cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Bubbles, gullibility, and other challenges for economics, psychology, sociology, and information sciences

Gullibility is the principal cause of bubbles. Investors and the general public get snared by a "beautiful illusion" and throw caution to the wind. Attempts to identify and control bubbles are complicated by the fact that the authorities who might naturally be expected to take action have often (especially in recent years) been among the most gullible, and were cheerleaders for the exuberant behavior. Hence what is needed is an objective measure of gullibility. This paper argues that it should be possible to develop such a measure. Examples demonstrate, contrary to the efficient market dogma, that in some manias, even top business and technology leaders fall prey to collective hallucinations and become irrational in objective terms. During the Internet bubble, for example large classes of them first became unable to comprehend compound interest, and then lost even the ability to do simple arithmetic, to the point of not being able to distinguish 2 from 10. This phenomenon, together with advances in analysis of social networks and related areas, points to possible ways to develop objective and quantitative tools for measuring gullibility and other aspects of human behavior implicated in bubbles. It cannot be expected to infallibly detect all destructive bubbles, and may trigger false alarms, but it ought to alert observers to periods where collective investment behavior is becoming irrational. The proposed gullibility index might help in developing realistic economic models. It should also assist in illuminating and guiding decision-making.
A Dual Approach to Contract Remedies

Are contracts options to perform or pay damages, or are they obligations to perform? This paper adopts a “both-and” answer to what commentators have spent decades debating as an “either-or” question. The correct theory of contract depends on the parties; applying the wrong theory harms the parties’ autonomy and economic interests. Recent empirical evidence shows that most people see contracts as obligations to perform. If the law applies the option theory to those parties’ contracts, it does not enforce the agreement to which they consented. The gap between the contract as understood at formation and the contract as enforced after breach not only limits the parties’ autonomy but also leads the parties to enter contracts that are not Pareto optimal. Adjusting the remedies can solve these deficiencies. Damages can be raised so as to be fully compensatory, covering not just the value of the unprovided contracted-for good or service but also the non-economic harm caused by the failure to perform. Forcing the breaching party to internalize the full costs of breach, as experienced by the non-breaching party, creates the correct incentives before and after formation. The computation of the remedy, and the theory underlying it, differ for contracts among merchants. Merchants typically contract for value, not performance, so the option theory better serves their autonomy and economic interests. Contracts among merchants already fall under different rules of formation and interpretation than other contracts; a dual approach to contract remedies provides a logical next step.
The history of digital spam

Tracing the tangled web of unsolicited and undesired email and possible strategies for its demise.
Can You Hear Me Now?: Private Communication, National Security, and the Human Rights Disconnect

Table of ContentsI. Introduction 614II. The Universal Reach of Relevant Human Rights Law 614A. The UN Charter 614B. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 617C. The Reach to Non-State Actor Aiders and Abettors 620III. Persons Protected Extraterritorially 621IV. The Relative Human Right to Private Communication 626A. "Arbitrary" or "Unlawfhl" 626B. Relevant Limitations on Freedom of Communication 6311. Under the ICCPR 6312. Under the American Declaration 6343. Under the American Convention 636C. Application in Context 6381. Arbitrary 6382. Unlawful 642V. Policy-Serving Reform 648VI. Conclusion 650"/WJe must continue to ensure that our signals intelligence policies and practices appropriately take into account... the leadership role that the United States plays in upholding democratic principles and universal human rights."'I. IntroductionRevelations regarding widespread and extraterritorial U.S. governmental surveillance and data collection-and private corporations' facilitating role- have sparked international debate about whether the U.S. surveillance program is lawful under domestic and international law, especially relevant human rights law. What has not been the primary concern in the U.S. is the equally important question whether international law regulates increased foreign governmental surveillance of natural and juridic persons in the U.S. for alleged foreign security purposes, the answer to which cannot rely on the U.S. Constitution and domestic laws. Human rights law recognizes a right to privacy that can restrain some forms of extraterritorial surveillance, but is its reach sufficient?This Article addresses the question whether global human rights law adequately protects private communications of individuals from state and nonstate actor eavesdropping, data collection, and data mining for national security purposes. It concludes that human rights protection is lacking and needs to be reformed if current public expectations about privacy are to be adequately met.As noted in Part II of this Article, relevant human rights law is universal in reach despite a serious misunderstanding by prior U.S. administrations and a putative U.S. reservation to a global human rights treaty. Although still insufficiently understood, human rights law can reach non-state aiders and abettors of human rights violations as well as state actor perpetrators and facilitators-and both have participated in extraterritorial intelligence gathering that has eroded individual and group privacy. However, as recognized in Part III, not all persons are protected from extraterritorial infringement, and there is a well-recognized test governing who is entitled to extraterritorial protection that precludes most persons under most human rights instruments. …
Computer‐Aided Instruction

This article will compare eight different guidelines for designing computer-aided instruction (CAI); each one is based on a different understanding of how humans learn from multimedia. Once a design guideline is adopted, the preferred learning definition becomes apparent. Similarly, once designers agree on what the multimedia learning should be, a corresponding guideline can be applied. Keywords: computer-assisted instruction; instructional design; multimedia learning; SSF model
Strategies of foreign banks in transition economies

Abstract This paper examines the strategies of foreign banks in transition economies. An extreme high share of foreign banks characterizes theses banking markets. I outline different strategies of foreign banks, model their entry decision and provide an empirical analysis by estimating loan supply functions. The main finding is that foreign banks compete with domestic banks in the same market segments. Furthermore, foreign banks tend to follow long-term strategies and thus contribute to credit market stabilization. Contrary to conclusions in the general banking literature, foreign banking behavior is independent of the macroeconomic conditions prevailing in the foreign banks' country of origin.
Federal Parole and Sentencing: A Report on the Present and Some Thoughts for the Future

In the past fifteen years an almost unanimous consensus has developed over the need for sentencing reform. Critics have maintained that the unregulated discretion currently granted judges fosters extensive and unwarranted disparity in the treatment of like cases. Commentators have condemned indeterminate parole and sentencing procedures as morally unjustifiable, and as a cause of prison unrest. Underlying both these concerns is disillusionment with the rehabilitative ideal.
Price‐setting power and information asymmetry in sealed bidding

Diverging from the historical precedent of using a midpoint rule (k=½) to experimentally structure two-person bargaining under incomplete information, extreme values of k (k={0, 1}) are invoked in an asymmetric information environment endowing one player with exclusive price-setting power and the other player with veto-only power. Theoretical analysis suggests that regardless of who possesses an information advantage, expected profits for a seller (buyer) decrease (increase) in k. Yet, experimental results show that under conditions of dramatic information asymmetry, not only is the observed share of the surplus is much smaller than predicted for the player with price-setting power, but also the player with the information advantage is unable to garner a greater share of the surplus as has been consistently demonstrated in previous studies providing a boundary test of Daniel et al.'s Information Disparity Hypothesis (1998). Published in 2006 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Natural selection. IV. The Price equation.

The Price equation partitions total evolutionary change into two components. The first component provides an abstract expression of natural selection. The second component subsumes all other evolutionary processes, including changes during transmission. The natural selection component is often used in applications. Those applications attract widespread interest for their simplicity of expression and ease of interpretation. Those same applications attract widespread criticism by dropping the second component of evolutionary change and by leaving unspecified the detailed assumptions needed for a complete study of dynamics. Controversies over approximation and dynamics have nothing to do with the Price equation itself, which is simply a mathematical equivalence relation for total evolutionary change expressed in an alternative form. Disagreements about approach have to do with the tension between the relative valuation of abstract versus concrete analyses. The Price equation’s greatest value has been on the abstract side, particularly the invariance relations that illuminate the understanding of natural selection. Those abstract insights lay the foundation for applications in terms of kin selection, information theory interpretations of natural selection and partitions of causes by path analysis. I discuss recent critiques of the Price equation by Nowak and van Veelen.
Income taxation, wealth effects, and uncertainty: Portfolio adjustments with isoelastic utility and discrete probability

Assuming isoelastic utility and binomial probability, the optimal adjustment to income taxation of portfolio returns is to scale up the holding of the risky asset by just [1+r(1−t)/(1+r)(1−t)], not 1/(1−t), as the literature classically maintains.
Price discrimination and quality improvement

This paper models quality improvements when multiple quality levels can sell, owing to differences in consumers' valuations of quality improvements. Firms can collude to price discriminate, so that consumers with high valuations pay a price premium, while others receive a quality level below the highest available. Imposing minimum quality standards or price ceilings can ensure that only the highest quality level of each product is sold. Such intervention reduces the quality-adjusted price paid by consumers but also reduces the incentives for firms to innovate. When enough consumers have high valuations, such intervention must be welfare reducing, owing to reduced innovation. JEL Classification: O31, L16 Discrimination par les prix et amelioration de la qualite. Ce memoire presente un modele d'amelioration de la qualite quand on peut vendre des produits a divers niveaux de qualitea cause des differences dans les evaluations d'amelioration de qualite par les consommateurs. Les entreprises peuvent entrer en collusion pour faire de la discrimination par les prix de maniere a ce que les consommateurs qui apprecient davantage la qualite paient une prime pendant que les autres consommateurs recoivent une qualite au-dessous de ce qui est la meilleure qualite disponible. Si on impose des normes de qualite minimale ou des plafonds aux prix, on peut s'assurer que seuls les produits de la plus haute qualite seront vendus. De telles interventions reduisent le niveau de prix ajuste pour la qualite paye par les consommateurs, mais reduisent aussi les incitations des entreprises a innover. Quand un nombre suffisant de consommateurs apprecient beaucoup la qualite, de telles interventions peuvent reduire le niveau de bien-etre a cause des innovations moins importantes.
Two-Person Cake-Cutting: The Optimal Number of Cuts

A cake is a metaphor for a heterogeneous, divisible good. When two players divide such a good, there is always a perfect division—one that is efficient (Pareto-optimal), envy-free, and equitable—which can be effected with a finite number of cuts under certain mild conditions; this is not always the case when there are more than two players (Brams, Jones, and Klamler, 2011b). We not only establish the existence of such a division but also provide an algorithm for determining where and how many cuts must be made, relating it to an algorithm, “Adjusted Winner” (Brams and Taylor, 1996, 1999), that yields a perfect division of multiple homogenous goods.
Corporate Policies of Republican Managers

We demonstrate that personal political preferences of corporate managers influence corporate policies. Specifically, Republican managers who are likely to have conservative personal ideologies adopt and maintain more conservative corporate policies. Those firms have lower levels of corporate debt, lower capital and research and development (R&D) expenditures, less risky investments, but higher profitability. Using the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Sept. 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy as natural experiments, we demonstrate that investment policies of Republican managers became more conservative following these exogenous uncertainty-increasing events. Furthermore, around chief executive officer (CEO) turnovers, including CEO deaths, firm leverage policy becomes more conservative when managerial conservatism increases.
The Pace of International Criminal Justice

Introduction 80 I. The Ambitions of International Criminal Justice 84 A. The Domestic Criminal Law Aims 85 B. The Historical Record Aim 88 C. The Transitional Justice Aims 90 D. The Aims in Context 93 II. Expectations for the Pace of International Criminal Justice 97 A. Domestic Criminal Law Timeframes 97 B. Historical Record Timeframes 102 C. Transitional Justice Timeframes 103 D. The Compatibility of These Timeframes 108 III. How Long Do International Criminal Cases Take?...... 112 A. The Data 113 B. The Results 116 1. Results to Date 116 2. The Impact of Ongoing Cases 121 3. Guilty Pleas 123 4. Multi-Defendant Trials 125 IV. Tailoring the Pace of International Criminal Justice 127 A. The Aims and the Timeframes 127 B. International Criminal Justice and Abruptly Transitioned Societies 132 1. Options 132 2. Analysis 136 C. The ICC, Its Pace, and Transitional Justice Aims 138 Conclusion 142 Appendix 144
An Analysis of the Determinants and Shareholder Wealth Effects of Mutual Fund Mergers

This study examines the determinants of mutual fund mergers and their subsequent wealth impact on shareholders of target and acquiring funds. Results indicate significant improvements in postmerger performance and a reduction in expense ratios for target fund shareholders. In contrast, acquiring fund shareholders experience a significant deterioration in postmerger performance. The net asset flows continue to remain negative for the combined fund in the year following the merger. The likelihood of a fund merger is inversely related to fund size for both within- and across-family mutual fund mergers. However, poor past performance is a significant determinant for only within-family mergers. THIS PAPER CONTRIBUTES to the growing literature on mutual fund organization and governance with an empirical examination of the determinants of mutual fund mergers and their subsequent impact on fund shareholders. Mergers among mutual funds are a relatively recent phenomenon, but given the dramatic growth in the fund industry, their emergence is not surprising. Rapid industry growth has increased the number of mutual funds, and mergers are one means of reducing what may be perceived as an excess supply.' In addition, the ongoing consolidation of the financial services industry has provided an incentive for firms to combine entire fund families, and reduce the number of fund offerings with similar objectives.
REIT Risk Premium Sensitivity and Interest Rates

This analysis investigates several aspects of the relationship between daily REIT stock risk premiums and various interest rates. Consistent with prior research, the general findings indicate that interest rates do impact REIT returns. This study specifically finds that stock returns are more sensitive to maturity rate spread between short- and long-term treasuries than the credit rate spread between commercial bonds and treasuries. In addition, the analyses document a structural model shift during the nineties that has made REITs more sensitive to credit risk. In additional to change in investor clientele, an analysis of declining REIT credit-worthiness points to a root cause for this shift.
The National Labor Relations Act at 75: In Need of a Heart Transplant

When the NLRA was enacted in 1935, 13.2% of workers were union members. Industrial unions used the power provided in the NLRA to organize manufacturing workers and achieve a union membership of 35% by the mid-1950s. Although the NLRA was significantly amended in 1947 and 1959, it has not been meaningfully changed since then. As a result, a statute designed for mass production industries is no longer relevant to the service and white-collar positions occupied by most individuals today. The NLRA must be modified to include independent contractors who work like regular employees and perma-temps hired from employment agencies on a long-term basis. Congress could also adopt the portions of the Employee Free Choice Act that would make it easier for unions to organize new age workers. First contract arbitration could be employed to help newly certified labor organizations achieve initial bargaining agreements, and mandatory worker participation programs could be adopted to provide unrepresented workers with a collective voice.
The Visible Hand: Finger Ratio (2D:4D) and Competitive Behavior

In an experiment using two-bidder rst-price sealed bid auctions with symmetric independent private values, we scan also the right hand of each subject. We study how the ratio of the length of the index and ring ngers (2D:4D) of the right hand, a measure of prenatal hormone exposure, is correlated with bidding behavior and total prots.
A Decision Theory of Statutory Interpretation: Legislative History by the Rules

We have a law of civil procedure, criminal procedure, and administrative procedure, but we have no law of legislative procedure. This failure has serious consequences in the field of statutory interpretation. Using simple rules garnered from Congress itself, this Article argues that those rules are capable of transforming the field of statutory interpretation. Addressing canonical cases in the field, from Holy Trinity to Bock Laundry, from Weber to Public Citizen, this Article shows how cases studied by vast numbers of law students are made substantially more manageable, and in some cases quite simple, through knowledge of congressional procedure. No longer need legislative history always be a search for one’s friends. Call this a decision theory of statutory interpretation. This approach is based on how Congress does in fact make decisions and thus is a positive theory. Normatively, it has the advantage of privileging text without blinding judges either to relevant information or to their duty to implement Congress’s decisions, including Congress’s own decisionmaking methods. It may also have the side benefit of reducing legislative incentives to manipulate the rules or to engage in strategic behavior to induce particular statutory interpretations. author. Professor of Law and Director, Center for Congressional Studies, Georgetown University Law Center. Special thanks to Professor William Eskridge’s seminar on Theories of Statutory Interpretation at Yale Law School, and Professor Peter Strauss’s The Regulatory State course at Columbia Law School, for their students’ enthusiasm and critical reflections on this Article. Thanks as well to the many faculty who commented on this Article at workshops at Georgetown, Northwestern, and the Yale Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic. Special thanks go to Dean Daniel Rodriguez, Professor Tonja Jacobi, and Professor Kathy Zeiler for their special advice on positive political theory, and to Professor Chai Feldblum for her willingness to teach these ideas to federal judges. Finally, the staff of The Yale Law Journal provided excellent editing suggestions, for which I am most grateful. All errors are of course my own. a decision theory of statutory interpretation
The Effect of Early Childhood Development Programs on Women's Labor Force Participation and Older Children's Schooling in Kenya

About 20,000 early childhood development centers provided day care for and prepared for primary school more than 1 million children aged three to seven (roughly 20 percent of children in that age group) in Kenya in 1995. The number of child care facilities reached 23,690 by the end of 1999. The authors analyze the effect of child care costs on households' behavior in Kenya. For households with children aged three to seven, they model household demand for mothers' participation in paid work, the participation in paid work of other household members, household demand for schooling, and household demand for child care. They find that: A) A high cost for child care discourages households from using formal child care facilities and has a negative effect on mothers' participation in market work. B) The cost of child care and the level of mothers' wages affect older children's school enrollment, but these factors affect boys' and girls' schooling differently. An increase in mothers' wages increases boys' enrollment but depresses girls' enrollment. C) Higher child care costs have no significant effect on boys' schooling but significantly decrease the number of girls in school.
The Deterrence Hypothesis and Picking Pockets at the Pickpocket's Hanging

The tenet that harsher penalties could substantially reduce crime rates rests on the assumption that currently active criminals weigh the costs and benefits of their contemplated acts. Existing and proposed crime strategies exhibit this belief, as does a large and growing segment of the crime literature. This study examines the premise that criminals make informed and calculated decisions. The findings suggest that 76% of active criminals and 89% of the most violent criminals either perceive no risk of apprehension or are incognizant of the likely punishments for their crimes.
Interpreting the Federal Rules of Evidence: The Use and Abuse of the Advisory Committee Notes

The Federal Rules of Evidence (Rules) are just two decades old. The Rules were drafted with the goal of promoting predictability and uniformity in the admission of evidence in the federal courts. At the same time, the drafters wished to leave some flexibility and discretion in the administration of the Rules, rejecting the possibility that they could draft a code that anticipated every possible evidence problem that might arise. The by-product of codification, however, is the problem of interpretation. The United States Supreme Court and several commentators have struggled recently with the following question: How do we determine what the Rules mean when applying them to concrete cases? While I have addressed that question in a comprehensive manner elsewhere, this Essay focuses on an essential piece of the puzzle - the role of the Advisory Committee Notes in interpreting the Federal Rules of Evidence.
Institutional flexibility and economic growth

Abstract This paper develops a formal model to investigate the relationship between institutional quality – the current set of property rights – and institutional flexibility – the ability to develop new institutions – and relate these aspects of institutional structure to dynamic economic performance. The model is used to analyze two types of institutional reform. An increase in institutional quality lowers market transaction costs, producing an immediate but short lived increase in the rate of economic growth. In contrast, an increase in institutional flexibility results in a delayed but permanent increase in economic growth. The analysis suggests that the current work on institutions places too much emphasis on property rights and too little on the determinants of institutional change.
Labor's liquidity service and firing costs

Abstract This paper studies the specific effect that firing costs can have on firms facing liquidity constraints. When firing costs are zero and a time gap exists between production and its associated revenues, firing allows firms to hold on to their liquid assets by saving on wages, and thus, allows firms to cope better with liquidity shocks when external financing is too costly or unavailable. I refer to this feature as labor's liquidity service. Higher firing costs reduces the value of labor's liquidity service, and thus, increases firms' incentive for hoarding liquidity and reduces firms' demand for production inputs. In addition to this negative effect at the creation margin of production, firing costs have a relatively higher positive effect on the destruction margin of production of financially restricted firms. This paper presents a model that develops these ideas and shows that the presence of firing costs has a stronger negative effect on the output of firms facing liquidity constraints. Regression analysis, based on country–industry panel data sets, provides empirical evidence consistent with the liquidity service effect of firing costs. I find a relatively stronger negative effect of firing costs on the output of industries with higher liquidity requirements and a relatively stronger negative effect of firing costs on the output of small, and more likely financially constrained, firms.
Price Dynamics in the International Wheat Market: Modeling with Error Correction and Directed Acyclic Graphs

In this paper we examine dynamic relationships among wheat prices from five countries for the years 1981–1999. Error correction models and directed acyclic graphs are employed with observational data to sort–out the dynamic causal relationships among prices from major wheat producing regions: Canada, the European Union, Argentina, Australia, and the United States. An ambiguity related to the cyclic or acyclic flow of information between Canada and Australia is uncovered. We condition our analysis on the assumption that information flow is acyclic. The empirical results show that Canada and the U.S. are leaders in the pricing of wheat in these markets. The U.S. has a significant effect on three markets excluding Canada.
Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Structure of the Administrative State: The Case of Financial Services Regulation

The viability and desirability of conducting cost-benefit analysis of financial regulation is a subject of intense academic debate. Opponents claim that such analysis is feasible for environmental regulation but not for financial regulation because of the difference in the benefits that require monetization in the respective areas. This Article argues that the recent debate misses an important part of the problem. In large part, cost-benefit analysis of financial regulation cannot currently be performed successfully because of institutional shortcomings, not analytical difficulties. Compared to Executive Branch agencies, independent agencies, like the major financial regulatory agencies, lack the capacity to do cost-benefit analyses of acceptable quality. Fortunately, there are good Executive Branch models that could be exported to the financial regulatory agencies. In particular, the Financial Stability Oversight Council could implement a robust coordinating role diffusing macroeconomic expertise, learning from the experience of the Interagency Working Group set up to estimate the damage of one ton of carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, the President could extend to independent agencies his Executive Order vesting in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs the responsibility to review significant federal regulations. Though no President has yet taken this step, in part because of fears of a congressional backlash, the time might now be ripe to do so. And, the financial regulatory agencies could learn from the experience of the Environmental Protection Agency in building significant economic expertise to aid the preparation of cost-benefit analyses.The Article also considers the role of judicial review. It takes issue with the influential argument that OIRA review can serve as an alternative to judicial review, showing that such an outcome would be inconsistent with settled principles of administrative law. But OIRA review can lead to more deferential judicial review, by serving as a signal that reviewing courts are likely to find reassuring.
A note on dual foreign exchange markets with official rationing: Predetermined versus floating official exchange rate

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between the long-run rate of inflation and the allocation of transactions between markets in economies that operate dual exchange market regimes and ration foreign exchange in the official market. It shows that wider access of importers to the official market, and wider access of exporters to the free market, are associated with higher rates of inflation and vice versa. The direction of causality among the various variables, and thus the effects of economic policies, depend on whether the official exchange rate is predetermined or floating.
The Politics of the Geneva Conventions: Avoiding Formalist Traps

The Geneva Conventions were drafted in 1949, in another world. The world of the Geneva Conventions' "framers" is still familiar to all of us, though increasingly it is familiar from movies and books rather from the evening news or, still less, our own lived experience. The world in which the Conventions were drafted was a world of states: powerful states, weak states, predatory states, law-abiding states, but states all the same. Soldiers wore uniforms designed by their states, carried weapons issued by their states, obeyed orders given by their commanders, and fought against the armies of other states.Well -- most of the time, anyway. It's true that even then, there were actors and conflicts that didn't fit the mold. There were partisans who wore no uniforms and answered to no recognized authority, and guerillas and resistance fighters who straddled the line between civilian and combatant. But although it is sometimes hard to make students see this, lawmaking is an imaginative enterprise: lawmakers look at the existing world, project onto it an image of a better, tidier world, and then try to develop contingency plans for dealing with various imaginable forms of untidiness. In this sense lawmaking is inevitably backward looking, because none of us is very good at correctly predicting future changes.So the diplomats who negotiated the Geneva Conventions took the raw materials already at hand, from the Hague Conventions and from international custom, and coupled these with their own searing sense of what had gone wrong in the world war just ended. In a sense, the Geneva Conventions read like an attempt to revisit the Second World War, without the mess, confusion, cruelty, and slaughter of civilians.
Earnings Management: New Evidence Based on Deferred Tax Expense

We assess the usefulness of deferred tax expense in detecting earnings management. Assuming greater discretion under GAAP than under tax rules, and assuming managers exploit such discretion to manage income upward primarily in ways that do not affect current taxable income, then such earnings management will generate book‐tax differences that increase deferred tax expense. Our results provide evidence consistent with deferred tax expense generally being incrementally useful beyond total accruals and abnormal accruals derived from two Jones‐type models in detecting earnings management to avoid an earnings decline and to avoid a loss. Only total accruals is incrementally useful in detecting earnings management to meet analysts' earnings forecasts. Deferred tax expense is more accurate than the accrual measures in classifying firm‐years as successfully avoiding a loss, whereas no one measure is more accurate in classifying firm‐years as avoiding an earnings decline or meeting analysts' forecasts.
Human cloning: the role of law.

Law embodies the moral judgments of a society. In the past, law has been used to encourage, leave alone, regulate, or ban new or emerging scientific potential. The novel legal issues that will be raised should human cloning become a reality lead to several tentative conclusions. First, we should not encourage human cloning. Second, laissez faire attitudes are too dangerous to tolerate. Third, extensive regulation will be necessary to protect both clone-donors and cloned individuals. Fourth, cloning should be undertaken only by not-for-profit organizations. Overall, we should put the burden on those who wish to use human cloning to demonstrate both benefits and safety. Even then, concerns about who will benefit and at what cost to others should inform our public policy. In considering our legal response to cloning, we need to be vigilant about the risk of human fallibility and misplaced self-confidence.
Transgender Military Personnel in the Post-DADT Repeal Era A Phenomenological Study

This study is the first to systematically inquire into the lives of transgender men and women currently serving across the branches of the US military in the post-“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) rep...
Ecological, Economic, and New Synthetic Perspectives in Range Management: An Interpretative Essay

Ecological, Economic, and New Synthetic Perspectives in Range Management: An Interpretative Essay
Foundations of Technical Analysis: Computational Algorithms, Statistical Inference, and Empirical Implementation

Technical analysis, also known as "charting," has been a part of financial practice for many decades, but this discipline has not received the same level of academic scrutiny and acceptance as more traditional approaches such as fundamental analysis. One of the main obstacles is the highly subjective nature of technical analysis-the presence of geometric shapes in historical price charts is often in the eyes of the beholder. In this paper, we propose a systematic and automatic approach to technical pattern recognition using nonparametric kernel regression, and we apply this method to a large number of U.S. stocks from 1962 to 1996 to evaluate the effectiveness of technical analysis. By comparing the unconditional empirical distribution of daily stock returns to the conditional distribution-conditioned on specific technical indicators such as head-and-shoulders or double-bottoms-we find that over the 31-year sample period, several technical indicators do provide incremental information and may have some practical value.
Fundamental Limits of Caching for Demand Privacy Against Colluding Users

This article investigates the problem of demand privacy against colluding users for shared-link coded caching systems, where no subset of users can learn any information about the demands of the remaining users. The notion of privacy used here is stronger than similar notions adopted in past work and is motivated by the practical need to insure privacy regardless of the file distribution. Two scenarios are considered: Single File Retrieval (SFR) and Linear Function Retrieval (LFR), where in the latter case each user demands an arbitrary linear combination of the files. This paper’s main contributions are a novel achievable scheme for LFR, referred as privacy key scheme , and a new information theoretic converse bound for SFR. Clearly, being SFR a special case of LFR, an achievable scheme for LFR works for SFR as well, and a converse for SFR is a valid converse for LFR as well. By comparing the performance of the achievable scheme with the converse bound derived in this article (for the small cache size regime) and existing converse bounds without privacy constraints (in the remaining memory regime), the communication load of the privacy key scheme turns out to be optimal to within a constant multiplicative gap in all parameter regimes. Numerical results show that the new privacy key scheme outperforms in some regime known schemes based on the idea of virtual users, which also satisfy the stronger notion of user privacy against colluding users adopted here. Moreover, the privacy key scheme enjoys much lower subpacketization than known schemes based on virtual users.
Mandatory extended searches in all genome sequencing: "incidental findings," patient autonomy, and shared decision making.

Should incidental findings discovered with whole-genome sequencing or testing be sought and reported to ordering clinicians and to patients (or their surrogates)? — NO.
Does the Sequence of Seasoned Equity Offerings Matter

We investigate the relation between announcement period returns and the sequence of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) for industrial, financial, and utility firms making multiple offerings. For industrial firms, there is a monotonically positive relation between the returns and the sequence of issues. Further, the stock price reactions to the fourth and subsequent issues by industrial firms are insignificant. For firms that conduct at least two SEOs, there is no difference in returns between industrial firms and utilities or financial institutions. The lower negative returns for later announcements by industrial firms can be explained by reduced adverse selection costs.
When are people persuaded by DNA match statistics

The way in which statistical DNA evidence is presented to legal decision makers can have a profound impact on the persuasiveness of that evidence. Evidence that is presented one way may convince most people that the suspect is almost certainly the source of DNA evidence recovered from a crime scene. However, when the evidence is presented another way, a sizable minority of people equally convinced that the suspect is almost certainly not the source of the evidence. Three experiments are presented within the context of a theory (“exemplar cueing theory”) for when people will find statistical match evidence to be more and less persuasive. The theory holds that the perceived probative value of statistical match evidence depends on the cognitive availability of coincidental match exemplars. When legal decision makers find it hard to imagine others who might match by chance, the evidence will seem compelling. When match exemplars are readily available, the evidence will seem less compelling. Experiments 1 and 2 show that DNA match statistics that target the individual suspect and that are framed as probabilities (i.e., “The probability that the suspect would match the blood drops if he were not their source is 0.1%”) are more persuasive than mathematically equivalent presentations that target a broader reference group and that are framed as frequencies (“One in 1,000 people in Houston would also match the blood drops”). Experiment 3 shows that the observed effects are less likely to occur at extremely small incidence rates. Implications for the strategic use of presentation effects at trial are considered.
The Value of Surprising Findings for Research on Marketing

Abstract In the work of Armstrong [J. Bus. Res. (2003)], I examined empirical research on the scientific process and related these to marketing science. The findings of some studies were surprising. In this reply, I address surprising findings and other issues raised by the commentators.
Comparison of SML and GMM estimators for the random coefficient logit model using aggregate data

A simulated maximum likelihood (SML) estimator for the random coefficient logit model using aggregate data is found to be more efficient than the widely used generalized method of moments estimator (GMM) of Berry et al. (Econometrica 63:841–890, 1995). In particular, the SML estimator is better than the GMM estimator in recovery of heterogeneity parameters which are often of central interest in marketing research. With the GMM estimator, the analyst must determine what moment conditions to use for parameter identification, especially the heterogeneity parameters. With the SML estimator, the moment conditions are automatically determined as the gradients of the log-likelihood function, and these are the most efficient ones if the model is correctly specified. Another limitation of the GMM estimator is that the product market shares must be strictly positive while the SML estimator can handle zero market share observations. Properties of the SML and GMM estimators are demonstrated in simulated data and in data from the US photographic film market.
Confidentiality of alcohol and other drug abuse treatment information for emergency department and trauma center patients.

The diagnosis and treatment of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use disorders has for the most part been confined to a narrow band of the U.S. heath-care system. Recently, some hospital emergency departments and, especially, trauma centers have taken the lead in seeking to integrate AOD diagnosis and treatment through the adoption of screening and brief intervention protocols. The available data suggest that the practice of providing screening and either brief interventions or referrals for more intensive AOD treatment can significantly reduce re-injury rates. Despite these encouraging statistics, many trauma centers and emergency departments still do not provide these services for all patients. Some advocates have suggested that federal confidentiality statutes and regulations governing AOD treatment information have an inhibiting effect on the willingness and ability of providers to engage in these activities, and have raised the possibility that amendments to these provisions may be necessary.This article analyzes the federal AOD confidentiality law and regulations to determine whether, and under what circumstances, those special health privacy rules might apply to AOD screening and intervention activities in the context of emergency departments and trauma centers. The article concludes with some observations about the broader question of whether the federal confidentiality law and regulations should be revised, given the obvious benefits of mainstreaming substance abuse diagnosis and treatment on the one hand, and the continuing stigma and legal jeopardy associated with the disclosure of those disorders on the other.
Deconstructing Equity: Public Ownership, Agency Costs, and Complete Capital Markets

The traditional law and fi nance focus on agency costs presumes, without acknowledgement, that the premise that diversifi ed public shareholders are the cheapest riskbearers is immutable. In this Essay, we raise the possibility that changes in the capital markets have called this premise into question, drawn into sharp relief by the recent private equity buying wave in which the size and range of public companies being taken private expanded signifi cantly. In brief, we argue that private owners, in increasingly complete markets, can transfer risk in discrete slices to counterparties who, in turn, can manage or otherwise diversify away those risks they choose to forego, arguably becoming a lower cost substitute for traditional risk capital. If diversifi ed shareholders are no longer the cheapest risk-bearers, then the associated agency costs may now be voluntary; and, if risk management can substitute for risk capital, without requiring a transfer of ownership, then why go public at all? Do more complete capital markets herald (once again) the eclipse of the public corporation? We offer some preliminary responses, suggesting that the line between public and private fi rms may begin to blur as the traditional balance between agency costs and the benefi ts of public ownership shifts towards a new equilibrium. For some, the benefi ts of public ownership may continue to outweigh the associated agency costs. For others, changes in risk transfer may implicate how a fi rm is (or should be) governed. The Essay then ends with a fi nal question: If the opportunity to invest in common stock recedes, by what means will former investors in public equity be able to invest capital?
Cooperation and Litigation Thoughts on the American Experience

I grew up in the age of Rambo litigation. But from what I have read since leaving practice for teaching more than thirty years ago, litigators (and other American lawyers) may well be more adversarial and less cooperative than ever. Some suggest that this tendency results in part from client domination of lawyers. Far from serving as the learned counselors that Dean Kronman applauded as representative of a lost golden era of lawyering, today’s litigator gets the case by winning a “beauty contest” and remains thereafter under the client’s thumb. No longer does the lawyer tell the client what to do in the litigation; the client—implementing a litigation budget—may control the day-to-day details of what the lawyer does. And the client does not want to hire a “cooperator,” but rather a bulldog.
The Nature of the Business Group: Power, Relational Contracts and Scope:

We propose a framework for understanding the business group, a hybrid organizational form that occupies the middle ground between firm and market and is a prominent feature of emerging economies. These organizations are characterized by varying levels of diversification and integration. We provide an explanation for the covariation, both positive and negative, in the scope, scale and ‘strength’ of integration of business groups. This notion of integration embodies the strength of ties that connect disparate subsidiary activities to the core of the business group, and is, we believe, novel to the theory of the firm. We also suggest the framework may be useful for understanding internal organizational hierarchy and multiproduct firms.JEL: L22, L14, M13, D23