cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Efficient Uncertainty in Patent Interpretation

Table of ContentsI. Introduction 1740II. The Problem of Uncertainty in Patent Scope 1747A. The U.S. Patent System Is Justified if It Produces Net Social Benefits 1747B. The Social Costs of Systemic Uncertainty in Patent Scope 17501 . Patent Claim Scope Uncertainty: An Intuitive View ... 17502. External Costs to Third Parties of Uncertainly Scoped Patents 1752C. Relationship Between Clear Legal Boundaries and Growth 1755D. Opportunistic Behavior from Patentees 1757E. Some Benefits of Scope Uncertainty 1758F. A Theoretical Model Can Improve Scope Certainty 1759III. Patent Scope and Legal Uncertainty 1761A. Claim Scope Uncertainty: A More Rigorous View 17611 . Literal Scope Versus Non-Literal Scope of Patent Claims 17622. Scope Is About Boundaries and Function 1764B. Defining Claim Scope Uncertainty 17661 . A Theoretical Metric: Perfect Scope Certainty 17662 . Characterizing Literal Claim Scope Uncertainty 1767C. Legal Uncertainty Through the Lens of a Legal Official 17671. One View of Legal Uncertainty 1768D. Sources of Patent Scope Uncertainty 17721. A Patent Claim Is a Classification Rule 17722 . Underdetermination and Scope Certainty 1 774E. Underdetermination: Precision Inadequacy 1780F. Underdetermination: Element Divisions 1780G. Scope Uncertainty Issues Difficult to Avoid 1781IV. Legal Uncertainty and Scope - A More Formal Approach 1784A. Set Theory as a Model of Legal Scope and Uncertainty 17841. Set Theory Overview 17852 . Justifying the Use of Set Theory to Characterize Legal Concepts 17863. Legal Bivalence and Legal Scope 1787B. Formally Defining and Patent Scope 17881 . Formally Defining Patent Scope and Certainty 1 7882. Patent Scope Uncertainty Using Set Theory 1790C. Formalizing Scope Restrictions 17911 . Constraint Satisfaction and Boundary Delimitation 17912. Origins of Constraint Satisfaction as a Framework 17923. Constraints on Meaning in Patent Law 1794D. Patent Scope Uncertainty and Marginal Analysis 17961 . Principle of Comparative Legal Uncertainty 1 7982. Marginal Reduction of Legal Uncertainty 17993 . Metrics for Notice-Enhancing Constraints 1801V. Policy Changes . …
Slow Passthrough Around the World: A New Import for Developing Countries?

Developing countries traditionally experience pass-through of exchange rate changes that is greater and more rapid than high-income countries experience. This is true equally of the determination of prices of imported goods, prices of local competitors’ products, and the general CPI. But developing countries in the 1990s experienced a rapid downward trend in the degree of pass-through and speed of adjustment, more so than did high-income countries. As a consequence, slow and incomplete pass-through is no longer exclusively a luxury of industrial countries. Using a new data set—prices of eight narrowly defined brand commodities, observed in 76 countries—we find empirical support for some of the factors that have been hypothesized in the literature, but not for others. Significant determinants of the pass-through coefficient include per capita incomes, bilateral distance, tariffs, country size, wages, long-term inflation, and long-term exchange rate variability. Some of these factors changed during the 1990s. Part (and only part) of the downward trend in pass-through to imported goods prices, and in turn to competitors’ prices and the CPI, can be explained by changes in the monetary environment—including a fall in long-term inflation. Real wages work to reduce pass-through to competitors’ prices and the CPI, confirming the hypothesized role of distribution and retail costs in pricing to market. Rising distribution costs, due perhaps to the Balassa-Samuelson-Baumol effect, could contribute to the decline in the pass-through coefficient in some developing countries.
Disaggregating Neighborhood and Community Center Property Types

Existing retail theory postulates a hierarchical space market with larger centers having greater drawing capacity and greater agglomeration benefits. In this study, rent determinants for two tiers ...
Culture and public goods: The case of religion and the voluntary provision of environmental quality

Using data from approximately 13,000 individuals in 14 different OECD regions, we find that culture, as expressed by religious beliefs, generates public goods contributions. We characterize individuals into systems of religious beliefs using latent class analysis and find that some types of beliefs influence pro-environment behaviors and attitudes, even after controlling for religious affiliation, political views and activism, and socio-demographic characteristics. We find a role for beliefs that is separate from social capital accumulated via membership in church groups and church attendance. Finally, we make a methodological contribution by showing that the use of latent class analysis to describe systems of beliefs yields more meaningful interpretations than the standard approach of dummy variables for specific beliefs.
Prospects for effective internal security reforms in India

This paper examines the important strides in internal security reform that India has undertaken since the November 2008 attack by Pakistani terrorists on the financial hub and port city of Mumbai. Despite decades of foreign and domestic terrorism and insurgency, India had never previously responded with such alacrity. This paper seeks to understand why this attack galvanised such reform whereas previous – and more deadly – attacks had not. To do so, it describes these important –if limited – achievements by putting them in the context of India's past insouciance and general approach towards internal security. Important factors (e.g. centre–state relations, patronage politics, composition and preferences of India's electorate and corruption) that will likely render more extensive change exceedingly unlikely if not impossible for the policy relevant future are identified. It concludes with a discussion of implications for India's internal security over the near and mid-term time horizons.
Raising the price of talk: An experimental analysis of transparent leadership

Abstract Does transparent leadership promote cooperative groups? We address this issue using a public goods experiment with exogenously selected leaders who are able to send non-binding contribution suggestions to the group. To investigate the effect of transparency in this setting we vary the ease with which a leader's actions are known by the group. We find leaders’ suggestions encourage cooperation in all treatments, but that both leaders and their group members are more likely to follow leaders’ recommendations when institutions are transparent so that non-leaders can easily see what the leader does. Consequently, transparency leads to significantly more cooperation, higher group earnings and reduced variation in contributions among group members.
Incomplete Markets, Heterogeneity and Macroeconomic Dynamics

This paper solves a real business cycle model with heterogeneous agents and uninsurable income risk using perturbation methods. In contrast to the value function iteration-based solutions, this permits an analytic characterization of an agent’s optimal decision rules that is accurate to the second order and render the implications of aggregation for macroeconomic dynamics transparent. Importantly, the role of cross-sectional holdings of capital in determining equilibruim dynamics can be directly assessed. Analysis discloses that an individual’s optimal saving decisions are, to the second order, almost linear in their own capital stock giving rise to permanent income consumption behavior. This provides an explanation for the approximate aggregation properties of this model documented by Krusell
Proposal of industrial research and development performance indices

To express research and development performance, R&D efficiency and R&D cash flow are proposed as indices. These indices reflect the connection between investment and its results more clearly than conventional indices such as R&D expenditure-to-sales ratio. For this attribute, the proposed indices are expected to be particularly useful in demonstrating the R&D division's accountability to other divisions and work within the R&D division toward R&D efficiency improvement.
Social Security Disability Determinations: Recommendations for Reform

This report for the Federal Courts Study Committee, which is reprinted as part of a symposium gathering a number of these reports, focuses on the contribution of Social Security disability claims to dramatic increases in the caseloads of the federal courts. After providing general background concerning the statutory and regulatory standards and procedural apparatus for determining whether a claimant is “disabled” so as to qualify for benefits, the report examines the Social Security caseload crisis. The report gathers caseload statistics at the agency and federal court levels, documenting a dramatic rise in the number of cases at all levels that cannot be linked to any corresponding rise in the number of benefit claims being filed. Instead, the caseload crises appears to be the product of a number of controversial policies and practices adopted by the Social Security Administration (SSA) that led to a dramatic rise in the denial of claims and termination of benefits for claimants already receiving them. These policies included the use of “continuing disability reviews” to terminate benefits even when the claimant’s condition had not changed, the imposition of substantive or evidentiary requirements that made it more difficult to establish disability, administrative oversight efforts widely perceived as pressuring decisionmakers to deny benefits, and an SSA policy of nonacquiescence in adverse judicial decisions. The SSA’s treatment of mental impairments, complaints of pain, and the opinions of treating physicians were particular significant areas of concern. Based on this information and analysis, the report concludes that reform is desirable, that it must balance efficiency and fairness, and it should be comprehensive.In light of these conclusions, the report offers four recommendations interrelated recommendations designed to streamline the process and improve decisional outcomes. First, federal district court review should be eliminated and that court of appeals review should be limited to statutory and constitutional issues and confined to the federal circuit. Second, Congress should create an Article I court of disability review that would have jurisdiction over Social Security, Veteran’s Benefits, and other disability claims, while eliminated the role of the Social Security Administration’s Appeal’s Council. Third, administrative law judges who decide Social Security claims should be removed from the administrative hierarchy of the SSA and placed in an independent corps (although still bound by agency regulations). Fourth, improvements to state level disability determination services that make initial determinations under contract with SSA should be considered. These recommendations, taken together, would streamline the process by reducing the number of steps, increase the objectivity and accuracy of disability decisions at the administrative level, and allow for the development of a specialized judiciary with greater expertise in disability matters.
Wireless Net Neutrality Regulation and the Problem with Pricing: An Empirical, Cautionary Tale

Introduction 2 I. The Network Neutrality Debate and the Problem with Price 9 A. Control of Network Property—Network Interconnectivity, Consumer Premise Equipment and the Zero-Price Access Rule 10 B. Network Management I—Prioritization by Application Restrictions and Differential Pricing 14 1. Congestion Control 14 2. Anticompetitive Prioritization 17 C. Network Management II—Consumer Tiered Pricing Regimes and the Broadband Internet Fairness Act 19 II. Regulation of the United States’ Mobile Telecommunications Industry 23 A. Overview 23 B. Dataset 25 1. Federal Entry Regulation 26 2. State Price, Non-Price Regulation 27 III. Regulation, Competition, and Pricing in the United States’ Mobile Telecommunications Industry 31 A. Hypotheses to Test 31 B. Description of the Variables 33
Public Policy Implications of Liability Regimes for Injuries Caused by Persons with Alzheimer's Disease

People in the United States and the developed world are living longer than ever before. While gains in the average life expectancy have been modest, these greatly underestimate the growth of the elderly population.1 Most of this elderly population is healthier than comparable populations in the past and they actively participate in everyday life much more than people of comparable age in decades past. The amelioration of many of the diseases of age has accentuated the problems of the chronic diseases for which there are no effective treatments. Perhaps the most devastating of these is Alzheimer's disease, a progressive dementia leading to incapacity and death.2 As discussed in the other articles in this symposia, Alzheimer's disease raises significant legal issues because it challenges our model of a world neatly divided into autonomous citizens and persons legally adjudged incompetent and under the control of duly appointed legal representatives in secure facilities.
Affinity and Hostility in Divided Communities: A Mathematical Model

We propose, develop, and analyze a mathematical model of the probability distribution of intergroup attitudes (measured on a linear scale) in a community that is divided between two distinct social groups (which may be distinguished by religion, ethnicity, or some other socially distinguishing factor). The model is based on very simple premises that are both intuitive and justified by sociological research. Under certain assumptions, we derive analytical equations to approximate the evolution of the probability distribution of affinities. We investigate the behavior of the model in various special cases, for various model configurations. We conclude that the analytical approximations do substantially capture the behavior of the system. According to the model, social pressures cause individuals in each group to tend towards extremes of hostility or affinity towards the other group. Under some conditions, groups can have stable extremist and moderate factions; but a very small change in system parameters can upset the stability, and the entire group is driven to unanimous extremism or moderation. Groups with intermediate affinity may end up unanimously extremist or unanimously moderate, depending on model parameters and random factors; a small change in parameters can have a huge effect on the likely outcome. Interpersonal cohesion (the degree to which individuals influence each other ’s opinions) plays a significant role in controlling within-group polarization. We show that programs to improve intergroup relations that target subpopulations of each group have greatly reduced effectiveness when cohesion is low. There is a narrow changeover range in which a small reduction in cohesion produces a much larger tendency towards within-group polarization.
Regulating advertisements: the case of smoking cessation products

We investigate how direct-to-consumer advertising of smoking cessation products is affected by Food and Drug Administration regulations. Because of their effectiveness, these products could be the key to meeting public health goals to reduce smoking. Our study period covers the evolution of the market as products are introduced while some of the older products move from prescription to over-the-counter (OTC) status. The movement to OTC substantially reduces disclosure requirements and reduces costs to advertise. Our results show that OTC status increases the amount firms spend on advertising and increases the number and pages of magazine advertisements.
Economic Interests and Congressional Voting on Security Issues

Most research on congressional consideration of foreign and defense policy concludes that ideology is the most important influence on roll-call voting and that constituent economic interests are not very important. This article challenges this conclusion on two grounds. First, most previous research conceives of constituent economic interests on these issues very narrowly, examining only the benefits constituents obtain from providing military goods and services rather than their economic stakes in the broader goals of national security policy. Second, the effect of ideology on congressional voting has changed enormously over time, a fact that poses difficulties for research that has stressed this consideration. The effects of broader economic interests and the changing implications of ideology are tested using a sample of key Senate votes on military resource allocation, intervention, and foreign aid from 1947 through 2000.
Data-Snooping Biases in Tests of Financial Asset Pricing Models

Tests of financial asset pricing models may yield misleading inferences when properties of the data are used to construct the test statistics. In particular, such tests are often based on returns to portfolios of common stock, where portfolios are constructed by sorting on some empirically motivated characteristic of the securities such as market value of equity. Analytical calculations, Monte Carlo simulations, and two empirical examples show that the effects of this type of data snooping can be substantial. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.
Originalism's Expiration Date

The Constitution of the United States declares itself supreme law, but even the amended document is ancient. By 2008, the predicted age of a randomly selected word in this text reached 178 years. The judiciary, for its part, might not interpret the text until decades after ratification. For Article V amendments, I calculate the average lag between ratification and Supreme Court interpretation to be approximately 40 years. The question is how these features of our supreme law might influence the choice of interpretive method and, ultimately, constitutional decision-making. In particular, some scholars indicate that originalism may be a strong force in adjudication when constitutional text is still fresh, but should then fade with time. On this view, the historical arguments in cases such as District of Columbia v. Heller might be irrelevant.This Article is a reassessment of time's influence on constitutional adjudication. It begins by investigating the character and suggesting the causes of time lags in the interpretation of supreme law. It also identifies the Supreme Court's initial encounters with Article V amendments and charts some interpretive trends over time. The Article then turns to the normative arguments for an expiring originalism. First, it resists the claim that strong judicial originalism is always desirable in the wake of ratification. Second, it pushes back in the other direction and explores justifications for a timeless originalism. An example is the possibility that judicial originalism generates ex ante incentives for Article V effort. Although unacceptable to some on principle, for others this justification will be persuasive on certain empirical assumptions. Finally, an unorthodox analogy is explored. Within a limited domain, a version of originalism can function as a culturally acceptable substitute for randomization. It turns out that a corner of supreme law is likely best determined at random, even if judges will never actually roll dice.
Cosmetic Compliance and the Failure of Negotiated Governance

Across a range of legal regimes—including environmental, tort, employment discrimination, corporate, securities, and health care law— United States law reduces or eliminates enterprise liability for those organizations that can demonstrate the existence of “effective” internal compliance structures. Presumably, this legal standard rests on an assumption that internal compliance structures reduce the incidence of prohibited conduct within organizations. This Article demonstrates, however, that little evidence exists to support that assumption. In fact, a growing body of evidence indicates that internal compliance structures do not deter prohibited conduct within firms and may largely serve a window-dressing function that provides both market legitimacy and reduced legal liability. This leads to two potential problems: (1) an under-deterrence of corporate misconduct, and (2) a proliferation of costly—but arguably ineffective—internal compliance structures. The United States legal regime’s enthusiastic embrace of internal compliance structures as a liability determinant is consistent with the increasing influence of what are referred to in this Article as “negotiated governance” models that seek to improve government regulation and/or the litigation process through more cooperative governance methods that provide a governance role to the regulated group and other interested parties. Drawing on the incomplete contracts literature, this Article argues that, although the negotiated governance model provides valuable descriptive insights into the mechanisms by which legal rules develop, the model’s proponents minimize the dangers of opportunistic behavior during the renegotiation phases of governance (that is, the implementation and enforcement phases) by those with the greatest stake in the meaning of 487 * Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School; Professor of Law, University of North Carolina. Krawiec@email.unc.edu. I am grateful to participants at a University of North Carolina School of Law faculty workshop and the F. Hodge O’Neal Corporate and Securities Law Symposium at Washington University for valuable input on this paper. I would also like to thank Scott Baker, Bill Bratton, Devon Carbado, Steve Choi, John Conley, Marion Crain, Jill Fisch, Mitu Gulati, Jerry Kang, Don Langevoort, Bill Marshall, Jim Rossi, and Ed Rubin for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this Article. Finally, I am indebted to Neil Bagchi and Huiyeon Kim for outstanding research assistance. Washington University Open Scholarship p487 Krawiec book pages.doc10/27/03 11:42 AM 488 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW QUARTERLY [VOL. 81:487 incomplete law—in this case, business organizations and legal compliance professionals, including lawyers.
Immediate and Delayed Emotional Consequences of Indulgence: The Moderating Influence of Personality Type on Mixed Emotions

The majority of literature looking at self‐control dilemmas has focused on short‐term positive and long‐term negative affective outcomes arising from indulgence. In two studies, we find evidence for more complex emotional responses after indulgent consumption. We show that consumers feel simultaneous mixtures of both positive and negative emotions in response to indulgences and that the specific components of those emotional mixtures vary, depending on differences in individual impulsivity. Further, these mixtures are resolved differently over time, leading to differences in subsequent choices. In addition we show that more prudent consumers are likely to seize an opportunity to get rid of, or “launder,” their negative emotions after an indulgence by subsequently making utilitarian versus hedonic choices.
Auditing Challenging Fair Value Measurements: Evidence from the Field

ABSTRACT: Concern about effective auditing of fair value measurements (FVMs) has risen in recent decades. Building on prior interview-based and experimental research, we provide an engagement-leve...
Network Transparency: Seeing the Neutral Network

Federal internet policy is emerging from the net neutrality debate with a clear commitment to vague principles. What began as a scuffle over configuring routers grew into a dizzying scramble to defend the internet as we know it -- and it turned out, nobody knows it quite the same way. Still, the discourse over net neutrality has been productive. From its initial ambiguity, it blossomed into a rich literature on innovation policy and the future of communications in our democracy. It inspired deep thinking on the core dynamics that make the Internet worth defending. While the politics remain unsettled, Congress has charged the new FCC to help develop a national broadband plan. And, in the next month, the FCC will begin rulemaking to enshrine as formal rules the 4 internet principles. It will also add 2 new principles: non-discrimination and transparency. Together, these 6 principles are part of the FCC’s announced program to preserve the Internet’s openness. The vague principles will be given a richer form. In this paper, we focus on achieving the new "transparency" principle. The Chairman asserted that "providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices." This transparency demands a technical and specific disclosure. We propose such a disclosure regime. Our disclosure’s immediate goal is neither improved consumer choice nor more effective regulatory oversight. Instead, tracking the incentives that function in open source software collaborations, our disclosure is aimed at high level network users, what we term with no doubt flattering vainglory, the "internet vanguard". Our disclosure is aimed at those with pecuniary, personal and reputational interests to track, react to, and defend open networks; strengthening a balance, even an ecosystem, between network managers’ tendency to centralize and users’ tendency to innovate freely at the periphery.
Taxing Financial Transactions : An Assessment of Administrative Feasibility

This paper considers how a tax on financial transactions could be applied to three broad and partially overlapping categories of financial instruments: (1) exchange-traded instruments; (2) over-the-counter instruments; and, (3) foreign exchange instruments. For each category, the paper examines the factors that would facilitate or complicate the administration of a financial transactions tax, the options for collecting the tax, the types of compliance risks that are likely to be encountered, and measures for mitigating these risks.
A Constructed Peace: Narratives of Suture in the News Media

In the aftermath of violent crime, survivors are confronted by questions of comprehension, healing, normalcy, accountability, and restoration. These same issues are communicated to audiences via mass media coverage of the crime and ensuing legal proceedings that focus upon survivors while they are in the public eye—and while those suspected of the crime are in the defendant's chair. Such stories bring a human face to the innocents most affected by the outcome of the proceedings, relaying their involvement in and response to legal developments from arrest to execution. This paper examines these chronicles through the lens of narrative theory, practices integral to human communication and memory. It discusses how the mass media makes use of narrative practices in covering crises, events that in effect demand narration. This paper then focuses upon the suturing potential of narrative, its ability to knit together understandings of crises into beginnings, endings, and points in between. This discussion is illustrated by a content analysis of stories covering Dennis and Judy Shepard, whose son Matthew was brutally slain in 1998, from the time of the murder to the prosecution of the killers and beyond.
Securities Price Consequences of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and Related Events

The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) increases restrictions on private litigation for securities fraud. We examine stock price reactions on legislative‐event‐related days of firms in four high‐litigation‐risk industries. Two other studies on this issue, Spiess and Tkac (1997) (ST) and Johnson et al. (2000) (JKN), conclude that shareholders considered PSLRA beneficial. While we find largely similar daily abnormal returns for event‐related days that they examine, we present evidence that the timing of multiple confounding events makes the interpretation of these daily returns ambiguous. Results from additional analyses beyond those conducted by ST and JKN (market price reversal tests, analysis of additional legislative‐event‐related days, cumulative abnormal returns over the legislative period, and analysis of other events affecting investors' ability to bring securities‐related lawsuits), are largely inconsistent with their interpretation, suggesting instead that shareholders in the four hi...
WHY ARE SOME PLACES RICH WHILE OTHERS ARE POOR? THE INSTITUTIONAL NECESSITY OF ECONOMIC FREEDOM

We survey perspectives on the economic differences between countries and argue that economic freedom is the key to prosperity. We close by outlining the policy implications. Specifically, removing obstacles to the exercise of economic freedom is an important step towards prosperity.
Is more targeting consistent with less spending

Economists often advise governments to target their spending better when cuts are called for. The author asks whether that advice is consistent with a political economy constraint that limits the welfare losses to the nonpoor from spending cuts. A simple theoretical model shows that the answer is unclear on a priori grounds and so will depend on the specifics of program design and financing. A case study for a World Bank-supported social program in Argentina illustrates how cuts can come with worse targeting performance: The allocation to the poor falls faster than that to the nonpoor. The author draws some lessons for how the poor might be better protected from cuts.
Dissolving (in)effective partnerships

This paper studies the problem of partnership dissolution in the context of asymmetric information. Past work shows that the initial share allocation, interdependence of partners’ valuations, and asymmetric control all affect the possibility of efficient dissolution. In this paper, I show, in a novel class of “cooperative” partnerships characterized by ex ante interdependence of valuations, that effectiveness is significantly more important than the initial share allocation. Intuitively, as the effectiveness of cooperation between partners (and thus partnership value) increases, the gains from dissolving decrease but the informational rents remain constant, so efficient dissolution is more difficult to achieve. For sufficiently high effectiveness, efficient dissolution is impossible for any initial share allocation. For sufficiently low effectiveness, however, efficient dissolution is possible for all initial share allocations. The possibility of efficient bargaining depends on the initial share allocation only for moderately effective partnerships.
BALANCE IN THE TAXATION OF DERIVATIVE SECURITIES: AN AGENDA FOR REFORM

By now, it is well understood that aggressive tax planning among high-income individuals and corporations represents a grave threat to the U.S. tax system, and that derivatives are staples of this planning. In response, the usual recommendation is consistency, which means that the same tax treatment should apply to economically comparable bets, regardless of what form is used. Yet because consistency is unattainable, this Article develops an alternative theory: Policymakers should strive instead for balance. This means that for each risky position, the treatment of gains should match the treatment of losses. For example, if the government bears 15% of losses, it has to share in 15% of gains. On a different derivative, if the government bears 35% of losses, it should share in 35% of gains. As long as this matching is achieved across the board for all risky bets, the admittedly counterintuitive reality is that taxpayers need not prefer, or engage in planning to attain, a low effective rate. A low rate obviously is appealing for gains, but it is correspondingly unappealing for losses (i.e., since deducting the loss is less valuable). Moreover, even if a low rate is desired, taxpayers can get the same aftertax return by increasing the size of their bet. The main advantage of this reform agenda is flexibility. To prove this point, this Article outlines three ways to match gains and losses on derivatives: mark-to-market accounting; a novel reform called the stated-term approach, in which gains and losses are deferred until the scheduled maturity date of the derivative, even if the contract is terminated earlier; and a zero tax rate. The provocative conclusion is that these thoroughly inconsistent approaches can coexist for economically comparable derivatives, without prompting planning. Yet this flexibility is not free, so the limitations of this reform agenda are considered as well, along with implications for cutting edge problems in the taxation of derivatives, including the timing and character rules for swaps, Section 1032, and the wash sale rules.
Entrepreneurial orientation as a basis for classification within a service industry: the case of retail pharmacy industry

Abstract To date, service classification research has primarily taken a macro view, creating service typologies or taxonomies by using dimensions such as customer contact or degree of labor intensity. Such classification schemes, though helpful in deciphering critical management issues and positioning strategies between service industries, tend to treat an entire industry, such as airlines, as a single homogenous entity. However, organizations in the same industry often use intangible resources, such as entrepreneurial orientation processes, to compete with one another. Resource-advantage theory suggests that organizations utilize intangible resources to build long-term strategies and a sustainable competitive advantage leading to superior performance. We developed organization clusters based on entrepreneurial orientation as intangible resources to classify organizations within a retailing industry. Using data from the retail pharmacy industry, we tested if the entrepreneurial orientations of the resultant groups within the pharmacy industry were related to their perception of the environment, organizational factors, and performance outcomes. The operationalization of the construct of entrepreneurial orientation is one of the contributions of the study.
Accruals and the Prediction of Future Cash Flows

Building on the Dechow et al. (1998) model of the accrual process, this study investigates the role of accruals in predicting future cash flows. The model shows that each accrual component reflects...
A hidden Markov model for collaborative filtering

In this paper, we present a method to make personalized recommendations when user preferences change over time. Most of the works in the recommender systems literature have been developed under the assumption that user preference has a static pattern. However, this is a strong assumption especially when the user is observed over a long period of time. With the help of a data set on employees' blog reading behavior, we show that users' product selection behaviors change over time. We propose a hidden Markov model to correctly interpret the users' product selection behaviors and make personalized recommendations. The user preference is modeled as a hidden Markov sequence. A variable number of product selections of different types by each user in each time period requires a novel observation model. We propose a negative binomial mixture of multinomial to model such observations. This allows us to identify stable global preferences of users and to track individual users through these preferences. We evaluate our model using three real-world data sets with different characteristics. They include data on employee blog reading behavior inside a firm, users' movie rating behavior at Netflix, and users' music listening behavior collected through last.fm. We compare the recommendation performance of the proposed model with that of a number of collaborative filtering algorithms and a recently proposed temporal link prediction algorithm. We find that the proposed HMM-based collaborative filter performs as well as the best among the alternative algorithms when the data is sparse or static. However, it outperforms the existing algorithms when the data is less sparse and the user preference is changing. We further examine the performances of the algorithms using simulated data with different characteristics and highlight the scenarios where it is beneficial to use a dynamic model to generate product recommendation.
Parameter Analysis of the VPIN (Volume‐Synchronized Probability of Informed Trading) Metric

Author(s): Song, Jung Heon | Abstract: VPIN (Volume synchronized Probability of Informed trading) is a leading indicator of liquidity-induced volatility. It is best known for having produced a signal more than hours before the Flash Crash of 2010. On that day, the market saw the biggest one-day point decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which culminated to the market value of $1 trillion disappearing, but only to recover those losses twenty minutes later (Lauricella 2010). The computation of VPIN requires the user to set up a handful of free parameters. The values of these parameters significantly affect the effectiveness of VPIN as measured by the false positive rate (FPR). An earlier publication reported that a brute-force search of simple parameter combinations yielded a number of parameter combinations with FPR of 7percent. This work is a systematic attempt to find an optimal parameter set using an optimization package, NOMAD (Nonlinear Optimization by Mesh Adaptive Direct Search) by Audet, le digabel, and tribes (2009) and le digabel (2011). We have implemented a number of techniques to reduce the computation time with NOMAD. Tests show that we can reduce the FPR to only 2percent. To better understand the parameter choices, we have conducted a series of sensitivity analysis via uncertainty quantification on the parameter spaces using UQTK (Uncertainty Quantification Toolkit). Results have shown dominance of 2 parameters in the computation of FPR. Using the outputs from NOMAD optimization and sensitivity analysis, We recommend A range of values for each of the free parameters that perform well on a large set of futures trading records.
Independence Before Conservatism: Transparency, Politics and Central Bank Design

The problem of monetary policy delegation is formulated as a two-stage game between the government and the central bank. In the first stage the government chooses the institutional design of the central bank. Monetary and fiscal policy are implemented in the second stage. When fiscal policy is taken into account, there is a continuum of combinations of central bank independence and conservatism that produce optimal outcomes. This indeterminacy is resolved by appealing to practical considerations. In particular, it is argued that full central bank independence facilitates the greatest degree of policy transparency and political coherence.
Supervising Managed Services

Many Internet-access providers simultaneously offer Internet access and other services, such as traditional video channels, video on demand, voice calling, and other emerging services, through a single, converged platform. These other services - which can be called "managed services" because the carrier offers them only to its subscribers in a manner designed to ensure some quality of service - in many circumstances will compete with services that are offered by unaffiliated parties as applications or services on the Internet. This situation creates an important interaction effect between the domains of Internet access and managed services, an effect that has largely been missing from the decade-long debate over network neutrality rules for Internet service. This Article examines this interaction effect, focusing on the context of online video services and on the recent NBC-Comcast transaction that finally highlighted these concerns. The Article contends that, when these interaction effects are understood, a nondiscrimination rule applied only to a converged carrier’s Internet service can be rendered ineffective by the carrier’s move to managed services offerings. As a result, a nondiscrimination rule, if it is to be effective, would need to be supplemented by specific behavioral or structural rules that both require the carrier to maintain its Internet service and limit the carrier’s freedom of action in the managed services domain. This reveals the difficulty of drafting effective nondiscrimination rules. It also reveals that non-economic justifications for nondiscrimination rules cannot stand alone; they must be supplemented by the economic-reasoning tools common to antitrust argument, in order to identify and determine the ultimate effects of the rules.
Tort Law and Technology

Many commentators argue that tort law is inappropriate for responding to the risks posed by emerging technologies. Courts are often seen as technically incompetent, and the case method is criticized for sending haphazard signals to producers. Administrative agencies, it is argued, have greater expertise than courts, and their capacity for uniform rule-making allows them to create a stable legal environment that contributes to technical progress and economic growth. These criticisms seem to justify current trends in preemption of tort law-Congress has been considering measures to restrict tort law, and courts are increasingly finding tort law preempted, even in the absence of explicit legislation to that effect.Professor Lyndon argues that tort law plays a valuable role in the management of new technologies. By giving producers incentives to concern themselves with all harms that a new technology may cause, rather than just those that a regulatory agency identifies, tort law encourages broader and more effective consideration of safety issues. In addition, knowledge of the specific context in which alleged harms were suffered may be critical in deciding how to react to those harms. The case method allows a more detailed consideration of this context. The focus of legal reform, Professor Lyndon argues, should not be on preempting on tort law, but on determining how tort law, regulation, and intellectual property law can best complement one another to allocate the burdens and benefits presented by technological change.
Taxing Top Earners: A Human Capital Perspective

We assess the consequences of substantially increasing the marginal tax rate on U.S. top earners using a human capital model. We nd that (1) the peak of the model Laer curve occurs at a 52 percent top tax rate, (2) if human capital were exogenous, then the top of the Laer curve would occur at a 66 percent top tax rate and (3) applying the theory and methods that Diamond and Saez (2011) use to provide quantitative guidance for setting the top tax rate to model data produces a tax rate that substantially exceeds 52 percent.
Can you hear me now? The importance of location for knowledge transfer in the telecommunications sector

This paper examines the evidence on the clustering of innovators within the telecommunications sector, using U.S. patent citation data to trace their locations over time. While clustering is clearly evident, we use multivariate left-censored Tobit regression analysis to control for identifiable factors, showing that the distance between successive innovators has been rising over time, perhaps even exponentially.
Access to Markets and the Benefits of Rural Roads

Transport infrastructure plays a central role in rural development, yet little is known about the size - or, especially, the distribution - of benefits from road investments. Among other benefits, rural roads provide cheaper access to both markets for agricultural output and for modern inputs. The author develops and implements a method for nonparametrically estimating the benefits from road projects at the household level. The idea is that since these benefits get capitalized in land values, they can be estimated by examining how the value of farmland falls with distance from agricultural markets. Household-level benefits from hypothetical road projects are calculated from the predicted appreciation in value of the household's farmland. These predicted benefits are then related to household per-capita expenditures to assess their distributional consequences. The empirical analysis, using data from Nepal, shows large benefits from extending roads into remote rural areas, much of these gains going to poorer households. But rural road construction is not the magic bullet for poverty alleviation. The benefits are neither large enough nor targeted well enough to reduce income inequality appreciably.
The Diversity Double Standard

In Grutter and Gratz (2003), the twin cases that challenged the University of Michigan’s affirmative action programs, corporate America praised educational diversity as a compelling interest. But as is well known, it did so not on social justice grounds but on the empirical claim that “diversity is good for business.” In particular, education in a diverse environment would produce better workers for an increasingly global and competitive economy. This position has since been echoed in corporate pronouncements about diversity in corporate workplaces and boardrooms. Generally speaking, corporations have justified voluntary affirmative action within the firm only to the extent that it furthers their bottom line—i.e., only if there is a “business case” for diversity. On the surface, the corporate stances toward educational diversity on the one hand and corporate diversity on the other hand seem entirely consistent. Both emphasize a consequentialist logic and economic rationale. But if one probes more deeply, an intriguing distinction appears. Regarding corporate diversity, corporations are advocating nothing more than what is already in their own economic self-interest. By contrast, when it comes to educational diversity, corporations recommend it regardless of the university’s economic self-interest. This Article argues that these positions amount to a double standard. After justifying this characterization, this Article provides a possible explanation for why the double standard exists by drawing on the psychology of human sociality in order to explore how we think differently about the commercial and educational realms. It concludes by pointing out that in light of this double standard, corporate America’s public position on diversity amounts to little more than support for diversity in the abstract so long as corporations don’t have to pay for it.
Regulating the Rulemakers: A Proposal for Deliberative Cost-Benefit Analysis

Modern risks are increasingly complex. Experts provide sober insights into the consequences of our regulatory choices. But these same risks also breed greater uncertainties and, thus, harder political decisions. Ever more urgent, then, becomes the need to ensure those decisions are transparent and accountable. Accordingly, this Note proposes the idea of deliberative cost-benefit analysis as a new regulatory paradigm, and offers concrete suggestions for implementing it. Simply stated, deliberative cost-benefit analysis entails the use of deliberative forums at critical stages of a cost-benefit study, including the designation of discount rates and measurements of willingness-to-pay. The results of this method would constitute a more legitimate means of administrative decision-making. Deliberative cost-benefit analysis can also mitigate social choice problems, uninformed preferences, and current deficits in democratic scrutiny.
The Doctrine of Illicit Intentions

According to the Doctrine of Illicit Intentions, it is impermissible both to form and then to act on an illicit intention. An intention is illicit, roughly, if it causes the agent who has it to be, in a certain way, disposed to perform actions that are impermissible. If the range of actions an agent might be directed to perform by an intention includes impermissible actions, then it may be impermissible to form or act on that intention even if, in the end, the agent performs no action that is impermissible (other than forming and acting on an illicit intention itself).