounts at the low and high extremes.
Where There’s At-Will, There Are Many Ways: Redressing the Increasing Incoherence of Employment at Will

Employment at will, the doctrine holding that employees have no legal remedy for unfair terminations because they hold their jobs at the will of the employer, has become mired in incoherence. State courts praise the common law rule as “essential to free enterprise” and “central to the free market,” but in recent years they increasingly have riddled the rule with exceptions, allowing employee claims for whistleblowing, fraud, etc. Yet states have neither rejected employment at will nor shown any consistency in recognizing exceptions. Strikingly, states cite the same rationales to adopt and reject opposite exceptions, as a case study of two states illustrates: One state accepts exception X to protect employees while rejecting exception Y to maintain employment at will; yet on the same rationales, the other accepts exception Y while rejecting X.
Looking Past The Hype: 10 Questions Everyone Should Ask About California’s Prison Realignment

DOI 10.1515/cjpp-2013-0011 Calif. J. Politics Policy 2013; 5(2): 266–306 Joan Petersilia* and Jessica Greenlick Snyder Looking Past The Hype: 10 Questions Everyone Should Ask About California’s Prison Realignment Abstract: California’s Criminal Justice Realignment Act passed in 2011 shifted vast discretion for managing lower-level offenders from the state to the county, allocated over $2 billion in the first 2 years for local programs, and altered sen- tences for more than 100,000 offenders. Despite the fact that it is the biggest penal experiment in modern history, the state provided no funding to evaluate its overall effect on crime, incarceration, justice agencies, or recidivism. We provide a frame- work for a comprehensive evaluation by raising 10 essential questions: (1) Have prison populations been reduced and care sufficiently improved to bring prison medical care up to a Constitutional standard? (2) What is the impact on victim rights and safety? (3) Will more offenders participate in treatment programs, and will recidivism be reduced? (4) Will there be equitable sentencing and treatment across counties? (5) What is the impact on jail crowding, conditions, and litiga- tion? (6) What is the impact on police, prosecution, defense, and judges? (7) What is the impact on probation and parole? (8) What is the impact on crime rates and community life? (9) How much will realignment cost? Who pays? (10) Have we increased the number of people under criminal justice supervision? Keywords: prison realignment; California corrections; criminal justice; prisons; probation and parole; Jails; victim’s rights; penology. *Corresponding author: Joan Petersilia, PhD, Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Co-Director of Stanford’s Criminal Justice Center, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford Law School, CA 94305, USA, e-mail: petersilia@law.stanford.edu Jessica Greenlick Snyder: 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford Law School, CA 94305, USA 1 Introduction On April 2, 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 109, the Criminal Justice Realignment Act of 2011. AB 109, commonly referred to as “rea- lignment,” took effect on October 1, 2011. AB 109 passed the legislature in a matter of hours after being introduced, and without any public input. Despite some mis- leading headlines, the law did not require the state to release anyone currently
Optimal Pricing with Speculators and Strategic Consumers

This paper studies a monopolist firm selling a fixed capacity. The firm sets a price before demand uncertainty is resolved. Speculators may enter the market purely with the intention of resale, which can be profitable if demand turns out to be high. Consumers may strategically choose when to purchase, and they may also choose to purchase from the firm or from the speculators. We characterize equilibrium prices and profits and analyze the long-run capacity decisions of the firm. There are three major findings. First, the presence of speculators increases the firm's expected profits even though the resale market competes with the firm. Second, by facilitating resale, the firm can mimic dynamic pricing outcomes and enjoy the associated benefits while charging a fixed price. Third, speculative behavior may generate incentives for the seller to artificially restrict supply, and thus may lead to lower capacity investments. We also explore several model extensions that highlight the robustness of our results.
Overpriced Shares, Ill-Advised Acquisitions, and Goodwill Impairment

ABSTRACT: We establish that the root cause of many goodwill write-offs is the buyers' overpriced shares at acquisition. Overpriced shares provide managers with strong incentives to exploit the overpricing by acquiring businesses, often paying more than the acquisition's synergies, setting the stage for subsequent goodwill write-offs. In particular, we document the following patterns: (1) Share overpricing is strongly and positively associated with the intensity of corporate acquisitions and the growth of accounting goodwill. (2) Share overpricing predicts goodwill write-offs and their magnitude. (3) Acquisitions by overpriced companies—a strategy often recommended by investment bankers and some academics—are often ill-advised (overpaid for and/or strategic misfit), exacerbating the post-acquisition negative returns of buyers beyond the reversal of the overpricing. Thus, managers' arguments notwithstanding, goodwill write-off is an important event highlighting a dysfunctional investment strategy. Data Avai...
Syndromic Surveillance and Patients as Victims and Vectors

Syndromic surveillance uses new ways of gathering data to identify possible disease outbreaks. Because syndromic surveillance can be implemented to detect patterns before diseases are even identified, it poses novel problems for informed consent, patient privacy and confidentiality, and risks of stigmatization. This paper analyzes these ethical issues from the viewpoint of the patient as victim and vector. It concludes by pointing out that the new International Health Regulations fail to take full account of the ethical challenges raised by syndromic surveillance.
Insurance, Self-Protection, and the Economics of Terrorism

Abstract This paper investigates the rationale for public intervention in the terrorism insurance market. It argues that government subsidies for terror insurance have the effect of discouraging self-protection and limiting the negative externalities associated with self-protection. Cautious self-protective behavior by a target can hurt public goods like national prestige if it is seen as “giving in” to the terrorists, and may increase the loss probabilities faced by others by encouraging terrorists to substitute toward more vulnerable targets. We argue that these externalities in protection are essential for normative analysis of government intervention in insurance markets and may also explain why availability problems in this market have engendered much stronger government responses than similar problems in other catastrophe insurance markets.
PRODUCT SEQUENCING: CO-EVOLUTION OF KNOWLEDGE, CAPABILITIES AND PRODUCTS

This article provides a conceptual model that explains how the coevolution of organizational knowledge, capabilities, and products over long time spans can result in competitive advantage through innovation and strategic linkage of products at a point in time and over time. At the heart of the model are sequences of products within and across markets, supported by an underlying system of knowledge and systems of learning. This dynamic model brings the importance of the products themselves, supported by vertical chains of activities, into the analysis of resource and knowledge-based competitive advantage. The model also suggests that we can think about the evolution of firms, and by implication the evolution of industries, not only in terms of knowledge and capabilities, but also in terms of vertical chains and products. Short company histories illustrate the workings of the model. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.