cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Runoff and Reality: Externalities, Economics, and Traceability Issues in Urban Runoff Regulation

If you sneeze, have you polluted? If you smoke in public, have you polluted? If you wash your car in your driveway, have you polluted? If you fertilize your lawn, have you polluted? If you pull out the chainsaw and take down a tree, have you polluted? If you run a business that uses chemicals on land-based resources, like a coal processing facility, have you polluted? What are your legal responsibilities if you take any of these actions? Do you know, have you considered it, and do you care? All of the above activities can cause trans-boundary effects—that is, effects beyond yourself or beyond your property—and much of the harm that these activities can cause is not immediately apparent. It is easy to ignore the incidental effects of our actions, yet regulators are increasingly placing a focus on such consequences when deciding whether and how to formulate rules for the control of pollution. The idea of runoff is not intuitive to individuals or businesses, but knowledge of legal liabilities for actions that create externalities through runoff is increasingly important. As our understanding of water quality and sources of pollution becomes more sophisticated, cognizance of the implications of the effects of that car wash or coal wash becomes far more important for the analysis of legal compliance and legal responsibility. The answer to all the questions posed above, and similar ones, is—“perhaps.” The conclusion rests on containment of possible pollutants, internalization of the costs of activities, the
Payment changes and default risk: The impact of refinancing on expected credit losses

Abstract This paper analyzes how access to credit and the path of mortgage rates can affect borrower credit risk. This is a crucial issue for evaluating refinance programs as a form of loss mitigation, and it became prominent in the debates around the Treasury Department's Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). These debates exposed gaps in the literature on the relationship between credit performance and changes in borrowers’ monthly mortgage payments. Since then, several new studies have attempted to fill these holes, each pursing a different methodology. In this paper, we review the relevant debates and look at what downward adjustments in prime adjustable-rate mortgages can tell us about modifications of prime fixed-rate mortgages. We argue that this method better addresses the various sampling biases that plague all attempts to predict HARP's impact. Our analysis indicates that typical monthly payment reductions under HARP would reduce credit losses by 56 basis points.
Lump-Sum Investing versus Dollar-Averaging

This article shows that if the market has an expected positive risk premium, then lump-sum investing is mean-variance superior to dollar-averaging. In showing this, it is critical to hold constant the risks of the two policies. When this is done over a 12-month horizon, lump-sum investing provides a higher return by 1 to 4 percent as the stock size declines. Lump-sum investing provides a higher return using the S&P 500 in 40 of 65 years. Risk-averse investors who prefer dollar-averaging can accomplish the aim of risk reduction more effectively by lowering the fraction of funds invested in the risky asset and investing them all at once.
The Merits of Tax Competition in a Globalized Economy

Since the turn of the current century, leading transnational organizations and academic scholarship have identified tax competition among countries as one of the scourges of the international tax regime. Both the EU and the OECD have warned that tax competition erodes the tax bases of Member States and impedes their ability to provide essential services. Commentators have argued that unrestrained competition is driving tax rates on mobile sources of income to (or close to) zero, a process that jeopardizes the very existence of the welfare state, exacerbates problems of global poverty, and deprives developing countries of funds that they desperately need in order to improve their physical infrastructure and human capital. Tax competition is also said to misallocate economic resources by driving investment to where the tax rate is lowest rather than to where the return on investment is highest.Most proposals for reform suggest that, to one extent or another, countries harmonize their tax policies with the aim of mitigating the threat of mutually harmful tax competition. One prevalent theme in reform proposals is that countries be prohibited from offering foreign investors a more lenient tax regime than that which applies to their own residents (“ring fencing”). The argument is that ring fencing is a predatory form of tax competition that allows foreign investors to benefit from government services for which they do not pay, erodes the tax base of other countries, and, by encouraging other countries to follow suit, instigates a “race to the bottom” to the detriment of all.This Article argues that, not only is international tax competition inevitable, but that free and fair tax competition, far from misallocating resources, is necessary in order to allocate resources efficiently and to maximize global welfare. It argues that limiting tax competition, particularly by restricting ring fencing, will likely exacerbate problems of global poverty and will lead to a more unequal distribution of wealth. Its thesis, therefore, is that tax reform should encourage, rather than discourage, international tax competition and that transnational organizations should focus their efforts on improving the competitive atmosphere.
Herding in ranch operations: an analysis of a search problem

Herding is an integral part of ranch operations in contemporary times. An aspect of herding that has received scant attention in the literature concerns the pros and cons of searching for livestock animals that have wandered away from a pasture and are hence missing from this pasture. Under what circumstances should a rancher search for these missing animals? This paper provides the first theoretical analysis of this question. Specifically, a formal model is constructed and examined that provides conditions under which it makes sense to search for these missing animals and conditions under which it does not.
Discussion of “Implications of the integral approach and earnings management for alternative annual reporting periods”

The paper by Gunny, Jacob, and Jorgensen (Rev Account Stud, 2013) provides evidence on whether the earnings volatility induced by year-end adjusting entries results from the integral method of accounting or from purposeful earnings management. The authors find that the variance and negative skewness of annual fiscal-year earnings is greater than the corresponding attributes of alternative annual earnings ending in the first three quarters and interpret these findings as evidence consistent with earnings management rather than settling up annual earnings under the integral method of accounting. While it is difficult to assess the usefulness of their conclusion due to problematic assumptions inherent in the research design, Gunny et al. (2013) reinforce the importance of assessing earnings performance using rolling annual windows. Specifically, they find that the quality of earnings for the alternative annual earnings is greater than that of fiscal-year earnings, highlighting that financial statement users may benefit from using alternative annual earnings to assess current and future performance.
Strategic selection: Political and legal mechanisms of territorial dispute resolution

States involved in territorial disputes have several options with regard to resolving their disputes. What types of states are more likely to resort to legal methods of peaceful resolution in attem...
The Compositional Effect of Rigorous Teacher Evaluation on Workforce Quality

We study how the introduction of a rigorous teacher evaluation system in a large urban school district affects the quality composition of teacher turnovers. With the implementation of the new syste...
A medical ghost in the e-health machine.

This essay seeks to contextualize e-health for the health law teacher. First, the history of e-health illustrates the way that health care in the United States has devalued patient expectations and access to care while over-investing in processes and technologies that serve the few. Second, e-health provides a rich source of examples revealing the transformation of health law away from an increasingly marginalized doctrine rooted in professional and personal paradigms. Third, e-health provides a disruptive model, particularly in its most recent iterations, that can be used to shake out otherwise dormant issues of law and policy.
Childless lesbian and gay adults’ self-efficacy about achieving parenthood.

Lesbian and gay people are much less likely than others to become parents, and psychological factors may contribute to this difference. We explored self-efficacy about becoming a parent among geographically diverse, childless, lesbian and gay U.S. residents aged 18 to 44 years (N = 1,098). On average, participants reported that they were uncertain whether they could overcome financial barriers to parenthood or become biological parents without assistance from reproductive health providers. However, they were somewhat optimistic about overcoming barriers to adoptive and foster parenthood, and they were optimistic that they could somehow achieve parenthood if they wanted. Participants who were younger, who reported that children with lesbian or gay parents enjoy positive outcomes, and who lived in social climates favorable for members of sexual minorities reported the highest self-efficacy about achieving parenthood. These results contribute to understanding of family formation among sexual minority adults.
NEGATIVE SOCIAL SANCTIONS, SELF-REJECTION, AND DRUG USE

Negative social sanctions are reactions by others to the real or imagined behavior of an actor that, either by the intentions of the others or the perceptions of the actor, serve as punishments for·the behavior of the actor. One theoretical perspective, labeling theory, fosters "the ironic v.iew that punishment often makes individuals more likely to commit crimes because of altered interactional structUres, foreclosed legal opportunities and secondary deviance" (Sherman & Berk, 1984, p. 261 ). The continuity or amplification of deviant behavior, from this perspective, frequently is character­ ized as "secondary deviation, defined as deviant behavior or social roles based upon it, which becomes a means of defense, attack, or adaptation to the overt and covert problems created by the societal
Ad Revenue and Content Commercialization: Evidence from Blogs

Many scholars argue that when incentivized by ad revenue, content providers are more likely to tailor their content to attract “eyeballs,” and as a result, popular content may be excessively supplied. We empirically test this prediction by taking advantage of the launch of an ad-revenue-sharing program initiated by a major Chinese portal site in September 2007. Participating bloggers allow the site to run ads on their blogs and receive 50% of the revenue generated by these ads. After analyzing 4.4 million blog posts, we find that, relative to nonparticipants, popular content increases by about 13 percentage points on participants' blogs after the program takes effect. About 50% of this increase can be attributed to topics shifting toward three domains: the stock market, salacious content, and celebrities. Meanwhile, relative to nonparticipants, participants' content quality increases after the program takes effect. We also find that the program effects are more pronounced for participants with moderately ...
On the coefficient of variation as a predictor of risk sensitivity: Behavioral and neural evidence for the relative encoding of outcome variability

Abstract Cox and Vjollca (2010) argue that the coefficient of variation (CV) fails as a normative criterion for risk taking in risky choice because it predicts violations of dominance. They suggest that it fails also on descriptive grounds because such violations are not observed in a study they conducted and because people’s choices in two other situations were not predicted by the CV. This paper counters the normative argument by suggesting that occasional violations of dominance might be the price that organisms with only limited processing capacity pay to achieve a broad set of goals. The consistency axioms of rational choice theory have a long history of falling short of accounting for such tradeoffs. The paper then addresses the three instances of descriptive failures of the CV to predict risk taking provided by Cox and Sadiraj, showing them to be inappropriate or inconclusive arguments against the use of the CV as a measure of risk in risk-return models of human and animal risk taking. Finally, the paper reviews new behavioral and neuroscience evidence in support of the CV as a predictor of risk taking, especially in decisions from experience, for which the model was developed.
From liquid life to A politics of the subject; or public administration for A fragile planet

The enormity of the challenges and changes the world is facing demand that we reimagine the very notion of “government.” While sometimes useful, traditional sectoral divisions of labor (e.g. government, market, civil sphere) are an impediment to this reimagining. This essay argues that we need a dynamic, relational understanding of governing and different conceptualization of the relationship of the self to governing. This entails a revolution, initially, less in the formal political institutions than a transformation in the way in which we think about living together and labor to create a life in common.
Pre-Closing Liability

Writing about Judge Easterbrook's impact on contract law without commenting on his decisions in Pro CD v Zeidenberg and Hill v Gateway 200(f is like ordering a Big Mac without the two hamburger patties. Where is the beef? These two cases are probably the most important and influential contract law decisions of our era. They reshaped the doctrine of mutual assent and received a tsunami of scholarly attention. Four major legislative efforts on the national scaleso far unsuccessfulwere triggered by the desire to reverse the holdings in these decisions, and in the judicial following they garnered.3 Despite the temptation, I choose not to remark on these branches of Easterbrook's jurisprudence. They have been dissected in a host of articles, court decisions, and symposia. Contracts doctrinalists largely hate these decisionsit has become almost an instinct among contracts commentators to collectively condemn these decisionswhereas some law and economics writers support the decisions.4 Elsewhere, I argue that ProCD and Hill should be viewed as two of the most consumer-friendly cases of our era, since they introduce a novel right to withdraw from a contract.5 Here, instead, I am electing to turn
The Bologna Process and its Impact in Europe: It's So Much More Than Degree Changes

The Bologna Process is a massive, multi-year project designed to create the “European Higher Education Area” by the year 2010. It began ten years ago, when four European Union (EU) countries signed a relatively vague declaration. It has grown to include forty-six countries, including all of the EU Member States and nineteen non-EU countries. The Bologna Process countries have agreed on ten “action lines” for restructuring European higher education. These action lines are nothing short of revolutionary—they address everything from a three-cycle degree system (e.g., bachelor-master’sdoctorate degrees), European-wide quality assurance efforts, mobility of higher education students and staff, “recognition” in one European country of studies undertaken in another European country, and the suitability of education for the marketplace. Because of the number of countries participating in the Bologna Process, its ambitious goals, and its demonstrated commitment to achieving those goals, the Bologna Process is an extremely significant development that will be important not only in Europe but elsewhere in the world. This Article is designed to provide “one-stop shopping” for understanding the Bologna Process, which will allow the reader to learn about all of its initiatives and action lines, and to understand and place in context future developments. This Article covers developments through the May 2007 London Ministerial meeting. It concludes with an examination of the impact of the Bologna Process on European higher education, including legal education. * Professor, Penn State Dickinson School of Law (LTerry@psu.edu). The Author would like to thank the numerous people who helped her during her sabbatical and with this article, especially Ron Aronovsky, Helen Hartnell, Prof. Dr. Martin Henssler, Dr. Matthias Kilian, Dr. Julian Lonbay, the German-American Fulbright Commission, and the participants at the 2006 Berlin Seminar, who provided useful comments. She would also like to thank Neil Conley for research assistance. 108 VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 41:107
Tail Risk and Asset Prices

We propose a new measure of time-varying tail risk that is directly estimable from the cross-section of returns. We exploit firm-level price crashes every month to identify common fluctuations in tail risk among individual stocks. Our tail measure is significantly correlated with tail risk measures extracted from S&P 500 index options and negatively predicts real economic activity. We show that tail risk has strong predictive power for aggregate market returns. Cross-sectionally, stocks with high loadings on past tail risk earn an annual three-factor alpha 5.4% higher than stocks with low tail risk loadings. We explore potential mechanisms giving rise to these asset pricing facts.
“Grand” corruption and the ethics of global business

Abstract The paper explores the ethical obligations of global business to refrain from corruption. Corruption is harmful for the growth prospects of host countries and can introduce inefficiencies and inequities. I argue that business corporations have an obligation to refrain from illegal payoffs as part of the quid pro quo implied by the laws that permit corporations to exist and to operate. The paper goes on to consider how firms might respond, and isolates situations where anti-corruption policies can be profitable for firms. It concludes with an analysis of international efforts to deter transnational bribery and with suggestions for additional international initiatives.
The Government’s Fire Dispatcher: The Solicitor General in Patent Law

This Note challenges the assumption that the Solicitor General's (SG's) litigating authority is ineffective in controlling agency policymaking. When other political control mechanisms are weak, the SG's litigating authority may provide the most effective means of ensuring that an agency’s policies agree with the Administration’s preferences. Patent law exemplifies this dynamic. The Patent and Trademark Office's (PTO's) specialization limits the effectiveness of policy and budgetary review and the appointment and removal powers. However, the SG's litigating authority compensates for this weakness in direct oversight by facilitating indirect review of the PTO's policies. Applying the fire-alarm model of political control, I argue that the SG acts as the Administration's fire dispatcher. The SG raises the alarm when the PTO diverges from the Administration's preferences, allowing the Administration and other government interests to intervene. In doing so, the SG decides which alarms are genuine, which fires can be extinguished, and when and where fire fighters should be allocated. Nevertheless, the SG's increasing influence threatens to swallow the PTO's expertise. This Note concludes by evaluating practices for improving the SG's functioning in its role as fire dispatcher. Specifically, it recommends that the SG should, in some cases, allow the PTO to self-represent, but that the Supreme Court should not follow the Federal Circuit’s innovative practice of issuing calls for agency views.
Value at risk: Is a theoretically consistent axiomatic formulation possible?

Abstract This note identifies three properties of a risk measure, the acceptance of all of which implies the acceptance of the VaR risk measure; and the rejection of any one of which implies the rejection of the VaR risk measure. First, a risk measure should reflect weak aversion to losses. Second, only sufficiently likely threats matter. Finally, the risk measurement should be unaffected by how promising the upside may look like. These properties, by themselves, constitute a consistent set of axioms that are necessary and sufficient for the acceptance of the VaR risk measure on a given probability space. The axiomatization highlights a peculiar characteristic of VaR: it ignores the upside, while at the same time neglecting the worse of the downside.
Reputation, search cost, and airfares

Abstract As cost of search for consumers decreases with the spread of the internet; researchers question whether this trend will lead to lower price or higher product differentiation. This paper examines a sample of offered fares to see if an airline choosing not to distribute its tickets via a channel where competitors' offers are directly observable may attempt taking advantage of potential customers. We find this to be the case. Our study suggests that the US airline industry appears to be evolving toward more product differentiation in the internet age.
Inscrutable OPEC? Behavioral Tests of the Cartel Hypothesis*

Although OPEC is commonly viewed as a syndicate of producers engaged in cooperative efforts to restrict production and raise price, to date there is a surprising dearth of supporting statistical evidence to that effect. I show that standard statistical tests of OPEC behavior have very low power across a wide range of alternative hypotheses regarding market structure. Consequently, it is difficult, given the current availability and precision of data on demand and costs, to distinguish collusive from competitive behavior in the world oil market. I apply a new, production-based approach for examining alternative hypotheses and find strong evidence of cooperative behavior among OPEC members. My results also suggest that OPEC's formal quota mechanism, introduced in 1982 to replace a system based on posted prices, increased transactions costs within the organization. Statistical evidence is mixed on the question of whether Saudi Arabia and other core producers have played a special role within the cartel.
Trade Skirmishes and Safeguards: A Theory of the WTO Dispute Settlement Process

I propose a framework within which to interpret and evaluate the major reforms introduced to the GATT system in its transition to the WTO. In particular, I examine the WTO Agreement on Safeguards that has replaced the GATT escape clause (Article XIX), and the Dispute Settlement Process (DSP) that resembles a court of law under the WTO. Using this framework, I interpret the weakening of the reciprocity principle under the Agreement on Safeguards as an attempt to reduce e¢ ciency-reducing trade skirmishes. The DSP is interpreted as an impartial arbitrator that announces its opinion about the state of the world when a dispute arises among member countries. I demonstrate that the reforms in the GATT escape clause should be bundled with the
ISO certification, financial constraints, and firm performance in Latin American and Caribbean countries☆

Abstract We employ World Bank Enterprise Survey data collected in 2006–2010 for 21,852 firms from 31 Latin American and Caribbean countries to investigate determinants of the adoption of International Organization for Standardization ( ISO ) certification, the relation between ISO certification and firm financial constraints, and the effect of ISO certification on firm performance. We find that ISO accreditation is positively related to firm size and firm age. Exporters and foreign firms are more likely to adopt ISO certification. We document that ISO-certified firms exhibit significantly lower level of financial constraints and higher labor productivity and lower cost of sales than non-certified firms.
Growth Through Heterogeneous Innovations

We study how exploration versus exploitation innovations impact economic growth through a tractable endogenous growth framework that contains multiple innovation sizes, multi-product …rms, and entry/exit. Firms invest in exploration R&D to acquire new product lines and exploitation R&D to improve their existing product lines. We model and show empirically that exploration R&D does not scale as strongly with …rm size as exploitation R&D. The resulting framework conforms to many regularities regarding innovation and
Collapsing Corporate Structures: Resolving the Tension Between Form and Substance

Courts, legislatures, and policymakers constantly must ask: when is a corporate structure legitimate, and when should it be collapsed? Although most urgent in the context of widespread but increasingly complex structured finance transactions which utilize multiple corporate entities as part of an overall structure,1 the question also arises in other important corporate contexts, including piercing the corporate veil (regarded as "one of the most litigated areas in American corporate law"),2 substantive consolidation, recharacterizing sales as transfers intended for security, and collapsing leveraged buyout ("LBO") transactions. In a larger sense, it is one of the most fundamental questions in corporation law, at the basis of any finding that the private ordering of a firm or of the relationship between firms is unenforceable or that the law should disrespect form in favor of substance. That is the question this Article engages.
Academic Research and Standard-Setting: The Case of Other Comprehensive Income

SYNOPSIS: This paper links academic accounting research on comprehensive income reporting with the accounting standard-setting efforts of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). We begin by discussing the development of reporting other comprehensive income, and we identify a significant weakness in the FASB's Conceptual Framework, in the lack of a cohesive definition of any subcategory of comprehensive income, including earnings. We identify several attributes that could help allocate comprehensive income between net income, other comprehensive income, and other subcategories. We then review academic research related to remaining standard-setting issues, and identify gaps in academic research where hypotheses could be developed and tested. Our objectives are to (1) stimulate standard-setters to better conceptualize what is meant by other comprehensive income and to distinguish it from earnings, and (2) stimulate researchers to develop and te...
Peer Effects with Random Assignment: Results for Dartmouth Roommates

This paper uses a unique data set to measure peer effects among college age roommates. Freshman year roommates and dormmates are randomly assigned at Dartmouth College. I find that in this group, peer effects are very important in determining levels of academic effort and in decisions to join social groups such as fraternities. Residential peer effects are markedly absent in other major life decisions such as choice of college major. Several forms of peer effects are considered. The data support a model in which peer effects are driven by roommate behavior after the freshmen arrive. Social learning based on a roommate's observable pre-Dartmouth information or skills appears to be less important. Peer effects in GPA occur at the individual room level whereas peer effects in fraternity membership occur both at the room level and the entire dorm level. I also find that a freshman with high social ability is likely to remain with his or her roommates in sophomore year, but high academic ability actually decreases roommate retention.
Displacing Dissent: The Role of "Place" in First Amendment Jurisprudence

From the perspective of free speech theory, both of the central First Amendment values - human autonomy and deliberative democracy - require robust protection for the places and spaces in which speech and public discourse occur. This Article argues that current Supreme Court doctrine does not effectively protect speech from content neutral regulation of place. The problem is that remaining neutral is consistent with policies that would dislocate the very place for the "marketplace of ideas." Moreover, free speech theory focused on autonomy and deliberative democracy has not adequately addressed the role that place plays in furthering these values. Speech may be, and increasingly in practice is, suppressed by control of the places and spaces where speech occurs. Limitations on public expressions critical of administration policies at Presidential events is a key example of the regulation of speech through the regulation of place. Dissent is increasingly displaced with the consequence that the figure of dissent risks disappearing from public discourse. Employing aspects of Hanna Arendt's political philosophy, this Article argues that we need to re-think and re-articulate the importance of public places for our free speech tradition. Personhood and human autonomy, as well as robust public debate, can only exist and develop in fullest form within social structures that provide public places and spaces for human interaction and discourse. Fundamentally, as Arendt suggests, we protect public appearances for public discourse not simply for its instrumental value for deliberation, but for the intrinsic value of creating persons and citizens in their fullest form.
Race Relations and Modern Church-State Relations

Over the last fifty years, the evolution of church-state jurisprudence in the Supreme Court of the United States has closely paralleled developments in race relations in the country. This Article examines how developments in race relations may have facilitated both the rise of strict church-state separationism in the 1960s and 1970s and its decline in the last twenty years, tracing the course of church-state relations not only in the Court itself, but in the broader society. The Article specifically argues that the strict separationism of the 1960s and early 1970s partially stemmed from a concern for religious minority rights inspired largely by the struggle for equal rights for blacks. In turn, this Article argues that strict separationism has declined in the last twenty years as secular-oriented theologies of social activism have faced serious challenges and lost ground, and as developments in race relations have aided the rise of governmental aid to religious educational institutions.
Crawford's Impact on Hearsay Statements in Domestic Violence and Child Sexual Abuse Cases

This Essay examines the important ancillary doctrines that need to be developed in the wake of Crawford v. Washington (2004) and the "testimonial statement" approach to Confrontation Clause analysis to ensure that when confrontation is provided it in fact satisfies the requirements of the Clause. More than just some opportunity to cross-examine is required. The witness must be asked to make a public accusation in his or her direct testimony rather than simply being made available for questioning by defense counsel. A public accusation in not simply an after-thought of the right; rather, both it and cross-examination are central components. Whether confrontation occurs in the present proceeding or a prior one, a public accusation is required at one point in the case. When the witness is unavailable at trial and confrontation is satisfied by what occurred in the prior proceeding, the government must likewise present the accuser for the opportunity for cross-examination at that proceeding to be sufficient. In addition, the government must put something at risk, and the hearing must have consequences. To claim the defendant has been confronted by providing an opportunity for cross-examination which will likely only harm the defendant by allowing otherwise inadmissible incriminating evidence to be admitted at trial is inadequate to satisfy the Confrontation Clause.
Returns on Investments in Information Technology: A Research Synthesis

Understanding the return on investments in information technology (IT) is the focus of a large and growing body of research. The objective of this paper is to synthesize this research and develop a model to guide future research in the evaluation of information technology investments. We focus on archival studies that use accounting or market measures of firm performance. We emphasize those studies where accounting researchers with interest in market‐level analyses of systems and technology issues may hold a competitive advantage over traditional information systems (IS) researchers. We propose numerous opportunities for future research. These include examining the relation between IT and business processes, and business processes and overall firm performance, understanding the effect of contextual factors on the IT‐performance relation, examining the IT‐performance relation in an international context, and examining the interactive effects of IT spending and IT management on firm performance.
Who’s Afraid of Thomas Cromwell?

Robert Bolt's famous play A Man for All Seasons can easily be interpreted as a starkly dualistic story. The man of conscience, Sir Thomas More valiantly seeks to reconcile obedience to God, his love for his family and his profession, and his loyalty to King Henry VIII but is brought low by the King's insatiable lusts and his henchmen's determination to destroy More if they cannot corrupt him. Thomas Cromwell, by contrast, is the "coming man" whose steady rise to power and prominence is fostered by his efficiency and expedience in eliminating difficulties that lie in the path of his sovereign's will. While More ultimately goes to the executioner's block for refusing to compromise his loyalty to the law of God and the English Constitution, Cromwell turns himself into a tool of tyranny, the archetypal heartless bureaucrat. Cromwell reduces the law to the tool of power, a tool wielded in what Cromwell believes to be the public interest, but a tool nonetheless. The ways in which lawyers and judges should wield the law are still debated. But God help us if we become Cromwell.
The Government as Litigant: Further Tests of the Case Selection Model

We develop a model of the plaintiff’s decision to file a lawsuit that has implications for how differences between the federal government and private litigants translate into differences in trial rates and plaintiff win rates at trial. Our case selection model generates a set of predictions for relative trial rates and plaintiff win rates, depending on the type of case and whether the government is defendant or plaintiff. To test the model, we use data on about 474,000 cases filed in federal district court between 1979 and 1994 in the areas of personal injury and job discrimination, in which the federal government and private parties work under roughly similar legal rules. We find broad support for the predictions of the model.
Four Views of the Citadel: The Consequential Distinction between Secularity and Secularism

In this article I want to suggest that there is an important, perhaps critical, distinction between secularity and secularism—in particular, that one concept is a fundamental component of liberal pluralism and a bastion against religious extremism, and that the other is a misguided, even dangerous, ideology that may degenerate into its own dystopian fundamentalism. As a means of advancing this suggestion, I propose to view the distinction between secularity and secularism from four vantage points, each of which I will call a view of the citadel.
Holding Up and Holding Out

Patent “hold-up” and patent “hold-out” present important, alternative theories for what ails the patent system. Patent “hold-up” occurs when a patent owner sues a company when it is most vulnerable—after it has implemented a technology—and is able wrest a settlement because it is too late for the company to change course. Patent “hold-out” is the practice of companies routinely ignoring patents and resisting patent owner demands because the odds of getting caught are small. Hold-up has arguably predicted the current patent crises, and the ex ante assertion of technology patents whether in the smartphone war, standards, or patent “troll” context. Hold-up theory has been embraced by thought leaders and fueled the current drive by Congress and President Obama to reform the patent system. This Article makes the counterintuitive case that hold-up theory is wrong—or at least incomplete—because it is missing is full consideration of the other side—the side of hold-out. When large companies systematically “hold out” on patentees, they have no choice but to work with efficient patent enforcers, or “trolls.” When small inventors are unfairly disadvantaged in the marketplace, jurors may give them relief in court. Considering hold-out and hold-up together provide a more complete picture than focusing on either theory alone. This perspective reveals surprising pathways to a better patent system, focused on the design, rather than the doctrine, of patent law. Instead of trying to eliminate all technology patents, or to enforce all of them, we should try to price them appropriately and reduce the distortions they produce. Instead of trying to make patent law * Associate Professor, Santa Clara University School of Law (on leave); Fenwick and West IP Scholar (on leave); Senior Advisor to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. This Article expresses my personal opinion and does not reflect the views of the White House, Obama Administration, or the US Government. I thank Melissa Murray, Courtney Joslin, David Horton, Dennis Ventry, Darien Shankse, Michael Risch, David Schwartz, Brian Love, Erich Spangenberg, Mark Lemley, Eric Goldman, Carl Shapiro, Michael Guo, Coryn Millslagle, Tej Singh, Teri Karabonik, Andrew Adair, Christopher Tosetti, and Michael Kenstowicz for valuable input and research assistance on earlier drafts, and Dirk Calcoen for his support, although all errors are mine. This paper is based in part on my testimony before the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet, April 16, 2013 (“2013 Chien Testimony”). This Article was first posted August 30, 2013.
The Post-Acquisition Returns of Stock Deals: Evidence of the Pervasiveness of the Asset Growth Effect

A growing literature finds that firm asset growth rates are negatively correlated with subsequent stock returns. We show that the poor post-deal returns that have been documented for stock acquisitions are more precisely explained by the return effects associated with systematically larger asset growth rates for stock deals. We find a similar result for other cross-sectional and time-series acquisition effects, including poor returns for glamour deals, weakly monitored deals, and deals done during high-valuation periods. We suggest that the distinguishing characteristic associated with poor performing acquisitions is simply their tendency to grow assets.
Rent-to-Own Housing Contracts under Financial Constraints

The aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis left a large number of houses whose previous owners had not been able to keep up mortgage payments and either abandoned the property or were forced out by foreclosure, in many cases leaving the house in questionable physical condition. Potential new occupants, also weakened by the crisis, did not have the financial resources to qualify for a new mortgage. The rent-to-own (RTO) contract offers a solution. The financially constrained buyer enters into a kind of lease agreement in which he/she rents the house but also acquires the option to purchase it during the term of the lease for a price fixed at the beginning. The combination of downpayment, monthly rent, and purchase price amounts to market rent on the house plus the call option premium. If the Tenant-Buyer’s financial condition improves over the lifetime of the lease, typically 1–3 years, and the market value of the house at the end is above the “exercise” price in the RTO contract, the option is exercised. In this article, Jaggia and Patel develop a model for the value of the RTO contract. They then apply it to evaluate RTO contract pricing under the housing market conditions in 20 major U.S. cities. An important mathematical tool used in deriving the model is the Esscher transform, and the paper provides a nice intuitive explanation of how it works.
All-units discounts in retail contracts

All-units discounts in retail contracts refer to discounts that lower a retailer's wholesale price on every unit purchased when the retailer's purchases equal or exceed some quantity threshold. These discounts pose a challenge to economic theory because it is difficult to understand why a manufacturer ever would charge less for a larger order if its intentions were benign. In this paper, we show that all-units discounts may profitably arise absent any exclusionary motive. All-units discounts eliminate double marginalization in a complete information setting, and they extract more profit than would a menu of two-part tariffs in the standard incomplete information setting with two types of buyers. All-units discounts may improve or may reduce welfare (relative to menus of two-part tariffs) depending on demand parameters.
Some Reflections on the Symposium: Judging, the Classical Legal Paradigm and the Possible Contributions of Science

One theme running through the many excellent contributions to this symposium involves the myriad influences on judicial decision-making. As Professor Wrightsman notes, Supreme Court Justices’ personal characteristics may affect their ability to influence colleagues and, consequently, the outcome of Supreme Court decisions. Professor Ruger observes that judges have both attitudinal and jurisprudential preferences that may change over time, affecting legal outcomes differently as time passes. Professor Sisk similarly notes that judges’ personal values and experiences influence their decision-making. These observations are consistent with those of numerous other scholars, who find wide-ranging and diverse influences on the judicial resolution of legal issues. Yet for all our understanding that these influences exist, we nevertheless resist accepting their operation, especially in the heady arena of constitutional adjudication. Rather, we seem to want to view constitutional law as an independent, a priori set of principles, uninfluenced by the hands of the judges who craft it. As Professor Farber writes, “[w]e want constitutional law to be a clear, objective mandate, free from . . . historical currents . . . . [W]e seem to have difficulty admitting that the Supreme Court really does have flexibility
Vulnerable Decision Points for Disproportionate Office Discipline Referrals: Comparisons of Discipline for African American and White Elementary School Students.

Racial disparities in rates of exclusionary school discipline are well documented and seemingly intractable. However, emerging theories on implicit bias show promise in identifying effective interventions. In this study, we used school discipline data from 1,666 elementary schools and 483,686 office discipline referrals to identify specific situations in which disproportionality was more likely. Results were largely consistent with our theoretical model, indicating increased racial and gender disproportionality for subjectively defined behaviors, in classrooms, and for incidents classified as more severe. The time of day also substantially affected disproportionality. These findings can be used to pinpoint specific student-teacher interactions for intervention.
Administration of War

"Of all the cares or concerns of government," Alexander Hamilton wrote, "the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand."1 "The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength," he continued in Federalist 74, "and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority."2 To avoid the "mischiefs" and "dissensions" that would arise from multiple commanders, the Framers vested the power to conduct war, the Commander-in-Chief power, in a single president.3 This decision, over which there was little dissent in the Philadelphia or state ratifying conventions,4 might lead one to think that the president would exercise greater control over the military than over any other part of the executive branch. We do not commonly think of the armed forces of the United States as an agency, in part because it does not fall within the Administrative Procedure Act's basic provisions. Nonetheless, the military is part of
Determinants of corporate carbon reduction targets

This paper examines attributes affecting a corporation’s choice of an intensity-only (carbon emissions relative to sales, production, etc.) versus an absolute carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions goal. We investigate alternative hypotheses for this choice including: 1) a high growth hypothesis whereby high growth companies select an intensity goal, to continue to grow without an absolute emission reduction; 2) a high emissions industrial sector hypothesis where firms in high CO2 emission industries prefer an intensity goal that is easier to reach; 3) a green window dressing hypothesis whereby firms tied to consumer acceptance select an easier to meet intensity target. Utilising maximum likelihood logit regressions, we find a higher likelihood for firms with higher growth, in high emission industries, and those in the consumer/retail sector to be more likely to have an intensity-only CO2 emissions goal. Corporations with stronger brands, however, are associated with more transparent, absolute emission targets
Talent Matters: Judicial Productivity and Speed in Japan

Abstract To study the determinants of judicial productivity and speed (measured by published opinions), I examine all 348 trial-court civil medical malpractice opinions published in Japan between 1995 and 2004. For comparative purposes, I add 120 randomly selected civil judgments from the same period. The data cover 706 judges (about a third of the Japanese bench). I find: (A) Productivity (measured as published opinions per year on the bench) correlates with apparent intellectual ability and effort. The judges who attended the most selective universities, who passed the bar exam most quickly, and who were chosen by the courts for an elite career track publish the most opinions. (B) Adjudicatory speed (measured as time from filing to decision, for published opinions) may correlate with apparent ability and effort too (the evidence is weaker), but institutional experience counts as well. As the courts acquired increasing experience with malpractice cases, the pace of adjudication quickened.