cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
What Federal Gun Control Can Teach Us About the DMCA's Anti-Trafficking Provisions

This article studies the so-called "anti-trafficking provisions" of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") by drawing insight from federal gun control. Among other things, the anti-trafficking provisions criminalize the distribution of technology that circumvents the encryption schemes sometimes used to protect digital files. This prohibition even applies to the sale of circumvention technology for lawful purposes. Not suprisingly, this result has generated controversy. Consumer advocates and civil libertarians have argued that it is wrong to criminalize the sale of technology that has lawful use, particularly when that criminalization makes it difficult - if not impossible - for the public to make legal, noninfringing use of copyrighted works. Controversy exists because Congress has refused to amend the DMCA to preserve lawful consumer use of copyrighted works. The argument for this refusal is simple: Digital technology, particularly the Internet, unacceptably threatens the security of copyright. Strong measures must therefore be taken to prevent such misuse of digital technology, even if it means curtailing rights of access and use that the public is supposed to enjoy.The article questions whether the above described sacrifice of public rights is really necessary. This criticism starts with the observation that both federal gun control and the DMCA's anti-trafficking provisions respond to the misuse of technology. People misuse guns to commit crimes, and people misuse circumvention technology to commit copyright infringement. In both cases, Congress has used criminal law to keep technology away from those who might misuse it. In the case of circumvention technology, Congress has banned such technology at the expense of public of access to such technology for lawful purposes. In the case of guns, Congress has not imposed a ban precisely because it was concerned about preserving access to firearms for lawful purposes.The article uses this observation to challenge the view that public availability of circumvention technology will destroy copyright. The article studies the regulatory methods used in gun control, and adapts them to propose a general approach for controlling the misuse of circumvention technology while preserving access to such technology for lawful purposes. The article contends that this proposal will provide adequate security to copyright holders, preserve public rights of fair use and access to copyrighted works, and encourage the responsible use of digital encryption schemes.
Examining macroeconomic models through the lens of asset pricing

Abstract We develop new methods for representing the asset-pricing implications of stochastic general equilibrium models. We provide asset-pricing counterparts to impulse response functions and the resulting dynamic value decompositions (DVDs). These methods quantify the exposures of macroeconomic cash flows to shocks over alternative investment horizons and the corresponding prices or investors’ compensations. We extend the continuous-time methods developed in Hansen and Scheinkman (2012) and Borovicka et al. (2011) by constructing discrete-time, state-dependent, shock-exposure and shock-price elasticities as functions of the investment horizon. Our methods are applicable to economic models that are nonlinear, including models with stochastic volatility.
The Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act at Twenty: Has Full Protection Made a Difference?

Even though our copyright statutes were silent about architecture until 1990, it was well established that plans, blueprints and models were copyrightable writings under the 1909 Act's category of "drawings or plastic works of a scientific or technical character," and then as "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works" under the 1976 Act. The scope of an architect's copyright protection was, however, quite limited. The unauthorized copying of plans or blueprints constituted infringement, but most authorities concluded that plans were not infringed by using them, without the architect's permission, to construct the building they depicted. Moreover, the prevailing view was that an architect's rights did not extend to the actual building derived from his or her plans. A building, as a useful article, could be protected by copyright only to the extent it had artistic features that could be identified separately from, and were capable of existing independently of, the structure's utilitarian aspects.The Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act (AWCPA) was passed soon after United States' adherence to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works became effective. Congress, in passing this statute, recognized that expanding protection for architecture would stimulate excellence in design, thereby enriching our public environment in keeping with the constitutional goals. The AWCPA is said to confer full protection to works of architecture by establishing them as a new category of protectable subject matter in Section 102(a)(8) and defining an architectural work as: "the design of a building as embodied in any tangible medium of expression, including a building, architectural plans, or drawings. The work includes the overall form as well as the arrangement and composition of spaces and elements in the design, but does not include individual standard features.This Article discusses variations on casebook authors' questions of whether the protection provided by the AWCPA is needed for mundane architectural works, and whether copyright protection is needed as an incentive for architects. Specifically, it addresses the impact of the AWCPA and considers whether that act has made a significant difference for architects and architecture.
Macroeconomics and the reality of mixed frequency data

Many time series are sampled at different frequencies. When we study co-movements between such series we usually analyze the joint process sampled at a common low frequency. This has consequences in terms of potentially mis-specifying the co-movements and hence the analysis of impulse response functions—a commonly used tool for economic policy analysis. We introduce a class of mixed frequency VAR models that allows us to measure the impact of high frequency data on low frequency and vice versa. Our approach does not rely on latent processes/shocks representations. As a consequence, the mixed frequency VAR is an alternative to commonly used state space models for mixed frequency data. State space models are parameter-driven whereas mixed frequency VAR models are observation-driven models as they are formulated exclusively in terms of observable data and do not involve latent processes as well as shocks and thus avoid the need to formulate measurement equations, filtering, etc. We also propose various parsimonious parameterizations, in part inspired by recent work on MIDAS regressions. We also explicitly characterize the mis-specification of a traditional common low frequency VAR and its implied mis-specified impulse response functions. The class of mixed frequency VAR models can also characterize the timing of information releases for a mixture of sampling frequencies and the real-time updating of predictions caused by the flow of high frequency information. Various estimation procedures for mixed frequency VAR models are also proposed, both classical and Bayesian. Numerical and empirical examples quantify the consequences of ignoring mixed frequency data.
Optimal interest-rate rules and inflation stabilization versus price-level stabilization ☆

Abstract This paper compares the properties of interest-rate rules such as simple Taylor rules and rules that respond to price-level fluctuations (called Wicksellian rules) in a basic forward-looking model. By introducing appropriate history dependence in policy, Wicksellian rules perform better than optimal Taylor rules in terms of welfare, robustness to alternative shock processes, and are less prone to equilibrium indeterminacy. A simple Wicksellian rule augmented with a high degree of interest rate inertia resembles a robustly optimal rule, i.e., a monetary policy rule that implements the optimal plan and that is also completely robust to the specification of exogenous shock processes.
Stop, Think, Build, Repeat: Using Behavioral Economics to Better Design Energy Efficiency Policies for Our Cities’ Buildings

Securing our country’s supply of energy resources for future generations has been and continues to be a complex scientific, political, and economic issue throughout the United States. While these efforts have to a certain extent focused on securing an adequate supply of fossil fuels for our country, perhaps we need a better, more efficient perspective. Prior to dedicating our efforts to ensuring an adequate supply of energy resources—whatever that resource may be—we should instead strive to become a more energy efficient society and reduce our overall demand for energy. By maintaining our current lifestyles and productivity while simply using less energy, we can avoid some of the negative environmental impacts from burning fossil fuels for energy while simultaneously reducing our overall consumption of energy in the United States. The reality, however, is that human behavior poses a significant number of cognitive obstacles to acting in a more energy efficient manner, specifically with regard to adopting more energy efficient practices in the building and utilization of our cities’ homes, office buildings, and other energy-consuming properties.
Capital Gains Taxes and Expected Rates of Return

ABSTRACT: Prior literature predicts a positive relation between firms' expected pre-tax rates of return and investor-level capital gains tax rates. We show that this relation is more nuanced than suggested by prior literature and that in three circumstances the relation can actually be negative. The first circumstance is when a firm's systematic risk is very high. The second circumstance is when the market risk premium is very high. The third circumstance is when the risk-free rate of return is very low. The circumstances arise because, in addition to reducing investors' expected after-tax cash proceeds, capital gains taxes reduce the risk that investors associate with the expected after-tax cash proceeds.
Dimensions of the Worldwide Merger Boom

The capstone of the worldwide merger activities of the 1990s occurred within the first five weeks of 2000 with the announced $165 billion planned purchase of Time-Warner by America Online and the $183 billion takeover of Mannesmann by Vodaphone AirTouch. Three other mega-mergers brought the total volume of merger activity in the same five weeks to more than half a trillion dollars.' Although subsequent actions by European Union's Competition Commission whittled down the size of several of these mergers, their overall volume is still impressive. Despite the reporting of particular mergers in the daily press, it is difficult to gain perspective on merger and acquisition (M&A) activities from such anecdotal evidence. And without a quantitative view of the dimensions of this process, we cannot begin to determine whether this merger movement will lead to a permanent change in the organization of industry. This essay has two purposes: to present data hitherto unavailable for various important dimensions of the merger tsunami in both the United States and abroad during the final two decades of the twentieth century and to draw attention to some crucial implications of these activities for the world economy. In particular, I focus on the impact on enterprise size and on industrial concentration. Although increasing industrial concentration may not necessarily signify decreasing competition, it is certainly an important component.2 The basic information came from a business database of mergers that has seldom been employed by economists and that allows an aggregate perspective. The analysis is straightforward. The first section focuses briefly on the database
Jumps and Information Flow in Financial Markets

This article investigates the predictability of jump arrivals in U.S. stock markets. Using a new test that identifies jump predictors up to the intraday level, I find that jumps are likely to occur shortly after macroeconomic information releases, such as the Federal Reserve announcements, nonfarm payroll reports, and jobless claims, as well as market index jumps. I also find firm-specific jump predictors related to earnings releases, analyst recommendations, past stock jumps, and dividend dates. Evidence suggests that distinguishing systematic jumps from idiosyncratic jumps is possible using the characteristics of jump predictors. Finally, I present a short-term jump size clustering. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.
"Unfit to Serve" Post-Enron

Accounting fraud may be the most pervasive type of fraud infecting modern corporations. As demonstrated by recent cases, such schemes may be facilitated by management directors and senior executives who know how to hide fraud within the camouflage of legitimate transactions, by non-management directors who fail to investigate obvious red flags, by ineffective internal control systems, and by accountants, lawyers, bankers and analysts who are captured by their clients. Executives who know of accounting fraud and take no steps to prevent the fraud may be liable for violating fiduciary duties as set forth in state corporation statutes or for violating disclosure requirements as set forth in federal securities law. This article proposes that both management and non-management directors who knowingly or recklessly engage in accounting and financial fraud are unfit to serve and should be barred from serving as officers and directors of publicly traded corporations. In particular, it proposes that non-management directors' reckless failure to respond to red flags may amount to an intentional omission of material information, and violate the Securities Exchange Act section 10(b), among other federal laws. Further, non-management directors who fail to take action should be found unfit to serve as company executives. Moreover, directors who knowingly or recklessly fail to halt or to disclose accounting fraud and similar unlawful behavior should be temporarily or permanently barred from serving as officers of directors of public corporations.
Speaking of the short-term: disclosure horizon and managerial myopia

We study conference calls as a voluntary disclosure channel and create a proxy for the time horizon that senior executives emphasize in their communications. We find that our measure of disclosure time horizon is associated with capital market pressures and executives’ short-term monetary incentives. Consistent with the language emphasized during conference calls partially capturing short-termism, we show that our proxy is associated with earnings and real activities management. Overall, the results show that the time horizon of conference call narratives can be informative about managers’ myopic behavior.
Malleable Standards of Care Required by Jurors When Assessing Auditor Negligence

ABSTRACT: We report the results of four experiments investigating the relationship between (1) the quality of an audit, (2) jurors' assessments of the standard of prudent care (SOC) against which audit quality is compared, and (3) jurors' negligence verdicts. Experiment 1 operationalizes audit quality by varying the sample size used in audit testing, and provides evidence that jurors anchor their assessment of SOC on audit quality, producing a “competitive mediation” in which audit quality reduces the potential for a negligence verdict directly, but increases that potential indirectly by increasing SOC. Experiment 2 generalizes this finding to a setting that operationalizes audit quality by varying the size of adjustment the auditor required. Experiments 3 and 4 extend these results to a setting in which SOC is elicited after jurors make negligence verdicts. Overall, these experiments provide insight into the role of SOC in constraining and justifying negligence verdicts. Data Availability: Contact the au...
Deliberation, disclosure of information, and voting

Abstract A set of voters consults experts before voting over two alternatives. Experts observe private signals about the values of the alternatives and can reveal their information or conceal it, but cannot lie. We examine how disclosure and voting vary with preference biases, signal precision, and the voting rule. Unanimity rule can lead to greater information revelation and total utility than simple majority rule. The voting rule that maximizes information disclosure need not coincide with the voting rule that maximizes total utility. In a large enough society, full information revelation is approximated via any voting rule.
Two Women, One Man: Knowledge, Power, and Gender in Medieval Sunni Legal Thought

Many Muslim feminists have argued that at the core of Islam lies a gender-neutral belief system that has been obscured by a centuries-long tradition of male-dominated interpretation. Although this gender-neutral system of belief had been almost entirely suppressed by the ruling Islamic discourses, according to Leila Ahmed, marginalized discourses such as Sufism and the antinomian Carmathians were able to preserve Islam's message of the ethical equality of men and women. Amina Wadud-Muhsin argues that the traditional verse-by-verse method of Qurʾanic exegesis, along with its domination by male practitioners, marginalized female experiences in understanding revelation. In her view, these two factors ultimately led to the suppression of the Qurʾan's message of gender equality. Fatima Mernissi, in The Veil and the Male Elite, instead argues that the religious scholars of Islam, because of their fear of subjectivity, were content with a purely empirical science of religion—a methodology that left the door wide open to the manipulation of revelation through interpretation. Unlike Ahmed, however, she recognizes that even within the dominant discourse of the Sunni scholars, not all spoke of women in the same monotonously misogynistic voice.
The Asymmetric Effects of Financial Frictions

Economic variables move asymmetrically over the business cycle: quickly during crises but slowly during recoveries. I show that this asymmetry is stronger in countries with less developed financial systems and greater financial frictions. Then I explain this fact using a learning model with endogenous information about economic conditions. Financial frictions, which I capture by higher bankruptcy costs, magnify the reaction of lending rates and economic activity to negative shocks and then delay their recovery by restricting information after the crisis. Empirical evidence and a quantitative exploration of the model show that this explanation is consistent with the data.
Designing Islamic constitutions: Past trends and options for a democratic future

In recent years, a growing number of countries have adopted constitutional provisions requiring that state law be consistent with Islamic law (sharia). Muslims today are deeply divided about what types of state action are consistent with sharia. The impact of a “Sharia guarantee clause” (SGC) depends largely on questions of constitutional design: who is given the power to interpret and apply the provision and what procedures do they follow? This article explores the trends that gave rise to SGCs and provides a history of their incorporation into national constitutions. It then surveys a number of the remarkably varied schemes that countries have developed to interpret and enforce their SGCs, and it considers the impact that different schemes have had on society. Finally, building on this background, the article considers what types of SGC enforcement scheme, if any, are consistent with democracy. As it notes, SGCs are often found in authoritarian or imperfectly democratic constitutions. Unsurprisingly, the designers of SGC enforcement schemes in non-democratic countries have generally tried to ensure that their SGC will be interpreted and applied in a way that permitted or even promoted non-democratic policies. Nevertheless, from the experience of non-democratic countries with SGCs we can draw some important lessons about the types of SGC enforcement scheme that would allow more democratic states to promote both democratic political participation and rights. Furthermore, recent debates have erupted in Western liberal democracies about how best to reconcile rights enforcement with democracy. These help to further clarify some issues that aspirational Islamic democracies will face as they try to develop SGC enforcement schemes for a democratic society, and they provide insights into the qualities that an institution must possess if it is to address these issues effectively. A number of Muslim countries are currently debating how best to square a constitutional commitment to respect Islam with parallel commitments to democracy and rights. Acknowledging that these countries will need to tailor their SGC enforcement schemes to very different local conditions, this article describes some basic design features that effective democratic SGC enforcement schemes are likely to share.
Searching for a Common Factor in Public and Private Real Estate Returns

We introduce a methodology to estimate common real estate returns and cycles across public and private real estate markets. We first place REIT indices and direct real estate—NCREIF appraisal-based and transaction-based indices (NPI and NTBI)—on a comparable basis by adjusting for leverage and sector. We extract a common real estate factor, which is allowed to be persistent, from all these markets. Individual real estate indices load on this common factor and they also are driven by persistent, idiosyncratic shocks. The common real estate factor is procyclical and has low correlations with standard systematic factors from public markets. Short-run idiosyncratic deviations from the common real estate factor load on several capital market factors for REITs and on liquidity factors for direct real estate.
Anomaly Detection via Controlled Sensing and Deep Active Inference

In this paper, we address the anomaly detection problem where the objective is to find the anomalous processes among a given set of processes. To this end, the decision-making agent probes a subset of processes at every time instant and obtains a potentially erroneous estimate of the binary variable which indicates whether or not the corresponding process is anomalous. The agent continues to probe the processes until it obtains a sufficient number of measurements to reliably identify the anomalous processes. In this context, we develop a sequential selection algorithm that decides which processes to be probed at every instant to detect the anomalies with an accuracy exceeding a desired value while minimizing the delay in making the decision and the total number of measurements taken. Our algorithm is based on active inference which is a general framework to make sequential decisions in order to maximize the notion of free energy. We define the free energy using the objectives of the selection policy and implement the active inference framework using a deep neural network approximation. Using numerical experiments, we compare our algorithm with the state-of-the-art method based on deep actor-critic reinforcement learning and demonstrate the superior performance of our algorithm.
A Value Platform Analysis Perspective on Customer Access Information Technology

Customer access information technologies (CAITs) provide a link between a firm and its customers. Firms invest in CAITs to reduce costs, increase revenues and market share, lock in existing customers, and capture new ones. These benefits, however, are notoriously difficult to measure. This paper proposes an evaluative method for CAIT deployment called value platform analysis, based on a conceptual model drawn from the theory of retail outlet deployment in marketing science. Value platform analysis evaluates the impact of the features of a CAIT, the features of its immediate site, and the features of the larger environment into which it is deployed on the transactions it generates and the resulting business value outcomes. Value platform analysis is then applied in an electronic banking context. Hypotheses regarding the likely impact of automatic teller machine (ATM) functionality, the immediate site's surrounding traffic, the customer demographics, and the number of competitors in the environment on ATM transactions are evaluated both before and after the merger of two regional ATM networks. The results indicate that there are a number of key features influencing ATM performance. Two distinct ATM deployment scenarios emerge: one for servicing a bank's own customers, and another for providing transaction services for customers for a fee. The merger of regional networks impacts each of these scenarios differently.
Structurally Conserved Primate lncRNAs Are Transiently Expressed During Human Cortical Differentiation and Influence Cell Type Specific Genes

The cerebral cortex has expanded in size and complexity in primates, yet the underlying molecular mechanisms are obscure. We generated cortical organoids from human, chimpanzee, orangutan, and rhesus pluripotent stem cells and sequenced their transcriptomes at weekly time points for comparative analysis. We used transcript structure and expression conservation to discover thousands of expressed long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). Of 2,975 human, multi-exonic lncRNAs, 2,143 were structurally conserved to chimpanzee, 1,731 to orangutan, and 1,290 to rhesus. 386 human lncRNAs were transiently expressed (TrEx) and a similar expression pattern was often observed in great apes (46%) and rhesus (31%). Many TrEx lncRNAs were associated with neuroepithelium, radial glia, or Cajal-Retzius cells by single cell RNA-sequencing. 3/8 tested by ectopic expression showed ≥2-fold effects on neural genes. This rich resource of primate expression data in early cortical development provides a framework for identifying new, potentially functional lncRNAs.
Preference heterogeneity and asset prices: An exact solution.

Abstract We introduce a general equilibrium model of a multi-agent, pure-exchange economy and find a set of conditions that enable us to obtain explicit closed-form solutions to the equilibrium interest rate, stock price, risk premium and stock market volatility when investors have heterogenous risk aversions. Because the market is dynamically complete, full risk sharing obtains and a representative agent can be constructed, though the risk aversion of this agent fluctuates over time with the state of the economy, as the relative wealth distribution of the individual investors changes. We show that preference heterogeneity can cause asset prices to be significantly more volatile than the underlying dividends and that it can lead to leverage-like effects in volatility, in the sense that volatility increases after stock-market declines.
Does Corporate Board Diversity Affect Corporate Payout Policy

We find that firms with gender/racial diversity in their boards are more likely to pay larger dividends than firms with non-diverse boards. Our results suggest that board diversity has a significant impact on dividend payout policy. The impact of board diversity on dividend payout policy is particularly conspicuous for firms with potentially greater agency problems of free cash flow, suggesting that a diverse board helps to mitigate the free cash flow problem. Our findings are consistent with the argument that board diversity enhances the monitoring function of directors and shareholder–manager conflict resolution for the benefit of shareholders.
Optimal Allocation of Effort to Software Maintenance: A Queuing Theory Approach

We develop variations of the M|G|1 queue to model the process of software maintenance within organizations and use these models to compute the optimal allocation of resources to software maintenance. User requests are assumed to arrive following a Poisson process and a binomial distribution is used to model duplication of requests. We obtain expressions for expected queue lengths with an exponential server using an N-policy for an integer N≥1. We also obtain the optimal batching size and mean service rate by minimizing the total cost consisting of the cost of the server, the cost of waiting, and the fixed cost of maintenance, if applicable.
Codification of late Roman inheritance law: fideicommissa and the Theodosian Code

It has long been known that most of the private law content of the Theodosian Code has not been preserved independently of the Lex Romana Visigothorum. Certain constitutions, not contained in the LRV but dating to the period covered by the CT, have survived in the Code of Justinian. This article discusses this problem with respect to a particular topic: fideicommissa. The article discusses whether a particular constitution, CJ 6.37.21, might have been included in the CT, either as part of a general rubric concerning inheritance or as part of a separate rubric on fideicommissa, and concludes by suggesting what the constitution might have looked like had it been under a separate heading.
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF POSTMATERIALISM: MATERIAL EXPLANATIONS OF CHANGING VALUES

This paper uses a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of the US political economy to explore the impact of public insurance on the way individuals react to partisan changes in economic policy. In response to these aggregate political shocks, individuals rely on public insurance to insulate them from government-induced volatility in consumption. As a result, the public appears to be relatively less materialistic in its vote choices as well as in ‘‘values’’ surveys, but only because its underlying materialism has less political salience. Thus this insurance model provides an alternative analysis of the rise of ‘‘postmaterialist values’’ and their relation to unemployment.
Dynamic Demand for New and Used Durable Goods Without Physical Depreciation: The Case of Japanese Video Games

We develop a new dynamic demand model for new and used durable goods and quantify the impact of used goods markets on producers’ profits and consumer welfare.
Portfolio Performance Manipulation and Manipulation-proof Performance Measures

Numerous measures have been proposed to gauge the performance of active management. Unfortunately, these measures can be gamed. Our article shows that gaming can have a substantial impact on popular measures even in the presence of high transactions costs. Our article shows there are conditions under which a manipulation-proof measure exists and fully characterizes it. This measure looks like the average of a power utility function, calculated over the return history. The case for using our alternative ranking metric is particularly compelling for hedge funds whose use of derivatives is unconstrained and whose managers' compensation itself induces a nonlinear payoff.
The Relational Economics of Commercial Contract

For almost half a century, the mainstream law-and-economics movement in contract law has zealously protected the parsimony – or simplicity – of economic analysis. The faith in ever-increasing formality is captured both by stubbornly spare assumptions about human behavior and tightly controlled econometric modeling. With few exceptions, the trend in most mainstream contract law scholarship – where the law-and-economic approach is dominant – has been toward excluding, not including, any variable which would capture the realities of actual contracting behavior. This trend has fueled the rise of neo-formalism in both contract theory and doctrine to the exclusion of other accounts.At the same time, however, economic empiricists in other disciplines have been capitalizing on insights from sociology – insights almost as old as the law-and-economics movement itself – showing not only that, but also how, commercial actors in contemporary transactions rely on cooperative social behaviors common in everyday contracting. These behaviors, called relational norms, were originally identified by law-and-sociology professor Ian MacNeil as part of what is now called relational contract theory. Since the early 1990’s, economics scholars working mostly in the fields of marketing and strategic management have included relational norms as key variables in transaction cost analysis research. Strangely, though this work has clear implications for contract law and theory, this work has yet to be discussed in contract law literature. This article breaks new ground by introducing that work in contract law scholarship. The article shows how, contrary to received wisdom in law-and-economics, including relational behaviors in transaction cost research can improve, not detract from, the predictive power of economic analysis.
From Group Data to Useful Probabilities: The Relevance of Actuarial Risk Assessment in Individual Instances

Probability plays a ubiquitous role in decision-making through a process in which we use data from groups of past outcomes to make inferences about new situations. Yet in recent years, many forensic mental health professionals have become persuaded that overly wide confidence intervals render actuarial risk assessment instruments virtually useless in individual assessments. If this were true, the mathematical properties of probabilistic judgments would preclude forensic clinicians from applying group-based findings about risk to individuals. As a consequence, actuarially based risk estimates might be barred from use in legal proceedings. Using a fictional scenario, I seek to show how group data have an obvious application to individual decisions. I also explain how misunderstanding the aims of risk assessment has led to mistakes about how, when, and why group data apply to individual instances. Although actuarially based statements about individuals' risk have many pitfalls, confidence intervals pose no barrier to using actuarial tools derived from group data to improve decision-making about individual instances.
To match or not to match: Aspects of marital matchmaking under uncertainty

Researchers have paid scant attention to matchmaking from the perspective of a matchmaker. Therefore, our purpose is to analyze the circumstances under which a matchmaker optimally accepts or rejects individual matching assignments. We concentrate on two specific cases. In the first (second) case, our matchmaker's reservation profit is exogenous (endogenous).
American Immigration Microfederalism: Sanctuaries, Restrictionist Jurisdictions, and Administrative Conflict

This article explains the rise of microfederalism in migration and integration policy in the United States. Power over immigration is traditionally assigned to the federal government, but States and localities play central roles in providing services to unauthorized migrants due to gaps in congressional policy. Microfederal jurisdictions have responded pragmatically, according to their different policy preferences. Restrictionist jurisdictions seek to participate formally in federal enforcement, supplement enforcement with their independent measures, or by litigation realign federal enforcement priorities to match their own. Sanctuary jurisdictions employ affirmative and defensive policies to integrate migrants and shield unauthorized migrants' data against federal discovery. Although policy competition and preference maximization favor non-interference with restrictionist and sanctuary microfederal policies, the Obama administration challenged restrictionist jurisdictions' policies by federal preemption litigation. Similarly, the Trump administration has asserted broad claims of federal supremacy and will seek federal preemption of sanctuary jurisdictions' integrative projects by resorting to broad claims of federal power at odds with local experimentation. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the conference "Looking Beyond the Crises: Impact of Mass Migration on Local, Regional, National, and EU Governance" organized by the Institute of Public Administration and held from 11-14 May 2017 at the Inter-University Center in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Compression and representation

Mental spaces are often connected by vital conceptual relations. When mental spaces serve as inputs to a blended mental space, the vital conceptual relations between them can be ‘compressed’ to ble...
Victim Participation at the International Criminal Court and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia: A Feminist Project

Under the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC), victims of the world’s most serious crimes were given unprecedented rights to participate in proceedings before the Court. Nearly a decade later, a similar scheme was established to allow victims to participate in proceedings before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a court created to prosecute atrocities committed by Khmer Rouge leaders. Although there are some differences in how the schemes work at each of these tribunals, both allow victims to participate in criminal proceedings independent of their role as witnesses. Advocates of victim participation had high expectations that these new schemes would allow victims to tell their story in a way they were unable to do as victim-witnesses before the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslav and Rwanda, where victims’ voices were often unheard or only partially heard because of the need to narrowly define what happened to them in line with the rules of evidence and the legal definition of the crimes with which the accused were charged. This paper explores whether this novel victim participation scheme, as implemented by the ICC and ECCC thus far, has actually allowed for greater recognition of victims’ voices and experiences than was possible in proceedings before their predecessor tribunals. The paper begins with a brief discussion of the significance of “visibility” as a feminist goal. From there, it describes the victim participation schemes at the ICC and ECCC and how victim participants, particularly survivors of gender-based violence, have fared under these schemes. Although the ICC and ECCC have only heard a limited number of cases, the history of participation before these tribunals thus far suggests that victim participants face some of the very same limitations victim-witnesses encountered at the ad hoc tribunals, particularly in cases against senior leaders and those most responsible for serious international crimes, the focus of ICC and ECCC prosecutions today. In the final section, the paper considers the implications of this conclusion on the feminist goal of visibility and, more generally, on the larger question of whether alternatives to direct participation in proceedings might be as, if not better, suited to achieve this goal.
Did You See What I Saw? Interpreting Others’ Forecasts When Their Information Is Unknown

We conduct a series of forecasting experiments to examine how people update their beliefs upon observing others’ forecasts. Subjects exhibit “cursedness,” that is, a propensity to underestimate the link between others’ forecasts and others’ information, which causes subjects to underreact. The behavior of sophisticated subjects is not affected by the framing of information, but unsophisticated subjects switch from underreaction to overreaction when they are only provided qualitative (rather than quantitative) forecast information. Our results have important implications for the way that financial analysts aggregate information and the way that financial institutions present forecasts to their clients.
When terrorism threatens health: how far are limitations on personal and economic liberties justified?

The U.S. government's homeland security project is a controversial one, largely because it has the effect of placing into conflict two sets of fundamental values: the public's health and safety versus personal and economic liberties. Resolving this conflict requires an understanding of the various interests, a recognition of key choices, and the development of a framework to balance individual and collective interests. Part I of this paper sets forth a risk assessment of the threat posed by bioterrorism and concludes that the risk is sufficiently high to justify liberty-limiting powers to detect and respond to that threat. Such powers include vaccination, treatment, quarantine, nuisance abatements, and takings of private property. Part II argues that instead of focusing the debate on whether the government should have these powers, it is more appropriate, given that the risk from bioterrorism is stratified, to ask under what circumstances may an exercise of authority be justified. Part III examines two political theories, liberalism and communitarianism, as a way to test the assumption that state power may, in some circumstances, be justified. Though at first glance these two theories would seem to advocate distinct responses to the question of the legitimacy of state power, in reality, the exercise of public health powers to avert a considerable risk is justifiable under both theories. Finally, Part IV presents a framework for balancing competing personal and collective interests to address the question of when, that is, under what circumstances, state power should be exercised. This framework advocates the use of traditional powers to further the goal of public security while requiring compliance with predetermined standards and procedures. Difficult trade-offs are an inevitability - at times, national security will be compromised out of respect for constitutional values, and at other times individual freedom and autonomy will be compromised out of respect for collective interests. Ultimately, the question as to how far personal and economic liberties can be circumscribed in the name of protecting the public's health and security is answered by way of categories. The first risk category involves targeted state action to avert a significant risk to the public's health - here, liberal and communitarian thought converge in supporting state action in such instances. The second risk category refers to state action exercised arbitrarily or pretextually - again, liberalism and communitarianism converge, but in rejecting the use of such power in the absence of risk. The final category involves state action to avert a moderate risk, that is the government reasonably believes the risk is real, yet hard evidence is lacking as to the nature and probability of that risk. It is in this category that hard trade-offs exist. The framework posed in this article is one way to facilitate those decisions which will allow the use of state power to safeguard the public's health while preventing state overreaching.
The Perils of Public Opinion

This article discusses the significance of Paul Robinson’s and John Darley’s book, Justice, Liability, and Blame: Community Views and the Criminal Law (“Justice”), and why the book is an excellent springboard for further research comparing community standards and legal codes. However, contrary to Justice’s conclusions, this article particularly emphasizes the perils of incorporating public opinion into the law based upon three major sources: (1) this article's own study of national and New Jersey demographic and political affiliation data, (2) the results presented in Justice, and (3) the results of public opinion research.This article suggests that public opinion research may fail to measure accurately the public's fundamental values or "moral intuitions." Rather, the research may be far more successful in reflecting individuals' erroneous knowledge and distorted attitudes, which can range enormously depending on demographics and personal experiences. This article considers whether the goal of incorporating community standards into the law at the level Justice recommends can be achieved with any accuracy under even the most ideal empirical circumstances. This article also questions whether the attempt is worth the effort in light of the potential measurement problems. Lastly, this article points to research showing that public opinion already has a marked effect on police, courts, legislatures, and politicians. It seems the public can be quite successful in achieving the goal Justice has proposed for it, at least in the areas and on the levels the public believes significant. Given the public's influence, it may be a worthy effort to educate the public more about how the law actually operates in order to correct the distorted impressions the public currently holds. Therefore, whatever impact individuals do have can better reflect a reasoned, educated, judgment rather than personal experience.
A Theory of Corporate Joint Ventures

How can corporations be competitors and partners at the same time? This is the dilemma of the corporate joint venture. I argue that the key legal challenge facing corporate co-venturers is to construct a coherent set of fiduciary duties among the corporate partners. This paper makes three contributions.First, the paper shows that the default fiduciary duties of corporate joint ventures conflict. This fact --- that the law itself creates a conflict --- has not been previously recognized by the literature. The paper then presents a theory of how corporations respond to this fiduciary conflict: Corporations (1) alter the default loyalty duties through a covenant not to compete (CNC) and then (2) avoid conflicts by operating the venture through a separate entity. This theory thus offers a new role for both CNCs and entities.Second, this contractual response is actually quite fragile because states vary considerably to the extent they (1) are willing to enforce covenants not to compete and (2) permit partners to alter their fiduciary duties. The paper offers a policy recommendation in light of these enforcement problems: an internal affairs doctrine for corporate joint ventures.Finally, the paper details the existence of joint venture networks. These networks further compound fiduciary conflicts and require us to update both competition policy and the theory of the firm.
Wrong on Red: The Constitutional Case Against Red-Light Cameras

Mr. Christensen reviews the legal framework within which red-light cameras operate in St. Louis, Missouri, and evaluates their constitutionality on due process and confrontation grounds.
School Desegregation and Educational Attainment for Blacks.

Abstract:This paper assesses the effects of school desegregation on its intended beneficiaries: black students. In Louisiana, substantial reductions in segregation between 1965 and 1970 were accompanied by large increases in per-pupil funding, which allowed funding in integrated schools to be "leveled up" to the level previously experienced only in white schools. Desegregation also brought increased exposure of blacks to whites. Analysis of new data on levels of segregation, resources and educational attainment from 1960-75 suggests that the increase in funding associated with desegregation improved educational attainment for blacks. A 42 percent increase in funding led to a 15 percent increase in high school graduation rates, and the estimated present value of the additional education exceeded the additional cost.