cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
A Response to Bloch, Lubbers & Verkuil's the Social Security Administration's New Disability Adjudication Rules: A Cause for Optimism…and Concern

This article examines Professors Bloch, Lubbers, and Verkuil's proposals which were published elsewhere in this symposium issue regarding the Social Security Administration's Commissioner's "Disability Service Improvement" process. While endorsing some of their proposals, such as eliminating the "reconsideration" stage, the article argues against curtailing claimants' rights to an administrative appeal of wholly or partially unfavorable decisions by Social Security Administrative Law Judges (ALJs).
Financial statement comparability and credit risk

Prior research shows that firms’ financial statement comparability improves the accuracy of market participants’ valuation judgments and thus may reduce firms’ costs of capital. Distinct from prior research focusing on the equity market, we develop measures of comparability relevant to debt market participants based on the within-industry variability of Moody’s adjustments to reported accounting numbers for the purposes of credit rating. We examine two sets of adjustments: (1) to the interest coverage ratio and (2) to non-recurring income items. We validate these comparability measures by providing evidence that greater comparability is associated with lower frequency and magnitude of split ratings by credit rating agencies. We predict and find that greater comparability is associated with (1) lower estimated bid-ask spreads for traded bonds, (2) lower credit spreads for both bonds and five-year credit default swaps, and (3) a steeper one- to five-year credit default swap term structure. Our results are consistent with financial statement comparability reducing debt market participants’ uncertainty about and pricing of firms’ credit risk.
Can the volatility of the federal funds rate explain the time-varying risk premium in treasury bill returns?*

The implementation of monetary policy through financial markets is widely believed to be an important factor affecting the return on financial assets, particularly the return on short-term government debt. This paper assesses the effects of shocks to monetary policy on Treasury bill returns by fitting a factor-ARCH model with a candidate factor based on innovations in the federal funds rate. We find that positive policy shocks significantly reduce Treasury bill returns and significantly increase the volatility of Treasury bill returns, but that the volatility of policy shocks does not explain the time-varying risk premia in Treasury bill returns.
Internet Speech and the First Amendment Rights of Public School Students

In exploring the range of the First Amendment issues raised by school efforts to discipline students for Internet activities, this Article first examines Supreme Court and lower court precedent involving student speech outside of the Internet context. It then looks at Beussink, the first reported decision to involve discipline of a student for Internet speech. It also discusses other Internet situations in which schools have sought to impose sanctions on students. In its final section, it applies free speech methodology to a range of Internet situations. This exploration identifies some situations where a school is free to control speech that it believes may harm the school environment and others where the free speech rights of students preclude school disciplinary action. For those situations where there is no clear answer as to whose rights are paramount, the Article cannot provide firm answers, but at least raises some of the critical questions.
Confronting the Impact of Citizens United

Perceived corporate power has spurred a recent populist backlash, on both political left and political right. In this atmosphere, the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, granting corporations the right to spend directly on express political advocacy, has become the target of particularly heated critique.This Essay confronts the impact of Citizens United in two respects. Part I first reviews Citizens United’s place in the campaign finance constellation. It argues that although the decision was a bold stroke in many ways, its impact on the scope of permissible campaign finance regulation is far less substantial than commonly assumed. Even if Citizens United’s incremental impact is mild, it nevertheless seems to have the feel of a final straw. The decision has provoked first furor, and then fear, with opponents invoking a broad vision of a dystopian political process overwhelmed by corporations. Yet rarely is the fear of corporate political spending articulated at a level of specificity conducive to assessing, or confronting, the perceived damage. Part II takes up the challenge, parsing the pragmatic concerns at the root of opposition to corporate political spending. It then offers responsive policy proposals - including an approach to protect against monopolization of media channels, an appealingly straightforward disclaimer label to mitigate voter misperception, and a novel application of a recusal obligation to combat the appearance of corruption - all well within the regulatory space undisturbed by Citizens United.
Asset Pricing Implications of Firms' Financing Constraints

We use a production-based asset pricing model to investigate whether financing constraints are quantitatively important for the cross-section of returns. Specifically, we use GMM to explore the stochastic Euler equation imposed on returns by optimal investment. Our methods can identify the impact of financial frictions on the stochastic discount factor with cyclical variations in cost of external funds. We find that financing frictions provide a common factor that improves the pricing of cross-sectional returns. Moreover, the shadow cost of external funds exhibits strong procyclical variation, so that financial frictions are moreimportant in relativelygood economic conditions. (JEL E22, E44, G12) We investigate whether financial frictions are quantitatively important in determining the cross-section of expected stock returns. Specifically, we construct a production-based asset pricing framework in the presence of financial market imperfections and use GMM to explore the stochastic Euler equation restrictions imposed on asset returns by the optimal investment decisions of firms. Our results suggest that financial frictions provide an important common factor that can improve the pricing of the cross-section of expected returns. In addition, we find that the shadow price of external funds is strongly procyclical, that is, financial market imperfections are more important when economic conditions are relatively good. These results are generally robust to the use of alternative measures of fundamentals
The Carbon Border War: Minnesota, North Dakota, and the Dormant Commerce Clause

Using the potential conflict between North Dakota and Minnesota over the latter’s carbon mitigation programs, this note draws attention to two problems with the current state actions to address global warming: first, a state’s climate mitigation program can have substantial economic impacts on its neighbors; second, the scientific characteristics of the carbon mitigation problem present issues the dormant Commerce Clause is unable to adequately address. While other authors suggest the dormant Commerce Clause be revised to address state carbon mitigation programs, this note rejects such a view. The dormant Commerce Clause’s purpose is to prevent states from engaging in economic protectionism and it accomplishes this goal admirably. State steps to address climate change produce the exact opposite of economic protection – they seek to create benefits that are enjoyed by all. Rather than using the dormant Commerce Clause (in either its current or modified forms) to settle these conflicts, the political branches of the federal government should end the quarrels among the states by adopting a national policy on carbon mitigation.
Uncovered Interest Parity

This paper provides an overview of the uncovered interest parity assumption. It traces the history of the interest parity concept, summarizes evidence on the empirical validity of uncovered interest parity, and discusses different interpretations of the evidence and the implications for macroeconomic analysis. The uncovered interest parity assumption has been an important building block in multiperiod models of open economies, and although its validity is strongly challenged by the empirical evidence, at least at short time horizons, its retention in macroeconomic models is supported on pragmatic grounds by the lack of much empirical support for existing models of the exchange risk premium.
Lethal injections: the law, science, and politics of syringe access for injection drug users.

Ensuring that injection drug users who cannot or will not stop injecting have access to sterile syringes is an important part of a comprehensive approach to reducing the transmission of viral and bacterial infections associated with injection drug use. Despite its public health value, however, syringe access has been politically controversial in the United States. The primary policy questions have been the legality of over-the-counter sales of syringes to IDUs, the legality of syringe possession by IDUs, and the authority of public health officials or private sector providers to initiate access interventions. This Article updates and significantly expands upon prior legal analyses of syringe access. The main focus is the body of law that regulates syringe sale, purchase, possession and disposal in the context of injection drug use in the United States, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, including drug paraphernalia laws; syringe prescription laws and regulations; pharmacy regulations and miscellaneous syringe laws; needle exchange laws and regulations; and drug possession laws. To place the law in context, the paper summarizes and critically assesses the public health research on the health effects of syringe access rules and the collateral effects of policies enhancing syringe access for IDUs; examines the public opinion poll results, and discuss the ethics and politics of syringe access reform. It concludes with key recommendations for public policy.
Review of heavy hadron spectroscopy

More than 30 years after the November Revolution, charmonium spectroscopy continues to surprise and challenge. A new era began in April of 2003 when BaBar announced the discovery of the enigmatic Ds(2317). This state continues to perplex us and Fermilab, CLEO, BES, BaBar, and Belle continue to add grist to the mill. This conference report is a brief review of the new heavy hadron spectroscopy.
The "Broadest Reasonable Interpretation" and Applying Issue Preclusion to Administrative Patent Claim Construction

Inventions are tangible. Yet patents comprise words, and words are imprecise. Thus, disputes over patents involve a process known as “claim construction,” which formally clarifies the meaning of a patent claim’s words and, therefore, the scope of the underlying property right. Adversarial claim construction commonly occurs in various Article III and Article I settings, such as district courts or the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). When these proceedings ignore each other’s claim constructions, a patent’s scope can become inconsistent and unpredictable. The doctrine of issue preclusion could help with this problem. The Supreme Court recently reemphasized in B & B Hardware v. Hargis Industries that administrative decisions can have issue preclusive effect. But district courts and the PTAB use formally different legal standards in claim construction, where the district court takes a narrower view of a patent’s scope. This Note contends that a claim construction determination made by the PTAB under the “broadest reasonable interpretation” standard should, indeed, be the broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim. To facilitate uniformity and public notice, issue preclusion should be applied such that the PTAB’s “broadest reasonable interpretation” is an outer interpretive bound of a patent’s scope in subsequent district court litigation.
Just Conduct: Regulating Bench-Bar Relationships

In this Article, I examine relationships between the American legal profession and judiciaries through the lens of judicial conduct regulation. Close relationships between bench and bar have been theorized to increase the political efficacy of these related institutions, but the increased political efficacy can be used to undermine as well as to support liberal democratic values. I argue that the legal profession’s ongoing involvement in defining and regulating permissible judicial conduct has eroded the legitimacy and independence of both institutions. Through the twentieth-century process of judicial conduct regulation reform, the profession increased its own power at the expense of judicial power. Through the resulting codes of judicial conduct, the profession ensured that special and more lenient standards would apply to lawyers’ interactions with judges. The result has been a challenge to core liberal democratic values through problematic appearances, problematic contacts, and excessively close relationships between bench and bar. I argue that these relationships should be voluntarily reconditioned to ensure that strong and independent judiciaries are supported by a strong and independent profession.
Alcohol Advertising and Alcohol Consumption by Adolescents

This study investigates the effects of alcohol advertising on adolescent alcohol consumption. The theory of an industry response function and evidence from prior studies indicate the importance of maximizing the variance in advertising measures. Monitoring the Future (MTF) and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) data are augmented with alcohol advertising, originating on the market level, for five media. The large sample of the MTF allows estimation of race and gender-specific models. The longitudinal nature of the NLSY97 allows controls for unobserved heterogeneity with state-level and individual fixed effects. Price and advertising effects are generally larger for females relative to males. Controls for individual heterogeneity yield larger advertising effects, implying that the MTF results may understate the effects of alcohol advertising. Results from the NLSY97 suggest that a 28% reduction in alcohol advertising would reduce adolescent monthly alcohol participation from 25% to between 24 and 21%. For binge participation, the reduction would be from 12% to between 11 and 8%. The past month price-participation elasticity is estimated at -0.26, consistent with prior studies. The results show that reduction of alcohol advertising can produce a modest decline in adolescent alcohol consumption, though effects may vary by race and gender.
Close Corporations and Private Companies Under American and English Law: Protecting Minorities

Euphemia Donahue, a minority stockholder1 in The Rodd Electrotype Company of New England, Inc., brought suit against the company, its directors, and Harry C. Rodd, a previous director, officer and the company's controlling shareholder. The plaintiff sought rescission of a July, 1970 transaction, in which the company purchased forty-five shares of its own stock2 from Harry C. Rodd, at eight hundred dollars (US) per share, totalling thirty-six thousand dollars (US).
Repo Market Effects of the Term Securities Lending Facility

The Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) was recently introduced by the Federal Reserve to promote liquidity in the financing markets for Treasury and other collateral. We evaluate one aspect of the program – the extent to which it has narrowed repo spreads between Treasury collateral and lower quality collateral. We find that TSLF operations have precipitated a significant narrowing of repo spreads. More refined tests indicate the market conditions and types of operations associated with the program's effectiveness. Various additional tests, including a split sample test, suggest that our findings are robust.
What is ‘General’ Jurisprudence? A Critique of Universalistic Claims by Philosophical Concepts of Law

AbstractThis essay compares two different types of general jurisprudence: one philosophical in orientation and the second with an empirical bent. These approaches are represented by two recent book...
Twenty-First Century Tort Theories: The Internalist/Externalist Debate

INTRODUCTION 419 I. A SOCIOLOGICAL CRITIQUE OF ONE-DIMENSIONAL TORT LAW 426 A. CIVIL RECOURSE THEORY: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION 426 B. SHRINKING TORT’S PUBLIC PURPOSES 426 II. IN DEFENSE OF CIVIL RECOURSE: GOLDBERG AND ZIPURSKY 433 A. GOLDBERG’S CORE CONCEPTS OF CIVIL RECOURSE THEORY 434 B. BENJAMIN ZIPURSKY: CIVIL RECOURSE APPLIED TO MODERN CASES ..... 436 III. MEET THE CRITICS OF CIVIL RECOURSE THEORY 438 A. GUIDO CALABRESI’S CRITIQUE OF CIVIL RECOURSE’S REDUCTIONISM... 438 B. RICHARD POSNER’S CRITIQUE OF CIVIL RECOURSE THEORY 440 C. CIVIL RECOURSE THEORY MEETS CRITICAL FEMINIST THEORY 443 D. CHRISTOPHER ROBINETTE’S: TORTS’ TWO DISUPRAVERGENT ROADS .... 445
Attribution and Reciprocity in an Experimental Labor Market

The gift‐exchange game has established that, in the laboratory, higher wages offered by an employer lead to considerably more costly effort provision. However, it is unclear whether this behavior reflects reciprocity or other forms of social preferences. This article tests whether attribution of volition in choosing a wage has a significant effect on subsequent costly effort provision. Treatments varied whether wages were chosen by the employer or by an external process. We see that both distributional concerns and reciprocity play a major role. The data are examined in the light of recent utility models.
Continuing dangers of disinformation in corporate accounting reports

Abstract Insiders can artificially deflect the market prices of financial instruments from their full information or “inside” value by issuing deceptive accounting reports. Incentive support for disinformational activity comes through forms of compensation that allow corporate insiders to profit extravagantly from temporary boosts in a firm's accounting condition or performance. In principle, outside auditing firms and other watchdog institutions help outside investors to identify and ignore disinformation. In practice, accountants can and do earn substantial profits from credentialling loophole-ridden measurement principles that conceal adverse developments from outside stakeholders. Although the Sarbanes–Oxley Act now requires top corporate officials to affirm the essential economic accuracy of any data their firms publish, officials of outside auditing firms are not obliged to express every reservation they may have about the fundamental accuracy of the reports they audit. This asymmetry in obligations permits auditing firms to continue to be compensated for knowingly and willfully employing valuation and itemization rules that generate misleading reports without fully exposing themselves to penalties their clients face for hiding adverse information. It is ironic that what are called accounting “ethics” fail to embrace the profession's common-law duty of assuring the economic meaningfulness of the statements that clients pay it to endorse.
Large–Sample Evidence on the Debt Covenant Hypothesis

We use Dealscan, a database of private corporate lending agreements, to provide large–sample tests of the debt covenant hypothesis. Dealscan offers several advantages over the data available in previous studies, principally larger and more representative samples and the availability of extensive actual covenant detail. These advantages allow us to construct powerful tests in which we find clear support for the debt covenant hypothesis. We also use these data to provide broad evidence on the economic role of debt covenants. We find that private lenders set debt covenants tightly and use them as “trip wires” for borrowers, that technical violations occur relatively often, and that violations are not necessarily associated with financial distress. Finally, since we measure covenant slack directly, we report evidence that the extensively–used leverage variable is a relatively noisy proxy for closeness to covenants.
Honesty in Managerial Reporting

This study reports the results of three experiments that examine how preferences for wealth and honesty affect managerial reporting. We find that subjects often sacrifice wealth to make honest or partially honest reports, and they generally do not lie more as the payoff to lying increases. We also find less honesty under a contract that provides a smaller share of the total surplus to the manager than under one that provides a larger share, suggesting that the extent of honesty may depend on how the surplus is divided between the manager and the firm. The optimal agency contract yields more firm profit than a contract that relies exclusively on honest reporting. However, a modified version of the optimal agency contract, which makes use of subjects' preferences for honest reporting, yields the highest firm profit. These results suggest that firms may be able to design more profitable employment contracts than those identified by conventional economic analysis.
Rethinking Crime Legislation: History and Harshness

There is a truth about the criminal law that scholars evade as much as they criticize: the criminal law is produced by legislators (rather than the experts). The author states she does not know of any way to make law in a democracy other than through the voters' representatives. And, yet, it is the standard pose of the criminal law scholar to denigrate legislatures and politicians as vindictive, hysterical, or stupid. All of these things may be true but name-calling is a poor substitute for analysis. As in constitutional law, so too in criminal law, it is time to put contempt aside and begin the process of understanding the history and the institutional dynamics of our nation's crime legislation.This is not a claim that the process is wise or rational; in fact, the author’s present hunch is that the legislative process is subject to regular, cycling malfunction. Her point is that we need to consider deeper questions-we need to ask whether legislative malfunctions are built into the political system. In other words, we need to turn to history, and specifically the history of crime legislation in the United States, to get a sense of its patterns over time. Here, the author offers preliminary support for the claim that wars on crime -- at least as political and legislative phenomena -- are not new, nor post-World War II, phenomena as they are conventionally viewed. At a minimum, this evidence should prompt us to ask whether the crime problem in America is at least in part a reflection of the structure of American "crime politics."
Court Reform and Breathing Space under the Establishment Clause

Flast v. Cohen held that federal taxpayers have standing to challenge government spending for religion. While Frothingham v. Mellon generally prohibits taxpayer standing in federal courts, the Court reasoned that the Establishment Clause specifically prohibits taxation in any amount to fund unconstitutional religious spending. For several decades Flast has been settled law that supplied jurisdiction in many leading establishment cases. But Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. and Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn signal that Flast may soon be overruled. This jurisdictional ferment raises two questions: Why this sudden shift? And what does it signify for the Establishment Clause? This article develops two themes. The first is that the Court wants to cut down on the amount of Establishment Clause litigation, in an asymmetrical fashion that increases the prospect of government aid for religion. This “court reform” explanation denies the relevance of individual psychic harm from and suggests that the Clause has little to do with governmental religious spending. The second theme is that the Justices are preparing a major substantive departure from existing doctrine, but have not yet worked out its contours. Rather than clouding doctrine with messy transitional rulings, they seek “breathing space” until the best opportunity arises for a bold transformative departure. A cutoff of taxpayer standing, by reducing the frequency of Establishment Clause litigation, may afford the time and circumstances needed to fashion a new direction. The retreat from Flast has important ramifications. By removing an entire class of cases, it surrenders control over those issues to the government’s political branches, giving them largely unreviewable discretion about whether and how to treat religion in taxing and spending. This converts financial arrangements between church and state from a constitutional to a political issue. It also renders the commands of the Establishment Clause regarding spending on religion largely precatory.
Wanting What Is Fair: How Party Cues and Information about Income Inequality Affect Public Support for Taxes

Income inequality has risen dramatically in the United States, with potentially negative social, economic, and political consequences. Governments can use redistributive taxes to combat inequality,...
Buyers' Alliances for Bargaining Power

We provide a novel explanation as to why forming an alliance of buyers (or sellers) across separate markets can be advantageous when input prices are determined by bargaining. Our explanation helps to understand the prevalence of buyer cooperatives among small and medium-sized firms.
Firm Leverage, Consumer Demand, and Employment Losses during the Great Recession

This article argues that firms’ balance sheets were instrumental in the transmission of consumer demand shocks during the Great Recession. Using micro-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we find that establishments of more highly levered firms experienced significantly larger employment losses in response to declines in local consumer demand. These results are not driven by firms being less productive, having expanded too much prior to the Great Recession, or being generally more sensitive to fluctuations in either aggregate employment or house prices. Likewise, at the county level, we find that counties with more highly levered firms experienced significantly larger declines in employment in response to local consumer demand shocks. Accordingly, firms’ balance sheets also matter for aggregate employment. Our results suggest a possible role for employment policies that target firms directly besides conventional stimulus.
Local Economic Impacts of Investments in Community Technology Centers: An Empirical Investigation

Although community technology centers (CTCs) provide a host of services that may have economic consequences, few studies have attempted to empirically assess the impact of CTCs on local communities. Controlling for broadband availability and demographics, this study found that there is a small but positive and significant impact of CTC quality on median household income, at the county level. In addition to bridging the digital divide for disadvantaged populations, our research shows that there are also quantifiable economic benefits from CTC investments.
Visual Representation: Implications for Decision Making

Abstract A large number of visualization tools have been created to help decision makers understand increasingly rich databases of product, customer, sales force, and other types of marketing information. This article presents a framework for thinking about how visual representations are likely to affect the decision processes or tasks that marketing managers and consumers commonly face, particularly those that involve the analysis or synthesis of substantial amounts of data. From this framework, the authors derive a set of testable propositions that serve as an agenda for further research. Although visual representations are likely to improve marketing manager efficiency, offer new insights, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, they may also bias decisions by focusing attention on a limited set of alternatives, increasing the salience and evaluability of less diagnostic information, and encouraging inaccurate comparisons. Given this, marketing managers are advised to subject insights from visu...
Law and Economics as a Pillar of Legal Education

This paper reports the distribution of doctoral degrees in economics and in other fields among faculty at the 26 highest-ranked law schools. Almost one-third of professors at the top 13 law schools have a Ph.D. degree, with 9% having a Ph.D. in economics. Law school rank is highly correlated with the share of faculty holding a Ph.D. in economics and is less correlated with the share of faculty with other doctoral degrees. Law and economics is a major area of legal scholarship based on citations in the law literature and other impact rankings. In recognition of the increased importance of economics in legal education, in 2006 Vanderbilt University established a joint J.D./Ph.D. program in law and economics. The program is housed in the law school and offers 11 new Ph.D. courses designed to fully integrate economics into legal education. We provide information on the genesis and operation of the program.
Essential Self-Adjointness of Perturbed Biharmonic Operators via Conformally Transformed Metrics

We give sufficient conditions for the essential self-adjointness of perturbed biharmonic operators acting on sections of a Hermitian vector bundle over a Riemannian manifold with additional assumptions, such as lower semi-bounded Ricci curvature or bounded sectional curvature. In the case of lower semi-bounded Ricci curvature, we formulate our results in terms of the completeness of the metric that is conformal to the original one, via a conformal factor that depends on a minorant of the perturbing potential V. In the bounded sectional curvature situation, we are able to relax the growth condition on the minorant of V imposed in an earlier article. In this context, our growth condition on the minorant of V is consistent with the literature on the self-adjointness of perturbed biharmonic operators on $\mathbb {R}^{n}$ .
Examining the Effect of the Earned Income Tax Credit on the Labor Market Participation of Families on Welfare

This paper examines the employment effects of the earned income tax credit (EITC). We use an unique dataset, created by matching administrative data from public assistance records, unemployment insurance records, and federal tax returns for a sample of California residents. We conduct a set of four tests to assess our ability to isolate the causal effects of the EITC on employment. The first test is based on the intuition that if the EITC alters employment, all else being equal, employment rates for two-or more child families should grow relative to the employment rates of one-child families, as credit amounts available to these groups of families diverged over the 1990s. The second test examines whether or not people eligible for the EITC actually file tax returns and claim it. The third test is based on the intuition that, if the EITC, and not other factors such as the strong economy in the 1990s, is causing employment differences between families with two or more children relative to those with one child, we should expect to see no employment differences (after conditioning on other characteristics) between families with two children and families with three or more children, since the EITC did not change differentially for the latter two groups. The fourth test conditions the sample on those who do not file tax returns and again examines employment changes in the 1990s for families with two or more children relative to families with one child. Using fixed-effects empirical employment models estimated on a sample of single-parent families, our coefficient estimates are consistent with the EITC having a substantial, positive effect on the employment of families who have used or will use welfare.
“Open Access,” Legal Publishing, and Online Repositories

This paper discusses the efforts of the Open Access movement to provide scientific and scholarly information over the Internet. The origin of the movement is described as are the benefits of free access to researchers in the scientific, technical and medical fields.
The social construction of the Great Depression: Industrial policy during the 1930s in the United States, Britain, and France

The Great Depression called Western nations' most fundamental ideas about economic growth into question by disrupting the march of progress. Governments responded by rejecting orthodox growth strategies in favor of new policies they hoped would turn their economies around.1 In the realm of macro-economic policy, governments had followed a common orthodoxy before the 1930s that prescribed adhering to the gold standard and cutting spending in hard times; yet during the depression they adopted a new orthodoxy that prescribed exactly the opposite: currency devaluation and increased public spending.
Moral elevation reduces prejudice against gay men

Disgust is linked to social evaluation. People with higher disgust sensitivity exhibit more sexual prejudice, and inducing disgust increases sexual prejudice. We tested whether inducing moral elevation, the theoretical opposite of disgust, would reduce sexual prejudice. In four studies (N = 3622), we induced elevation with inspiring videos and then measured sexual prejudice with implicit and explicit measures. Compared to control videos that elicited no particular affective state, we found that elevation reduced implicit and explicit sexual prejudice, albeit very slightly. No effect was observed when the target of social evaluation was changed to race (Black-White). Inducing amusement, another positive emotion, did not significantly affect sexual prejudice. We conclude that elevation weakly but reliably reduces prejudice towards gay men.
Expectations Hypotheses Tests

We investigate the expectations hypotheses of the term structure of interest rates and of the foreign exchange market using vector autoregressive methods for U.S. dollar, Deutsche mark, and British pound interest rates and exchange rates. We examine Wald, Lagrange multiplier, and distance metric tests by iterating on approximate solutions that require only matrix inversions. Bias-corrected, constrained VARs provide Monte Carlo simulations. Wald tests grossly overreject the null, Lagrange multiplier tests slightly underreject, and distance metric tests overreject. A common interpretation emerges from the small sample statistics. The evidence against the expectations hypotheses is much less strong than under asymptotic inference. ACCORDING TO THE EXPECTATIONS HYPOTHESIS, information in current interest rates provides the conditional expectation of future asset prices. The expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates ~EH-TS! states that the current term spread between a long-term interest rate and a short-term interest rate is the expected value of a weighted average of the expected future changes in the short-term interest rate. This theory, popularized in the writings of Fisher ~1930!, Keynes ~1930!, and Hicks ~1953!, continues to be a way that many economists think about the determination of long-term interest rates. Fisher ~1930! and Keynes ~1930! also discuss the expectations hypothesis in the foreign exchange market ~EH-FX!, which states that the interest-rate differential between two currencies is the conditional expected value of the rate of depreciation of the high interest-rate currency relative to the low interest-rate currency. Because of covered interest arbitrage, the interest differential equals the forward premium, which is the percentage difference between the forward exchange rate and the spot rate. Hence, the EH-FX is equivalent to the unbiasedness hypothesis, which is the proposition that the logarithm of the forward exchange rate is an unbiased predic* Bekaert and Hodrick are from Columbia University and are Research Associates of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Our research benefitted from the comments of Federico
Out of work and into school: Labor market policies and college enrollment during the Great Recession☆

Abstract The Great Recession brought large increases in unemployment and college enrollment; we examine how changing state labor market conditions and state-specific variation in Unemployment Insurance (UI) interact to affect enrollment outcomes. We identify a substantial role of the UI program in affecting post-secondary enrollment choices. We provide some of the first evidence that the duration of UI affects a displaced individual's propensity to enroll, and suggestive evidence that these effects are larger in states with more inclusive approved training laws. These findings identify a substantial overlap between UI policy and post-secondary enrollment decisions, indicating the potential importance of UI in not only providing income but also facilitating investments in skills.
Justice Jackson and the Second Flag-Salute Case: Reason and Passion in Opinion-Writing

I. Introduction In 1943, the Supreme Court handed down West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.1 With Justice Robert H. Jackson writing for the six-Justice majority, the Court upheld the First Amendment right of Jehovah's Witnesses schoolchildren to refuse to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance, state-imposed obligations that the children and their parents contended were acts of idolatry that violated biblical commands. Judge Richard A. Posner has said that Justice Jackson's effort “may be the most eloquent majority opinion in the history of the Supreme Court.”2
Five arguments on the rationality of suicide terrorists

Abstract This is a critical review of five arguments against the scholarly consensus that individual suicide terrorists are rational actors. The first three arguments are analytic, meaning that they hold that suicide terrorism is inherently irrational, based on assumptions regarding the nature of the perpetrators' interests as individuals. The fourth argument is empirical, based on alleged evidence of suicide terrorist psychopathology. And the fifth argument is pragmatic, based on the strategic implications of ‘conceding’ the status of rationality to enemies. This article highlights weaknesses in these arguments and considers assessing the rationality of suicide terrorists by measuring their act to cultural or community goals subject to a division of labor principle.
Buy, Sell or Hold? Analyst Fraud From Economic and Natural Law Perspectives

Investor protection and healthy capital markets are commonly acknowledged as the objectives historically driving U.S. federal securities legislation and policy. Less commonly appreciated, or perhaps intentionally neglected, is the critical role that virtue was understood to play in realizing these objectives by the architects and original enforcers of the securities laws. This understanding has largely been lost, in no small part, due to the success that law and economics has had in dominating securities law thinking. This Article posits that this original understanding can be rediscovered, and the role of virtue restored to its rightful place in securities regulation, via application of a natural law approach to securities law issues. Within the context of the recent research analyst conflict-of-interest problem, this Article compares a natural law approach to the problem with a law and economics approach. The conclusion reached is that the natural law approach is preferable on account of its endorsement of solutions that are more comprehensive, and, moreover, more harmonious with the historical values and objectives of U.S. securities law.
The simple analytics of the environmental Kuznets curve

Abstract Evidence suggests that some pollutants follow an inverse-U-shaped pattern relative to countries’ incomes, a relationship that has been called an ‘environmental Kuznets curve’. We present a simple and straight-forward static model of the microfoundations of this relationship, in which the curve depends on increasing returns in the technological link between consumption of a desired good and abatement of its undesirable byproduct. The curve does not depend on the dynamics of growth, political institutions, or even externalities, and can be consistent with market failure or efficiency. We conclude by presenting empirical support for increasing returns to abating some common air pollutants.
Disentangling Preferences and Learning in Brand Choice Models

In recent years there has been a growing stream of literature in marketing and economics that models consumers as Bayesian learners. Such learning behavior is often embedded within a discrete choice framework that is then calibrated on scanner panel data. At the same time, it is now accepted wisdom that disentangling preference heterogeneity and state dependence is critical in any attempt to understand either construct. We posit that this confounding between state dependence and heterogeneity often carries through to Bayesian learning models. That is, the failure to adequately account for preference heterogeneity may result in over-or underestimation of the learning process because this heterogeneity is also reflected in the initial conditions. Using a unique data set that contains stated preferences (survey) and actual purchase data (scanner panel) for the same group of consumers, we attempt to untangle the effects of preference heterogeneity and state dependence, where the latter arises from Bayesian learning. Our results are striking and suggest that measured brand beliefs can predict choices quite well and, moreover, that in the absence of such measured preference information, the Bayesian learning behavior for consumer packaged goods is vastly overstated. The inclusion of preference information significantly reduces evidence for aggregate-level learning and substantially changes the nature of individual-level learning. Using individual-level outcomes, we illustrate why the lack of preference information leads to faulty inferences.
On Media Consolidation, the Public Interest, and Angels Earning Wings

Introduction 614 I. The Power of Broadcasting 616 II. The Public Interest Standard: Lofty Goals 618 III. The Public Interest Standard: Today’s Earthly Reality 624 IV. The June 2003 Media Ownership Decision: The Latest Blow 625 V. Restless Angel? 629 Conclusion 633
Bankruptcy Step Zero

In RadLAX Gateway Hotel, LLC v Amalgamated Bank, the Supreme Court’s statutory interpretation focuses on an emerging theme of its bankruptcy jurisprudence: the proper domain of the bankruptcy judge. While one might expect the Court to approach that question of domain as it has for administrative agencies, that is not the approach taken. This article explores the Court’s approach to bankruptcy’s domain. In doing so, we connect three principal strands of the Court’s bankruptcy jurisprudence. The first strand, embodied in Butner v United States, centers on the idea that the bankruptcy forum must vindicate nonbankruptcy rights. The second, most recently addressed in Stern v Marshall, focuses on the limits of bankruptcy judges in deciding and issuing final judgment on the issues before them. Bankruptcy judges must limit themselves to deciding issues central to the administration of the bankruptcy process. RadLAX is the continuation of a third strand that makes it plain that the Court reads ambiguous provisions of the Bankruptcy Code to narrow the range of decisions over which the bankruptcy judge may exercise her discretion — at least when the exercise of that discretion might impact nonbankruptcy rights. The resulting bankruptcy jurisprudence is in stark contrast with the Court’s approach in administrative law. This paper attempts to make sense of this state of affairs and connect it with the realities of bankruptcy practice today.
Hartle-Hawking vacuum for c = 1 tachyon condensation

Quantum vacua are constructed for a time-symmetric cosmology describing closed string tachyon condensation in two-dimensional string theory. Due to the euclidean periodicity of the solution, and despite its time dependence, we are able to construct thermal states at discrete values of the temperature. The asymptotic thermal Green functions and stress energy tensor are computed and found to have an intriguing resemblance to those in the Hartle-Hawking vacuum of a black hole.
Restatement of Place

Images and intuitions of place are ubiquitous in human thought. Dominion over place is one of the first anchors of the conception of law, providing a rationale for sovereign control over defined land boundaries. Place is also embedded in attempts to define rights and regulate conduct. For example, in slave times in the United States, the rights of masters and the duties of slaves were conceived within an assumption of proximity, duties of obedience, and a return consideration of paternalism and care. At the same time, slaves’ bodies became a tradable commodity and their labor an input into commodity pricing on international markets, thereby combining a place-anchored rationale in the governing legal rationalization with faceless commerce across borders in human bodies and forced labor. Ideas about place have increased in visibility in the regulation of the female body, with attempts to map the body and demarcate permissible, or public and observable parts of the body fairly subject to control over a place. With the increased mobility of people, both en masse and using modern travel for individual transit, and with the arrival of cyber reality, the importance of place is in transition. At the same time, place has mystical meanings, manifested in the impulse to claim as sacred sites of death by accident or by mass destruction. The demand is expressed by improvised memorials such as roadside crosses and formal designations of a site such as the World Trade Center for commemoration as well as commerce. Law must mediate the competing interests implicated by differing views of the social needs affecting such sites. This Article explores these and other contexts for the uncertain moral weight in law of place as a guiding factor for rules and decisions. Place has no overarching theory in law. In light of its many contexts, place is a complex and subtle factor in law. The task of fashioning a Restatement of Place across many dimensions is by no means patently manageable, but a sustained effort should bear fruit. The ambiguities in our collective understanding of place as an orienting feature of our legally relevant interactions merit close study, organizing theory, and reformist efforts.
The Efficiency and Stability of Banks and Markets

Traditionally, financial systems have been bank-based or market-based. The efficiency properties of these systems are compared in various dimensions. These include risk sharing, information provision, funding new industries, corporate governance, and law, finance and politics. Both systems have advantages and disadvantages. With regard to stability, both bank-based and market-based systems are subject to crises. Going forward a financial system with financial intermediaries and markets would have many advantages and few disadvantages.
Multidimensional Responsiveness: The Determinants of Legislators' Representational Priorities

Scholars of American politics typically conceptualize representation as mass-elite policy congruence, and in doing so have found several factors that hinder that relationship. These findings are at odds with the fact that American legislators often gain enough support to win re-election. I present an explanation for this puzzle by showing that legislators strategically provide four unique dimensions of representation to their constituents: policy, service, allocation, and descriptive. I unify these dimensions in a single theoretical model of legislators’ priorities, then test it with data from survey experiments administered to 1,175 state legislators. I posit that legislators systematically emphasize some dimensions over others to further the goal of reelection. Given the constraints of resources and costs, legislators must choose their representational focus based on perceived electoral benefits. I find that institutional, district, and individual-level traits alter these resources, costs, and benefits, thereby driving legislators’ strategic representational behavior.