cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Making and Breaking Habits: Teaching (and Learning) Cultural Context, Self-Awareness, and Intercultural Communication Through Case Supervision in a Client-Service Legal Clinic

This Article begins by offering teaching objectives that can be used to focus supervision and education on effective representation of clients from different cultures as issues arise in the course of representation. The Article then discusses the context of student supervision and explains how case supervision sessions can be extremely effective moments during which to pursue those teaching goals. The Article next examines vignettes that grew out of cases handled by the University of New Mexico's Clinical Law Program.
Legislative note: the abolition of the death penalty for drug offenses in The Gambia

The Gambia, the smallest mainland country in Africa, is increasingly a transit point for illicit drug traffic between Latin America and Europe. As part of President Yayeh Jammeh’s attempts to crack down on this drug trade, in October 2010 the Gambian legislature passed a mandatory sentence of death for drug trafficking for persons possessing more than 250 grams of cocaine or heroin. The law was not constitutionally operable, however, because of Article 18(2) of the Gambian constitution, which forbids the death penalty for crimes other than aggravated or premeditated murder. Consequently, the death penalty for drug trafficking was abolished in April 2011.
Asymmetric information in bilateral trade and in markets: An inversion result

Abstract I consider bilateral trade between a seller and a buyer with private valuations. The seller makes a take-it-or-leave-it price offer. If the seller observes the buyerʼs valuation (symmetric information), bilateral trade is trivially efficient. If the seller cannot observe the valuation (asymmetric information), bilateral trade is inefficient. This bilateral trading game is embedded into a large matching market. In the steady-state equilibrium of the market game, the relation between the informational regime and efficiency is inverted: With small frictions efficiency obtains if information is asymmetric. If information is symmetric, however, the trading outcome can be very inefficient—even if frictions vanish.
Examining the Examiners: SEC Error Detection Rates and Human Capital Allocation

The ability to detect misreporting is an important aspect of financial reporting regulation. I derive a measure of SEC error detection rates using information from comment letter reviews. Conditional on the SEC issuing a comment letter, I find that the review team detects an error resulting in a restatement in 4.6 percent of cases, while firms eventually restate financial reports for 13.6 percent of periods under review. My measure of SEC error detection rates is the ratio of reviews that detect an error to total reviews that could have detected an error. I document a positive association between detection rates and review team size. Using a novel approach to identify examiner characteristics, I show that this association is driven by the number of accountants on the review team. I find an economically insignificant association between individual examiner performance and economic or career incentives.
Education corruption, reform, and growth: Case of Post-Soviet Russia

Abstract This paper investigates a possible impact of education corruption on economic growth in Russia. It argues that high levels of education corruption may harm total factor productivity in the long run, primarily through lowering the level of human capital and slowing down the pace of its accumulation. Ethical standards learned in the process of training in universities can also affect the standards of practice in different professions. The growing level of economic productivity is not likely to reduce education corruption in the short run, but can eventually lead to implementation of higher ethical standards in the education sector.
Optimal Leverage in Real Estate Investment

This article is a theoretical examination of optimal financial leverage for real estate investment in the presence of uncertainty. The main result shows that uncertainty creates the possibility that a borrower will default on a real estate loan and that this possibility is the underlying factor in optimal leverage calculations for both borrower and lender.
Contracting Spyware by Contract

The question of what constitutes "spyware" is controversial because many programs that are adware in the eyes of their distributors may be perceived as spyware in the eyes of the end user. Many of these programs are loaded on the computers of end users after the end user has agreed to the terms of a license presented in a click-through interface. This paper analyzes whether it might be possible to reduce the volume of unwanted software loaded on end users' computers by applying contract law doctrine more strictly. Unwanted programs are often bundled with programs that the end user wants, but the disclosure that additional programs will be downloaded is usually buried deeply within dense form contracts. Even though this makes it difficult for end users to recognize that they are agreeing to have multiple programs installed at once and that some of those programs may be objectionable, US courts are unlikely to invalidate those disclosures. This is because in business to consumer online contracting cases in the US, courts have tended to be very deferential to the intentions of the merchants in designing the contract interfaces. In the EU, by contrast, such conduct by software distributors would not be binding on consumers. Under unfair contract terms laws in place in EU member states, consumer objections to bundled software could not be overridden by terms hidden in standard form contracts.
Did Medicare Induce Pharmaceutical Innovation

The introduction of Medicare in 1965 was the single largest change in health insurance coverage in U.S. history. Many economists and commentators have conjectured that the introduction of Medicare may have also been an important impetus for the development of new drugs that are now commonly used by the elderly and have substantially extended their life expectancy. In this paper, we investigate whether Medicare induced pharmaceutical innovations directed towards the elderly. Medicare could have played such a role only if two conditions were met. First, Medicare would have to increase drug spending by the elderly. Second, the pharmaceutical companies would have to respond to the change in market size for drugs caused by Medicare by changing the direction of their research. Our empirical work finds no evidence of a "first-stage" effect of Medicare on prescription drug expenditure by the elderly. Correspondingly, we also find no evidence of a shift in pharmaceutical innovation towards therapeutic categories most used by the elderly. On the whole, therefore, our evidence does not provide support for the hypothesis that Medicare had a major effect on the direction of pharmaceutical innovation.
Hopf Algebra Actions and Rational Ideals

This note discusses a framework for the investigation of the prime spectrum of an associative algebra A that is equipped with an action of a Hopf algebra H. In particular, we study a notion of H-rationality for ideals of A and comment on a possible Dixmier-Moeglin equivalence for H-prime ideals of A.
How Attribute Quantity Influences Option Choice

Abstract Products can be described by different numbers of attributes, but can the mere number of attributes presented across a choice set influence what type of options people choose? This article demonstrates that attribute numerosity tends to benefit certain types of options more than others and consequently has systematic effects on choice. Because attributes often serve as a heuristic cue for product usefulness, they benefit options that people perceive as relatively inferior on this dimension. Consistent with this perspective, five studies demonstrate that attribute numerosity benefits hedonic more than utilitarian options by increasing the extent to which the former appear useful. Consequently, increasing attribute quantity equally across the choice set shifts choice toward hedonic options, regardless of whether the attributes are hedonic, utilitarian, or mixed in nature. Consistent with this conceptualization, these effects become amplified when decision makers engage in heuristic processing and w...
How States Facilitate Small Arms Trafficking in Africa: A Theoretical and Juristic Interpretation

Small arms trafficking is complex and involves a host of actors. As numerous court documents, transcripts, United Nations and NGO reports have revealed, many state institutions play a prominent role in the facilitation of, complicity in, and implicit involvement in black and grey arms trafficking. We suggest that if we are to consider the vast number of actors involved in the trafficking of small arms, the issue of controls is highly problematic, given the extent of limited applicable international legal doctrines, such as joint criminal enterprise, criminal organization, or collective criminality. Furthermore, there are broader political issues that hinder efforts of control as highlighted by the state crime literature, including issues of enforcement, political will and states positions to hinder the advancement of levels of accountability for their own behaviors. Consequentially, our focus here is not to empirically test the etiological factors of states complicit or implicit involvement in arms trafficking, but instead to move the discussion forward to broader theoretical and juristic issues associated with efforts to control arms trafficking. If the goal is to reduce illegal arms trafficking (and subsequent numbers of civilian deaths) policies and controls must be based, not only on the immediate or apparent actors, the role of states in the facilitation of this type of crime.
Jet formation in the magnetospheres of supermassive black holes: analytic solutions describing energy loss through Blandford–Znajek processes

In this paper, we provide exact solutions for the extraction of energy from a rotating black hole via both the electromagnetic Poynting flux and matter currents. By appropriate choice of a radially independent poloidal function Λ(θ), we find solutions where the dominant outward energy flux is along the polar axis, consistent not only with a jet-like collimated outflow, but also with a weaker flux of energy along the equatorial plane. Unlike previously obtained solutions, the magnetosphere is free of magnetic monopoles everywhere.
Professional Sports League Commissioners’ Authority and Collective Bargaining

With the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL) collective bargaining agreements set to expire within the next two years, many experts are already predicting what changes may be made to both leagues'governing labor documents. One likely point of contention between the owners and the players' unionsthough rarely discussed in the experts 'predictive discourse-is the power of the respective league commissioners to punish or discipline wayward players for misbehavior committed off of the court or field. This article will analyze this area of sports law by exploring this power of each league's sports commissioner, as well as its place and significance in collective bargaining. This article will begin in Part 11 by giving a brief overview of the rise in commissioner discipline for players' misbehavior committed off of the court or field and why commissioners punish in this manner. Parts 11 and 111 will track and situate the source of the commissioners 'power to discipline for such reasons-namely, in the leagues' respective collective bargaining agreements. Part IV will describe how courts and arbitrators have treated commissioners'decisions to punish players for their actions off of the court or field, and posit why such treatment is a concern for the labor unions representing professional athletes in these two leagues. Part IV will then give an overview of the collective bargaining process and the effect it has on this power of each league commissioner. Part IV will also explore why the players' unions will likely make this power of the league commissioner a provision of the collective bargaining agreement that will be negotiated over, unlike in years past. Finally, Part V will provide some concluding insights. " Associate Professor of Law, Marquette University Law School; J.D., Yale Law School; B.A., Loyola Marymount University. I would like to thank Professor Janine Kim for her comments on an earlier draft of this article; Ben Tulis, Emeka Anyanwu, and the other editors of the Texas Review of Entertainment and Sports Law for inviting me to speak at their symposium entitled "The Implications of the Expiring Collective Bargaining Agreements in the NFL and NBA," as well for their research and editing assistance; Alex Porteshawver and Ashley Wilson for their research assistance; and Marquette University Law School for its financial support. HeinOnline -11 Tex. Rev. Ent. & Sports L. 179 2009-2010 TEXAS REVIEW OF ENTERTAINMENT AND SPORTS LAW
Discovering William Cook: Ten Sources for Reconstructing the Life of a Lawyer

Ms. Leary uses a case study to describe ten categories of resources for reconstructing a Manhattan lawyer�s life. These resources answer questions about his law practice, scholarship, personal life, personality, values, and philanthropy. The case study uses today�s resources to look far back into the details of the life of William W. Cook, who gave his fortune to the University of Michigan Law School.
CEO after-tax compensation incentives and corporate tax avoidance

I examine the association between CEOs’ after-tax incentives and their firms’ levels of tax avoidance. Economic theory holds that firms should compensate CEOs on an after-tax basis when the expected tax savings generated from additional incentive alignment outweigh the incremental compensation demanded by CEOs for bearing additional tax-related compensation risk. Using publicly available data, I estimate CEOs’ after-tax incentives and find a negative relation between the use of after-tax incentives and effective tax rates. While the results suggest that greater use of after-tax measures in CEO compensation leads to higher tax savings, it is possible that these savings will lead to lower pre-tax returns, or implicit taxes. Therefore, I also examine the association between the use of after-tax incentives and implicit taxes and find a positive association between the two. Finally, I find a significant positive relation between after-tax incentives and total CEO compensation, suggesting that CEOs who are compensated after-tax demand a premium for the additional risk they bear.
Good Booms, Bad Booms

Credit booms usually precede financial crises. However, some credit booms end in a crisis (bad booms) and others do not (good booms). We document that, while all booms start with an increase of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and Labor Productivity (LP), such growth falls much faster subsequently for bad booms. We then develop a simple framework to explain this. Firms finance investment opportunities with short-term collateralized debt. If agents do not produce information about the collateral quality, a credit boom develops, accommodatingfirms with lower quality projects and increasing the incentives of lenders to acquire information about the collateral, eventually triggering a crisis. When the average quality of investment opportunities also grows, the credit boom may not end in a crisis because the gradual adoption of low quality projects is not strong enough to induce information about collateral. Finally, we also test the main predictions of the model.
The Rocky Path for Private Directors General: Procedure, Politics, and the Uncertain Future of EU Antitrust Damages Actions

For the better part of the past decade, the European Commission has engaged in a dialogue with European Union (EU) citizens and businesses in an attempt to strengthen an almost nonexistent private competition enforcement system. In the United States, where private antitrust lawsuits are most prevalent, litigation is justified on the grounds of both deterrence and compensation. While the Commission wants to make private damages actions the primary vehicle for the compensation of aggrieved parties, recent political pressure has made EU officials claim that government enforcement will remain the predominant means for the deterrence of EU antitrust violations. Furthermore, many EU policy makers have emphasized that they want to avoid what they perceive as shortcomings in the U.S. private enforcement system. In its 2008 White Paper on Damages Actions for Breach of the EC Antitrust Rules, the Commission proposed procedural reforms to incentivize antitrust litigation in member state courts, but it stopped short of offering the full range of rights granted to U.S. plaintiffs. Nonetheless, the Commission drafted a directive in late 2009 that effectively included U.S.-style antitrust class actions, but it quickly withdrew its proposal due to strong opposition in the member states. This Note argues that the EU needs to implement greater procedural reforms than suggested in the White Paper to make antitrust litigation practical and desirable for most parties. It also contends that the need for private enforcement would be more credible if the Commission once again embraced deterrence as one of its central goals. Finally, this Note challenges the notion, perpetuated by many critics and EU policy makers,
THE MARKET FOR BANK STOCKS AND THE RISE OF DEPOSIT BANKING IN NEW YORK CITY, 1866-1897

The rapid growth of deposits in New York over the late nineteenth century is often attributed to the release of pent-up demand for transactions services. I advance a complementary explanation that emphasizes the market for bank shares. The stock market was important because it generated quotations that signaled depositors about the condition of individual banks as innovations in banking practices allowed confidence to grow. A new database of prices, dividends, and balance sheet items for traded banks and a series of dynamic panel models show that fluctuations in bank prices influenced the course of the expansion.
Rumor Has It: Sensationalism in Financial Media

The media has an incentive to publish sensational news. We study how this incentive affects the accuracy of media coverage in the context of merger rumors. Using a novel dataset, we find that accuracy is predicted by a journalist's experience, specialized education, and industry expertise. Conversely, less accurate stories use ambiguous language and feature well-known firms with broad readership appeal. Investors do not fully account for the predictive power of these characteristics, leading to an initial target price overreaction and a subsequent reversal, consistent with limited attention. Overall, we provide novel evidence on the determinants of media accuracy and its effect on asset prices
Credit market constraints and labor market decisions

Abstract In this paper, we examine whether imperfections in credit markets spill over to other markets, particularly the labor market. We take the case of Italy, a country that experienced changes in the mortgage market brought about by the 1992 European unification and other institutional shifts. These events make Italy a good laboratory to study the effects of financial markets on the labor market. Using household data from the Bank of Italy between 1989 and 1993, we estimate the relationship between female participation and mortgage use. We find a significant impact of mortgages on women's participation in the labor market.
Good News is Bad News: Leverage Cycles and Sudden Stops

We show that a model with imperfectly forecastable changes in future productivity and an occasionally-binding collateral constraint can match a set of stylized facts about Sudden Stop events. \Good" news about future productivity raises leverage during times of expansions, increasing the probability that the constraint binds, and a Sudden Stop occurs, in future periods. The economy exhibits a boom period in the run-up to the Sudden Stop, with output, consumption, and investment all above trend, consistent with data. During the Sudden Stop, the nonlinear eects of the constraint induce output, consumption and investment to
Cross-Examining Film

The Supreme Court decision in Scott v. Harris holds that a Georgia police officer did not violate a fleeing suspect's Fourth Amendment rights when he caused the suspect's car to crash. The court's decision relies almost entirely on the filmed version of the high-speed police chase taken from a "dash-cam," a video camera mounted on the dashboard of the pursuing police cruiser. The Supreme Court said that in light of the contrary stories told by the opposing parties to the lawsuit, the only story to be believed was that told by the video. In Scott v. Harris, the court fell into a dangerous and common trap of believing - to the point of enshrining in our law - that film captures reality. As Justice Breyer said in oral argument of the case seemingly flabbergasted by contrary findings below: "I see with my eyes ... what happened, what am I supposed to do?"The Supreme Court is not the first court to fall prey to the persuasive power of film. It is typical for courts and advocates to naively treat filmic evidence as a transparent window revealing the whole truth, as a presentation of unambiguous reality. But film has a history in art as a constructed medium. As filmmakers and critics have known since the beginning of cinema, film's appearance of reality is an illusion, an illusion based on conventions of representation.How could Mr. Scott have countered the weight of the film and its persuasive power? When faced with prejudicial filmic evidence, how does an advocate undermine the assertive nature of film and its overwhelming appearance of exposure? The advocate must cross-examine the film the way she cross-examines witnesses. Because films are assertive in nature, an advocate faced with filmic evidence must treat it the way she treats other testimonial evidence, critically and with careful scrutiny. She must cross-examine the film. This article will set forth certain examination techniques using a piece of filmic evidence (linked to the article) from a recent case as an example. By doing so, it aspires to be a teaching tool for other courts and advocates in their treatment and consideration of filmic evidence.
Merger-Motivated IPOs

Inthispaper,wefindsupportforinitialpublicofferings(IPOs)motivatedbysubsequentacquisition activity. Over a third of newly public firms enter the market for corporate control as acquirers within three years of the IPO. We find that IPOs facilitate acquisitions in a number of ways. Newly public firms benefit from the cash raised in the IPO, from subsequent access to public financing, and from ability to pay with publicly traded stock for acquisitions. IPO firms also benefit by obtaining market feedback and by taking advantage of high post-IPO stock values in making stock-based acquisitions at favorable terms. Over the last two decades, much empirical and theoretical research has focused on motivations for initial public offerings (IPO). Some commonly offered explanations for this transition from private to public ownership include better access to capital, enhanced liquidity of shares, diversification of ownership, and, finally, increased publicity. In this study, we explore an additional explanation for undertaking an IPO, namely, the role of an IPO in facilitating subsequent acquisition activity by a newly public firm. The role of an IPO as a “springboard” for subsequent acquisition activity has been largely neglected in past empirical research. Several recent studies, however, provide evidence regarding the correlation between these two corporate events. Brau, Francis, and Kohers (2003) suggest that an IPO may be a mechanism for obtaining currency (i.e., publicly traded stock) for subsequent merger activity. A recent survey of 336 chief financial officers (CFOs) by Brau and Fawcett (2006) demonstrates that 59% of CFO respondents agree with this statement. Rosen, Smart, and Zutter (2005) find that IPO banks are more likely to serve as acquirers than comparable private banks. Schultz and Zaman (2001) similarly find that the IPOs of internet firms in the late 1990s were followed by series of acquisitions. The most comprehensive empirical study on the topic is a paper by Celikyurt, Sevilir, and Shivdasani (2010), which finds that the acquisition activity of newly public firms contributes to firm growth more so than investment in research and development (RD thus, we focus on their relative importance. According to the financing hypothesis, an IPO facilitates acquisitions by relaxing financing constraints that may impede a private firm’s ability to acquire attractive targets. This can happen in a number of ways. First, a public issue of stock during an IPO itself generates funding for future
The Limits of Second Amendment Originalism and the Constitutional Case for Gun Control

Second Amendment jurisprudence was revolutionized by the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. Relying on what it characterized as the "original meaning" of the Second Amendment, the Court recognized for the first time an individual right to keep and bear arms, and invalidated an ordinance that prohibited the possession of handguns, at least as applied to individuals who wished to keep them at home for purposes of lawful self-defense.This article takes Heller’s conclusions about the original meaning of the Second Amendment as given, and assesses whether they have produced – or even are capable of producing – an authentically originalist Second Amendment jurisprudence. It assesses as well the implications of Heller for gun control. Some six years after the Court announced a new era in Second Amendment jurisprudence in Heller, the outlines of a new Second Amendment jurisprudence – one that contemplates surprisingly robust regulatory authority and in which originalism plays a surprisingly limited role – are starting to come clear. The discussion that follows seeks to explicate and defend this emerging jurisprudence in terms of the relationship between the Second Amendment's preamble and its operative clause. It explores as well the constitutional case for a quite robust regime of gun control.
The effects of inflation on economic growth : lessons from Latin America

This paper investigates the relationship between inflation and long-run growth. It presents an endogenous growth model that illustrates the channels through which inflation affects growth. The model highlights the effects of inflation on the productivity of capital and the rate of capital accumulation. The reduction in growth is caused by a diversion of resources away from activities that lead to faster rates of growth toward activities associated with reducing the costs of inflation. The negative association between inflation and growth is assessed empirically for a sample group of Latin American countries.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor: A Selected Annotated Bibliography

As the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is a profound and fascinating figure in American jurisprudence. Appointed to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Potter Stewart, questions loomed about how she would rule on important constitutional issues, including affirmative action and racial and gender equality. As the annotations contained in this piece demonstrate, commentators and legal scholars have reflected on Justice O'Connor's work as a woman, a conservative, and a former politician. Her term on the Court ended in 2005, and scholars are beginning the process of reflecting on her years on the Court as well as her influence on constitutional law. In an effort to begin and contribute to this analysis, this selected annotated bibliography focuses on both the substantive and scholarly materials Justice O'Connor wrote and the legal scholarship written about her and her jurisprudence. It is intended as a tool for researchers, and the categorization is intended to assist them by providing logical access to this material. Part I focuses on Justice O'Connor's own extra-judicial writing. Subsection A compiles her substantive works about the judiciary, judicial philosophy, federalism, and institutional law. Subsection B highlights Justice O'Connor's writing on equality and feminism. Justice O'Connor spoke and wrote often about the legal profession, specifically addressing lawyers - these remarks are compiled in Subsection C. Subsection D includes Justice O'Connor's reflective tributes to other members of the judiciary. Subsection E includes Justice O'Connor's substantive autobiographical works. Part II compiles substantive works written about Justice O'Connor and her jurisprudence. These works are arranged and divided by the type of material and how it was published. Subsection A focuses on scholarship published in law reviews and academic journals. Subsection B compiles scholarly monographs and book chapters about Justice O'Connor. Next, Subsection C includes biographies. Finally, subsection D compiles tributes to Justice O'Connor, by Justices of the Supreme Court and other legal professionals. This bibliography does not purport to include every document or text written about or by Justice O'Connor. Rather, it is a selection of scholarly works. It does not include newspaper or magazine pieces, or bar journal articles. Likewise, it does not include children's and young-adult works, of which there are several. The annotations provided are intended to show the myriad ways that Justice O'Connor's opinions, background, and political leanings have been scrutinized and analyzed since her nomination to, and retirement from, the nation's highest Court.
Lean and Green? Environmental Law and Policy and the Flexible Production Economy

Driven by global competition, American manufacturing is undergoing a fundamental transformation from mass production to flexible or lean production. Mass production is premised on the stable, high-volume manufacture of identical goods. Flexible production engages all workers in a system-wide search for continuous improvement. It is characterized by constant innovation and rapid change to products and processes. Intel Corporation, a flexible producer, averages forty-five process changes per year. This article begins by identifying two implications of this industrial shift for environmental law and policy, particularly the Clean Air Act (CAA). First, flexible production's continuous improvement culture provides an ideal platform for pollution prevention and should enable facilities adopting it to achieve improved environmental performance. Second, the rapid change that characterizes the new production method is in tension with Clean Air Act provisions, originally designed for mass production plants, that require facilities to complete a months-long permitting process prior to undertaking each individual change. The article argues that major recent environmental policy initiatives can be understood, in part, as early attempts to adapt the regulatory system to the new conditions of flexible production. Experimental Clinton Administration programs replaced traditional permitting with plantwide emission caps. These innovative permits allowed flexible production facilities to make changes without delay, so long as their overall air emissions remained within the limit. The programs set the cap at a level more stringent than that which traditional permitting would have required, thereby both providing flexible producers with regulatory speed and pushing them to achieve better performance. Recent Bush Administration rules also offer plantwide caps. However, they do not require more stringent performance and may, in fact, allow pollution increases. They fail to capitalize on flexible production's green potential. While the Clinton Administration initiatives represent a better approach, they are far from perfect. The article spells out specific legal and policy recommendations that would strengthen this approach and so point the way towards an effective regulatory strategy for the coming era of flexible production.
The impact of bond rating changes on corporate bond prices: New evidence from the over-the-counter market

Abstract I study the information content of bond ratings changes using daily corporate bond data from TRACE. Abnormal bond returns over a two-day event window that includes the downgrade (upgrade) are negative (positive) and statistically significant, although the reaction to upgrades is economically small. Monthly abnormal bond returns around downgrades and upgrades are statistically significant but overstate the magnitude of the reaction relative to two-day abnormal returns. Unlike the bond market, the stock market reaction to upgrades is statistically insignificant. Evidence suggests that the differing inferences on the effect of upgrades in the two markets can be attributed to wealth transfer effects rather than relative market inefficiencies. In the cross-section, the bond market response is stronger for rating changes that appear more surprising, rating changes of lower rated firms, and upgrades that move the firm from speculative grade to investment grade.
SEC Scrutiny and the Evolution of Non‐GAAP Reporting

We empirically examine the effects of intensified scrutiny over non‐GAAP reporting on the quality of non‐GAAP earnings exclusions. We find that, on average, exclusions are of higher quality (i.e., more transitory) following intervention by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into non‐GAAP reporting. We further find that firms that stopped releasing non‐GAAP earnings numbers after the SEC intervention had lower quality exclusions in the pre‐intervention period. These results are consistent with the SEC's objectives of improving the quality of non‐GAAP earnings figures. However, when we decompose total exclusions into special items and other exclusions, we find evidence that the quality of special items has decreased in the post‐intervention period, which suggests that managers adapted to the new disclosure environment by shifting more recurring expenses into special items. This suggests that there may be unintended consequences arising from the heightened scrutiny over non‐GAAP reporting.
The Determinants of Bank Mergers: A Revealed Preference Analysis

We provide new estimates of merger value creation by exploiting revealed preferences of merging banks within a matching market framework. We find that merger value arises from cost efficiencies in overlapping markets, relaxing of regulation, and network effects exhibited by the acquirer-target matching. Beyond our findings, the revealed preference method has notable advantages that warrant its application beyond the bank merger market. Notably, we show that the method outperforms reduced form alternatives out of sample, enables sensible counterfactual experiments, and can be used to evaluate private-to-private mergers, which have been understudied because of lack of stock market data. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2245. This paper was accepted by Amit Seru, finance.
Political and Media Factors in the Evolution of the Media’s Role in U.S. Supreme Court Nominations

The selection of U.S. Supreme Court justices has become a highly media-oriented process both in the presidential selection and Senate confirmation stages. In the former stage, the White House uses the media to signal consideration of certain nominees, while interest groups publicly pressure the president to appoint favoured candidates or threaten confirmation fights over unacceptable candidates. In the confirmation stage, the White House, and nominee supporters, battle nominee opponents through image-making strategies intended to shape media coverage of the nominee. This paper will describe and explain the role of the media in the current nomination process, briefly assess why the media’s role has evolved in the past half century, and also predict how those roles would be changed under differing reform scenarios for Supreme Court nominations. La seleccion de los magistrados de la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos se ha convertido en un proceso muy influenciado por los medios de comunicacion, tanto en la eleccion presidencial como en las etapas de confirmacion del Senado. En la primera etapa, la Casa Blanca utiliza los medios de comunicacion para senalar los candidatos que se estan considerando, mientras que los grupos de interes presionan publicamente al presidente para que designe a sus candidatos de su preferencia, o amenaza con luchas ante la confirmacion de candidatos no afines. En la fase de confirmacion, la Casa Blanca y los partidarios del magistrado seleccionados se enfrentan a sus oponentes a traves de una estrategia de creacion de imagen, para determinar la cobertura mediatica del candidato. Este articulo describe y explica el papel de los medios de comunicacion en el proceso actual de nombramiento, evalua brevemente por que el papel de los medios de comunicacion ha evolucionado en el ultimo medio siglo, y tambien predice como cambiaria este papel ante diferentes escenarios de reforma del proceso de nombramiento de la Corte Suprema. DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2512155
The Reputational Costs of Tax Avoidance

We investigate whether firms and their top executives bear reputational costs from engaging in aggressive tax avoidance activities. Prior literature has posited that reputational costs partially explain why so many firms apparently forgo the benefits of tax avoidance, the so-called “under-sheltering puzzle.” We employ a database of 118 firms that were subject to public scrutiny for having engaged in tax shelters, representing the largest sample of publicly identified corporate tax shelters analyzed to date. We examine the reputational costs that prior research has shown that firms and managers face in cases of alleged misconduct: increased CEO and CFO turnover, auditor turnover, lost sales, increased advertising costs, and decreased media reputation. Across a battery of tests, we find little evidence that firms or their top executives bear significant reputational costs as a result of being accused of engaging in tax shelter activities. Moreover, we find no decrease in firms’ tax avoidance activities after being accused of tax shelter activity. Finally, in tests of the capital market reaction to news of tax shelter involvement, we find that negative event-period returns fully reverse within a few weeks of the public scrutiny, consistent with a temporary market penalty to tax shelter news. In all, we conclude that there is little evidence of tax shelter usage leading to reputational costs at the firm level.
Randomization and the Fourth Amendment

Randomized checkpoint searches are generally taken to be the exact antithesis of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment. In the eyes of most jurists, checkpoint searches violate the central requirement of valid Fourth Amendment searches—namely, individualized suspicion. We disagree. In this Article, we contend that randomized searches should serve as the very lodestar of a reasonable search. The notion of “individualized” suspicion is misleading; most suspicion in the modern policing context is group based and not individual specific. Randomized searches by definition are accompanied by a certain level of suspicion. The constitutional issue, we maintain, should not turn on the question of suspicion-based versus suspicionless police searches, but on the level of suspicion that attaches to any search program and on the evenhandedness of the program. In essence, we argue for a new paradigm of randomized encounters that satisfy a base level of suspicion and that will provide the benefits of both privacy protection (by ensuring a minimum level of suspicion) and evenhandedness (by cabining police discretion), the very values we wish to protect through the Fourth Amendment.
Envelope Condition Method with an Application to Default Risk Models

We develop an envelope condition method (ECM) for dynamic programming problems – a tractable alternative to expensive conventional value function iteration (VFI). ECM has two novel features: First, to reduce the cost of iteration on Bellman equation, ECM constructs policy functions using envelope conditions which are simpler to analyze numerically than …rst-order conditions. Second, to increase the accuracy of solutions, ECM solves for derivatives of value function jointly with value function itself. We complement ECM with other computational techniques that are suitable for highdimensional problems, such as simulation-based grids, monomial integration rules and derivative-free solvers. The resulting value-iterative ECM method can accurately solve models with at least up to 20 state variables and can successfully compete in accuracy and speed with state-of-the-art Euler equation methods. We …nally use ECM to solve a challenging default risk model with a kink in value and policy functions.   : C6, C61, C63, C68   : Dynamic programming; Value function iteration; Bellman equation; Endogenous grid; Envelope condition; Curse of dimensionality; Large scale; Sovereign debt; Default risk
Till Human Voices Wake Us: The Role of Emotions in the Adjudication of Dignity Claims

The present paper is concerned with the role emotions play with respect to evaluative legal concepts, a class of concepts that require judges to interpret values in their application of the law. The paper focuses on the legal concept of human dignity, a central concept in international human rights law and in the constitutional practice of many states. Nearly every article or book written on the concept of human dignity begins by noting its resonance and the power of its promise. The affective dimension of the concept is, however, soon set aside by most scholars and legal practitioners in order to work out the term’s content. Against this trend, the paper explores the affective dimensions of the legal concept of human dignity.Situated in the field of comparative human rights, the paper examines the various roles emotions play in judicial interpretations of the concept of human dignity in human rights and constitutional law. The paper begins by offering a working definition of emotion before setting out the challenge to legal theory and practice posed by evaluative legal concepts. It then sketches out the landscape of dignity jurisprudence and various key sites for the study of emotion. The paper then develops a typology of roles that emotions play in judicial interpretations of the legal concept of human dignity. The three roles that emotions play, orientation, tracker, and service, draw upon the unique features of emotions to enliven and direct judicial understandings of the concept. Emotions fulfill orientation roles when they imbue a concept with their own meaning, tracker roles when they react to the subject matter of the concept, and service roles when they guide the use of the concept. Each role contributes an additional layer of meaning to the concept by lending structure, and often a sense of importance and clarity, to judicial interpretations of human dignity.
An Endogenous Model of Public School Expenditures and Private School Enrollment

Abstract This paper examines the link between private school enrollment rates and public school expenditures. Using a panel of New York State school districts, models are estimated in which public school spending and private school enrollment rates are endogenously determined. The results indicate the presence of endogeneity. Increases in private school enrollment are not shown to cause decreases in public school per pupil expenditure. Private school enrollment rates are found to respond to changes in public school expenditure and are sensitive to changes in tuition.
Juvenile delinquent mortgages: Bad credit or bad economy?

Abstract We study early default, defined as serious delinquency or foreclosure in the first year, among nonprime mortgages from the 2001 to 2007 vintages. After documenting a dramatic rise in such defaults and discussing their correlates, we examine two primary explanations: changes in underwriting standards that took place over this period, and changes in the economic environment. We find that while credit standards were important in determining the probability of an early default, changes in the economy—especially a sharp reversal in house price appreciation—after 2004 were the more critical factor in the increases in default rates that we observe. An important additional result is that in spite of our rich set of covariates, much of the increase remains unexplained, even in retrospect. Thus, the fact that the credit markets seemed surprised by the rate of early defaults in the 2006 and 2007 nonprime vintages becomes more understandable.
Inflation in Pakistan: Money or Wheat?

This paper examines the relative importance of monetary factors and structuralist supply-side factors for inflation in Pakistan. A stylized inflation model is specified that includes standard monetary variables (money supply, credit to the private sector), exchange rate, as well as wheat support price as a supply-side factor that has received considerable attention in Pakistan. The model is estimated for the period January 1998 to June 2005 on a monthly basis. The results indicate that monetary factors have played a dominant role in recent inflation, affecting inflation with a lag of about one year. Changes in the wheat support price influence inflation in the short run, but not in the long run. Furthermore, the wheat support price matters only over the medium term if accommodated by monetary policy.
Estimating covariation: Epps effect, microstructure noise

Abstract This paper is about how to estimate the integrated covariance 〈 X , Y 〉 T of two assets over a fixed time horizon [ 0 , T ] , when the observations of X and Y are “contaminated” and when such noisy observations are at discrete, but not synchronized, times. We show that the usual previous-tick covariance estimator is biased, and the size of the bias is more pronounced for less liquid assets. This is an analytic characterization of the Epps effect. We also provide the optimal sampling frequency which balances the tradeoff between the bias and various sources of stochastic error terms, including nonsynchronous trading, microstructure noise, and time discretization. Finally, a two scales covariance estimator is provided which simultaneously cancels (to first order) the Epps effect and the effect of microstructure noise. The gain is demonstrated in data.
Bobbing for Widgets: Compensating Wage Differentials.

The authors describe a classroom game that introduces the concept of compensating wage differentials by allowing students to negotiate over the assignment of jobs and wages. Two jobs are designed so that neither job requires special skills, but one is significantly more unpleasant than the other. By varying the job titles and duties, students can see how wages respond to changes in job characteristics. The impact of various policy measures, such as comparable worth legislation and safety regulation, is also explored. This game can be conducted in a 50-minute class and requires only a deck of cards, poker chips, and a container of ice water.