cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Reassessing the new Commonwealth model of constitutionalism

This article presents a general reassessment of the success and distinctiveness of “the new Commonwealth model of constitutionalism” in practice. This new, third model of constitutionalism attempts to straddle the previous dichotomy of traditional parliamentary sovereignty and constitutional or judicial supremacy by adequately and effectively protecting rights through a reallocation of powers between courts and legislatures which brings them into greater balance than under these two preexisting, more lopsided models. The article considers the extent to which the new model is achieving these twin goals—protecting rights and balancing judicial and legislative powers—through a critical evaluation of recent experience under its various versions in Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom and the mostly country-specific academic commentary on all aspects of its workings. The article concludes that the new model has for the most part been moderately successful and distinctive in practice, and proposes a few working adjustments that might make it more so in the future.
Currency Substitution and Inflation in Peru

This paper shows that there is a long-run relationship between the expected rate of depreciation in the black-market-exchange rate and the ratio of domestic to foreign money in Peru: that is, the hypothesis of currency substitution can explain the behavior of real holdings of money in Peru. The paper also shows that, while, the importance of currency substitution as a transmission mechanism through which domestic policies affected the dynamics of inflation was relatively small during a period of high but relatively stable inflation (January 1978-85), it became an important factor in the inflation process during the recent hyperinflation episode.
Optimality of Debt under Flexible Information Acquisition

We study the optimality of debt through the interaction between se- curity design and information acquisition. An impatient seller designs an asset backed security and a buyer decides whether to buy it to provide liquidity. Facing dierent securities, the buyer has incentives to acquire in- formation from dierent aspects of the fundamental, which in turn aects security design. Speci…cally, the buyer bene…ts from information acqui- sition at the expense of the seller through adverse selection. The seller hence deliberately designs the security to induce the buyer to acquire the information least harmful to the seller's interest. Since securities can be designed in arbitrary ways, the resulting incentive to acquire information is very ‡exible. Thus, we introduce ‡exible information acquisition to capture this interaction. We show that debt is uniquely optimal. Com- pared with the security design literature, we neither assume monotonicity of the feasible securities nor impose various distributional assumptions on the fundamental or information structures. Fixed aggregate cash ‡ow and homogeneous information cost are two key factors driving the results. JEL: D86, D82, G32
On the survival of overconfident traders in a competitive securities market

Recent research has proposed several ways in which overconfident traders can persist in competition with rational traders. This paper offers an additional reason: overconfident traders do better than purely rational traders at exploiting mispricing caused by liquidity or noise traders. We examine both the static profitability of overconfident versus rational trading strategies, and the dynamic evolution of a population of overconfident, rational and noise traders. Replication of overconfident and rational types is assumed to be increasing in the recent profitability of their strategies. The main result is that the long-run steady-state equilibrium always involves overconfident traders as a substantial positive fraction of the population.
Design and pricing of derivative contracts in a spectrum market

We propose a secondary spectrum market that allows wireless providers to purchase spectrum access licenses of short duration in the form of spot contracts and derivative contracts on spectrum. A spot contract provides immediate access to one or more wireless channels and cannot be further traded. On the other hand, derivative contracts on spectrum typically involve purchase of spectrum licenses in the future for predefined terms, and they can play an important role in risk management objectives of wireless providers. In this paper, we utilize a model for the spot price of spectrum licenses in which the price increases with increasing congestion in spectrum usage caused by the primary demand for spectrum. The spot price process, modeled as driven by a fractional Brownian motion (fBm) process to capture the self-similarity properties of wireless traffic, is utilized in fractional stochastic calculus to obtain the value of derivative contracts. We design a variety of derivative contracts considering the risk profile of both the buyers and sellers of spectrum. Through a detailed numerical study, we examine the value of these derivative contracts for changes in spot price volatility and the parameters that define the contracts.
Why Governance Might Work in Mutual Funds

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Jones v. Harris Associates L.P. has highlighted the potential for agency conflicts in mutual funds, whose advisors have the de facto power to award themselves high fees. While the surrounding debate has focused on the extent to which market competition replaces the need for fee litigation, there appears to be a growing consensus that fund governance, through the use of voice, is unlikely to be effective. The use of voice is commonly said to be hampered by collective action problems; more recently, scholars have argued that it is further weakened by the easy availability of exit. Yet while the easy availability of exit may discourage the use of voice, the easy availability of exit may also encourage voice. This paper explains how the easy availability of exit from mutual funds encourages shareholder voice, at least in theory. By analyzing the responsibility of 401(k) plan fiduciaries to prudently select investment options that plan participants can choose from, the paper also explains why mutual fund governance might work in practice.
When Does Information Asymmetry Affect the Cost of Capital

This paper examines when information asymmetry among investors affects the cost of capital in excess of standard risk factors. When equity markets are perfectly competitive, information asymmetry has no separate effect on the cost of capital. When markets are imperfect, information asymmetry can have a separate effect on firms’ cost of capital. Consistent with our prediction, we find that information asymmetry has a positive relation with firms’ cost of capital in excess of standard risk factors when markets are imperfect and no relation when markets approximate perfect competition. Overall, our results show that the degree of market competition is an important conditioning variable to consider when examining the relation between information asymmetry and cost of capital.
Rivalry and superior dispatch: an analysis of competing courts in medieval and early modern England

In most areas, economists look to competition to align incentives, but not so with courts. Many believe that competition enables plaintiff forum shopping, but Adam Smith praised rivalry among courts. This article describes the courts when the common law developed. In many areas of law, courts were monopolized and imposed decisions on unwilling participants. In other areas, however, large degrees of competition and consent were present. In many areas, local, hundred, manorial, county, ecclesiastical, law merchant, chancery, and common law courts competed for customers. When parties had a choice, courts needed to provide a forum that was ex ante value maximizing.
Financing Constraints and Workplace Safety

We present evidence that financing frictions adversely impact investment in workplace safety, with implications for worker welfare and firm value. Using several identification strategies, we find that injury rates increase with leverage and negative cash flow shocks, and decrease with positive cash flow shocks. We show that firm value decreases substantially with injury rates. Our findings suggest that investment in worker safety is an economically important margin on which firms respond to financing constraints.
The Job Gap, the Money Gap, and the Responsibility of Legal Educators

This essay, presented as part of Washington University's Becker Symposium in October 2012, discusses three gaps in legal education: the gap between the number of law school graduates and the jobs available, the gap between tuition levels and expected income, and the slowness of legal educators to recognize and address these problems. Drawing upon data from the National Association of Law Placement and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I illustrate the size of the first two gaps. I then argue that, although legal education clearly creates economic value, the dramatic rise in law school tuition has taken much of that value from graduates and bestowed it upon educators. That outcome raises both professional and policy concerns.
On the Ergodicity of an Autonomous Robot for Efficient Environment Explorations

This paper addresses the autonomous robot ergodicity problem for efficient environment exploration. The spatial distribution as a reference is given by a mixture of Gaussian and the mass generation of the robot is assumed to be skinny Gaussian. The main problem to solve is then to find out proper timing for the robot to visit as well as leave each component-wise Gaussian for the purpose of achieving the ergodicity. The novelty of the proposed method is that no approximation is required for the developed method. Given the definition of the ergodic function, a convergence condition is derived based on the timing analysis. Also, a formal algorithm to achieve the ergodicity is provided. To support the validity of the proposed algorithm, simulation results are provided.
Taming the Beast: Payday Loans, Regulatory Efforts, and Unintended Consequences

This Article examines the payday loan phenomenon, reviews state and federal attempts to regulate it, and explores its most recent appearance under the protection of state CSO laws designed to protect overextended consumers. Part II examines the transaction and the parties involved: what is a payday loan; who makes them; and who are the customers? Part III describes state and federal attempts to regulate payday lending. Part IV explores states' attempts to protect credit-seeking consumers with laws designed to regulate CSOs and the payday loan's emergence between the lines of this regulation. Part V concludes with some thoughts on approaches to tame the Hydra once and for all.
Corporate Governance, Board Oversight, and CEO Turnover

One of the primary roles of corporate boards is to control the processes by which top executives are assessed and if necessary replaced. CEO turnover cannot be viewed in isolation because it affects the behavior of the involved players and hence interacts with other organizational goals. This monograph seeks to synthesize recent research that analyzes these interactions. I focus on a number of recurring themes, including the implications of CEO assessment and replacement on optimal contracting, board monitoring, project selection, financial reporting, and CEO selection.
Liquidity risk and the cross-section of hedge-fund returns ☆

Abstract This paper demonstrates that liquidity risk as measured by the covariation of fund returns with unexpected changes in aggregate liquidity is an important determinant in the cross-section of hedge-fund returns. The results show that funds that significantly load on liquidity risk subsequently outperform low-loading funds by about 6% annually, on average, over the period 1994–2008, while negative performance is observed during liquidity crises. The returns are independent of the liquidity a fund provides to its investors as measured by lockup and redemption notice periods, and they are also robust to commonly used hedge-fund factors, none of which carries a significant premium during the sample period. These findings highlight the importance of understanding systematic liquidity variations in the evaluation of hedge-fund performance.
Employment-based health insurance and universal coverage: four things people know that aren't so.

Employment-based health insurance is the Rodney Dangerfield of U.S. health policy: it gets no respect from anyone. Employment-based coverage ("EBC") may not get much respect, but it covers roughly 177 million people - and it appears to have considerable staying power - even if the principal explanation for that staying power is nothing more compelling than inertia. Given the likely prevalence of EBC for the foreseeable future, it is worth emphasizing four important points about EBC and universal coverage. What these points have in common is that they are myths - most people believe they are true, even though they are not. The four "myths" are these:* Employers pay for EBC;* There are 45.7 million uninsured Americans; * Universal coverage means everyone will have access to high quality care;* Universal coverage will solve the cost problems of American health care. The paper explains why each of these points are "things people know that aren't so." It then highlights the budgetary and collective action problems with trying to get to universal coverage without relying on EBC, at least for the foreseeable future.
Struck by Stereotype: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Pregnancy Discrimination as Sex Discrimination

This is an attempt at recovery. This Essay hopes to call attention to then-Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg's merits brief in Struck v. Secretary of Defense. The brief has been under appreciated in part because the Supreme Court declined to decide the case. But anyone seeking to understand the origins and nature of Justice Ginsburg's views on sex discrimination would be well advised to read this brief. So would anyone interested in reimagining the bounds of constitutional possibility in the realm of gender equality.
Reciprocity-Induced Cooperation

Many legal systems foster metarules of reciprocity to facilitate cooperative outcomes. This paper considers the role of reciprocity rules in various strategic environments. We start by considering the effect of reciprocity constraints in a classic prisoners' dilemma with two symmetric parties and linear payoffs. We extend the analysis to continuous strategies and then further extend the basic model of reciprocity to (a) asymmetric players and (b) nonlinear payoff functions. Then we examine the welfare properties of the reciprocity-induced equilibrium. In many game-theoretic situations, reciprocity constraints facilitate the achievement of cooperative outcomes. Yet the reciprocity-induced equilibrium is not always socially optimal.
Unbundling Criminal Trial Rights

The notion that criminal defendants are put to an all-or-nothing choice between the guilty plea and full-blown jury trial is both pervasive and wrong. Defendants can, and sometimes do, “unbundle” their jury-trial rights and trade them piecemeal, consenting to streamlined trial procedures to reduce their sentencing exposure. This Article explores what happens if, once and for all, we eschew the all-or-nothing framework and actually encourage these “unbundled bargains.” The parties could then tailor court procedures by agreement. Defendants, for example, could bargain for sentencing leniency by consenting to a six-person jury. Or the parties could agree to submit a case to private arbitration. Would such a world be better or worse than the one we have now? This Article takes a first cut at this question, making the uneasy case that the benefits of unbundled bargaining plausibly outweigh the costs.
Veiled Political Questions: Islamic Dress, Constitutionalism, and the Ascendance of Courts

This article explains how judicial independence can develop in regimes that are not fully democratic. Conventional wisdom holds that a strong legislature and political parties are necessary for the emergence of an independent judiciary. This article challenges conventional wisdom by explaining how judicial independence may arise in regimes where these conditions are not present. It presents a theory of how judicial independence emerges and why and when other political actors will respect it. The article also explains why courts may be better poised than legislatures to counter executive power in non-democracies. The theory is developed through a discussion of cases involving Islamic headscarves and veils in Middle Eastern courts. These cases have broad political implications because of their significance to Islamists, who pose the biggest challenge to the power of traditional elites in majority-Muslim countries; and their broad legal ramifications with respect to judicial power, individual rights, constitutional convergence, religious freedom, and the relationship between shari‘a and state law. The article also explains how national courts have interpreted Islamic law and challenges the notion that courts function to secularize state-sponsored religion. To the author’s knowledge, this article contributes the most complete discussion in the English-language academic literature of recent high court cases in Egypt, Kuwait, and Turkey that were translated for the purposes of this article, thus contributing to the body of foreign constitutional case law available for comparative study.
SHOULD THE PRIVATE SECTOR PROVIDE PUBLIC CAPITAL

The choice between private and government provision of a productive public good like infrastructure (public capital) is examined in the context of an endogenously growing open economy. The accumulation of public capital need not require government provision, in contrast to the standard assumption in the literature. Even with an efficient government, the relative costs and benefits of government and private provision depend crucially on the economy’s underlying structural conditions and borrowing constraints in international capital markets. Countries with limited substitution possibilities and large production externalities may benefit from governments encouraging private provision of public capital through targeted investment subsidies. By contrast, countries with flexible substitution possibilities and relatively smaller externalities may benefit either from governments directly providing public capital or from regulation of private providers. The transitional dynamics also are shown to depend on the underlying elasticity of substitution and the size of the production externality.
Network Analysis for International Relations

International relations research has regarded networks as a particular mode of organization, distinguished from markets or state hierarchies. In contrast, network analysis permits the investigation and measurement of network structures—emergent properties of persistent patterns of relations among agents that can define, enable, and constrain those agents. Network analysis offers both a toolkit for identifying and measuring the structural properties of networks and a set of theories, typically drawn from contexts outside international relations, that relate structures to outcomes. Network analysis challenges conventional views of power in international relations by defining network power in three different ways: access, brokerage, and exit options. Two issues are particularly important to international relations: the ability of actors to increase their power by enhancing and exploiting their network positions, and the fungibility of network power. The value of network analysis in international relations has been demonstrated in precise description of international networks, investigation of network effects on key international outcomes, testing of existing network theory in the context of international relations, and development of new sources of data. Partial or faulty incorporation of network analysis, however, risks trivial conclusions, unproven assertions, and measures without meaning. A three-part agenda is proposed for future application of network analysis to international relations: import the toolkit to deepen research on international networks; test existing network theories in the domain of international relations; and test international relations theories using the tools of network analysis.
Eleventh Amendment Schizophrenia

This article argues that conflicting analytical strains run through the Supreme Court's recent majority opinions in the area of state sovereign immunity. The "supremacy" strain stresses that, despite the Eleventh Amendment, the states remain obligated to comply with federal law, and that the Constitution envisions the "necessary judicial means" to enforce these obligations against the state. These means include suits by the federal government, private suits for injunctive relief, and suits seeking damages from state officials in their individual capacities. Thus, according to the supremacy strain, state sovereign immunity is unimportant because it merely bars unnecessary means of enforcing the federal obligations of the states. The "state sovereignty" strain, on the other hand, emphasizes that state sovereign immunity is a vital and fundamental principle of federalism and hence, for example, cannot be evaded through mere pleading maneuvers. Both analytical strains are evident in the recent opinion in Alden v. Maine. This article describes the two analytical strains and argues that the conflict between them may be coming to a head in the Court's doctrine concerning abrogation of Eleventh Amendment immunity under the Fourteenth Amendment. The recent abrogation cases suggest that an abrogation of state sovereign immunity is valid only if it is "genuinely necessary." If so, and if state sovereign immunity does not bar the "necessary judicial means" for assuring state compliance with federal law, then it would appear that an abrogation of state sovereign immunity would never be valid. The increasing prominence of the state sovereignty strain in the Court's decisions suggests that the Court may be poised to narrow the alternative remedies that until now have provided the "necessary judicial means" for assuring state compliance with federal law, substituting a congressional power to abrogate state sovereign immunity pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment. This article concludes that such a move would be problematic because, among other things, it would deny "necessary judicial means" of enforcing valid federal laws placing obligations on the states pursuant to Article I.
The Future of Empirical Legal Scholarship: Where Might We Go From Here?

Introduction For some time now, scholarly journals have been editing and publishing empirical legal studies. This includes both peer-reviewed journals, in fi elds such as law, economics, and psychology, and non-peer-reviewed, studentedited law journals. The number of empirical legal studies that show up in the pages of journals has been on the rise as empirical methods improve and researchers gain easy access to a growing number of data sets. This addition to legal scholarship is welcome after decades of theory’s dominance. Prior to the entrance of empirical work onto the scene, we were drowning in a sea of predictions derived from unvalidated theories. Journals were fi lled with guesses, and we blindly applied theory in policymaking, if at all, in the absence of evidence that the relevant theoretical insights were accurate and robust. The situation has improved in recent years as we have sought to verify theories relevant to law and policy using data from a rapidly expanding number of sources. This is the good news. The troubling news is that empirical scholarship in most fi elds is under fi re. Several studies published during the past decade have revealed the tenuous nature of a shockingly high percentage of some of the most widely cited empirical results. Empiricists are scrambling to fi nd eff ective ways to restore confi dence in published empirical studies. The situation in the fi eld of law is doubly worse. First, the average quality of empirical studies published in student-edited law reviews is undoubtedly lower than those published in peer-reviewed journals. This is partly because law review editorial boards, usually comprising solely law students, do not systematically require expert review of submitted work. Student editors are eager to publish empirical work, but too often lack the expertise to ensure that they publish only high-quality, replicable studies. This system encourages submissions by
International Standards for Detaining Terrorism Suspects: Moving beyond the Armed Conflict-Criminal Divide

Under what circumstances does international law permit a state to detain terrorism suspects not captured in a theater of combat? There continues to be confusion on this question, but two dominant strands of thought have emerged. One asserts that the law of armed conflict applies to permit extended detention with minimal legal process; the other claims that human rights law applies to prohibit detention unless accompanied by the ordinary criminal process. Neither strand tracks international practice. Rather than uniformly adopting one system or the other - armed conflict or exclusively criminal - international actors have been groping for new options. Based on a review of that practice, this Article argues that the global fight against terrorism should not be characterized as an armed conflict for purposes of application of a detention regime under the law of armed conflict, but that the reflexive rejoinder - if the law of armed conflict does not apply, then the criminal law must - is mistaken. Although the criminal law is an important tool for detaining terrorism suspects, human rights law also permits states to detain them administratively. Moreover, administrative detention better balances the liberty and security interests at stake in the context of particular terrorism suspects. Yet the legal parameters of security-based administrative detention are underdeveloped in international law. This Article thus begins the project of refining that law as it applies in the fight against terrorism. The purpose of this project is twofold: to inhibit states from detaining unnecessarily or through uncontrolled and ad hoc measures; and to enable states to detain based on a lawful template that satisfies their security needs.
Entry-level police selection: The assessment center is an alternative

Abstract This article examines the utility of an assessment center for the selection of entry-level police officers. The assessment center successfully predicted both training academy and on-the-job performance. The predictive validities of the assessment center ratings were compared to the predictive validities of a paper-and-pencil cognitive ability test. The cognitive ability test outpredicted the assessment center ratings for training academy performance. However, the assessment center ratings outpredicted the cognitive ability test for on-the-job performance. Assuming a selection rate of 150 candidates for the cognitive ability test, there would have been adverse impact against the Black and Hispanic candidates. Basing selection on the assessment center results would have eliminated the adverse impact against Hispanics and increased the percentage of Blacks being selected. Despite the implementation costs associated with assessment centers, they are a viable alternative for selecting police officers.
Church, state, and charter: Canada's hidden establishment clause

The thesis of this article is that the judiciary in Canada has successfully used the guarantee of individual religious freedom in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to achieve a similar level of neutrality towards religion as the United States Supreme Court has reached using the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution. This article compares Canadian and American caselaw on topics such as Sunday Closing laws, school and legislative prayer, and more
Enhancing Drug Effectiveness and Efficacy Through Personal Injury Litigation

For decades, personal-injury liability for the harms that prescription drugs cause has languished, unloved among legislatures and commentators. A near-consensus frets about overdeterring manufacturers; writers fear that lawsuits drive valuable pharmaceutical products from the American market. Even though confidence in FDA oversight - the main alternative to liability as a source of consumer protection - is in decline, few express concern about the possibility of underdeterrence. Without denying that the costs of personal-injury liability might threaten the supply of prescription drugs, this article, first presented to an audience of state and federal judges in November 2006, looks at what judges (especially judges who try cases in state courts) can do to strengthen liability as a check on the harms that these products inflict on consumers. It invites courts to help enforce an entitlement to effectiveness, just as they now help enforce an entitlement to safety.
Discussion of a Utilization-Driven Approach for Performance-Informed Budgeting in China

The diffusion of performance budgeting into China asks the question: how may China approach this task? This research examines the experience of performance budgeting in the United States, and explores the desirability of a utilization-driven approach to implement performance budgeting in China. This article argues that, given what we have known from experiences in other countries, a utilization driven approach, an approach that means to design a performance measurement system that clearly identifies the users of information and the intended uses, holds the promise in China’s unique historical, political and cultural environment.
Price setting, price dispersion, and the value of money: or, the law of two prices ☆

Abstract We study models combining search, money, price posting, and preference shocks. We show how these features interact to influence the price level and price dispersion. First, price-posting equilibria exist with valued fiat currency. Second, although both are possible, price dispersion is more common than a single price. Third, we prove that generically there cannot be more than two prices. We provide intuition for this law of two prices , show it also holds in some nonmonetary search models, and discuss variations of the assumptions under which it may not hold.
Hunting for Leopards: Long Run Country Income Dynamics in Africa

This paper examines the country-level dynamics of long-run growth in Africa between 1975 and 2005. We are primarily interested in examining how growth has affected mobility and the distribution of income among countries. We analyze changes in the cross-country income structure and convergence. We also look for evidence of the formation of country groups or “clubs”. Finally, we use a novel method of breaking up the growth histories of African economies into medium term spells of growth accelerations and declines to see if a group of African “leopards” – the regional equivalent of Asia’s “tigers” – is beginning to emerge.
The Receding Tide of Medical Malpractice Litigation: Part 1—National Trends

The United States has experienced three medical malpractice (med mal) crises in the past 40 years. In response, 31 states now have caps on noneconomic or total damages. Researchers have studied the impact of these caps, relative to control states without caps, but have not studied trends in no-cap states or overall national trends. We find that the per-physician rate of paid med mal claims has been dropping for 20 years and in 2012 was less than half the 1992 level. Lawsuit rates, in the states with available data, are also declining, at similar rates. “Small” paid claims (payout < $50,000 in 2011 dollars) have been dropping for the full period; “large” paid claims (payout ≥ $50,000) have been dropping since 2001. Payout per large paid claim was roughly flat. Payouts per physician have been dropping since 2003, and by 2012 were 48 percent below their 1992 level. The “third wave” of damage cap adoptions over 2003–2006 contributed to this trend, but there are also large declines in no-cap states.
The Constitutional Politics of Presidential Succession

The current line of presidential succession is no safer than playing presidential roulette. It imprudently privileges politics and tradition over competence and leadership. We should rethink the rules that currently govern succession to the Presidency – legal and constitutional rules that, in my view, serve the wrong institutional and political interests. The task I have given myself in these pages is to propose and defend an alternative to the current presidential succession regime: revising the order of succession to insert former living presidents – in reverse chronological order of service beginning with former presidents of the same party as the unavailable president – into the line of succession and concurrently removing the House Speaker and the Senate President pro tempore from the line of succession. Temporary presidential succession is a promising alternative to the current succession regime for several reasons that I endeavor to justify. Yet even if readers disagree with my proposed alternative to the current line of presidential succession, the larger purpose of my project nevertheless remains achievable: to probe the values that currently shape presidential succession and to invite reflection about whether they are the right ones for our time.
'Unconscious Transference' Can Be an Instance of 'Change Blindness'

Three experiments investigated the role of ‘change blindness’ in mistaken eyewitness identifications of innocent bystanders to a simulated crime. Two innocent people appeared briefly in a filmed scene in a supermarket. The ‘continuous innocent’ (CI) walked down the liquor aisle and passed behind a stack of boxes, whereupon the perpetrator emerged and stole a bottle of liquor, thereby resulting in an action sequence promoting the illusion of continuity between perpetrator and innocent. The ‘discontinuous innocent’ (DI) was shown immediately afterward in the produce aisle. Results revealed that: (1) more than half of participants failed to notice the change between the CI and the perpetrator, (2) among those who failed to notice the change, more misidentified the ‘CI’ than the ‘DI’, a pattern that did not hold for those who did notice the change. Participants were less likely to notice the change when they were distracted while watching the video. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Empirical Tests of Audit Budget Dynamics

Previous research in nonaudit contexts suggests that managers design budgets based on prior performance relative to budget targets, and that this “ratcheting” response can be asymmetrical (i.e., greater increase in target following good performance than the decrease in target following correspondingly bad performance). This implies a dynamic view of budgeting, in which the budget is an endogenous feature of the business environment, a perspective that is rare in the auditing literature. We hypothesize and find asymmetric budget ratcheting by audit firm supervisors in a sample of audit engagements. Further, we find that engagement teams' reported hours also vary asymmetrically with prior budget variance. Our results suggest temporal interdependence between audit firm supervisors and engagement teams as both parties act strategically to adapt budgeting and reporting behavior based on prior budget variances, with associated implications for audit quality.
Product-Use Information and the Limits of Voluntary Disclosure

Concern about asymmetric information in markets for consumer goods and services has focused on product attribute information. We highlight the importance of another category of information|product use information. In important markets, sellers have better information about how a consumer will use their product or service than the consumer herself. Moreover, we show that the classic unraveling results do not extend to product use information, and thus sellers are less likely to voluntarily disclose this type of information. Our ndings have important policy implications: While most disclosure mandates target product attribute information, our analysis suggests that mandating disclosure of product use information may be more important. Indeed, policymakers are beginning to recognize the importance of product use disclosures.
Stability in Supply Chain Networks

This paper studies matching in vertical networks, generalizing the theory of matching in two-sided markets. It gives sufficient conditions for the existence of stable networks and presents an algorithm for finding two of them. One is the best stable network for the agents on the "upstream" end of an industry. The other is best for the agents on the "downstream" end. The paper describes several properties of the set of stable networks and discusses applications of the theory to the design of matching markets with more than two types of agents and to the empirical analysis of supply chains. (JEL C78, D85, L14)
Internet Solutions to Consumer Protection Problems

This Article claims that the Internet may provide consumers with new kinds of protection in buying goods and services and new powers in resolving disputes. The Internet achieves these results by reducing the cost of communication.
Abortion and Original Meaning

This article argues that the debate between originalism and living constitutionalism offers a false dichotomy. Many originalists and their critics improperly conflate fidelity to the original meaning of the constitutional text with fidelity to how people living at the time of adoption expected that it would be applied. That is, they confuse original meaning with original expected application. Constitutional interpretation requires fidelity to the original meaning of the Constitution and to the principles that underlie the text, but not to original expected application. This general approach to constitutional interpretation is the method of text and principle. This approach is faithful to the original meaning of the constitutional text, and to its underlying purposes. It is also consistent with the idea of a basic law that leaves to each generation the task of how to make sense of the Constitution's words and principles in their own time. Although the constitutional text and principles do not change without subsequent amendment, their application and implementation can. That is the best way to understand the interpretive practices characteristic of our constitutional tradition and the work of the many political and social movements that have transformed our understandings of the Constitution's guarantees. It explains, as other versions of originalism cannot, why these transformations are not simply mistakes that we must grudgingly accept out of respect for settled precedent, but are significant achievements of our constitutional tradition. The article applies this method to the most contentious constitutional issue of our generation - the constitutional right to abortion. It concludes, contrary to conventional wisdom, that the constitutional right to abortion is consistent with the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, and, in particular, its prohibition on class legislation that is embodied in the Equal Protection Clause. The article criticizes Roe v. Wade's original trimester system, arguing that there are actually two rights to abortion instead of one. Finally, it explains how courts might have better implemented the constitutional guarantee of the two rights to abortion in ways that are more respectful of democratic politics. [This article will appear in 24 Constitutional Commentary (2007). A response to critics, expanding on the some of the key ideas of the article, appears in Original Meaning and Constitutional Redemption, 24 Constitutional Commentary (2007), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=987060]
The Tentative Case Against Flexibility in Commercial Law

Well-rooted in modern commercial law is the idea that the law and the obligations that it enforces should reflect the empirical reality of the relationship between the contracting parties. The Uniform Commercial Code ("Code") champions this tradition by viewing the performance practices formed among the parties throughout their interaction as a primary source for interpreting and supplementing their explicit contracts. The generous recognition of waiver and modifications, as well as the binding force the Code accords to course of performance, course of dealings, and customary trade usages, effectively permits unwritten commercial practices to vary and to erode explicit contractual provisions. This approach, which allows the reality of the relationship to override rigid allocations of rights and duties in the bargain, has long been celebrated for its nonformalist spirit. It is the substance of the parties' agreement that the law seeks to trace, not a formal historical manifestation of it. Formalism-the separation of law from life, of the meaning of the text from its context-is rejected in favor of pragmatism.2 Obligations are derived not merely by logical deduction from the language of the bargain, but through an inductive process, resting on scattered empirical observations.3 The Code recognizes that the rights and duties of contracting parties can be derived not solely from specified
Does your ad have too many pictures

ABSTRACT Are advertisements with more peripheral pictures more memorable than those with fewer pictures? If advertisers9 objectives could be accomplished with advertisements containing fewer pictures, significant reductions in advertising-creation and media costs would result. In this paper the authors focus is on long print advertisements that have a low copy-to-picture ratio. They address several research issues, beginning with the fundamental question: Is a longer pictorial ad more effective than its shorter version? Then does a longer multi-picture ad cut through the media clutter more effectively than its shorter version. The moderating influence of reader motivation on the relative effectiveness of a longer versus a shorter ad is the final research question addressed in this study.
Optimal Policy with Heterogeneous Preferences

Optimal policy rules--including those regarding income taxation, commodity taxation, public goods, and externalities--are typically derived in models with homogeneous preferences. This article reconsiders many central results for the case in which preferences for commodities, public goods, and externalities are heterogeneous. When preference differences are observable, standard second-best results in basic settings are unaffected, except those for the optimal income tax. Optimal levels of income taxation may be higher, the same, or lower on types who derive more utility from various goods, depending on the nature of preference differences and the concavity of the social welfare function. When preference differences are unobservable, all policy rules may change. The determinants of even the direction of optimal rule adjustments are many and subtle.
Terrorizing Justice: An Argument that Plea Bargains Struck Under the Threat of "Enemy Combatant" Detention Violate the Right to Due Process

As part of the War on Terror, the President has detained certain individuals as "enemy combatants"—a form of military detention that is preventive, non-criminal, and of indefinite duration. Some terrorism defendants appear to have pled guilty to criminal charges in order to avoid being detained as enemy combatants. This Note argues that plea bargains induced by threats of enemy combatant detention do not arise from the normal give-and-take of plea bargaining, create serious public policy concerns, and serve no societal interests that could not be served equally well by other means. It therefore concludes that the courts should hold such plea bargains per se unenforceable under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Discussion paper: Hard cases make bad law—reactions to R v T

In the case of R v T (2010), the Court of Appeal for England and Wales rejected the testimony of an expert who had used likelihood ratios to assess the probative value of shoe-print evidence. Because likelihood ratios are widely used in forensic science, and their use has been actively promoted by leaders in the field (Association of Forensic Science Providers, 2009; Cook et al., 1998; Evett, 1998; Robertson and Vignaux, 1995), the court’s opinion has understandably caused consternation in the forensic science community (Berger et al. 2011; Robertson et al. 2011; Redmayne et al. 2011). Recognizing the importance of the issues involved, the editors of Law, Probability and Risk have devoted this issue to articles commenting on the case. At the invitation of Editor Colin Aitken, it is my privilege and honour to review and respond to those articles. In the interest of full disclosure, I will say at the outset that I think R v T is an inept judicial opinion that creates bad law. The opinion went awry because the justices who wrote it misunderstood a key aspect of the evidence they were evaluating. The justices sought to achieve laudable goals, but their misunderstanding of basic principles of inductive logic, and particularly Bayes’ theorem, led them to exclude a type of expert evidence that, in general, is helpful and appropriate in favour of an alternative type of expert of evidence that is fundamentally inconsistent with the goals the court sought to achieve. The case has already received severe criticism and will inevitably come to be seen for what it is—a judicial blunder.
Legal Education for Sustainability: A Report on US Progress

This article is an overview of sustainability efforts in US law schools. It describes two sets of drivers for these efforts—inside and outside the legal profession. Drivers from within the legal profession include the American Bar Association as well as several state and local bar associations; law firms and other law organisations; and current and prospective law students. Drivers from outside the legal profession include clients, universities and colleges, nongovernmental organisations, and government. This article then describes what US law schools are now doing in the areas of curriculum, research, buildings and operations, community outreach and service, student life, and institutional mission, policy and planning. More generally, it suggests that law schools need to play a leading role in the national and global effort to achieve sustainability.
Controlling Residential Stakes

Local communities often suffer when residents have too small a stake in their homesa point underscored by recent rashes of foreclosures and abandonments, and implicated by longstanding questions about the effects on communities of renters and owner-occupants, respectively. However, homeowners with too great a financial stake in their homes can also cause difficulties for local governance by acting as risk-averse NIMBYs. Local governments should have a strong interest in helping members of their communities move away from problematic forms of stakeholding and toward more desirable intermediate positions. This Article examines how and why governmental entities at the state and local levels might regulate or shape the financial stakes that residents have in their homes. We give particular attention to the role local governments may play in facilitating homeowner and tenant access to index-based financial instruments that adjust residential risk-bearing. More radically, we suggest that local governments, assisted by state law, could formulate shared equity arrangements in which local residents hold stakes, either directly or through their municipalities, in the housing markets of surrounding localities as well as in their own jurisdictions.