cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The supraview of return predictive signals

This study seeks to inform investment academics and practitioners by describing and analyzing the population of return predictive signals (RPS) publicly identified over the 40-year period 1970–2010. Our supraview brings to light new facts about RPS, including that more than 330 signals have been reported; the properties of newly discovered RPS are stable over time; and RPS with higher mean returns have larger standard deviations of returns and also higher Sharpe ratios. Using a sample of 39 readily programmed RPS, we estimate that the average cross-correlation of RPS returns is close to zero and that the average correlation between RPS returns and the market is reliably negative. Abstracting from implementation costs, this implies that portfolios of RPS either on their own or in combination with the market will tend to have quite high Sharpe ratios. For academics who seek to document that they have found a genuinely new RPS, we show that the probability that a randomly chosen RPS has a positive alpha after being orthogonalized against five (25) other randomly chosen RPS is 62 % (32 %), suggesting that the returns of a potentially new RPS need to be orthogonalized against the returns of some but not all pre-existing RPS. Finally, we posit that our findings pose a challenge to investment academics in that they imply that either US stock markets are pervasively inefficient, or there exist a much larger number of rationally priced sources of risk in equity returns than previously thought.
Day and night returns of Chinese ADRs

Abstract Are the returns of Chinese American Depositary Receipts (ADR) more affected by the US market or their underlying home market? We separate Chinese ADR daily returns into day and night returns to investigate the different market effects on ADR pricing. We compare “homeless” ADRs to home-based or cross-listed ADRs to see if they are affected differently by market factors. We find the night returns of Chinese ADRs are significantly affected by their home market (either the Hong Kong market or mainland China market) daily returns and the US market night returns. The US day returns appear to be the most significant pricing factor for the day returns of Chinese ADRs. The homeless ADRs are more affected by the US market and less affected by their home market compared to the cross-listed ADRs.
Expectancy theory and nascent entrepreneurship

Motivation is an important factor that distinguishes those nascent entrepreneurs who make progress towards an operating venture from those who do not. Based on Vroom’s (Work and motivation, 1964) expectancy theory, we predict that startup-specific instrumentality, valence and expectancy are key components of entrepreneurial motivation and closely related to those intentions, efforts, and behaviors that will eventually lead to operating a firm. Hypotheses are tested using data from the first Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics I. Our results show that valence is a multidimensional construct, and that various types of valence are related to different intent and behavioral outcomes. All types of valence, instrumentality, and expectancy are related to a nascent entrepreneur’s intended effort level in a cross-section of data, and over time, intended effort is positively related to operative firm status. Overall, our results suggest that expectancy theory holds promise for research on nascent entrepreneurs’ motivation.
National Courts, Domestic Democracy, and the Evolution of International Law: A Reply to Eyal Benvenisti and George Downs

EJIL (2009), Vol. 20 No. 4, 1013–1020 doi: 10.1093/ejil/chp094 The proliferation of international law and institutions over the past two decades has produced both excitement and anxiety. Cooperation and coordination – formal and informal – have allowed states and other international actors to get at glo­ bal and regional problems and facilitate international exchange much more than in the past. The heightened activities of international organizations and national governments have pertained both to traditional areas, as well as those, such as environmental law, which had hith­ erto been almost exclusively within the domain of domestic politics and law. Such developments have worried those who believe that decisions taken at the inter­ national level are insufficiently reflective of and constrained by democratic poli­ tics and basic principles of due process,
Pay-for-performance: is medicare a good candidate?

According to one prominent study, adults in the United States receive the generally accepted standard of preventive, acute, and chronic care only about 55% of the time. The likelihood that patients will receive recommended care “varie[s] substantially according to the particular medical condition, ranging from 78.7 percent of recommended care . . . for senile cataract to 10.5 percent of recommended care . . . for alcohol dependence.” Evidence of low-quality care appears in Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled. Quality of care does not appear to be higher in areas where Medicare spending is higher. In fact, some studies point to the somewhat paradoxical conclusion that
Social Security's Five OASI Inflation Indexing Problems

This paper examines five problems with the inflation indexing procedures used by the Social Security Administration of the United States in taking inflation into account when calculating Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Benefits. Because of Problem #1, the commingling of unindexed with indexed earnings, a retiree born in 1930 who continued in a high earning career until age 75 receives an annual benefit more than $1,800 larger than would have been generated with full indexing. As a result of Problems #2 and #4 your OASI check will be larger if wage inflation happens to be extra high in your 60th year or if price inflation is exceptionally low in your 61st year. Because of the indexing problems, the percentage increase in your inflation (CPI-W) adjusted benefit if you elect to postpone retirement and the start of OASI benefits will depend in part on the pace of inflation. While inflation indexing problems do not attract much attention in normal times, they can contribute to serious short-run financial instability for the OASI trust fund in periods of substantial inflation or deflation.
How to Be the World's Best Law Professor

It is always dangerous to start with a confession (unless you are a Catholic stepping into a confessional, of course1) but here is mine. The title of this essay was originally, “How to Be the World’s Worst Law Professor.” After all, we are supposed to write about the things we are expert on, aren’t we? Some of you are expert on contracts law, others on immigration law, and those are the topics that you write about. What am I expert on? Good question. Sometimes I hope that I know a little bit about children’s rights, but more often I fear that my greater expertise centers on what not to do as a law professor. There have been many days that have ended with my head on my desk wondering why my students did not understand something I had taught, did not perform how I expected, or were seen scrolling through their Facebook newsfeeds during class. I could share with you all of the mistakes I have made as a professor and provide scientific research showing why my approaches were destined to fail. Who doesn’t enjoy reading about someone who performs worse than we do? Isn’t this the attraction of the Darwin Awards? I imagine you would find great comfort knowing that, although you might lecture occasionally, at least you never made a group of Scandinavian students in Cape Town sit through a three-hour lecture on international children’s rights in a foreign language (English) while talking really quickly as Professor Binford once did (yes, I really did). But when I sent an early draft of my essay to a more savvy colleague across the country, he immediately pointed out that for the rest of my life, anyone who Googled my name would see “World’s Worst Law Professor” pop up
Got Water? Social Divisions and Access to Public Goods in Rural India

Data from the 2001 Census of India is used to examine how social divisions are associated with access to tap water across rural India. Different types of social fragmentation are associated with different outcomes for tap water access. Communities that are heterogeneous in terms of caste have lower access to tap water, while communities that are fragmented across religions have higher access. This underscores the importance of heterogeneity both within and across religions. Aggregated measures of social fragmentation may thus conceal the differential effects of its component measures, and obscure important information that may affect the design of public policies.
Disclosure Practices of Foreign Companies Interacting with U.S. Markets

We analyze the disclosure practices of companies as a function of their interaction with U.S. markets for a group of 794 firms from 24 countries in the Asia-Pacific and Europe. Our analysis uses the Transparency and Disclosure scores developed recently by Standard & Poor's. These scores rate the disclosure of companies from around the world using U.S. disclosure practices as an implicit benchmark. Results show a positive association between these disclosure scores and a variety of market interaction measures, including U.S. listing, U.S. investment flows, exports to, and operations in the United States. Trade with the United States at the country level, however, has an insignificant relationship with the disclosure scores. Our empirical analysis controls for the previously documented association between disclosure and firm size, performance, and country legal origin. Our results are broadly consistent with the hypothesis that cross-border economic interactions are associated with similarities in disclosure and governance practices.
Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction: Theoretical Implications and Practical Solutions

The growing volume of empirical research on wrongful convictions and the factors underlying them is commendable. Such work helps in understanding the problem and, perhaps more importantly, formulating solutions. Even so, if the lessons from recent post-conviction exonerations of innocent prisoners are to instigate a New Civil Rights Movement for the twenty-first century, as Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld and others maintain, and yield genuine systemic change, then the individual stories of those cases must not be lost amid the sea of quantitative data and policy debate. Like Rosa Parks and Emmett Till during the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century, narratives of wrongfully convicted defendants can serve to galvanize political support for revamping the criminal justice system by touching the public in a personal fashion and bringing the issue, which may seem amorphous and beyond comprehension to some, into sharp focus. This Article critically examines one such wrongful conviction: People of the State of New York v. David Wong. The Wong case reflects a singular instance of injustice as well as a window into several of the root causes of wrongful convictions more generally: eyewitness misidentification, the use of jailhouse informants, ineffective assistance of counsel, and racial bias. It is these twin features of David Wong's story - micro-level tragedy and macro-level significance - that I hope will prove useful in the current reform efforts and create a sufficient legacy for him as he builds a new life in his native China, free at last.
An Overview of TSCA, its History and Key Underlying Assumptions, and its Place in Environmental Regulation

This article provides an overview of TSCA's history, including the key assumptions Congress made in enacting the statute. The article also highlights important features of TSCA and some of the experiences with its implementation. Finally, the article identifies some of the larger issues the experience with TSCA raises as efforts continue to reform TSCA and to revisit environmental law and sustainable development strategies more generally.
The Fluidity of Neutrality

The political ideal of neutrality toward conceptions of the good is unsustainable at the extremely abstract level proposed by some liberal theorists. Neutrality is nonetheless a valuable political ideal. One of the many ways that government can go wrong is to take a position on some question that it would, all things considered, be better for it to abstain from deciding. The classic example is the question of which (if any) religion is true. The idea of neutrality holds that government ought to avoid this pathology.
What Segments Equity Markets

We propose a new, valuation-based measure of world equity market segmentation. While we observe decreased levels of segmentation in many countries, the level of segmentation remains significant in emerging markets. We characterize the factors that account for variation in market segmentation both through time as well as across countries. Both a country's regulation with respect to foreign capital flows and certain nonregulatory factors are important. In particular, we identify a country's political risk profile and its stock market development as two additional local segmentation factors as well as the U.S. corporate credit spread as a global segmentation factor. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.
Letting Bygones be Bygones: Rapprochement in US Foreign Policy†

Research into the conditions that cause former adversaries to seek improved relations has missed the interaction of systemic and domestic factors critical to a rapprochement. The United States was able to achieve a rapprochement with China 25 years after fighting a war against it, but has failed to develop normal diplomatic relations with the other adversary from that conflict, North Korea, after nearly 60 years. This study posits that reconciliation is the product of two factors: changing threat perceptions and economic incentives. At the international level, shifts must occur that change how the rivals perceive each other. While this creates conditions for a rapprochement, there must also be economic incentives to drive the two sides together. When both these conditions are present, reconciliation can occur. This theory is examined in two cases where diplomatic normalization with the United States occurred—China and Vietnam—and two cases where it did not—Iran and North Korea. The likelihood of improved relations between the United States and North Korea or Iran is also discussed in light of this theory.
Versioning Strategy of Information Goods with Network Externality in the Presence of Piracy

In our model, market consists of two types of consumers who receive some common utility from the basic functionality of the information good but have heterogeneous valuation for other value enhancing functionalities. We show that in absence of piracy, versioning is optimal when the proportion of high valuation consumers is neither too large nor too small. In the presence of piracy, when the cost of piracy is too low for the lower valuation consumers, the information good provider offers only high quality product. Presence of network effect makes versioning strategy less likely to be optimal for the provider.
Inequality and outside options in common-property resource use ☆

Abstract Using a dynamic intergenerational game, this paper analyzes the effects of inequality among resource users and their access to outside markets and credit on cooperative use of a local commons. The study finds that, depending on the agents' harvest sharing rule, the conditions under which homogeneous agents can cooperate in equilibrium may not be sufficient for cooperation when agents differ in harvesting productivity. The resource users' access to outside markets or credit may have a negative effect on efficient local resource management.
Are Anti-Retaliation Regulations in Title VI or Title IX Enforceable in a Private Right of Action: Does Sandoval or Sullivan Control This Question?

Recently, the federal circuit courts of appeals have divided in addressing to what extent either Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (hereinafter “Title VI”) or Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (hereinafter “Title IX”) protects those who complain about racial or gender discrimination from retaliation by their employers or schools. Title VI prohibits federal agencies from providing funding to any person, organization, or governmental agency that discriminates on the basis of race. Similarly, Title IX
Partisan News: A Perspective from Economics

I briefly summarize the economics literature on ideologically slanted political media (which I call, for short, partisan news), and discuss directions for future research. In the literature review, I take a history of thought approach, describing how theory and empirical work have fed off one another and real world events. I also note ways in which the work of economists differs from comparable work from other disciplines. In the discussion of future research, I identify open questions and policy options, and assess the relationship between research from economics and other disciplines.
Deportation for a Sin: Why Moral Turpitude Is Void for Vagueness

A major problem facing noncitizen criminal defendants today is the vagueness of the term “crime involving moral turpitude” (CIMT) in deportation law. The Supreme Court in the 1951 case Jordan v. DeGeorge decided that a statute authorizing deportation for a CIMT was not void for vagueness because courts had long held the noncitizen’s offense, fraud, to be a CIMT, so he was on notice of his likely deportation. I argue that when noncitizens are charged with an offense that case law has not clearly delineated as a CIMT, the term is vague, since the definition used by the agency and courts, an act that is “base, vile, depraved, and contrary to the rules of morality,” provides no useful definition. Rather, it casts judges in the role of God, deporting noncitizens for sin. Exacerbating this situation is the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Padilla v. Kentucky; since the Court held that defense counsel only has a Sixth Amendment duty to warn noncitizens about immigration consequences that are “succinct, clear, and explicit” from the immigration statute, there is no clear obligation to warn about deportability for a CIMT. Scholars have thoroughly discussed the vagueness doctrine and also have begun to analyze the Court’s recent Padilla decision. This article is the first to address whether CIMT in deportation law is void for vagueness in a post-Padilla world.
Fairness in Financial Markets: The Case of High Frequency Trading

Recent concern over “high frequency trading” (HFT) has called into question the fairness of the practice. What does it mean for a financial market to be “fair”? We first examine how high frequency trading is actually used. High frequency traders often implement traditional beneficial strategies such as market making and arbitrage, although computers can also be used for manipulative strategies as well. We then examine different notions of fairness. Procedural fairness can be viewed from the perspective of equal opportunity, in which all market participants are treated alike. The same rules apply to HFT as to other traders. Another approach to fairness is in the equality of outcomes. Many HFT strategies are beneficial to other market participants, so one cannot categorically denounce the practice as unfair. Other strategies, for both high and low frequency trading, are not. It is thus important to distinguish between the technology and the use of the technology to make judgments on fairness.
Economic consequences of firms’ depreciation method choice: Evidence from capital investments

Abstract This study identifies several interrelated reasons why firms’ depreciation method choice is likely to influence managers’ capital investment decisions. We find that firms that use accelerated depreciation make significantly larger capital investments than firms that use straight-line depreciation. Further, we find that there has been a migration away from accelerated depreciation to straight-line depreciation over the past two decades. Firms that make such accounting changes make smaller capital investments in the post-change periods than in the pre-change periods. These results suggest that a choice made for external financial reporting purposes influences managers’ capital investment decisions.
Party polarization, political alignment, and federal grant spending at the state level

Research on the distribution of federal expenditures has provided mixed evidence showing that states with more legislators who belong to the president’s party and states with more legislators in the chamber majority tend to receive a larger allocation of federal funds. We add to this research by considering how political polarization and political alignment impact these presidential and congressional determinants of how the domestic US budget is distributed to the states. Our results show that states with a larger percentage of senators in the majority can secure a larger share of federal grant expenditures per capita when political polarization is relatively low.
The Role of Modular Upgradability as a Green Design Strategy

Modular upgradability has been suggested as a strategy for improving environmental performance: as technology improves, it allows for independent replacement of improving subsystems, instead of replacing the entire product. This may extend the useful life of stable subsystems, reducing production and disposal impact. However, this argument ignores the effect of modular upgradability on a firm's development and introduction decisions and the environmental impact during the use phase. In this paper, we investigate when modular upgradability leads to lower environmental impact and higher profits. We do so by endogenizing a firm's development and introduction decisions and considering the product's environmental impact during its entire life cycle. Our results show that although modular upgradability may accelerate the replacement of some subsystems, it delays the replacement of others. We find that modular upgradability can increase the environmental impact for some product categories due to accelerated obsolescence arising from more frequent introduction and replacement. However, we also find that accelerated obsolescence, under some conditions, can actually make modular upgradability greener.
Can stories shape strategy? Narrative-structured information and strategic decision making

Despite progress made by prior research in understanding how information is used in strategic decision making, most studies are grounded on a similar, unstated assumption: information is homogeneou...
Spillovers from Costly Credit

Recent studies of credit access among low-income households find that payday loans can exacerbate, rather than alleviate, financial distress. I find that households with payday loan access are also more likely to use food assistance benefits and less likely to make child support payments required of non-resident parents. These findings suggest that borrowers in distress turn to transfer programs to supplement the household’s resources and prioritize loan payments over other liabilities like child support payments. In that way, borrowing produces negative externalities, with both taxpayers and non-resident family members bearing a cost due to payday lending.
The Global Reach of HIV/AIDS: Science, Politics, Economics, and Research

HIV/AIDS affects people throughout the world - their health, their communities, and their countries' economic structures. It is truly a global epidemic, imposing a burden on all countries and regions, leaving none immune from its devastating impact. Of the forty-two million people infected with HIV/AIDS, almost ninety percent live in developing countries, which can least afford the sickness, death, and loss of productivity associated with the epidemic. Prevention of HIV/AIDS would benefit all regions and countries, irrespective of the prevalence or incidence of HIV/AIDS in the population, as all social and economic life in the early twenty-first century is interconnected. HIV/AIDS in one part of the world is bound to affect the health, economy, and security of countries everywhere. Given the level of need, there ought to be little disagreement that the more prosperous countries of North America and Europe should be devoting significant resources for education, prevention, and treatment in the poorer countries of Africa and Southeast Asia. International organizations such as UNAIDS, the WHO, and the World Bank have issued warnings and calls for action. Yet, political leaders in developed countries have not viewed it in their self-interest to provide the kind of resources needed. This lack of political will to cooperate may be caused, in part, by insular attitudes toward world health, economics, and politics and in part by the fact that resource-rich and resource-poor countries have markedly different priorities tailored to the different dynamics of the epidemic in their regions. Developing countries have been hurt not only by lack of political will, but by the interplay of drug companies, patents, and international law. Pharmaceutical companies have been unwilling to take steps to make drugs and potential vaccines available in resource-poor markets, instead electing to vigorously defend their proprietary interests in their drug patents. This strategy drives up the costs of most modern medications, leaving them out of reach for the poor. International law tends to support protection of these patents, but may provide some opportunity to circumvent property rules to protect the public's health. The research community has struggled with whether the ethical standards held in developed countries apply when engaging in research in less developed countries. Stakeholders are at odds and struggle to find the balance between ensuring strong ethical standards and expediting access to cost-effective treatments in poor countries. Although many of these trials would doubtless be regarded as unethical if conducted in the United States, given the social and economic context, it may have been unethical not to conduct the most rigorous and efficient international studies. The strategies needed to reduce significantly the burden of HIV/AIDS are well known and demonstrated to be effective. What is still needed are the economic resources and political will necessary to implement comprehensive programs for AIDS prevention and treatment in every region.
The traffic and behavioral effects of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse

On August 1, 2007, the collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis abruptly interrupted the usual route of about 140,000 daily vehicle trips, which substantially disturbed regular traffic flow patterns on the network. It took several weeks for the network to re-equilibrate, during which period travelers continued to learn and adjust their travel decisions. A good understanding of this process is crucial for traffic management and the design of mitigation schemes. Data from loop-detectors, bus ridership statistics, and a survey are analyzed and compared, revealing the evolving traffic reactions to the bridge collapse and how individual choices could help to explain such dynamics. Findings on short-term traffic dynamics and behavioral reactions to this major network disruption have important implications for traffic management in response to future scenarios.
CEO incentives and earnings prediction

This study investigates whether information about Chief Executive Officer (CEO) incentives is useful for predicting future earnings. We find that in companies with higher CEO equity incentives, current year earnings are more informative of future earnings than in other companies. Additionally, in an earnings prediction setting, CEO incentives are shown to provide information about future earnings that is incremental to current earnings or earnings components. The predictive power of CEO incentives for future earnings is robust to the inclusion of other predictors of future earnings. Furthermore, we find that CEO incentives are predictive of “real” future earnings, as represented by operating cash flow and non-discretionary accruals, but not predictive of future discretionary accruals. Finally, we find that financial analysts do not incorporate information about CEO incentives when they forecast future earnings. This result suggests that incorporating CEO incentives can potentially improve analyst forecasts of future earnings.
Investigating the President: Committee Probes and Presidential Approval, 1953-2006

Members of Congress have long sought to combat assertions of presidential power and alleged executive misconduct through committee investigations. But are such investigations mere political theater, or do they have systematic effects on the course of politics? We argue that congressional investigations of the executive branch damage the president's support among the public, making investigations a useful tool in interbranch battles. Marshaling an original data set of more than 3,500 investigative hearings and over 50 years of public opinion data, we show that increased investigative activity in the hearing room significantly decreases the president’s job approval rating. A survey experiment both confirms our assertion that investigations decrease public support for the White House and shows that committee-led charges of misconduct have a greater influence on public opinion than identical charges not attributed to a congressional actor.
The Two Faces of Bribery: International Corruption Pathways Meet Conflicting Legislative Regimes

This Article analyzes the conceptual and practical dynamics of bribery as it courses through public and private sectors and critiques the divergent legislative approaches to criminalizing both bribery forms. It advocates for the adoption of specific statutory reforms to combat private bribery more effectively as part of a larger anti-corruption regime and to limit the differences between criminal laws governing public and private bribery so that sanctions balance for both bribery forms.
Geographic Concentration as a Dynamic Process

This paper uses data from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database to describe the dynamics of geographic concentration in U.S. manufacturing industries. Agglomeration results from a combination of the mean reversion and randomness in the growth of state-industry employment. Although industries' agglomeration levels have declined only slightly over the last quarter century, we find a great deal of movement for many geographically concentrated industries. We decompose aggregate concentration changes into portions attributable to plant births, expansions, contractions, and closures. We find that the location choices of new firms play a deagglomerating role, whereas plant closures have tended to reinforce agglomeration.
Judicial Independence and the Rationing of Constitutional Remedies

This Article analyzes the doctrinal instruments federal courts use to allocate scarce adjudicative resources over competing demands for constitutional remedies. It advances two claims. First, a central, hitherto underappreciated, doctrinal instrument for rationing judicial resources is a demand that most constitutional claimants demonstrate that an official violated an exceptionally clear, unambiguous constitutional rule—that is, not only that the Constitution was violated, but that the violation evinced a demanding species of fault. This fault rule first emerged in constitutional tort jurisprudence. It has diffused to the suppression and postconviction review contexts. The Article’s second claim is that fault-based rationing of constitutional remedies flows, to an underappreciated degree, from an institutional commitment to judicial independence. Federal courts have developed branch-level autonomy, along with distinctly institutional interests, over the twentieth century. These interests are inconsistent with the vindication of many individualized constitutional claims. Although Copyright © 2015 Aziz Z. Huq. † Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School. I received terrific feedback on an earlier draft of this paper at the University of Buffalo SUNY Law School. I am also especially grateful to Anya Bernstein, Guyora Binder, Samuel Bray, Luis Chiesa, Zach Clompton, Jim Gardner, Genevieve Lakier, Marin Levy, Anji Malhotra, Tony O’Rourke, Eve Primus, John Rappaport, Mike Seidman, Neil Siegel, Matthew Steilen, and Rick Su for their generous and illuminating responses and comments, which have saved me from many errors. Michael Fishman, Jyoti Jindal, and other editors at the Journal did a superlative job on this piece, providing excellent editing and substantive advice. I’m grateful for their care and patience. All remaining errors are mine alone. I am also pleased to acknowledge the support of the Frank Cicero, Jr. Faculty Fund. HUQ IN PRINTER-FINAL (DO NOT DELETE) 10/6/2015 11:46 AM 2 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 65:1 ideological preferences and changing socioeconomic conditions have had well-recognized influences on the path of constitutional remedies, I argue that the judiciary’s institutional preferences have also played a large role. This causal link between judicial independence and remedial rationing raises questions about federal courts’ function in the Separation of Powers.
R&D/Returns Causality : Absorptive Capacity or Organizational IQ

Absorptive capacity is the principle that assimilating new knowledge requires prior knowledge. The attendant prescription is to invest more in RD it is that some firms have higher returns to R&D, thus they invest more. I conduct an empirical test of the competing views and find ...
The role of liquid-liquid phase separation in regulating enzyme activity.

Abstract Liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS) is now recognized as a common mechanism underlying regulation of enzyme activity in cells. Insights from studies in cells are complemented by in vitro studies aimed at developing a better understanding of mechanisms underlying such control. These mechanisms are often based on the influence of LLPS on the physicochemical properties of the enzyme's environment. Biochemical mechanisms underlying such regulation include the potential for concentrating reactants together, tuning reaction rates, and controlling competing metabolic pathways. LLPS is thus a powerful tool with extensive utilities at the cell's disposal, e.g. for consolidating cell survival under stress or rerouting metabolic pathways in response to the energy state of the cell. Here, we examin the evidence for how LLPS affects enzyme catalysis and begin to understand emerging concepts and expand our understanding of enzyme catalysis in living cells.
Enron‐Era Disclosure of Off‐Balance‐Sheet Entities

The scandal that followed Enron's failure to disclose billions of dollars of debt held by off‐balance‐sheet entities (OBSEs) prompted investor interest in these entities and motivated auditors to request more accounting guidance. The SEC responded by issuing Financial Release No. 61 (FR‐61) to remind managers to follow SEC guidance for disclosures on liquidity and capital resources in the Management's Discussion and Analysis section of the annual report. FR‐61 identifies disclosure objectives but does not require specific disclosures. We study how the OBSE‐related disclosures of companies that sponsored OBSEs before Enron changed after Enron/FR‐61. We find that while OBSEs were widely used by S&P 500 firms before Enron/FR‐61, a majority of these firms either did not disclose their OBSEs or, if they did, provided little useful information. After Enron/FR‐61, OBSE disclosure levels increased significantly but not uniformly across firms. The pattern of increases suggests that FR‐61 reduced regulatory uncerta...
Accounting conservatism and managerial risk-taking: Corporate acquisitions

Abstract Watts (2003) and Ball and Shivakumar (2005) argue that accounting conservatism decreases managerial incentives to make negative net present value investments. I develop and test a new hypothesis that accounting conservatism is associated with managers making less risky investments. I find that under more conservative accounting managers make less risky acquisitions and that firms with accounting-based debt covenants drive this association. This result is consistent with conservative firms avoiding risky investments because of the potential for large losses to trigger debt covenants. Conservatism reducing risk-shifting can in part explain debt holders׳ demand for conservative accounting.
Predation and Accumulation

This article incorporates the economic theory of predation into the theory of economic growth. The analytical framework is a general-equilibrium model of the interaction between two dynasties: a potential predator and its prey. We find that the rate of accumulation of capital and the security of property are positively related only for generations of the prey dynasty that tolerate predation. Generations of the prey dynasty that choose to deter predation, even though their property is perfectly secure, accumulate productive capital more slowly than the preceding generations that tolerated predation.
The Case for Managed Judges: Learning from Japan after the Political Upheaval of 1993

The Chief Justice of the United States supervises a vast judicial bureaucracy. He is the titular head of the judicial branch: 1200 judges with life tenure, 850 magistrate and bankruptcy judges, and 30,000 administrative staff members. The careers he can affect most are those of his administrative employees. Even the life-tenured judges, however, he can appoint to specialized judicial bodies. In doing all this, he supervises the Federal Judicial Conference with a budget of $5.4 billion. If the Chief Justice of the United States does much, his counterpart in Japan does much more. Not only does the Japanese Chief Justice supervise administrative employees, he also supervises the judicial personnel office called the Secretariat. In turn, the judges in the Secretariat control the jobs of the 3000 other national judges who decide cases. The American Chief Justice does not tell lower-court judges where to sit. Through the Secretariat, however, the Japanese Chief Justice does. The American Chief Justice does not decide how much the lower-court judges earn. Through the Secretariat, the Japanese Chief Justice does. Effectively, the Japanese Chief Justice exercises power over the career of every lower-court judge. All this he does as an appointee of a distinctly political Prime Minister. This is not an institutional structure likely to foster judicial independence. Nor, over the four decades during which the Liberal De-
Ownership Structure, Corporate Governance, and Firm Value: Evidence from the East Asian Financial Crisis

We use a sample of 800 firms in eight East Asian countries to study the effect of ownership structure on value during the region's financial crisis. The crisis negatively impacted firms' investment opportunities, raising the incentives of controlling shareholders to expropriate minority investors. Crisis period stock returns of firms in which managers have high levels of control rights, but have separated their control and cash flow ownership, are 10-20 percentage points lower than those of other firms. The evidence is consistent with the view that ownership structure plays an important role in determining whether insiders expropriate minority shareholders. CONFLICT OF INTEREST BETWEEN CORPORATE INSIDERS (controlling shareholders and managers) and outside investors is central to the analysis of the modern corporation in which insiders have less than full ownership of the cash flow rights of the firm (Berle and Means (1932) and Jensen and Meckling (1976)). These analyses suggest that the firm's ownership structure is a primary determinant of the extent of agency problems between controlling insiders and outside investors, which has important implications for the valuation of the firm. The insiders who control corporate assets can potentially expropriate outside investors by diverting resources for their personal use or by committing funds to unprofitable projects that provide private benefits. By diverting resources for private benefit, controlling managers have the opportunity to increase their current wealth or perquisite consumption without bearing the full cost of their actions.1 Alternatively, by investing resources within the firm in positive NPV projects,
Perceiving and Reporting Domestic Violence Incidents in Unconventional Settings: A Vignette Survey Study

For decades researchers have grappled with issues of underreporting abuse to the police in formulating domestic violence scholarship and policy. Traditionally, domestic violence has been viewed through a lens of patriarchy and gender oppression. However, some literature suggests that in unconventional abusive relationships, such as in same-sex relationships or in relationships where a female batterer perpetrates abuse on a male victim, the problem of underreporting abuse is even more severe. In these relationships, underreporting may stem from less frequent identification of violence as abuse. Additionally, an increased reluctance to report abuse may result from concerns regarding the appropriateness of a police response to these nonstereotypical situations. The current project uses a vignette survey design to examine the tendencies to report such incidents to the police, by controlling for the type of relationship, the existence of "outing" threats, and the presence of mutual violence. Compared to the typical scenario involving a male batterer and female victim, we find significantly more unwillingness to contact the police in situations where women abuse men and in same-sex abuse scenarios. Violence in these alternative relationships is more often seen as mutual relationship problems that should be resolved through counseling and reconciliation. Also, we find that mutual violence leads to a decline in reporting only in the normative male abuser and female victim scenario. Conversely, in non-traditional relationships, where power differentials do not track expected gender roles, the victim is less likely to be "penalized" for engaging in violence. Further, non-heterosexual respondents are less likely to report same-sex violent incidents. Finally, education (legal education in particular), as well as residing in a more progressive state regarding same-sex issues, yield lesser rates of police reporting.
Measuring the value of electronic word of mouth and its impact in consumer communities

Marketing practitioners have recognized a need to measure customer-generated media in addition to the traditional marketing metrics. Message boards, chat rooms, blogs, and virtual brand communities have become important venues for customer-generated media.These communities can be modeled as two distinct, albeit connected, networks: social and informational. These networks change over time under the influence of online word of mouth. This study introduces adapted PageRank (APR), a new metric for measuring the value a community assigns each word-of-mouth instance and the value the community assigns to the members that create them. That metric is used to empirically support a model explaining how highly-valued information builds the social network. These communities are egalitarian in assigning value to informational content, without regard to the status of its source, and highly-valued content explains 10% of social network growth.
Deciding Recusal Motions: Who Judges the Judges?

This Article discusses judicial impartiality as a significant element of justice. It is well established that judges should decide legal disputes free of any personal bias or prejudice. When a conflict of interest arises a judge may be unable to maintain impartiality and thus should be disqualified from the case. This Article deals with whether, and under what circumstances, a judge must, may, or cannot refer a motion to disqualify to another judge. Contrary to the traditional majority approach which leaves the decision on any motion to the challenged judge, this Article also suggests that the reasons alleged for the conflict of interest should determine the identity of the decision maker.
Changes in Federal Reserve preferences

Abstract Using a model of optimizing central bank behavior, I estimate the dynamic behavior of preferences, which are captured by the relative weight put on stabilizing inflation versus minimizing the output gap. Unlike previous work, I let this parameter vary continuously over time. There is a drastic but steady rise in the weight on inflation around the appointment of Paul Volcker; however, I find variation in preferences throughout the sample period. The results suggest that preference changes have been more complex than typically assumed in the literature. The estimated preference series is used to perform counterfactual experiments and to construct a new measure of monetary shocks.
An Economic Analysis of State and Individual Responsibility Under International Law

The international law of state responsibility determines when states are liable for international law violations. States are generally liable when they have control over the actions of wrongdoers; thus, the actions of state officials can implicate state responsibility whereas the acts of private citizens usually do not. We argue that the rules of state responsibility have an economic logic similar to that of vicarious liability in domestic law: the law in both cases provides third parties with incentives to control the behavior of wrongdoers whom they can monitor and influence. We also discuss international legal remedies and individual liability under international criminal law.
Is Servicization a Win-Win Strategy? Profitability and Environmental Implications of Servicization

Problem definition: Servicization is a business strategy to sell the functionality of a product rather than the product itself. It has been touted as an environmentally friendly strategy as it enco...
Do tax havens divert economic activity

Abstract When multinational firms expand their operations in tax havens, do they divert activity from non-havens? Much of the debate on tax competition presumes that the answer to this question is yes. This paper offers a model for examining the relationship between activity in havens and non-havens, and discusses the implications of recent evidence in light of that model. Properly interpreted, the evidence suggests that tax haven activity enhances activity in nearby non-havens.
Tag N’ Train: a technique to train improved classifiers on unlabeled data

There has been substantial progress in applying machine learning techniques to classification problems in collider and jet physics. But as these techniques grow in sophistication, they are becoming more sensitive to subtle features of jets that may not be well modeled in simulation. Therefore, relying on simulations for training will lead to sub-optimal performance in data, but the lack of true class labels makes it difficult to train on real data. To address this challenge we introduce a new approach, called Tag N’ Train (TNT), that can be applied to unlabeled data that has two distinct sub-objects. The technique uses a weak classifier for one of the objects to tag signal-rich and background-rich samples. These samples are then used to train a stronger classifier for the other object. We demonstrate the power of this method by applying it to a dijet resonance search. By starting with autoencoders trained directly on data as the weak classifiers, we use TNT to train substantially improved classifiers. We show that Tag N’ Train can be a powerful tool in model-agnostic searches and discuss other potential applications.