cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Exploring Metropolitan Housing Price Volatility

This paper uses GARCH models and a panel VAR model to analyze possible time variation of the volatility of single-family home value appreciation and the interactions between the volatility and the economy, using a large quarterly data set that covers 277 MSAs in the U.S. from 1990:1 to 2002:2. We find evidence of time varying volatility in about 17% of the MSAs. Using volatility series estimated with GARCH models, we find that the volatility is Granger-caused by the home appreciation rate and GMP growth rate. On the other hand, the volatility Granger-causes the personal income growth rate but the impact is not economically significant.
Testing Weak Cross-Sectional Dependence in Large Panels

This article considers testing the hypothesis that errors in a panel data model are weakly cross-sectionally dependent, using the exponent of cross-sectional dependence α, introduced recently in Bailey, Kapetanios, and Pesaran (2012). It is shown that the implicit null of the cross-sectional dependence (CD) test depends on the relative expansion rates of N and T. When T = O(N e), for some 0 < e ≤1, then the implicit null of the CD test is given by 0 ≤ α < (2 − e)/4, which gives 0 ≤ α <1/4, when N and T tend to infinity at the same rate such that T/N → κ, with κ being a finite positive constant. It is argued that in the case of large N panels, the null of weak dependence is more appropriate than the null of independence which could be quite restrictive for large panels. Using Monte Carlo experiments, it is shown that the CD test has the correct size for values of α in the range [0, 1/4], for all combinations of N and T, and irrespective of whether the panel contains lagged values of the dependent variables...
The U.S. as Tax Haven? Aiding Developing Countries by Revoking the Revenue Rule

Over the years, many OECD countries, including the United States, have identified tax havens as a significant problem, and have acted to limit the ability of their taxpayers to use tax havens to reduce their taxes. The United States has implemented tax regimes, including subpart F and the passive foreign investment company rules, and disclosure regimes, such as the recently-enacted FATCA rules, to prevent U.S. taxpayers from taking advantage of tax haven jurisdictions. But the intersection of a number of U.S. tax rules, it turns out, makes the United States an attractive place for foreigners to invest—and hide—their money. Principal among these is the revenue rule, an eighteenth-century common law rule that prevents the United States from recognizing and enforcing foreign tax judgments. As a result, if a foreign taxpayer hides money in the United States and fails to pay taxes at home, her government has no recourse to satisfy the tax debt with the taxpayer’s U.S. assets. Such hidden money disparately impacts developing countries by reducing their ability to finance government through developing tax infrastructure, and instead forcing them to remain dependent on foreign aid. The revenue rule stands in stark contrast to the general default rule that U.S. courts will enforce foreign final judgments. But the revenue rule is not grounded in any compelling policy considerations. Moreover, to the extent that the U.S. revokes the revenue rule, not only will the U.S. aid other countries—including, especially, developing countries—but it may receive reciprocal aid in collecting taxes from U.S. taxpayers with assets held overseas. This Article argues that the U.S. should revoke the revenue rule, both from a moral obligation to aid developing economies in becoming self-sufficient and to receive reciprocal aid in collecting taxes being held overseas. * Assistant Professor, Loyola University Chicago School of Law. I would like to thank the participants at the University of Kentucky College of Law Developing Ideas Workshop, the Eighth Annual Junior Tax Scholars Workshop, the 2013 Law & Society Annual Meeting, and ClassCrits VI. I would also like to thank Loyola University Chicago School of Law for its summer research stipend and Jamie Brunson for her support. 2014] THE U.S. AS TAX HAVEN? 171
De Re and De Dicto

Statements involving knowledge, intent, and the like may often be interpreted either de re (about a thing) or de dicto (about a statement). For instance, "A knowingly took B's car" can mean either "A knowingly took a car that turned out to be B's," the de re interpretation, or "A knowingly caused it to be the case that he took B's car," the de dicto interpretation. This paper takes up twelve cases whose outcome depends on which interpretation one gives to a governing principle. It suggests that since the two alternative interpretations are equally supported by the applicable language policy considerations must be brought in to resolve the cases.
An Additional Source of Financial Analysts' Earnings Forecast Errors: Imperfect Adjustments for Cost Behavior

We test a hypothesis that financial analysts use a simple algorithm of an equal growth rate for expenses as is for sales when they forecast corporate earnings by examining the errors in analysts' earnings forecasts. If expenses change at a lower rate than sales in absolute terms due to the fixed portion of expenses, then analysts' forecasted expenses will be higher (lower) than actual when they forecast an increase (decrease) in sales, resulting in lower (higher) forecasted than actual earnings assuming that analysts have perfect sales forecasts. Using 3,220 individual financial analysts' sales and earnings forecasts during the period of 1996–2005 for which sales forecast errors are close to zero, we find that the errors in analysts' earnings forecasts are positively related to their expected sales growth rate. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that analysts' imperfect adjustments of cost behavior result in systematic errors in their earnings forecasts.
Is there an energy paradox in fuel economy? A note on the role of consumer heterogeneity and sorting bias

Abstract From the previous literature, it can be found that consumers tend to undervalue discounted future energy costs in their purchase decisions for energy-using durables. We show that this finding could, in part, result from ignoring consumer heterogeneity in empirical analyses as opposed to true undervaluation.
Filtering, Piracy Surveillance and Disobedience

There has always been a cyclical relationship between the prevention of piracy and the protection of civil liberties. While civil liberties advocates previously warned about the aggressive nature of copyright protection initiatives, more recently, a number of major players in the music industry have eventually ceded to less direct forms of control over consumer behavior. As more aggressive forms of consumer control, like litigation, have receded, we have also seen a rise in more passive forms of consumer surveillance. Moreover, even as technology has developed more perfect means for filtering and surveillance over online piracy, a number of major players have opted in favor of “tolerated use,” a term coined by Professor Tim Wu to denote the allowance of uses that may be otherwise infringing, but that are allowed to exist for public use and enjoyment. Thus, while the eventual specter of copyright enforcement and monitoring remains a pervasive digital reality, the market may fuel a broad degree of consumer freedom through the toleration or taxation of certain kinds of activities. This Article is meant largely to address and to evaluate these shifts by drawing attention to the unique confluence of these two important moments: the growth of tolerated uses, coupled with an increasing trend towards more passive forms of piracy surveillance in light of the balance between copyright enforcement and civil liberties. The content industries may draw upon a broad definition of disobedience in their campaigns to educate the public about copyright law, but the market’s allowance of DRM-free content suggests an altogether different definition. The divide in turn between copyright enforcement and civil liberties results in a perfect storm of uncertainty, suggesting the development of an even further division between the role of the law and the role of the marketplace in copyright enforcement and innovation, respectively.
Quality Control: A Reply to Professor Sunstein

Unless cost-benefit analysis finds room for the nonquantifiable and nonmonetizable benefits of regulation, it will skew systematically against government action to address social problems that have significant nonquantifiable and nonmonetizable dimensions. In The Limits of Quantification—drawn from the 2013 Brennan Center Jorde Symposium at Berkeley Law—Professor Cass R. Sunstein looks for a way out of this quandary. But the solutions he explicitly or implicitly embraces—a meaningful recognition of qualitative benefits like human dignity, a redoubled effort to quantify and monetize regulatory benefits, and breakeven analysis—fall short. Breakeven analysis is too selectively deployed to be the neutral tool Sunstein seeks. Fitting qualitative values, like dignity, into the cost-benefit mold can be both legally gratuitous and conceptually confused. Monetizing heretofore nonmonetized regulatory benefits—like preventing prison rape—entails a complete redefinition of the problem at hand. The limits of quantification remain severe, undermining claims that cost-benefit analysis can play an evenhanded role in the evaluation of agency rules.
Humanitarian Financial Intervention

Over the past several decades, states have used international asset freezes with increasing frequency as a mechanism for promoting human rights abroad. Yet the international law governing this mechanism, which I refer to as "humanitarian financial intervention", remains fragmented. This article offers the first systematic legal analysis of humanitarian financial intervention. It identifies six humanitarian purposes that states may pursue through asset freezes: preserving foreign assets from misappropriation, incapacitating foreign states or foreign nationals, coercing foreign states or foreign nationals to forsake abusive practices, compensating victims, ameliorating humanitarian crises through humanitarian aid or post-conflict reconstruction, and punishing human rights violators. Whether intervening states may pursue these objectives in any given context depends upon the interplay between several international legal regimes, including international investment law, collective-security agreements such as the UN Charter, the customary law of countermeasures, the law of armed conflict, and customary law governing the enforcement of judicial decisions. By disentangling the various international legal regimes that govern humanitarian financial intervention, this article furnishes a preliminary road map for evaluating the legality of past, present, and future financial interventions � including asset freezes directed against the Qaddafi regime during the 2011 Libyan Revolution.
Towards a Balanced Approach for the Protection of Native American Sacred Sites

Are Native American Sacred Sites adequately protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act? Finding that this may not be the case, this paper recommends amending the American Indian Religious Freedom Act to provide adequate protection.
Do Bond Issuers Shop for Favorable Credit Ratings

This paper provides evidence of ratings shopping in the corporate bond market. By estimating systematic differences in agencies’ biases about any given firm’s bonds, I show that new bonds are more ...
Knowledge, Consumption, and Endogenous Growth

In neoclassical theory, knowledge generates increasing returns — and therefore growth — because it is a public good that can be costlessly reused once created. In fact, however, much knowledge in the economy is actually tacit and not easily transmitted —and thus not an obvious source of increasing returns. Several writers have responded to this alarming circumstances by affirming hopefully that knowledge today is increasingly codified, general, and abstract — and increasingly less tacit. This paper disputes such a trend. But all is not lost: for knowledge does not have to be codified to be reused and therefore to generate economic growth.
Do Health Care Investments Hedge Health Care Liabilities

Investment pools are frequently designed to pay health care expenses. We examine whether health care equity investments hedge the health care liabilities of these investment pools. In contrast with conventional wisdom, we find them to be uncorrelated with medical inflation and, thus, poor hedges.
AN OPEN TRIAL OF INTEGRATIVE THERAPY FOR GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER.

Cognitive– behavioral therapy (CBT), although effective, has the lowest average effect size for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), when compared to effect sizes of CBT for other anxiety disorders. Additional basic and applied research suggests that although interpersonal processes and emotional avoidance may be maintaining GAD symptomatology, CBT has not sufficiently addressed interpersonal issues or emotion avoidance. This study aimed to test the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of an integrative psychotherapy, combining CBT with techniques to address interpersonal problems and emotional avoidance. Eighteen participants received 14 sessions of CBT plus interpersonal emotional processing therapy and three participants (for training and feasibility purposes) received 14 sessions of CBT plus supportive listening. Results showed that the integrative therapy significantly decreased GAD symptomatology, with maintenance of gains up to 1 year following treatment. In addition, comparisons with extant literature suggested that the effect size for this new GAD treatment was higher than the average effect size of CBT for GAD. Results also showed clinically significant change in GAD symptomatology and interpersonal problems with continued gains during the 1-year follow-up. Implications of these results are discussed.
Delegation in Immigration Law

Immigration law both screens migrants and regulates the behavior of migrants after they have arrived. Both activities are information intensive because the migrant’s “type” and the migrant’s post-arrival activity are often forms of private information that are not immediately accessible to government agents. To overcome this information problem, the national government can delegate the screening and regulating functions. American immigration law, for example, delegates extensive authority to both private entities— paradigmatically, employers and families—and to the fifty states. From the government’s perspective, delegation carries with it benefits and costs. On the benefit side, agents frequently have easy access to information about the types and activities of migrants and can cheaply monitor and control them. On the cost side, agents’ preferences are not always aligned with those of the national government. The national government can ameliorate these costs by giving agents incentives to act consistently with the government’s interests. Understanding these virtues and vices of delegation sheds light on longstanding debates about the roles that employers, families, and states play in American immigration law.
The assessment of fairness in agricultural markets

Abstract We propose a framework for assessing claims of unfairness by agricultural producers. By employing concepts from network exchange theory and considerations of power and dependency, we show that judgments about fairness can be made after considering the structure and context of the network and the way context influences expectations of network actors. Understanding expectations is important because claims of unfairness usually arise when expectations are violated. We test our framework by examining statements made by current and former poultry producers who participated in the May 2010 workshop on issues of concern in the poultry industry, conducted by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Justice. We claim our framework not only helps us know what to look for in assessing claims of unfairness but also helps us understand why unfairness claims might arise or why they did not arise when we might have expected them.
Flexibility, the Uniform Probate Code's Procedural Article, and Some Comparisons with Kentucky Statutes

The present state of the law in America governing the succession to decedents' estates is badly in need of reform. There is a growing awareness of the inadequacy of present probate procedure even among ordinary citizens unschooled in the law. The public awareness of the problems of probate and its demand for reform are apparent from the spate of articles and books which have dealt with probate "pains" and methods for avoiding them. This demand and the efforts of reform-minded scholars have culminated in a proposed solution--the Uniform Probate Code (UPC). This Author argues that the probate scheme of the UPC (at least as to the procedural article) is a major improvement in this area and should be adopted by the Kentucky legislature.
Beyond risk mitigation: Enhancing corporate innovation with scenario planning

The impact of exogenous shocks on business strategy, and possible responses to those threats, have received growing attention when considering the challenges of conducting business in an increasingly complex business environment. Scenario/contingency planning is a tool used by firms to translate their organizational learning capabilities into preconceived operational responses designed to react to, and then recover from, an exogenous shock. The use of scenario planning that includes exogenous shock scenarios has become a best practice in many industries. This article explores the additional potential usefulness of scenario planning as a tool for promoting innovation and corporate entrepreneurship. # 2009 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. All rights reserved.
Quasi-Partnerships in Distribution

This paper concerns the sale of a vertically differentiated good by a manufacturer to retailers that have market power when reselling to consumers. The contractual relationships between the manufacturer and individual retailers are characterized as “quasi-partnerships,” reflecting the ongoing and multi-dimensional nature of such relationships. Contractual terms are predicted by the Nash bargaining solution and are distinguished from those in an ordinary bilateral monopoly because they make allowance for competing, vertically differentiated brands. The model predicts that differences in retailers’ ability to promote the manufacturer’s brand induce prices that vary systematically with the manufacturer’s market share of retailers’ sales.
Minimum Degrees of Minimal Ramsey Graphs for Almost-Cliques

For graphs F and H, we say F is Ramsey for H if every 2-coloring of the edges of F contains a monochromatic copy of H. The graph F is Ramsey H-minimal if F is Ramsey for H and there is no proper subgraph F′ of F so that F′ is Ramsey for H. Burr et al. defined s(H) to be the minimum degree of F over all Ramsey H-minimal graphs F. Define Ht,d to be a graph on t+1 vertices consisting of a complete graph on t vertices and one additional vertex of degree d. We show that s(Ht,d)=d2 for all values 1<d≤t; it was previously known that s(Ht,1)=t−1, so it is surprising that s(Ht,2)=4 is much smaller. We also make some further progress on some sparser graphs. Fox and Lin observed that s(H)≥2δ(H)−1 for all graphs H, where δ(H) is the minimum degree of H; Szabo et al. investigated which graphs have this property and conjectured that all bipartite graphs H without isolated vertices satisfy s(H)=2δ(H)−1. Fox et al. further conjectured that all connected triangle-free graphs with at least two vertices satisfy this property. We show that d-regular 3-connected triangle-free graphs H, with one extra technical constraint, satisfy s(H)=2δ(H)−1; the extra constraint is that H has a vertex v so that if one removes v and its neighborhood from H, the remainder is connected.
Online Case Resolution Systems: Enhancing Access, Fairness, Accuracy, and Efficiency

Online case resolution (OCR) systems have the potential to dramatically increase access to our justice system. Part I introduces the concept of an OCR system, how it might work in practice, and its likely impact on courts and citizens. Part II argues that OCR systems can lower many of the barriers to going to court by reducing the need for face-to-face resolution of disputes; cutting the amount of time needed for hearings; mitigating litigant confusion and fear; allowing asynchronous scheduling that can accommodate work and child-care schedules; and offering a more reliable and easier-to-use means for litigants to voice their views. These advantages should especially benefit those of lower socioeconomic status, who often suffer disproportionately under the status quo. Part III contends that OCR systems need not compromise a judge's or a prosecutor's decision-making process but can actually enhance both. OCR systems can provide more, better, and easier-to-use information, and by removing a litigant’s appearance (race, gender, weight, etc.) from a judge’s consideration, can render outcomes less subject to implicit biases.
Climate Policy and the United States System of Divided Powers: Dealing with Carbon Leakage and Regulatory Linkage

Climate change has pushed governmental authorities within the United States (US) into new routes of national and transnational policy-making. The normal route for national policy-making runs from Congress in setting policy, to the President in agency implementation, to judicial oversight and enforcement. When that route is blocked, however, federalism and the separation of powers provide some byways and detours that may still be used to make progress. State governments and the executive branch have moved into the breach left by congressional deadlock. In the absence of federal climate legislation or a formal treaty, however, constitutional challenges will predictably meet efforts to limit carbon leakage or to establish linkages between regulatory systems.These constitutional issues often involve corners of constitutional law such as foreign affairs, where doctrines are particularly murky. Solid arguments can be made in favour of state efforts to avoid leakage and create linkage, despite claims of discrimination against interstate commerce, extraterritoriality, and foreign affairs pre-emption. The Environmental Protection Agency has some statutory authority to deal with leakage, and the President seems to have authority to pursue linkage through executive agreement. Thus, both states and the executive branch should have room to deal with transboundary implications of climate policies. Although the deadlock in Congress regarding climate change may be unusually severe, these modes of response may also be important for other kinds of transnational activity by US state governments and the national executive.
A case for procedural justice climate: Development and test of a multilevel model.

Current conceptualizations of procedural justice focus largely on the individual level of analysis; no framework exists for examining procedural justice's social context. Empirical tests reported h...
Non-Electoral Civic Engagement in California: Why Does the State Lag the Nation?

We examine citizen engagement in political and social civic life in Cali- fornia. We begin by comparing the state to the nation at large, and find that Cali- fornia lags the nation in non-electoral civic engagement. The data also show that Whites were more engaged than Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, and native citizens born in the US are more engaged than citizens born elsewhere and non-citizens. To analyze whether demographic factors determine why civic engagement differs in California, we employ a regression analysis. The participation gaps between Cali- fornia and the rest of the nation (excluding New York and Texas) can be entirely explained by differences in demographics for three of the five measures of civic engagement. For the other two, the differing demographic profile of California explains 45% to 59% of the gaps. We also find that ethnicity, race, and citizenship are generally the most important determinants and explain much of the California engagement gaps. The fact that California has more Hispanics, Asians, natural- ized citizens, and non-citizens than the rest of the US thus appears to go a long way toward explaining the lower level of civic engagement in the state.
The Restricted Gift Life Cycle, or What Comes Around Goes Around

I have been charged with the pleasant task of thinking about spending money. Of course, the exercise is confined to the intellectual, with no empirical mandate that might set me upon the path to personally engaging in that endeavor. Even in the presence of such a mandate, I would be bound, like the charitable fiduciary, to approach my task with the interests of others foremost on my mind. In the context of a nonprofit charitable organization, those “others” would be the class of charitable beneficiaries towards whom the organization’s mission is directed—that beneficiary class serving as a proxy for the broader public good. Of course, now that I have subdued my pleasure with the concept of purpose and the attendant prospect of accountability, I may as well acknowledge another stakeholder whose interests cannot be ignored when theorizing about charitable organizations and their missions. I am referring to charitable donors—those contributors of money and assets in support of an organization’s mission. A given donor’s interests become more pronounced, or at least her objectives become more particularly identifiable, when the donor makes her contribution in the form of a restricted gift.1 A restricted gift is one with respect to which the donor has specified certain
EXIST: All-sky hard X-ray imaging and spectral–temporal survey for black holes

Abstract The energetic X-ray imaging survey telescope (EXIST) is under study for the proposed Black Hole Finder Probe, one of the three Einstein Probe missions in NASA’s proposed Beyond Einstein Program. EXIST would have unique capabilities: it would survey the full sky at 5–600 keV each 95 min orbit with 0.9–5′, 10 μs–45 min and ∼0.5–5 keV resolution to locate sources to 10″ and enable black holes to be surveyed and studied on all scales. With a 1y/5σ survey sensitivity Fx (40–80 keV) ∼ 5 × 10−13 erg cm−2 s−1, comparable to the ROSAT soft X-ray (0.3–2.5 keV) sky survey, a large sample (≳2–4 × 104) of obscured AGN will be identified and a complete sample of accreting stellar mass BHs in the Galaxy will be found. The all-sky/all-time coverage will allow rare events to be measured, such as possible stellar disruption flares from dormant AGN out to ∼100 Mpc. A large sample (∼2–3/day) of GRBs will be located (≲10″) at sensitivities and bandwidths much greater than previously and likely yield the highest redshift events and constraints on Pop III BHs. An outline of the mission design from the ongoing concept study is presented.
Explaining CEO retention in misreporting firms

Abstract We propose a framework that advances our understanding of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) retention decisions in misreporting firms. Consistent with economic intuition, outside directors are more likely to fire (retain) CEOs when retention (replacement) costs are high relative to replacement (retention) costs. When the decision is ambiguous because neither cost dominates, outside directors are more likely to retain the CEO when they both benefit from selling stock in the misreporting period. We show that joint abnormal selling captures director–CEO alignment incrementally to biographical overlap. This new proxy operationalizes information sharing and trust, making it useful for studying economic decision-making embedded in social relationships.
Locke for the Masses: Property Rights and the Products of Collective Creativity

Author(s): Merges, Robert P | Abstract: In this brief Idea piece, I describe how the labor theory of property rights associated with John Locke might apply to projects such as WikiPedia, which aggregate many small contributions by dispersed contributors. These works of "collaborative creativity" represent very significant investments of time and resources, yet do not fit comfortably within the individually-oriented framework of traditional Lockean analysis. Locke's central insight -- that laboring on unowned resources ought (with exceptions and qualifications) to justify appropriation -- suggests the desirability of granting some form of property interest over the products of collaborative creativity. I also explore a few practical issues that would have to be resolved to implement such a right.
Innovation by leaders

A new rationale for the persistence of monopolies is based on a precommitment of the incumbent monopolist to invest in R&D. In a patent race, as long as entry is free, the Arrow effect disappears: the incumbent has more incentives to invest than any outsider. Paradoxically, a market with some persistence of monopoly is competitive, while one with continuous leapfrogging must hide some barriers to entry. When the size of innovations is endogenous, leaders invest in more radical innovations. If there is a sequence of innovations, cycling investment emerges. Finally, I apply the idea to a general equilibrium model of Schumpeterian growth with persistence of monopoly. Who does research? Overwhelming evidence tells us that incumbent monopolists do a lot of research and their leadership persists through a number of innovations. This persistence of the monopolistic position drives the incentives to invest in Research & Development and indirectly enhances aggregate growth. Nevertheless the industrial organisation theory of innovation since the pathbreaking contribution of Arrow (1962) and the macroeconomic theory of Schumpeterian growth started by Aghion and Howitt (1992) do not provide clear arguments as to why leaders should innovate. Under free competition, the theory implies that leaders do not invest at all and a process of continuous leapfrogging between firms should characterise markets with technological progress. This paper provides a new rationale for the persistence of monopolistic positions and evaluates some of its microeconomic and macroeconomic consequences. The literature on patent races has studied equilibrium outcomes in the market for innovations starting with Loury (1979) and Dasgupta and Stiglitz (1980).' The standard hypotheses of this literature assume decreasing returns to scale, fixed costs of innovations and a flow of investment in R&D (where either of the two may determine the arrival rate of innovations) and Nash-Cournot competition between firms. The participants of the patent race are the current monopolist of the market, who has a patent on the leading-edge quality of the product and a number of entrant firms trying to replace the patentholder. The main result is that the patentholder does less research than any other entrant and zero research under free entry because its incentives to invest in R&D are lower due to the Arrow (1962) effect: the expected gain of the patentholder is just the difference between expected profits obtained with the next technology and the current one, while the * I am extremely grateful to Robert Barro for his support and comments at critical stages and to the Editor, David de Meza, for many important suggestions. I benefited from interesting comments by Daron Acemoglu, Philippe Aghion, Karina Firme, David Laibson, Greg Mankiw, Indira Pottebaum, Jennifer Reinganum, Joseph Zeira, two anonymous referees and seminar participants at M.I.T. and Harvard University. This paper was written at the National Bureau of Economic Research while I was a PhD student at Harvard University. I am grateful to NBER for providing a very exciting research environment.
Negative Feedback by NUR77/ Nr4a1 Restrains B Cell Clonal Dominance During Early T-Dependent Immune Responses

B cell clones compete for entry into and dominance within germinal centers (GC), where the highest affinity BCRs are selected. However, diverse and low affinity B cells can enter and reside in GCs for extended periods. To reconcile these observations, we hypothesized that a negative feedback loop may operate within B cells to preferentially restrain high affinity clones from monopolizing the early GC niche. Here we report a role for the nuclear receptor NUR77/Nr4a1 in this process. We previously showed that NUR77 expression scales with antigen stimulation and restrains B cell expansion when T cell help is limiting. Here we show that, although NUR77 is dispensable for regulating GC size when GC are elicited in a largely clonal manner, it serves to curb immunodominance under conditions where diverse clonal populations must compete for a constrained niche. Moreover, this is independent of B cell precursor frequency and reflects, at least in part, a B cell-intrinsic role for NUR77. We propose that this is important to preserve early B cell clonal diversity in order to limit holes in the post-immune repertoire and to optimize GC selection.
The Value of "Green:" Evidence from the First Mandatory Residential Green Building Program

There has been recent interest in green building and development practices and research. Resulting from growing environmental awareness and concerns, mandatory residential green building programs h...
Risk transfer versus cost reduction on two-sided microfinance platforms

Microfinance can be an important tool for fighting global poverty by increasing access to loans and possibly lowering interest rates through microlending. However, the dominant mechanism used by online microfinance platforms, in which intermediaries administer loans, has profound implications for borrowers. Using an analytical model of microlending with intermediaries who disburse and service loans, we demonstrate that profit-maximizing intermediaries have an incentive to increase interest rates because much of the default risk is transferred to lenders. Borrower and lender interest rate elasticities can serve as disciplining mechanisms to mitigate this interest rate increase. Using data from Kiva.org, we find that interest rates do not affect lender decisions, which removes one of these disciplining mechanisms. Interest rates are high, around 38% on Kiva. In contrast, on an alternative microfinance platform that does not use intermediaries, Zidisha, interest rates are only around 10%, highlighting the dramatic impact of intermediaries on interest rates. We propose an alternative loan payback mechanism that still allows microfinance platforms to use intermediaries, while removing the incentive to increase interest rates due to the transfer of risk to lenders.
Hollywood Deals: Soft Contracts for Hard Markets

Hollywood film studios, talent and other deal participants regularly commit to big-budget film projects on the basis of unsigned “deal memos” or draft agreements whose legal enforceability is uncertain. These “soft contracts” constitute a hybrid instrument that addresses a challenging transactional environment where neither formal contract nor reputation effects adequately protect parties against the holdup risk and project risk inherent to a film project. Uncertainly enforceable contracts supply an implicit termination and renegotiation option that provides some protection against project risk while maintaining a threat of legal liability that provides some protection against holdup risk. Historical evidence suggests that soft contracts substitute for the vertically integrated structures that allocated these risks in the “studio system” era. The prevalence of soft contracting in Hollywood and other markets suggests an efficiency rationale for the historical relaxation of formation requirements in contract law. * Professor, Gould School of Law, University of Southern California. I am grateful for valuable suggestions from Mark Weinstein and other participants at the USC Law School Faculty Workshop and the 2012 Annual Conference of the International Society for New Institutional Economics, as well as conversations and interviews with industry executives, producers, accountants and attorneys. I especially thank David Fierson of Alcon Entertainment for bringing this paper’s subject to my attention and Jonathan Handel for extensive discussions. For excellent research assistance, I thank Dmitri Gabrielov, Michael Hartman, Blake Horn, Minku Kang, Omar Nourreldin,Vanessa Roman, and Lewis Stevenson. Comments are welcome at
The sub rosa subchapter: Individual debtors in chapter 11 after BAPCPA

Reorganization under the Bankruptcy Code serves the public interest by providing worthy debtors a mechanism to gain relief from crushing debt while maintaining some measure of fidelity to creditors. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) of 2005 initiated fundamental changes to this mechanism in an effort to ensure the continued worthiness of bankruptcy applicants. BAPCPA changes a number of provisions in the Code with respect to individual debtors. This article suggests that BAPCPA’s provisions have created and will continue to create unexpected anomalies in individual chapter 11 cases, due in large part to the manner in which BAPCPA provisions affecting such individuals are scattered throughout the Code. The author contends that BAPCPA’s reworking of chapter 11 created a hidden category of individual reorganization. As Congress was building this mystery, it unnecessarily masked the import of substantive changes to chapter 11. Attempting to shed light on the matter, the author explores the roots of the BAPCPA provisions and summarizes the five most significant adjustments relevant to individual debtors in chapter 11, contrasting chapter 11’s operation with that of chapter 13. Chapter 11 for individuals post-BAPCPA tends to work mischief at all stages in the reorganization process. New concerns arise with regard to the debtor’s ability to pay expenses necessary to achieve confirmation of the reorganization plan. Uncertainties exist regarding the allocation of property into the estate, and as to who may have standing in postconfirmation plan modifications. As the article suggests, Congress could have avoided, or even discovered, many of these difficulties if BAPCPA’s provisions had been grouped together as a separate subchapter to chapter 11.
Risk-shifting Through Issuer Liability and Corporate Monitoring

This article explores how issuer liability re-allocates fraud risk and how risk allocation may reduce the incidence of fraud. In the US, the apparent absence of individual liability of officeholders and insufficient monitoring by insurers undermine the potential deterrent effect of securities litigation. The underlying reasons why both mechanisms remain ineffective are collective action problems under the prevailing dispersed ownership structure, which eliminates the incentives to monitor set by issuer liability. This article suggests that issuer liability could potentially have a stronger deterrent effect when it shifts risk to individuals or entities holding a larger financial stake. Thus, it would enlist large shareholders in monitoring in much of Europe. The same risk-shifting effect also has implications for the debate about the relationship between securities litigation and creditor interests. Creditors’ claims should not be given precedence over claims of defrauded investors (e.g., because of the capital maintenance principle), since bearing some of the fraud risk will more strongly incentivise large creditors, such as banks, to monitor the firm in jurisdictions where corporate debt is relatively concentrated.
Beyond “Life and Liberty”: The Evolving Right to Counsel

The majority of Americans, if they have contact with the criminal justice system at all, will experience it through misdemeanor courtrooms. More than ever before, the criminal justice system is used to sort, justify, and reify a separate underclass. And as the system of misdemeanor adjudication continues to be flooded with new cases, the value that is exalted over all others is efficiency. The result is a system that can make it virtually painless to plead guilty (which has always been true for low-level offenses), but that is now overlaid with a new system of increasingly harsh collateral consequences. The hidden consequences of a conviction may never be explained to the person choosing to plead guilty, leading to unjust results that happen more regularly and with more severe consequences than ever before. This Article argues that current Sixth Amendment jurisprudence on the right to counsel has not adequately adapted to the changed realities within which misdemeanor prosecutions take place today. Because of the dramatic changes in the cultural meaning and real-life consequences of low-level convictions, there is no longer a useful or constitutionally significant line between those cases resulting in actual imprisonment and those cases not resulting in imprisonment. Three years ago in Padilla v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court recognized that the line between the direct and collateral consequences of a conviction has no constitutional significance in defining the effective assistance of counsel. Recognizing that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel has evolved throughout its history to accommodate the changing cultural context of criminal prosecutions, this Article calls for a robust expansion of the right to counsel in all criminal cases.
The behavior of money and other economic variables: Two natural experiments

Abstract The object of this paper is to test the performance of the quantity-theory model and the related proposition of monetary neutrality in a context in which, to use Bernanke's phraseology, “money move[d] for reasons that [were] plausibly unrelated to the current state of the economy.” We investigate this question using data from two recent episodes of monetary-policy regime change – the move to floating exchange rates throughout the industrialized world following the breakdown of Bretton Woods in the early 1970s and the shift toward less expansive monetary policy that to varying degrees took place in these countries a decade or so later. The results of this exercise are highly positive. The money–price relationship that we observe is fully consistent with theory – growth shifts in the nominal stock of money and in the price level are highly correlated and bear a one-to-one relation to one another. Growth shifts in exchange rates are significantly related both to growth shifts in relative price levels and to growth shifts in relative excess supplies of money. The classical neutrality proposition – in this context superneutrality – in general, receives strong, though not totally unambiguous, support.
Fables of the Cuyahoga: Reconstructing a History of Environmental Protection

On June 22, 1969, just before noon, an oil slick and assorted debris under a railroad trestle on the Cuyahoga River caught fire. The fire attracted national media attention, and helped prompt the passage of federal environmental laws. A river on fire was a symbol of earth in need of repair, and federal regulation was the reparative tool of choice. Much of the Cuyahoga story is mythology, however, a fable with powerful symbolic force. The river did burn in 1969 - as it and other rivers had burned many times before - and today the Cuyahoga and many U.S. rivers are far less polluted. But so much else of what we "know" about the 1969 fire is simply not so. The conventional narratives, of a river abandoned by its local community, of water pollution at its zenith, of conventional legal doctrines impotent in the face of environmental harms, and of a beneficent federal government rushing in to save the day, is misleading in many respects. This paper revisits the context and history of the legendary Cuyahoga River fire to reveal a more complex story about the causes and consequences of various institutional choices in environmental law. The aim is to provide additional perspective to the questions of institutional choice which underlie environmental policy, and to suggest that the decision to reallocate primary authority over water quality to the federal government was neither inevitable nor an unmitigated blessing.
Negativity bias and task motivation: testing the effectiveness of positively versus negatively framed incentives.

People are frequently challenged by goals that demand effort and persistence. As a consequence, philosophers, psychologists, economists, and others have studied the factors that enhance task motivation. Using a sample of undergraduate students and a sample of working adults, we demonstrate that the manner in which an incentive is framed has implications for individuals' task motivation. In both samples we find that individuals are less motivated when an incentive is framed as a means to accrue a gain (positive framing) as compared with when the same incentive is framed as a means to avoid a loss (negative framing). Further, we provide evidence for the role of the negativity bias in this effect, and highlight specific populations for whom positive framing may be least motivating. Interestingly, we find that people's intuitions about when they will be more motivated show the opposite pattern, with people predicting that positively framed incentives will be more motivating than negatively framed incentives. We identify a lay belief in the positive correlation between enjoyment and task motivation as one possible factor contributing to the disparity between predicted and actual motivation as a result of the framing of the incentive. We conclude with a discussion of the managerial implications for these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved). Language: en
Fingerprint Error Rates and Proficiency Tests: What They are and Why They Matter

When a fingerprint examiner declares a match between a print from a known source and a latent print recovered from a crime scene, his word may seal a defendant's fate like no other form of evidence save, perhaps, DNA. At trial the fingerprint examiner will offer little in the way of data, statistical tests, or uncertainty. Instead, he will say that latent print could only have been made by the source of the known print, that he is 100% certain, and that the method he used to make this and other identifications has an error rate of zero. In recent years, the broader scientific community has objected to this form of testimony. Critics charge that fingerprint analysis lacks an empirical foundation and that examiners make exaggerated claims that are likely to mislead jurors. In this Article, I use a question and answer style to address key issues related to fingerprint error rates and the proficiency tests that are sometimes used to estimate those rates. My focus throughout is on how to assess the various error rates, why they matter, and how we might go about collecting the requisite data. In Part I, I identify the different types of errors and error rates and explain why knowledge of error rates is important. In Part II, I discuss the connection between proficiency tests and estimated error rates. In Part III, I identify the features proficiency tests must include to ensure that the resultant data can help estimate casework error rates.
PERFORMANCE MATCHED DISCRETIONARY ACCRUAL MEASURES

Abstract We examine the specification and power of tests based on performance-matched discretionary accruals, and make comparisons with tests using traditional discretionary accrual measures (e.g., Jones and modified-Jones models). Performance matching on return on assets controls for the effect of performance on measured discretionary accruals. The results suggest that performance-matched discretionary accrual measures enhance the reliability of inferences from earnings management research when the hypothesis being tested does not imply that earnings management will vary with performance, or where the control firms are not expected to have engaged in earnings management.