cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The True Luminosities of Planetary Nebulae in M31's Bulge: Massive Central Stars from an Old Stellar Population

We measure the Balmer decrements of 23 of the brightest planetary nebulae (PNe) in the inner bulge ($r \lesssim 3$ arcmin) of M31 and de-redden the bright end of the region's [O III] $\lambda 5007$ planetary nebula luminosity function. We show that the most luminous PNe produce $\gtrsim 1{,}200 \, \rm{L}_{\odot}$ of power in their [O III] $\lambda 5007$ line, implying central star luminosities of at least $\sim 11{,}000 \, \rm{L}_{\odot}$. Even with the most recent accelerated-evolution post-AGB models, such luminosities require central star masses in excess of $0.66 \, \rm{M}_{\odot}$, and main sequence progenitors of at least $\sim 2.5 \, \rm{M}_{\odot}$. Since M31's bulge has very few intermediate-age stars, we conclude that conventional single-star evolution cannot be responsible for these extremely luminous objects. We also present the circumstellar extinctions for the region's bright PNe and demonstrate that the distribution is similar to that found for PNe in the Large Magellanic Cloud, with a median value of $A_{5007} = 0.71$. Finally, we compare our results to extinction measurements made for PNe in the E6 elliptical NGC 4697 and the interacting lenticular NGC 5128. We show that such extinctions are not unusual, and that the existence of very high-mass PN central stars is a general feature of old stellar populations. Our results suggest that single-star population synthesis models significantly underestimate the maximum luminosities and total integrated light of AGB stars.
Telescope bibliographies: an essential component of archival data management and operations

Assessing the impact of astronomical facilities rests upon an evaluation of the scientic discoveries which their data have enabled. Telescope bibliographies, which link data products with the literature, provide a way to use bibliometrics as an impact measure for the underlying observations. In this paper we argue that the creation and maintenance of telescope bibliographies should be considered an integral part of an observatory's operations. We review the existing tools, services, and work ows which support these curation activities, giving an estimate of the eort and expertise required to maintain an archive-based telescope bibliography.
Residual Carbon in Oxygen-Neon White Dwarfs and Its Implications for Accretion-induced Collapse

We explore the effects of the residual $\mathrm{^{12}C}$ present in oxygen-neon white dwarfs (ONe WDs) on their evolution towards accretion-induced collapse (AIC). We produce a set of ONe WD models using MESA and illustrate how the amount and location of the residual carbon depends on the initial mass of the star and assumptions about rotation and convective overshooting. We find a wide range of possible $\mathrm{^{12}C}$ mass fractions roughly ranging from 0.1 to 10 per cent. Convection and thermohaline mixing that occurs as the ONe WDs cool leads to nearly homogeneous interior compositions by the time that AIC would occur. We evolve these ONe WD models and some toy WD models towards AIC and find that regardless of the carbon fraction, the occurrence of Urca-process cooling due to $\mathrm{^{23}Na}$ implies that the models are unlikely to reach carbon ignition before electron captures on $\mathrm{^{24}Mg}$ occur. Difficulties associated with modeling electron-capture-driven convective regions in these ONe WDs prevent us from evolving our MESA models all the way to thermonuclear oxygen ignition and the onset of collapse. Thus, firm conclusions about the effect of carbon on the final fates of these objects await improved modeling. However, it is clear that the inclusion of residual carbon can shift the evolution from that previously described in the literature and should be included in future models.
Inherited Extremes of Aortic Diameter Confer Risk for a Specific Class of Congenital Heart Disease.

Population based studies demonstrate strong familial recurrence of cardiac malformations particularly for individuals affected with a specific class of CHD, left-ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) obstruction. Recently we linked 99 lead variants across 71 loci to diameter of the ascending aorta derived from MRI measurements across multiple ethnicities in the UK Biobank. Using these data we created a polygenic risk score capturing ascending aortic diameter (PRSAoD) Among 2,594 individuals with CHD; a decrease by one standard deviation in PRSAoD was associated with an increased risk of congenital LVOT (OR=1.14[1.03-1.26], p=0.014) but not with other subtypes of CHD. Using Mendelian Randomization we observed strong evidence of a causal effect where inheritance of a smaller diameter of the ascending aorta corresponded to an increase in risk for congenital LVOT (p_IVW = 0.008). Our data may suggest that genetic determinants of a smaller ascending aorta act during early development to disturb blood flow through left-sided structures to increasing the risk of LVOT CHD, which is consistent with experimental evidence and the "no flow, no grow" paradigm in the formation of the left ventricular outflow tract.
Linear Stability of the Lagrangian Triangle Solutions for Quasihomogeneous Potentials

In this paper, we study the linear stability of the relative equilibria for homogeneous and quasihomogeneous potentials. First, in the case the potential is a homogeneous function of degree −a, we find that any relative equilibrium of the n-body problem with a>2 is spectrally unstable. We also find a similar condition in the quasihomogeneous case. Then we consider the case of three bodies and we study the stability of the equilateral triangle relative equilibria. In the case of homogeneous potentials we recover the classical result obtained by Routh in a simpler way. In the case of quasihomogeneous potentials we find a generalization of Routh inequality and we show that, for certain values of the masses, the stability of the relative equilibria depends on the size of the configuration.
VERITAS observations of the Segue 1 dwarf spheroidal galaxy

In the cosmological paradigm, Cold Dark Matter (DM) dominates the mass content of the Universe and is present at every scale. Candidates for DM include many extensions of the standard model, with a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) in the mass range from 50 GeV to greater than 10 TeV. The self-annihilation of WIMPs in astrophysical regions of high DM density can produce secondary particles including Very High Energy (VHE) gamma rays with energies up to the DM particle mass. The VERITAS array of Cherenkov telescopes, designed for the detection of VHE gamma rays in the 100 GeV-10 TeV energy range, is an appropriate instrument for the detection of DM. Among the possible astrophysical targets, dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) of the Local Group are promising targets to search for the annihilation signature of DM due to their proximity and large DM content. We report here on extensive observations conducted by VERITAS on the nearby Segue 1 satellite galaxy, which is currently considered as one of the best dSphs for DM studies. The results are discussed in the framework of WIMP models, with a special emphasis on leptophilic DM models invoked to explain the recent cosmic-ray lepton anomalies.
Rejuvenating the Matter Power Spectrum. III. The Cosmology Sensitivity of Gaussianized Power Spectra

It was recently shown that applying a Gaussianizing transform, such as a logarithm, to the nonlinear matter density field extends the range of useful applicability of the power spectrum by a factor of a few smaller. Such a transform dramatically reduces nonlinearities in both the covariance and the shape of the power spectrum. Here, analyzing Coyote Universe real-space dark-matter density fields, we investigate the consequences of these transforms for cosmological parameter estimation. The power spectrum of the log-density provides the tightest cosmological parameter error bars (marginalized or not), giving a factor of 2-3 improvement over the conventional power spectrum in all five parameters tested. For the tilt, ns , the improvement reaches a factor of five. Similar constraints are achieved if the log-density power spectrum and conventional power spectrum are analyzed together. Rank-order Gaussianization seems just as useful as a log transform to constrain ns , but not other parameters. Dividing the overdensity by its dispersion in few-Mpc cells, while it diagonalizes the covariance matrix, does not seem to help with parameter constraints. We also provide a code that emulates these power spectra over a range of concordance cosmological models.
Methods for evaluating the performance of volume phase holographic gratings for the VIRUS spectrograph array

The Visible Integral field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) is an array of at least 150 copies of a simple, fiber-fed integral field spectrograph that will be deployed on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) to carry out the HET Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX). Each spectrograph contains a volume phase holographic grating as its dispersing element that is used in first order for 350 < λ(nm) < 550. We discuss the test methods used to evaluate the performance of the prototype gratings, which have aided in modifying the fabrication prescription for achieving the specified batch diffraction efficiency required for HETDEX. In particular, we discuss tests in which we measure the diffraction efficiency at the nominal grating angle of incidence in VIRUS for all orders accessible to our test bench that are allowed by the grating equation. For select gratings, these tests have allowed us to account for < 90% of the incident light for wavelengths within the spectral coverage of VIRUS. The remaining light that is unaccounted for is likely being diffracted into reflective orders or being absorbed or scattered within the grating layer (for bluer wavelengths especially, the latter term may dominate the others). Finally, we discuss an apparatus that will be used to quickly verify the first order diffraction efficiency specification for the batch of at least 150 VIRUS production gratings.
Physical aspects of quantum sheaf cohomology for deformations of tangent bundles of toric varieties

In this paper, we will outline computations of quantum sheaf cohomology for deformations of tangent bundles of toric varieties, for those deformations describable as deformations of toric Euler sequences. Quantum sheaf cohomology is a heterotic analogue of quantum cohomology, a quantum deformation of the classical product on sheaf cohomology groups, that computes nonperturbative corrections to analogues of 27 3 couplings in heterotic string compactifications. Previous computations have relied on either physics-based GLSM techniques or computation-intensive brute-force Cech cohomology techniques. This paper describes methods for greatly simplifying mathematical computations, and derives more general results than previously obtainable with GLSM techniques. We will outline recent results (rigorous proofs will appear elsewhere).
YouTube AV 50K: An Annotated Corpus for Comments in Autonomous Vehicles

Ahstract- With one billion monthly viewers, and millions of users discussing and sharing opinions, comments below YouTube videos are rich sources of data for opinion mining and sentiment analysis. We introduce the YouTube AV 50K dataset, a freely-available collections of more than 50,000 YouTube comments and metadata below autonomous vehicle (AV)-related videos. We describe its creation process, its content and data format, and discuss its possible usages. Especially, we do a case study of the first self-driving car fatality to evaluate the dataset, and show how we can use this dataset to better understand public attitudes toward self-driving cars and public reactions to the accident. Future developments of the dataset are also discussed.
A maximum entropy principle for inferring the distribution of 3D plasmoids

The principle of maximum entropy, a powerful and general method for inferring the distribution function given a set of constraints, is applied to deduce the overall distribution of 3D plasmoids (flux ropes/tubes) for systems where resistive MHD is applicable and large numbers of plasmoids are produced. The analysis is undertaken for the 3D case, with mass, total flux, and velocity serving as the variables of interest, on account of their physical and observational relevance. The distribution functions for the mass, width, total flux, and helicity exhibit a power-law behavior with exponents of −4/3, −2, −3, and −2, respectively, for small values, whilst all of them display an exponential falloff for large values. In contrast, the velocity distribution, as a function of v=|v|, is shown to be flat for v→0, and becomes a power law with an exponent of −7/3 for v→∞. Most of these results are nearly independent of the free parameters involved in this specific problem. A preliminary comparison of our results with...
Producing Distant Planets by Mutual Scattering of Planetary Embryos

It is likely that multiple bodies with masses between those of Mars and Earth ("planetary embryos") formed in the outer planetesimal disk of the solar system. Some of these were likely scattered by the giant planets into orbits with semimajor axes of hundreds of au. Mutual torques between these embryos may lift the perihelia of some of them beyond the orbit of Neptune, where they are no longer perturbed by the giant planets, so their semimajor axes are frozen in place. We conduct N-body simulations of this process and its effect on smaller planetesimals in the region of the giant planets and the Kuiper Belt. We find that (i) there is a significant possibility that one sub-Earth mass embryo, or possibly more, is still present in the outer solar system; (ii) the orbit of the surviving embryo(s) typically has perihelion of 40–70 au, semimajor axis less than 200 au, and inclination less than 30°; (iii) it is likely that any surviving embryos could be detected by current or planned optical surveys or have a significant effect on solar system ephemerides; (iv) whether or not an embryo has survived to the present day, its dynamical influence earlier in the history of the solar system can explain the properties of the detached disk (defined in this paper as containing objects with perihelia >38 au and semimajor axes between 80 and 500 au).
Structural Analysis of Laplacian Spectral Properties of Large-Scale Networks

Using methods from algebraic graph theory and convex optimization, we study the relationship between local structural features of a network and the eigenvalues of its Laplacian matrix. In particular, we propose a series of semidefinite programs to find new bounds on the spectral radius and the spectral gap of the Laplacian matrix in terms of a collection of local structural features of the network. Our analysis shows that the Laplacian spectral radius is strongly constrained by local structural features. On the other hand, we illustrate how local structural features are usually insufficient to accurately estimate the Laplacian spectral gap. As a consequence, random graph models in which only local structural features are prescribed are, in general, inadequate to faithfully model Laplacian spectral properties of a network.
No timing variations observed in third transit of snow-line exoplanet Kepler-421b

We observed Kepler-421 during the anticipated third transit of the snow-line exoplanet Kepler-421b in order to constrain the existence and extent of transit timing variations (TTVs). Previously, the Kepler Spacecraft only observed two transits of Kepler-421b leaving the planet's transit ephemeris unconstrained. Our visible light, time-series observations from the 4.3-meter Discovery Channel Telescope were designed to capture pre-transit baseline and the partial transit of Kepler-421b barring significant TTVs. We use the light curves to assess the probabilities of various transit models using both the posterior odds ratio and the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) and find that a transit model with no TTVs is favored to 3.6-sigma confidence. These observations suggest that Kepler-421b is either alone in its system or is only experiencing minor dynamic interactions with an unseen companion. With the Kepler-421b ephemeris constrained, we calculate future transit times and discuss the opportunity to characterize the atmosphere of this cold, long-period exoplanet via transmission spectroscopy. Our investigation emphasizes the difficulties associated with observing long-period exoplanet transits and the consequences that arise from failing to refine transit ephemerides.
Automated Reasoning and Detection of Specious Configuration in Large Systems with Symbolic Execution.

Misconfiguration is a major cause of system failures. Prior solutions focus on detecting invalid settings that are introduced by user mistakes. But another type of misconfiguration that continues to haunt production services is specious configuration--settings that are valid but lead to unexpectedly poor performance in production. Such misconfigurations are subtle, so even careful administrators may fail to foresee them. We propose a tool called Violet to detect such misconfiguration. We realize the crux of specious configuration is that it causes some slow code path to be executed, but the bad performance effect cannot always be triggered. Violet thus takes a novel approach that uses selective symbolic execution to systematically reason about the performance effect of configuration parameters, their combination effect, and the relationship with input. Violet outputs a performance impact model for the automatic detection of poor configuration settings. We applied Violet on four large systems. To evaluate the effectiveness of Violet, we collect 17 real-world specious configuration cases. Violet detects 15 of them. Violet also identifies 9 unknown specious configurations.
Rethinking Few-Shot Image Classification: A Good Embedding is All You Need?

The focus of recent meta-learning research has been on the development of learning algorithms that can quickly adapt to test time tasks with limited data and low computational cost. Few-shot learning is widely used as one of the standard benchmarks in meta-learning. In this work, we show that a simple baseline: learning a supervised or self-supervised representation on the meta-training set, followed by training a linear classifier on top of this representation, outperforms state-of-the-art few-shot learning methods. An additional boost can be achieved through the use of self-distillation. This demonstrates that using a good learned embedding model can be more effective than sophisticated meta-learning algorithms. We believe that our findings motivate a rethinking of few-shot image classification benchmarks and the associated role of meta-learning algorithms. Code: http://github.com/WangYueFt/rfs/.
Texture Hallucination for Large-Factor Painting Super-Resolution

We aim to super-resolve digital paintings, synthesizing realistic details from high-resolution reference painting materials for very large scaling factors (e.g., 8\(\times \), 16\(\times \)). However, previous single image super-resolution (SISR) methods would either lose textural details or introduce unpleasing artifacts. On the other hand, reference-based SR (Ref-SR) methods can transfer textures to some extent, but is still impractical to handle very large factors and keep fidelity with original input. To solve these problems, we propose an efficient high-resolution hallucination network for very large scaling factors with efficient network structure and feature transferring. To transfer more detailed textures, we design a wavelet texture loss, which helps to enhance more high-frequency components. At the same time, to reduce the smoothing effect brought by the image reconstruction loss, we further relax the reconstruction constraint with a degradation loss which ensures the consistency between downscaled super-resolution results and low-resolution inputs. We also collected a high-resolution (e.g., 4K resolution) painting dataset PaintHD by considering both physical size and image resolution. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method with extensive experiments on PaintHD by comparing with SISR and Ref-SR state-of-the-art methods.
Ambiguity in medical concept normalization: An analysis of types and coverage in electronic health record datasets.

OBJECTIVES Normalizing mentions of medical concepts to standardized vocabularies is a fundamental component of clinical text analysis. Ambiguity-words or phrases that may refer to different concepts-has been extensively researched as part of information extraction from biomedical literature, but less is known about the types and frequency of ambiguity in clinical text. This study characterizes the distribution and distinct types of ambiguity exhibited by benchmark clinical concept normalization datasets, in order to identify directions for advancing medical concept normalization research. MATERIALS AND METHODS We identified ambiguous strings in datasets derived from the 2 available clinical corpora for concept normalization and categorized the distinct types of ambiguity they exhibited. We then compared observed string ambiguity in the datasets with potential ambiguity in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) to assess how representative available datasets are of ambiguity in clinical language. RESULTS We found that <15% of strings were ambiguous within the datasets, while over 50% were ambiguous in the UMLS, indicating only partial coverage of clinical ambiguity. The percentage of strings in common between any pair of datasets ranged from 2% to only 36%; of these, 40% were annotated with different sets of concepts, severely limiting generalization. Finally, we observed 12 distinct types of ambiguity, distributed unequally across the available datasets, reflecting diverse linguistic and medical phenomena. DISCUSSION Existing datasets are not sufficient to cover the diversity of clinical concept ambiguity, limiting both training and evaluation of normalization methods for clinical text. Additionally, the UMLS offers important semantic information for building and evaluating normalization methods. CONCLUSIONS Our findings identify 3 opportunities for concept normalization research, including a need for ambiguity-specific clinical datasets and leveraging the rich semantics of the UMLS in new methods and evaluation measures for normalization.
Fast Markov Chain Monte Carlo for High-Dimensional Bayesian Regression Models With Shrinkage Priors

In the past decade, many Bayesian shrinkage models have been developed for linear regression problems where the number of covariates, p, is large. Computation of the intractable posterior is often ...
Best-Effort Adversarial Approximation of Black-Box Malware Classifiers

An adversary who aims to steal a black-box model repeatedly queries it via a prediction API to learn its decision boundary. Adversarial approximation is non-trivial because of the enormous alternatives of model architectures, parameters, and features to explore. In this context, the adversary resorts to a best-effort strategy that yields the closest approximation. This paper explores best-effort adversarial approximation of a black-box malware classifier in the most challenging setting, where the adversary’s knowledge is limited to label only for a given input. Beginning with a limited input set, we leverage feature representation mapping and cross-domain transferability to locally approximate a black-box malware classifier. We do so with different feature types for the target and the substitute model while also using non-overlapping data for training the target, training the substitute, and the comparison of the two. Against a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) trained on raw byte sequences of Windows Portable Executables (PEs), our approach achieves a 92% accurate substitute (trained on pixel representations of PEs), and nearly 90% prediction agreement between the target and the substitute model. Against a 97.8% accurate gradient boosted decision tree trained on static PE features, our 91% accurate substitute agrees with the black-box on 90% of predictions, suggesting the strength of our purely black-box approximation.
Platform Models for Sustainable Internet Regulation

The dynamic nature of the telecommunications industry, with its rapidly changing technology and industry structure, presents a serious challenge to the theory and practice of regulation, which has a slower time scale and a tendency to embed assumptions about technology and industry into regulation. This paper proposes a model that attempts to capture two durable and persistent features of today’s telecommunications ecosystem: the use of layered platforms to implement desired functionality; and interconnection between actors at different platform layers. We use platform theory, and in particular theories of multi-sided platforms (MSPs), to focus on key technical and business aspects of today’s industry. We use an MSPaware layered model of the ecosystem to explore several recent and impending innovations in the ecosystem that have been naively conflated with the global Internet, illuminate their differences, and describe how regulators could use our model to more rigorously consider them. Finally, to illustrate its potential as a baseline for future research, we briefly consider how this model can help scope consistent policy discourse of three open questions: specialized services, minimum quality regulations (“the dirt road” problem), and structural separation.
The timeliness of bad earnings news and litigation risk

ABSTRACT: This study investigates whether the timely revelation of bad earnings news is associated with a lower incidence of litigation. The timeliness of earnings news is captured by a new measure based on the evolution of the consensus analyst earnings forecast. Holding total bad earnings news and other determinants of litigation constant, we find that earlier revelation of bad earnings news lowers the likelihood of litigation. This result holds for both settled and dismissed lawsuits. Further, we reconcile our findings with prior work that measures timeliness using managerial warnings via press releases. These tests suggest our findings are attributable to the ability of our timeliness measure to capture bad earning news revealed through disclosure channels beyond press releases. Data Availability: Data are available from public sources identified in the paper. JEL Classifications: K22; K41; M41.
The Life-Cycle Pattern of Collegiate GPA: Longitudinal Cohort Analysis and Grade Inflation.

Individual semester-by-semester undergraduate grade point average for each of the eight semesters of the collegiate academic life cycle for five entire student cohorts for the classes of 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002 at a large, private university in the northeast (N = 12,663) reveal a "check-mark" pattern: students' grades fell in the second semester, rose thereafter, and slumped in the last academic term. Attrition and participation in the Greek system explain over half of the longitudinal change in academic achievement. A comparison of the five cohorts of students indicates a rate of grade inflation comparable to that obtained for multischool studies covering the period 1960 to the late 1990s.
Entrepreneurship Is a General Education Course! The Why, How and Transferability of the Concept

Abstract We describe the development and implementation of an innovative university undergraduate course entitled Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E&I). Our purpose is to explain and justify how the new E&I course adds a fresh dimension to undergraduate general education by emphasizing student integrative learning of opportunity recognition and creativity knowledge and skills within a classroom of students from many academic disciplines and majors. We describe the lengthy and ultimately successful university approval process that we traversed to create the first entrepreneurship course in the United States to be granted university general education (usually consisting of liberal azts and sciences courses) degree graduation requirement status. The E&I course was included as an approved general education social and behavioral science course in 2004. We view the designation of an introductory entrepreneurship course as a general education course as a significant milestone for college and university entrepren...
Spontaneous neural encoding of social network position

Unlike many species that enact social behaviour in loose aggregations (such as swarms or herds), humans form groups comprising many long-term, intense, non-reproductive bonds with non-kin1. The cognitive demands of navigating such groups are thought to have significantly influenced human brain evolution2. Yet little is known about how and to what extent the human brain encodes the structure of the social networks in which it is embedded. We characterized the social network of an academic cohort (N = 275); a subset (N = 21) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study involving viewing individuals who varied in terms of ‘degrees of separation’ from themselves (social distance), the extent to which they were well-connected to well-connected others (eigenvector centrality) and the extent to which they connected otherwise unconnected individuals (brokerage). Understanding these characteristics of social network position requires tracking direct relationships, bonds between third parties and the broader network topology. Pairing network data with multi-voxel pattern analysis, we show that information about social network position is accurately perceived and spontaneously activated when encountering familiar individuals. These findings elucidate how the human brain encodes the structure of its social world and underscore the importance of integrating an understanding of social networks into the study of social perception. Parkinson et al. combine social network analysis and multi-voxel pattern analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data to show that the brain spontaneously encodes social distance, the centrality of the individuals encountered, and the extent to which they serve to broker connections between members.
Legal Consciousness and LGBT Research: The Importance of Law in the Everyday Lives of LGBT Individuals

The law occupies a prominent place in the everyday lives of LGBT individuals, and the continuing regulation and policing of sexuality and gender weighs heavily on many people who identify as LGBT. Despite remarkable progress in the area of LGBT civil rights, LGBT individuals in the United States still lack formal equality and are denied many of the protections that are afforded other historically disadvantaged groups. These legal disabilities represent an ongoing source of minority stress and can produce a correspondingly high degree of “legal consciousness” within the LGBT community. Given the importance of law in LGBT lives, it is not surprising that LGBT-related research often incorporates references to the legal status of LGBT individuals. Over the last several years, however, the pace of change in the area of LGBT civil rights has been so fast and uneven that it has become increasingly difficult to keep up with the most recent developments. This Essay is designed to offer an accessible framework for understanding the current state of LGBT civil rights in the United States, with a special focus on the question of relationship recognition. It explains the key concepts, provides some basic research guidelines, and suggests a number of helpful resources in order to ensure that the “legal consciousness” of LGBT-related research reflects the latest developments in the field.
When Is Difficult Planning Good Planning? The Effects of Scenario-Based Planning on Optimistic Prediction Bias

As a general rule, individuals tend to be optimistic in predicting when they will complete an upcoming activity. Building upon the ease of generation theory, we examined how dividing the planning process into multiple steps would impact the magnitude of optimism in “real world” planning. In Experiment 1 we found a decrease in optimistic prediction bias when individuals described their plans by generating a relatively difficult five-step, rather than a relatively easy two-step, optimistic scenario. In Experiment 2 the bias diminished when individuals generated the easy, rather than difficult, pessimistic scenario. In Experiment 3 the bias decreased even among individuals who generated the easy, rather than difficult, optimistic scenario when they were led to negatively interpret the feeling of ease.
The Strategic Perils of Low Cost Outsourcing

The existing outsourcing literature has generally overlooked the cost differential and contract negotiations between manufacturers and suppliers (by assuming identical cost structures and adopting the Stackelberg framework). One fundamental question yet to be addressed is whether upstream suppliers' cost efficiency is always beneficial to downstream manufacturers in the presence of competition and negotiations. In other words, does low cost outsourcing always lead to a win--win outcome? To answer this question, we adopt a multiunit bilateral bargaining framework to investigate competing manufacturers' sourcing decisions. We analyze two supply chain structures: one-to-one channels, in which each manufacturer may outsource to an exclusive supplier; and one-to-two channels, in which each manufacturer may outsource to a common supplier. We show that, under both structures, low cost outsourcing may lead to a win--lose outcome in which the suppliers gain and the manufacturers lose. This happens because suppliers' cost advantage may backfire on competing manufacturers through two negative effects. First, a decrease of upstream cost weakens a manufacturer's bargaining position by reducing her disagreement payoff (i.e., her insourcing profit) because the competing manufacturer can obtain a low cost position through outsourcing. Second, in one-to-two channels, the common supplier's bargaining position is strengthened with a lower cost because his disagreement payoff increases (i.e., his profit from serving only one manufacturer increases). The endogeneity of disagreement payoffs in our model highlights the importance of modeling firm negotiations under competition. Moreover, we identify an interesting bargaining externality between competing manufacturers when they outsource to a common supplier. Because the supplier engages in two negotiations, his share of profit from the trade with one manufacturer affects the total surplus of the trade with the other manufacturer. Because of this externality, surprisingly, as a manufacturer's bargaining power decreases, her profit under outsourcing may increase and it may be more likely for her to outsource. This paper was accepted by Yossi Aviv, operations management.
The Effect of Old Age Assistance on Retirement

Abstract Researchers have devoted considerable attention to analyzing the impact of Social Security on retirement, with mixed findings. However, the means-tested program Old Age Assistance (OAA) dwarfed Social Security until the 1950s and coincided with the early decline in elderly labor force participation. Also, OAA benefits were determined by the states – a key source of policy variation. I estimate the relationship between OAA benefits and elderly participation using individual data from the 1940 and 1950 Censuses. OAA's impact is found to be strong and implies that participation would have risen slightly instead of falling if benefits had not increased during the 1940s.
EXPORT PERFORMANCE AND EXTERNAL COMPETITIVENESS IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA

This paper r eviews a broad set of indicators of competitiveness in the Macedonian economy and estimates the equilibrium real effective exchange r ate (REER) using different methodologies. Although the REER is broadly in equilibrium at present, structural factors are found to hamper competitiveness. While a more competitive exchange rate might improve short-term export performance, sustained improvements require enhanced productivity and resource reallocation to more dynamic sectors, which depends on reforms to improve the business environment.
The two-tier board system and underpricing of initial public offerings: Evidence from Austria

We study the relation between initial IPO underpricing and two-tier board structure in the Vienna Stock Exchange of Austria, where a two-tier board is mandatory for listed companies. The board ratio, defined as the size of the supervisory board to the management board, is used to capture the effect of two-tiered board on underpricing. The results show that the board ratio is negatively related with underpricing, consistent with the agency theory which predicts that more effective monitoring implied in a relatively larger supervisory board will lead to lower agency costs, and thus lower underpricing. The results are robust to the inclusion of control variables and suggest that firms seeking to raise external capital will be helped by adopting strong corporate governance standards.
Changing Administrative Practices in American Unions: A Research Note

This note presents findings from the first longitudinal study of the administrative practices of American unions. Our surveys, conducted in 1990 and 2000, gathered information on the hiring, human resource, and financial/strategic planning practices of U.S.-based national and international unions. The results indicate that American unions are changing their criteria for hiring staff and moving toward more formal human resource policies and systematic financial and strategic planning practices.
Cognitive load and strategic sophistication

We study the relationship between the cognitive load manipulation and strategic sophistication. The cognitive load manipulation is designed to reduce the subject's cognitive resources that are available for deliberation on a choice. In our experiment, subjects are placed under a high cognitive load (given a difficult number to remember) or a low cognitive load (given a number that is not difficult to remember). Subsequently, the subjects play a one-shot game then they are asked to recall the number. This procedure is repeated for various games. We find that the relationship between cognitive load and strategic sophistication is not persistent across classes of games. This lack of persistence is consistent with recent findings in the literature. We also find that the relationship between cognitive load and actions is different from the relationship between cognitive load and beliefs. This suggests that actions and beliefs may not be as closely related as standard game theory would predict.
Incomplete Information, Higher-Order Beliefs and Price Inertia

The question that motivates this paper is how incomplete information impacts the response of prices to nominal shocks. Our baseline model is a variant of the Calvo model in which firms observe the underlying nominal shocks with noise. In this model, the response of prices is pinned down by three parameters: the precision of available information about the nominal shock, the frequency of price adjustment, and the degree of strategic complementarity in pricing decisions. This result synthesizes the broader lessons of the pertinent literature. However, this synthesis provides only a partial view of the role of incomplete information. Once one allows for more general information structures than those used in previous work, one cannot quantify the degree of price inertia without data on the dynamics of higher-order beliefs, or of the agents’ forecasts of inflation. We highlight this with three extensions of our baseline model, all of which break the tight connection between the precision of information and higher-order beliefs featured in previous work.
Chief executive officers and the pay-pension tradeoff

The theory of equalizing differences predicts that workers trade pay for benefits, but empirical confirmation of such tradeoffs is rare. This study investigates the extent to which chief executive officers (CEOs) trade pay for pension benefits. For a sample of S&P 500 CEOs, I find that an additional dollar of pension benefits is associated with a 48 cent decrease in pay. Although the tradeoff estimate is significantly different from zero, it is also significantly less than the anticipated rate of dollar-for-dollar, especially for CEOs with relatively more bargaining power over their boards of directors. This implies that the implicit price of pension benefits decreases with the CEO’s bargaining power, so pooling datasets on CEOs with varying degrees of power blurs the size of the pay–pension tradeoff. The theory of equalizing differences predicts that under competitive market conditions workers trade pay for benefits such as pensions, but empirical confirmation of such tradeoffs is rare. Smith and Ehrenberg (1983) and Currie and Madrian (1999) attribute the lack of empirical confirmation of the theory to weak proxies for employee ability and to datasets that lack individual-level pay and pension values. Both of these empirical problems can produce an underestimate of the tradeoff, consistent with the insignificant or sometimes even positive correlation between pay and pensions often found in prior research. 1
Obesity, Poverty, and the Built Environment: Challenges and Opportunities

Obesity and its associated chronic diseases heave become one of the major health concerns in the United States and around the world. Approximately two thirds of adults in the United States either overweight or obese, and the condition is linked to diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions requiring ongoing medical supervision. Obesity is a particular health concern for the poor. Not only are obesity rates generally higher among those with lower socioeconomic status, but the chronic conditions caused by obesity may present a particular challenge for the poor who often lack access to necessary ongoing medical supervision. Obesity is linked to behaviors related to food consumption and physical activity. Although the factors affecting behaviors in these areas are complex, there is growing evidence that the physical characteristics of many of our communities, and particularly poorer communities, encourage obesity-generating behaviors including a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy eating habits. This paper explores the relationship between obesogenic behavior and the physical characteristics of communities and highlights some of the challenges and opportunities associated with changing those physical characteristics.
Making the Grade: The Sensitivity of Education Program Effectiveness to Input Choices and Outcome Measures

This paper demonstrates the acute sensitivity of education program effectiveness to the choices of inputs and outcome measures, using a randomized evaluation of a mother-tongue literacy program. Th...
Stock Price Jumps and Cross-Sectional Return Predictability

We identify large discontinuous changes, known as jumps, in daily stock prices and explore the role of jumps in cross-sectional stock return predictability. Our results show that small and illiquid stocks have higher jump returns to the extent that cross-sectional differences in jumps fully account for the size and illiquidity effects. Based on value-weighted portfolios, jumps also account for the value premium. On the other hand, jumps are not the cause of momentum or net share issue effects. The findings of our study shed new light on stock return dynamics and present challenges to conventional explanations of stock return predictability.
Should There Be an Accreditation Program for Finance and Budget Offices

Professionals in public finance and budgeting face a multi-faceted credential environment, including current programs that accredit academic degrees, that bestow credentials on individuals, and that award work products meeting national standards. This article addresses a proposal to accredit the organizational unit with responsibility for budgeting and finance functions.
Strongly coupled radiation from moving mirrors and holography in the Karch-Randall model

Motivated by the puzzles in understanding how Black Holes evaporate into a strongly coupled Conformal Field Theory, we study particle creation by an accelerating mirror. We model the mirror as a gravitating Domain Wall and consider a CFT coupled to it through gravity, in asymptotically Anti de Sitter space. This problem (backreaction included) can be solved exactly at one loop. At strong coupling, this is dual to a Domain Wall localized on the brane in the Karch-Randall model, which can be fully solved as well. Hence, in this case one can see how the particle production is affected by A) strong coupling and B) its own backreaction. We find that A) the amount of CFT radiation at strong coupling is not suppressed relative to the weak coupling result; and B) once the boundary conditions in the AdS5 bulk are appropriately mapped to the conditions for the CFT on the boundary of AdS4, the Karch-Randall model and the CFT side agree to leading order in the backreaction. This agreement holds even for a new class of self-consistent solutions (the `Bootstrap' Domain Wall spacetimes) that have no classical limit. This provides a quite precise check of the holographic interpretation of the Karch-Randall model. We also comment on the massive gravity interpretation. As a byproduct, we show that relativistic Cosmic Strings (pure tension codimension 2 branes) in Anti de Sitter are repulsive and generate long-range tidal forces even at classical level. This is the phenomenon dual to particle production by Domain Walls.