cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Size, value, and momentum in developed country equity returns: Macroeconomic and liquidity exposures ☆

Abstract The paper investigates value and momentum factors in 23 developed international stock markets. We find that typically value and momentum premia are smaller and more negatively correlated for large market capitalization stocks relative to small. Momentum factors are more highly correlated internationally relative to value. We provide international evidence on three sets of risk exposures of value and momentum returns: macroeconomic risk, funding liquidity risk, and stock market liquidity risk. We find that value returns are typically lower prior to a recession while momentum returns often exhibit little sensitivity. Value returns are typically lower in times of poor funding liquidity, whereas, with notable exceptions, momentum returns are typically unaffected. Lastly, for almost all countries, value returns are high in poor stock market liquidity conditions.
Smart money, dumb money, and capital market anomalies

Abstract We investigate the dual notions that “dumb money” exacerbates well-known stock return anomalies and “smart money” attenuates these anomalies. We find that aggregate flows to mutual funds (dumb money) appear to exacerbate cross-sectional mispricing, particularly for growth, accrual, and momentum anomalies. In contrast, hedge fund flows (smart money) appear to attenuate aggregate mispricing. Our results suggest that aggregate flows to mutual funds can have real adverse allocation effects in the stock market and that aggregate flows to hedge funds contribute to the correction of cross-sectional mispricing.
Corporate Tax Policy and Long-Run Capital Formation: The Role of Irreversibility and Fixed Costs

This paper presents an analytically tractable continuous-time general equilibrium model with investment irreversibility and fixed adjustment costs. In the model, there is a continuum of firms that are subject to idiosyncratic shocks to capital. Although the presence of investment frictions lowers consumer welfare, it may raise or reduce the long-run average capital stock, depending on the degree of idiosyncratic uncertainty. An increase in this uncertainty may raise equilibrium aggregate capital, but reduce welfare. An unexpected permanent change in the corporate income tax rate affects the investment trigger and target values, and hence the size and rate of capital adjustment. Following this tax policy, the percentage changes in equilibrium quantities are larger when fixed adjustment costs are larger. These changes are significantly smaller in a general equilibrium model than in a partial equilibrium model.
Truth or Consequences in Legal Scholarship

There has been an erosion of the ideal of truth as a guiding force for what we do. This includes a dishonoring of the tradition of the truthseeking function of scholars.1 For the university-based intellectual, including legal scholars, the problem with commitments to ends other than truth-seeking is that once we accept a mission distinct from the pursuit of truth and honest discourse, most of the remaining options are suspect-including falseness, hypocrisy, self-deception, subordination of self to a collective, profit, dogmatism, devotion to tradition, and propaganda. * Professor of Law, Cleveland State University. 1. Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford University, laments in Academic Duty that: "The list of scientists publicly tainted by charges that either they or their colleagues have published falsified data reads like a Who's Who of biomedical research." DONALD KENNEDY, ACADEMIC DUTY 211 (1999). He observes: "Today... the public would react to such a revelation [of academic Charles Van Doren's game-show fraud] both more calmly and more cynically. The change illustrates just how serious a threat to the public's confidence in the value of scholarship is the belief that its pursuit is marred by personal interest, greed, or dishonesty. Many factors are involved in higher education's fall from grace in the past decade. But surely one of the most troubling, especially for the sciences, is the issue of 'research misconduct."' Id. at 210. HeinOnline -33 Hofstra L. Rev. 1203 2004-2005
Trade liberalization, exchange rate changes, and tax revenue in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract Empirical evidence on the relationship between trade liberalization, exchange rates, and tax revenue is mixed. This paper examines these linkages anew, using a methodology similar to that of Adam et al. [, Adam, C., Bevan, D., & Chambas, G. (2001), Exchange rate regimes and revenue performance in Sub-Saharan Africa, Journal of Development Economics, 64 , 173–213]. Using a panel of 22 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, over 1980–1996, we perform Generalized Method of Moment regressions to test this relationship. We find evidence that the relationship between trade liberalization and tax revenue is sensitive to the measure used to proxy trade liberalization, but that, in general, trade liberalization is not strongly linked to aggregate tax revenue or its components—though with one measure, it is linked to higher income tax revenue. Currency appreciation and higher inflation show some linkage to lower tax revenues or its components. These results are consistent with previous findings, and support the notion that trade liberalization accompanied by appropriate macroeconomic policies can be carried out in a way that preserves overall revenue yield.
Sequencing the Issues for Judicial Decisionmaking: Limitations from Jurisdictional Primacy and Intrasuit Preclusion

This Article treats the order of decision on multiple issues in a single case. That order can be very important, with a lot at stake for the court, society, and parties. Generally speaking, although the parties can control which issues they put before a judge, the judge gets to choose the decisional sequence in light of those various interests. The law sees fit to put few limits on the judge‘s power to sequence. The few limits are, in fact, quite narrow in application, and even narrower if properly understood. The Steel Co.-Ruhrgas rule generally requires a federal court to decide Article III justiciability and subject-matter jurisdiction before ruling on the merits. The Beacon Theatres-Dairy Queen rule requires a federal trial judge to avoid preclusion by first giving to the jury a factual issue common to the merits of both law and equity claims for relief joined in the same case. The impact of these two narrow limits might seem mundane, but much turns on their scope. The sequence of jurisdictional defenses can result in dismissing a claim when the court lacked authority to hear the case and may lock a litigant out of both federal and state courts. And, while a jury‘s decision on damages would restrain a judge‘s decision on final injunctive relief, the judge remains free to decide jurisdictional defenses, class certification, or evidentiary issues without worry of affecting the jury‘s later consideration of common issues.
Participation and Procedure

How much participation should a procedurally just court system offer litigants? This question has always been especially difficult to answer in complex litigation such as class actions and mass torts because these cases involve so many litigants that it would be impossible for each of them to be afforded the kind of individualized hearing that we associate with the day in court ideal. To address the problem, we need to go back to first principles and ask what purposes participation in litigation is meant to serve. Participation serves two purposes: as a predicate to litigant consent and to engage public reason. This Article, written for the Clifford Symposium honoring Judge Jack Weinstein, argues that the public reason rationale offers the best normative underpinning for participation in large-scale litigation and demonstrates how public reason can be realized through procedural innovations such as those Judge Weinstein has pioneered.
Do Firms Hedge in Response to Tax Incentives

There are two tax incentives for corporations to hedge: to increase debt capacity and interest tax deductions, and to reduce expected tax liability if the tax function is convex. We test whether these incentives affect the extent of corporate hedging with derivatives. Using an explicit measure of tax function convexity, we find no evidence that firms hedge in response to tax convexity. Our analysis does, however, indicate that firms hedge to increase debt capacity, with increased tax benefits averaging 1.1 percent of firm value. Our results also indicate that firms hedge because of expected financial distress costs and firm size. AN INCREASING NUMBER OF CORPORATIONS use financial derivatives each year. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association reports that the notional value of outstanding OTC swap contracts increased from $11.3 trillion in 1994 to more than $60 trillion by mid-2000 ~http:00www.isda.org!. This is interesting because financial theory tells us that corporate risk management enhances value only in the presence of costly market imperfections. A number of empirical studies examine derivative holdings to identify which of the proposed theoretical incentives and imperfections lead to corporate hedging. Our paper adds to the hedging literature by testing whether corporations respond to two tax-related incentives to hedge: the incentive to reduce volatility, thereby increasing debt capacity and the tax benefits of debt, and the incentive to reduce expected tax liabilities by reducing the volatility of taxable income. We also use a refined dependent variable to measure net
Career concerns and mandated disclosure

Abstract This paper examines the effects of mandated disclosure on the design of contracts and induced behavior in the presence of career concerns. We analyze the impact of two key properties of a mandated performance measure that is publicly disclosed: its sensitivity to the agent’s effort and its informativeness about the agent’s ability. We show conditions under which the agent’s effort (and the firm’s output) and the pay-for-performance weight critically depend on these two properties. In particular, when the mandated measure is sufficiently noisy, the pay-for-performance weight always decreases relative to a setting with no mandated measure. But when the mandated measure’s noise is close to that of the existing performance measure, the effect of a mandated measure on the pay-for-performance weight depends on the effort-sensitivity and informativeness of the measure. We also characterize settings where a mandated disclosure would be desirable or not; variations arise because mandated disclosures can increase both effort and risk. Our results imply that mandating the public disclosure of performance measures, particularly measures that are relatively informative about ability but are difficult to influence through managerial effort, may have the unintended consequence of generating inefficiencies in firms’ employment contracts.
A Reflection on American Justice at a Crossroads: A Public and Private Crisis

In April, 2010, a prominent group of judges, attorneys, academics, private dispute resolution professionals, and policymakers gathered to reflect upon the current state and future of the American justice system. A symposium entitled American Justice at a Crossroads: A Public and Private Crisis was held at Pepperdine University School of Law under the joint sponsorship of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, the Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal, and the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR Institute). This special symposium edition of the Journal is comprised of select papers and speeches presented at that event and provide thoughtful considerations for meaningful reform in our public and private justice system. Thanks is owed to Dean Ken Starr, conference panelists the Honorable Barbara Rothstein, Charles “Tim” McCoy, Vaughn R. Walker, Daniel Winslow, Hon. Ben Tennille, Dean Lisa Kloppenberg, Professor Jack Coe, and Michelle Leetham for joining with us to contemplate, debate, and aspire American Justice at a Crossroads. Individuals who helped make this conference a reality and a success include: CPR’s President Kathy Bryan, Academic Director of the Straus Institute, Professor Thomas Stipanowich, Symposium Editor Julie Dilworth, the administrative expertise of Lori Rushford, as well as the hard-working law students of the Dispute Resolution Journal. This essay recaptures some of the discussion and ideas generated at the conference on American Justice at a Crossroads. In his 1906 address to the American Bar Association, Dean Roscoe Pound posed a challenged. He asked us to think about the “Causes of Popular Dissatisfaction in the Administration of Justice.” Dean Pound cited the overly formalistic and adversarial nature of U.S. litigation among the
Impacts of Performance Pay for Hospitals: The Readmissions Reduction Program

US policy increasingly ties payments for providers to performance on quality measures, though little empirical evidence guides the design of such incentives. I deploy administrative data to study a large federal program that penalizes hospitals with high readmissions rates. Using policy-driven variation in the penalty incentive across hospitals for identification, I find that hospital responses to the penalty account for two-thirds of the observed decrease in readmissions over this period, as well as a decrease in heart attack mortality. Quality improvement accounts for about one-half of the decrease in readmissions; the remainder is explained by selective admission of returning patients.
Combating pirates of the Gulf of Aden: The Djibouti Code and the Somali Coast Guard

The electrifying rescue of a merchant marine captain by U.S. special operations forces in April 2009 was the most dramatic episode yet in the surge in Somali piracy that began in 2006. But the real success in the fight against this age-old threat lies in far less sensational settings. In international venues and local courtrooms along the shores of East Africa, states are taking important steps to contain the maritime criminal activity that has shaken global energy markets and rattled the shipping industry.
State medical peer review: high cost but no benefit--is it time for a change?

The medical community and policy-makers have widely accepted peer review of physicians as essential to encouraging high quality medical practice. Peer review is a process by which members of a hospital's medical staff review the qualifications, medical outcomes and professional conduct of other physician members and medical staff applicants to determine whether the reviewed physicians may practice in the hospital and, if so, to determine the parameters of their practice.
Privatization and the Sale of Tax Revenues

I. The Role of Debt in State and Local Government Finance 1969 A. The Case for Debt 1970 B. The Case Against Debt 1972 C. The Development of Legal Controls on Government Debt 1975 II. The Avoidance of Restrictions on Debt 1977 A. Creating New Jurisdictions 1978 B. The Special-Funds Exception 1980 C. Short-Term Debt 1984 D. Property Tax Exemptions 1985 E. Leases 1987 F. Privatization 1990 III. The Collateral Damage of Privatization 2001 A. Cash Pricing 2002 B. Noncash Contractual Terms 2010 C. Transactional Transparency 2018 IV. Reining in Smoke-and-Mirror Accounting and Limiting Dead-Hand Control 2021 A. Eliminating Debt Restrictions 2022 B. Direct Attacks on Privatization/Sales of Tax Revenues 2024 1. Limiting Particular Transactions 2024 2. Limiting Harmful Effects 2029 Conclusion 2033
Competition, Preference Uncertainty, and Jamming: A Strategic Communication Experiment

We conduct a game-theoretic laboratory experiment to investigate the nature of information transmission in a communication environment featuring competition and information asymmetry. Two senders have private information about their preferences and simultaneously send messages to a receiver in a one-dimensional space with a large number of states, actions, and messages. We find that equilibrium predictions fare poorly and that senders overcommunicate by consistently exaggerating their messages. Over time, exaggeration increases and communication unravels. Our analysis suggests that exaggeration and unraveling can only be partially explained by bounded rationality models of iterated reasoning or belief learning. Instead, behavior is consistent with a naive form of exaggeration in which senders know they must exaggerate, but they do so in an understated way that is less responsive to their private information or to opponents' past behavior than would be fully optimal.
Tax Expenditures, Reform, and Distributive Justice

Tax reform is coming, and it will be an important part of any plan to avert national fiscal disaster. The President’s Fiscal Commission recently presented a proposal for comprehensive tax reform that will form the basis for serious legislative discussion. At the center of that proposal is elimination of “tax expenditures,” which are provisions in the tax law that operate like direct government spending. They include the charitable deduction, the home mortgage interest deduction, the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance, the child credit, the earned income credit, education credits and deductions, the tax preference for retirement savings accounts like IRAs and 401(k) plans, and dozens of others. This article argues that elimination of tax expenditures is a flawed approach to tax reform. Tax expenditures are not an undifferentiated mass, but reflect a wide variety of federal policies, each of which requires independent evaluation. Before policymakers can decide whether to abolish tax expenditures, they need to know a lot more than the tax expenditure budgets currently reveal about what tax expenditures do, who benefits from them, and how much revenue could be raised by their repeal. They also need to decisively identify which provisions are tax expenditures, a perennial source of disagreement. This article argues that proposals to repeal tax expenditures reflect a normative preference for efficiency over equity, the traditional twin goals of tax policy, squandering the tax law’s unique role in economic justice.
Left Out at Sea: Highly Migratory Fish and the Endangered Species Act

Of the nearly 2,000 threatened and endangered species protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA), not one is a highly migratory fish. Despite well-documented population declines in many species of highly migratory fish over the past fifty years, including tuna, marlin, and shark, no highly migratory fish has ever been listed for protection. In light of current controversy over the proposed protection of Atlantic bluefin tuna under international and domestic law, this Comment seeks to explore reasons for the curious absence of any protection for highly migratory fish under the ESA. Specifically, this Comment will examine how societal perceptions and values of fish as commercial commodities perpetuate a statutory and administrative regime that militates against the protection of highly migratory fish under the ESA.
Exit, Voice, Loyalty, and Pay: Evidence from the Public Workforce

We assess Hirschman’s theory of exit, voice and loyalty in the context of voluntary exit from organizations in the public workforce. Specifically, we test the effects of loyalty and voice on the likelihood a person states their intention to leave. We assess these relationships using data from the Federal Human Capital Survey. Our statistical analysis provides evidence that perceptions about voice and loyalty limit exit at all levels of the organizational hierarchy. Yet, dissatisfaction with pay is also a substantial cause of intention to leave – and this effect is greatest for executive-level employees. We also show evidence for “motivation crowding” when pay-based motivation is emphasized.
At Your Service on the Table: Impact of Tabletop Technology on Restaurant Performance

Some industries, such as healthcare and financial services, have reported significant productivity gains from introduction of new technologies. However, other more traditional, labor-intensive indu...
The Ontology of Consent

In this paper, I show that consent is neither a performative nor a mental state plus a signification thereof. Rather, consent is a mental state, that of waiving one’s moral or legal objection to the consented-to act. Signification provides evidence of consent but does not constitute its existence. It can, however, affect the culpability of those who act with or without that evidence. Consent does depend on what information the putative consenter possesses regarding the act in question. The informational requisites of valid consent is a quite difficult and undertheorized topic. The motivational requisites of valid consent, however, is not a difficult matter.
Development effectiveness: what have we learnt?*

We suggest that the ‘poverty-efficiency’ aid allocation is merely a benchmark guide if a donor lacks other information about the country and also the power to change or prevail over government preferences. We argue that in most circumstances donors have only limited scope for the latter and that, while high aid dependence may reduce the fungibility problem and the use of NGOs can by-pass it altogether, such circumstances are not very common. Hence, the main reasons for departing from the benchmark are when the donor has additional information about likely poverty impact, or if poverty reduction is not the objective.
How "Decentralization" Rationalizes Oligarchy: John McGinnis and the Rehnquist Court

"Decentralization" sounds wonderfully democratic. It implies that people are becoming masters of their own destinies, freed from the oppression of distant functionaries who neither know nor care about the particulars of their lives. Strangely, however, "decentralization" can sometimes be deployed to disguise oligarchic rule by an unaccountable elite. The paradox is starkly, if inadvertently, displayed in Professor John McGinnis's explication and defense of the Rehnquist Court's decisions on federalism and free association, "Reviving Tocqueville's America." Professor McGinnis argues that decentralization is a central theme of the Rehnquist Court's jurisprudence. He claims that this idea justifies the court's work, in the same way that John Hart Ely's representation-reinforcement theory justified much of the work of the Warren Court. His attempted justification fails, however, because the idea of decentralization cannot be implemented in the way he contemplates without policy determinations that are essentially legislative.
Clogs in the Pipeline: The Mixed Data on Women Directors and Continued Barriers to Their Advancement

The longstanding disparity between the percentage of women in the workforce and their membership on corporate boards indicates that women continue to face significant barriers to corporate board membership. Evidence drawn from an empirical study on women directors at Fortune 100 companies demonstrates that the mere passage of time does not eliminate these barriers. This empirical study confirms that women have made considerable progress since 1934, but the aggregate number of women directors is small when compared against their percentages in the workforce and school population. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 may have resulted in changes in board composition that have a positive impact on women's effectiveness in the boardroom, but it has not resulted in a significant increase in the number of women directors. The empirical evidence on directors’ occupations reveals that the pipeline from the workforce to the board primarily flows through corporate executive suites. As a result, the failure of women to advance to executive levels within the corporation is a critical reason for the sluggish advancement of women on boards.
Reading John Noonan

This contribution to the Eighth Annual John F. Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics, and Religion highlights several works by Judge John T. Noonan, Jr.
Welfare, Freedom and Social Choice: A Reply

The editors of this journal have kindly offered me the opportunity to write a “reply” to the essays included in this special number. It is not easy to respond adequately to such a rich collection of challenging ideas and contributions, nor to hide the fact that I am delighted — and feel tremendously honoured — by the occasion and by this wonderful set of essays. The papers cover a wide variety of fields : social choice theory and welfare economics (Blackorby, Donaldson and Weymark; Moulin); bargaining theory and social choice (Roemer); social justice and equality (Cohen; Van Parijs); evaluation of freedom (Pattanaik and Xu); rights and consequentialism (Steiner); evaluation of poverty (Bourguignon and Fields); standards of living (Schokkaert and Van Ootegem). I shall follow the authors from territory to territory, like a solitary “groupie”. But I shall also crane my neck in trying to view one territory from another, to explore some interconnections.
World cup 2026 now accepting bribes: a fundamental transformation of FIFA’s world cup bid process

The beauty of the game of football, while being played on the pitch, is unquestioned; however, the widespread corruption within the Federation International de Football Association (FIFA) has tarnished the on the field beauty of the game. The perception that football is corrupt became a reality after the allegations of bribery and vote trading that surrounded the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid process. This article argues that to restore the public confidence in FIFA, specifically in the World Cup bid process, FIFA must aggressively punish individuals, nations, and confederations guilty of accepting or offering kickbacks, bribes, or vote trading, as well as protecting those guilty, or reasonably believed to be guilty, of such crimes. To assure that such a fundamental shift will occur, FIFA must work with other sports governing bodies to establish a World Anti-Corruption Agency. Additionally, FIFA must internally change its World Cup vote procedures to ensure fairness and transparency. FIFA must act with honor, integrity, and transparency to regain credibility and public trust. This article outlines the current rules and regulations that govern the selection of the host nation for World Cup, addresses the controversy centered on the selection process for 2018 and 2022 World Cup, and recommends a three-part solution detailing the necessary steps both FIFA and FIFA members must take to ensure the integrity of the FIFA World Cup bid process.
Bond market event study methods.

Abstract The procedures used in corporate bond event studies to date fail to control for heteroskedasticity due to differences in return volatility by term-to-maturity, rating, and other factors resulting in low test power. Bond return standardization yields considerably more powerful tests. Also, due to infrequent trading, use of bond transaction price observations over several days before and after an event, while giving more weight to returns calculated from transactions closer to the event, yields considerably more powerful tests than returns based solely on transactions the day before and the day after the event. Exploring the test bias caused by overlapping event dates, we find that, adjusted for rating and maturity, the correlation among standardized abnormal bond returns is small but that even fairly small correlations can result in biased test statistics. A bond market modification of the Kolari and Pynnonen (2010) procedure corrects this bias.
Autoencoder asset pricing models

Abstract We propose a new latent factor conditional asset pricing model. Like Kelly, Pruitt, and Su (KPS, 2019), our model allows for latent factors and factor exposures that depend on covariates such as asset characteristics. But, unlike the linearity assumption of KPS, we model factor exposures as a flexible nonlinear function of covariates. Our model retrofits the workhorse unsupervised dimension reduction device from the machine learning literature – autoencoder neural networks – to incorporate information from covariates along with returns themselves. This delivers estimates of nonlinear conditional exposures and the associated latent factors. Furthermore, our machine learning framework imposes the economic restriction of no-arbitrage. Our autoencoder asset pricing model delivers out-of-sample pricing errors that are far smaller (and generally insignificant) compared to other leading factor models.
Who’s heard on the Street? Determinants and consequences of financial analyst coverage in the business press

This study examines the determinants of financial analyst coverage in the business press and the effects of such coverage on analysts’ careers. Using a sample of business press articles that quote a financial analyst, we compare each cited analyst with the other analysts who were actively following the same firm and could have been cited by the reporter but were not. In general, we find that analysts quoted in the business press are more likely to possess characteristics that prior research has found to be positively associated with analyst quality and that higher quality analysts are allotted more space in the articles. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that at least some of our analyst quality measures capture the effects of familiarity. After controlling for analyst quality and article tone, we find that analysts with unfavorable stock recommendations are more likely to be cited than analysts with favorable recommendations. We provide evidence of significant career benefits for analysts who receive publicity in the business press, which suggests that the press is a source of valuable exposure for analysts.
Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth : The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors

Individual investors who hold common stocks directly pay a tremendous performance penalty for active trading. Of 66,465 households with accounts at a large discount broker during 1991 to 1996, those that trade most earn an annual return of 11.4 percent, while the market returns 17.9 percent. The average household earns an annual return of 16.4 percent, tilts its common stock investment toward high-beta, small, value stocks, and turns over 75 percent of its portfolio annually. Overconfidence can explain high trading levels and the resulting poor performance of individual investors. Our central message is that trading is hazardous to your wealth.
The Perils of Sterilization

The sterilization of capital inflows at the start of a price stabilization program may give rise to future pressures to discontinue the program as a result of the unduly high debt-service burden that the sterilization policy may generate.
Chain-wide and store-level analysis for cross-category management

Abstract When planning and implementing their price-promotions strategy, retail chain managers face the typical dilemma of “thinking globally, but acting locally.” In other words, they must plan their strategy, keeping in mind the global chain-level impact of their promotions, to deliver on the commitments made to manufacturers. At the same time, managers need to make sure that the implementation of such strategy takes into account the fact that each store caters to a different market with different needs and responses to marketing programs. Moreover, the retail chain manager must consider not only how the promotion of a brand affects competing brands and total category sales, but also how it could affect sales in other categories. Our proposed model addresses these two important aspects of chain-wide and store-level cross-category analysis. First, our proposed factor-regression model takes store differences and longitudinal market shifts into account, thereby providing the retail chain manager with unbiased global, chain-level estimates. It also provides stable local estimates of cross-category promotion effects at the store level. Second, while allowing this flexibility, our proposed model is parsimonious enough over existing alternatives, making it particularly useful for chain-wide and store-level cross-category analysis. We apply the proposed model to store-level data from one retail chain, comparing it with several competing approaches, and demonstrate that it provides the best balance between flexibility and parsimony. Most importantly, we show that the proposed model provides useful insights regarding cross-category effects at the chain-level, for individual stores, and their patterns across stores.
Privacy, Visibility, Transparency, and Exposure

This essay considers the relationship between privacy and visibil ity in the networked information age. Visibility is an important deter minant of harm to privacy, but a persistent tendency to conceptualize privacy harms and expectations in terms of visibility has created two problems. First, focusing on visibility diminishes the salience and ob scures the operation of nonvisual mechanisms designed to render in dividual identity, behavior, and preferences transparent to third par ties. The metaphoric mapping to visibility suggests that surveillance is simply passive observation rather than the active production of cate gories, narratives, and norms. Part I explores this problem and identi fies some of the reasons that US privacy jurisprudence has been par ticularly susceptible to it. Second, even a broader conception of privacy harms as a function of informational transparency is incomplete. Privacy has a spatial di mension as well as an informational dimension. The spatial dimension of the privacy interest, which I characterize as an interest in avoiding or selectively limiting exposure, concerns the structure of experienced space. It is not negated by the fact that people in public spaces expect to be visible to others present in those spaces, and it encompasses both the arrangement of physical spaces and the design of networked communications technologies. US privacy law and theory currently do not recognize this interest at all. Part II argues that they should. Part III argues that the spatial dimension of the privacy interest extends to online conduct and considers some implications of that view for cur rent debates about expectations of privacy online. Part IV offers some preliminary thoughts on how the privacy interest against exposure might affect thinking about privacy self-defense.
Combining monotonicity and strong equity: construction and representation of orders on infinite utility streams

This paper studies the nature of social welfare orders (SWO) on infinite utility streams, satisfying the efficiency principle known as monotonicity and the consequentialist equity principle known as strong equity. It provides a complete characterization of domain sets for which there exists such a SWO which is in addition representable by a real valued function. It then shows that for those domain sets for which there is no such SWO which is representable, the existence of such a SWO necessarily entails the existence of a non-Ramsey set, a non-constructive object.
The Linkage Between Speculative Attack and Target Zone Models of Exchange Rates

In this paper we generalize the target zone exchange rate as model formalized by Krugman (1988b) to include finite-sized interventions in defense of the zone. The main contributions of these pages consist of linking the recent developments in the theory of target zones to the mirror-image theory of speculative attacks on asset price fixing regimes and in using aspects of that linkage to give an intuitive interpretation to the smooth pasting" condition usually invoked as a terminal condition.
Contractual incompleteness as a signal of trust

Abstract This paper shows how the fear of signaling distrust can endogenously lead to incomplete contractual agreements. We consider a principal agent relationship where the agent may be trustworthy (dedicated to the project) or not. The principal may trust the agent (i.e. have a high belief of facing a trustworthy agent), or distrust him. The proposal of a complete contract, including fines and other explicit incentives, is shown to signal distrust. When trust is important in some non-contractible part of the relationship, a principal may prefer to leave the contract incomplete rather than to signal distrust by proposing a complete contract. Contractual incompleteness arises endogenously due to asymmetric information about how much one partner trusts the other side.
The evolution of capital structure and operating performance after leveraged buyouts: Evidence from U.S. corporate tax returns

This study uses corporate tax return data to examine the evolution of firms' financial structure and performance after leveraged buyouts (LBOs) for a comprehensive sample of 317 LBOs taking place between 1995 and 2007. We find little evidence of operating improvements subsequent to an LBO, although consistent with prior studies, we do observe operating improvements in the set of LBO firms that have public financial statements. We also find that firms do not reduce leverage after LBOs, even if they generate excess cash flow. Our results suggest that effecting a sustained change in capital structure is a conscious objective of the LBO structure.
The Pluralist Predicament: Contemporary Theorizing in the Law of Religious Freedom

Religious pluralism is at once the cause of and a substantial impediment to theorizing about religious freedom. The purpose of theorizing in law is typically to impose order on an unruly collection of phenomena - of seemingly conflicting decisions, or doctrines, or legal arguments - and to do so by articulating and elaborating the foundational truths that govern the subject in question. In a condition of religious pluralism, however, theorists typically suppose that it is impermissible to appeal to contested religious beliefs. But these are the very beliefs that would provide the natural foundations for thinking about the proper relation between government and religion (and that at least until relatively recently did provide the foundations for such thinking). This essay, written to provide a succinct "state of the art" review of current approaches, describes and assesses the various ways in which modern theorists of religious freedom have addressed this fundamental difficulty.
The Effect of Information Releases on the Pricing and Timing of Equity Issues

With time-varying adverse selection in the market for new equity issues, firms will prefer to issue equity when the market is most informed about the quality of the firm. This implies that equity issues tend to follow credible information releases. In addition, if the asymmetry in information increases over time between information releases, the price drop at the announcement of an equity issue should increase in the time since the last information relese. Using earnings releases as a proxy for informative events, we find evidence supporting these propositions. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.
Corporate venture capital and the returns to acquiring portfolio companies.

Abstract A prominent motive for corporate venture capital (CVC) is the identification of entrepreneurial-firm acquisition opportunities. Consistent with this view, we find that one of every five startups purchased by 61 top corporate investors from 1987 through 2003 is a venture portfolio company of its acquirer. Surprisingly, our analysis reveals that takeovers of portfolio companies destroy significant value for shareholders of acquisitive CVC investors, even though these same investors are “good acquirers” of other entrepreneurial firms. We explore numerous explanations for these puzzling findings, which seem rooted in managerial overconfidence or agency problems at the program level.
For Whom the Little Bells Toll: Recent Judgments by International Tribunals on the Legality of Cluster Munitions

"Little bells" refer to cluster bomblets in Serbo-Croatian. Two international tribunals recently have found defendants liable for civilian deaths caused by cluster munitions. These decisions may herald a turning point in the regulation of these weapons. In 2004, the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission held Eritrea liable for civilians killed in cluster munition strikes on Mekele, Ethiopia. On June 12, 2007, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia held the former president of the now defunct Serbian Republic of Krajina criminally liable for deaths and injuries resulting from cluster munition rocket attacks on Zagreb. Cluster bombs came back onto the world stage during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, with both sides of the conflict deploying the weapon in irresponsible ways. By early 2007, momentum had gathered for a treaty banning cluster bombs. Efforts are also underway at the national level to regulate their use. The two judgments have much to contribute to the current debate over how to eliminate or limit the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions. These cases are the only ones to date to address several humanitarian law issues in the debate over cluster munition regulation. Adjudicators grappled with whether the characteristics of cluster munitions can be used as evidence of intent to attack civilians or of indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks; what precautions users of these weapons must take in advance; and what role does foreknowledge about the wide area nature as well as landmine-like effects of cluster munitions have on culpability. This article analyzes the two judgments in detail and presents lessons to be learned: A. Advance Awareness of Cluster Weapon Characteristics Can Lead to Criminal Liability B. The Use of Unguided Cluster Munitions With Wide Area Effects May Lead to Criminal Liability C. Cluster Munition Use Against Military Targets in Civilian Areas Should Be Presumptively Off-Limits D. Restricting Cluster Munition Use Should Not Be Seen as a Green Light to Use Even More Destructive Weapons Indiscriminately E. Duds Matter: Probable Harm in the Immediate and Longer Term Aftermath Must Be a Part of the Proportionality Equation F. Magic Bullets? Why Trying to Build Better Cluster Bombs Does Not Resolve All the Indiscriminate Effects Associated with Their Use
Health Insurance and the Supply of Entrepreneurs: Evidence from the ACA Medicaid Expansion

I examine whether the expansion of Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act increases the supply of entrepreneurs as measured by self-employment. Using the 2003–2017 Current Population Survey and focusing on childless adults in low-income households, I apply difference-in-differences, propensity score weighting, and instrumental variable (IV) methods. I find that expanding Medicaid eligibility raises the self-employment rate by 0.8 to 1.6 percentage points, without increasing self-employment exit. IV estimates imply that covered individuals have 8 to 11 percentage points higher probability to become self-employed. In the analysis of policy heterogeneity, I find evidence that the underlying mechanism of the effect was through the reduction of entrepreneurship lock. The results suggest that limited access to health insurance may be a barrier to entrepreneurship.
Do Family Wealth Shocks Affect Fertility Choices? Evidence from the Housing Market Boom and Bust

Little is known about how wealth affects fertility decisions of the household. This paper fills this gap by investigating how changes in housing wealth affect fertility. We first conduct a state-level aggregate analysis to investigate how the birth rate is related to housing prices using differences in the timing and size of the housing market boom and bust across different states over time. We then conduct an analysis using restricted-use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics that allows us to track how women’s fertility behavior is related to individual-level housing price growth. We find that for homeowners, a $10,000 increase in real housing wealth causes a 0.07 percent increase in fertility. We find little effects of MSA-level housing price growth on the fertility of renters, which supports our identification strategy. That increases in housing wealth are strongly associated with increases in fertility is consistent with some recent work showing a positive income effect on births, and our estimates are suggestive that the large recent variation in the housing market could have sizeable demographic effects that are driven by the positive effect of housing wealth on fertility.
The dynamics of online word-of-mouth and product sales—An empirical investigation of the movie industry

There are growing interests in understanding how word-of-mouth (WOM) on the Internet is generated and how it influences consumers’ purchase decisions at retail outlets. A unique aspect of the WOM effect is the presence of a positive feedback mechanism between WOM and retail sales. We characterize the process through a dynamic simultaneous equation system, in which we separate the effect of online WOM as both a precursor to and an outcome of retail sales. We apply our approach to the movie industry, showing that both a movie's box office revenue and WOM valence significantly influence WOM volume. WOM volume in turn leads to higher box office performance. This positive feedback mechanism highlights the importance of WOM in generating and sustaining retail revenue.
Deferring to Secrecy

In prescribing de novo judicial review of agencies’ decisions to withhold requested information from the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Congress deliberately and radically departed from the typical deferential treatment courts are required to give to agencies. Nonetheless, empirical studies demonstrate that the de novo review standard on the books in FOIA cases is not the standard used in practice. In fact, despite being subject to the stringent de novo standard, agencies’ FOIA decisions are upheld at a substantially higher rate than agency decisions that are entitled to deferential review. This Article posits that although courts recite the appropriate standard in FOIA cases, they have created a collection of practices unique to FOIA cases that have the effect of deferring to the government’s secrecy positions. First, in some cases, courts expressly defer to particular representations made by the government, even though these representations are themselves crucial to the overall determination of the legality of the withholding. Second, in every FOIA case, certain procedural practices have become part of the body of case law governing how FOIA cases are adjudicated, and these practices stack the deck in favor of the government. This Article concludes that these procedural practices, which are departures from the federal procedural system’s trans-substantive design, may be the more pernicious of the deference doctrines under FOIA, as they hide the true nature of the rulings, make it more difficult for the political branches to respond, and diminish public confidence in the judiciary.
Can You Gig It? An Empirical Examination of the Gig Economy and Entrepreneurial Activity

We examine how the entry of gig-economy platforms influences local entrepreneurial activity. On the one hand, such platforms may reduce entrepreneurial activity by offering stable employment for th...