cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Blurred Lines: Structure/Agency, Presence/Vacancy in Detroit's Urban Museum

Detroit has come to symbolize the end of American hegemony in manufacturing. Faced with globalization, market competition, and political change, Detroit's citizens seem the victims of structural forces beyond their control. Yet, this photographic essay explores Detroit precisely through the lens of agency, highlighting citizens’ creativity, entrepreneurship, and play. The photographs highlight the ways Detroit's citizens have blurred the boundaries between ruins and art, presence and vacancy, and structure and agency.
Intra‐Industry Information Transfers and the Post‐Earnings Announcement Drift

This study examines the role of intra-industry information transfers in the analyst forecast-based post-earnings announcement drift. I find that subsequent same-industry-peer earnings announcements influence a firm's post-earnings announcement drift if these subsequent announcements confirm the firm's initial earnings surprise and the firm's industry exhibits ex ante positive (common effect) intra-industry information transfers. The results suggest that underreaction to industry-specific information contributes to analyst forecast-based post-earnings announcement drift.
Profiles of spectral lines from failed and decelerated winds from neutron stars and black holes

We calculate profiles of spectral lines from an extended outflow from the compact object (a black hole or a neutron star). We assume that the bulk velocity of the flow increases during a short phase of acceleration and then rapidly decreases forming a failed wind. We also study the wind which is only decelerating. We show that depending on the relative strength of the gravitational redshifting line profiles from such winds may be of several types: distorted P-Cygni (emission and blueshifted absorption); W-shaped (absorption-emission-absorption) and inverted P-Cygni (emission-redshifted absorption). The latter case is expected from accretion flows where the velocity is directed inwards; however, we show that inverted P-Cygni profile can be produced by the failed wind, provided the line is formed within several tens of Schwarzschild radii from the compact object.
Relative valuation of U.S. insurance companies

This study examines the accuracy of relative valuation methods in the U.S. insurance industry, using price as a proxy for intrinsic value. The approaches differ in terms of the fundamentals used, the adjustments made to the fundamentals, the use of conditioning variables, and the selection of comparables. Selected findings include the following. First, over the last decade, book value multiples have performed significantly better than earnings multiples in valuing insurance companies. Second, inconsistent with the practice of many analysts, excluding accumulated other comprehensive income from book value worsens rather than improves valuation accuracy. Third, as expected, using income before special items, instead of reported income, improves valuation accuracy, but, surprisingly, excluding realized investment gains and losses does not. An exception to this latter result occurred during the financial crisis, likely due to an increase in “gains trading.” Fourth, conditioning the price-to-book ratio on return on equity significantly improves the valuation accuracy of book value multiples. Finally, while valuations based on analysts’ earnings forecasts outperform those based on reported earnings or book value, the gap between the valuation performance of forecasted EPS and the conditional price-to-book approach was relatively small during the last decade.
Weathering NEPA Review: Superstorms and Super Slow Urban Recovery

Delays in implementing long-term neighborhood housing recovery measures following urban disasters profoundly disrupt a city's revitalization and resurgence. Following recent large-scale urban disasters, some blame the National Environmental Policy Act environmental and historical review requirement for greatly slowing the long-term recovery process. They claim that the National Environmental Policy Act review is ill suited for the exigencies of disasters. Finding effective ways to advance urban disaster recovery as quickly as possible, while not compromising key environmental quality objectives, is a central challenge to implementing effective post-disaster recovery plans. This Article addresses how best to balance necessary regulation with critical disaster recovery objectives. Drawing on long-term recovery lessons from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and most recently, Hurricane Sandy, this Article articulates five principles that the federal government should incorporate in a new Unified Federal Review process.
Industrial Modernization and Political Change: A Latin American Perspective

The recent emergence of harshly repressive military governments in several of the industrially most advanced nations of Latin America has called into question earlier hypotheses of modernization theory regarding the links between socioeconomic modernization and democracy. Guillermo O'Donnell has made an important contribution to explaining this new authoritarianism and to using the recent Latin American experience as a basis for proposing a major reformulation of the earlier hypotheses. Yet O'Donnell's analysis requires significant modification if its potential contribution is to be realized. Highly aggregated conceptual categories such as “bureaucratic-authoritarianism” should be abandoned, and his explanatory framework should be broadened to explicity incorporate the crucial political differences among Latin American countries, as well as the impact of the international economic and political system. A revised explanation for the rise of authoritarianism is presented to illustrate how some of these modifications could be applied in future research on political change in Latin America.
Information content of advertising: Empirical evidence from the OTC analgesic industry

We develop an empirical study of the information�persuasion trade-off in advertising using data on the information content of ads, which we measure with the number of information cues in ads within an entire industry. The data are from video files of all advertisements in the OTC analgesics industry from 2001 to 2005. We propose a simple theoretical framework to motivate an ordered probit model of information content. We find that stronger vertical differentiation is positively associated with the delivery of more product information in a brand's advertisements: brands with higher levels of quality include more information cues. Next, comparative advertisements contain significantly more product information than self-promotional advertisements. Finally, brands with larger market shares and brands competing against generic substitutes with large market shares use ads that have less information content.
The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition

In this chapter I develop the concept of vulnerability in order to argue for a more responsive state and a more egalitarian society. I argue that vulnerability is universal and constant, inherent in the human condition. The vulnerability approach I propose is an alternative to traditional equal protection analysis; it moves us beyond identity-based inquiries because it focuses not only on discrimination against deﬁned groups, but is concerned with the privileges conferred on limited segments of the population by the state through its institutions. Therefore, vulnerability analyses concentrate on our social structures and institutions established to manage our common vulnerabilities. This approach has the potential to move us beyond the conﬁnes of current discrimination-based models toward a more substantive vision of equality. Theorizing a concept of vulnerability necessitates developing a more complexsubject around which to build social policy and law; this new subject is useful in redeﬁning and expanding current ideas about state responsibility toward individuals and institutions. In fact, I argue that the “vulnerable subject” must replace the autonomous and independent subject asserted in the liberal tradition. Far more representative of actual lived experience and the human condition, the vulnerable subject should be at the center of our political and theoretical endeavors. The vision of the state that would emerge in such an engagement would be more responsive to and responsible for the vulnerable subject, a reimagining that is essential to attaining a more equal society than currently exists in America. Before developing the vulnerability thesis, I will address some conceptualimpediments to the idea of a more responsive state. First, an impoverished sense of equality is embedded in our current legal doctrine. We understand equality in formal terms, focused on discrimination and inattentive to underlying societal inequities. Second, the view that the state’s proper role is one of restraint and abstention is politically powerful. Even self-identiﬁed progressive social reformers are suspicious of the state; the rhetoric of non-intervention prevails in policy discussions, deterring positive measures designed to address inequalities. We idealize contract and correspondingly reify individual choice in ways that mask society’s role in perpetuating inequality. The fact that societal institutions play asigniﬁcant role in perpetrating inequality is the very reason that we need a more active and responsive state.
Selling to Overconfident Consumers

Consumers may overestimate the precision of their demand forecasts. This overconfidence creates an incentive for both monopolists and competitive firms to offer tariffs with included quantities at zero marginal cost, followed by steep marginal charges. This matches observed cellphone service pricing plans in the US and elsewhere. An alternative explanation with common priors can be ruled out in favor of overconfidence based on observed customer usage patterns for a major US cellular phone service provider. The model can be reinterpreted to explain the use of flat rates and late fees in rental markets, and teaser rates on loans. Nevertheless, firms may benefit from consumers losing their overconfidence.
The effect of school construction on test scores, school enrollment, and home prices

Abstract This paper provides new evidence on the effect of elementary and middle school construction projects on home prices, academic achievement, and school enrollment. Combining the staggered implementation of a comprehensive school construction project in a poor urban district with panel data on student test scores and neighborhoods of residence, we find that, by six years after building occupancy, school construction increases reading scores by 0.15 standard deviations relative to the year before building occupancy. We do not observe similar effects for math scores. School construction raised home prices in affected neighborhoods by roughly 10%, and led to increased public school enrollment.
Examining the long-term mortality effects of early health shocks

A growing literature in economics and other disciplines has tied exposure to early health shocks, particularly in utero influenza, to reductions in a variety of socioeconomic and health outcomes ov...
Accountability Solutions in the Consent Search and Seizure Wasteland

The legal and social issues that have emerged out of the doctrine that people in America have a right against unreasonable government instituted searches and seizures have dominated the dialogue and controversy in the American criminal justice system over the last three decades. A large portion of the debate has centered around the controversial exclusionary rule, which frees the sometimes unmistakably guilty because of irregularities in police procedure. The notion that society suffers when criminals go free because of the constable's blunder has struck a decidedly political note in the discussion over criminal justice reform. Many observers are quick to note that the protections of a free society are to benefit the law abiding as well as the criminal. Yet others point out that the offender should not be able to behave lawlessly at the expense of others and with the assistance of the law. On the other side of the issue is the painful reality that the power asserted over citizens has often been exercised and abused on racial, ethnic and economic terms. This Article is an attempt to offer a meaningful look at the current state of search and seizure principles being applied (or not being applied) by the Supreme Court. It also will attempt to offer some solutions to the primary problem of search and seizure law - the absence of protection from abuse of police discretion, particularly during the situation in which the police allegedly obtain consent to search suspects. While police must have some measure of discretion, they must also behave reasonably and honestly in the execution of their duties. The current judicial retreat from the imposition of specific rules of conduct on police has left a void in privacy protection and presents the opportunity for search and seizure overreaching. In this Article, I propose a legislative solution that will balance the need for controlled discretion in search and seizure situations with the desire for a high level of accountability for police officers on the street and those responsible for policy, supervision, and the training of street level officers. In the pursuit of reaching a consensus on the proper balance between personal freedom and crime control, particularly where racial bias might be alleged, a useful starting point is to adjust the burden of proof in certain types of search cases and to require police departments to keep records of police-citizen encounters.
How the NLRB's Light Still Shines on Anti-Discrimination Law Fifty Years after Title VII

As the passage of Title VII approaches its fiftieth anniversary, this Article explores what may be thought of as the unlikely impact of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) on anti-discrimination law principles used to protect employees. How an agency charged with enforcing labor law protections under the National Labor Relations Act has affected anti-discrimination principles for employee protection under Title VII may not represent an obvious correlation, especially with the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.This Article asserts that after almost eighty years of existence, the NLRB continues to play a major role in addressing discrimination in the workplace as a supplement to an employee's discrimination claims filed under Title VII with the EEOC and in the courts. This Article highlights the necessary role offered by the NLRB in offering workplace protections during such tenuous economic times. NLRB actions that protect concerted activity have helped employees, especially in non-union settings, to protect themselves from discrimination matters. Given the difficulties plaintiffs have experienced in pursuing employment discrimination claims within the court system, the NLRB's enforcement actions help supplement Title VII's enforcement objectives. Finally, this Article discusses various NLRB decisions that demonstrate the NLRB's important role in helping employees eradicate employment discrimination in the workplace even fifty years after the creation of the EEOC by Title VII. As a result, any efforts to shut down or emasculate the NLRB's powers must be attacked and prevented to allow the NLRB to keep supplementing workplace protections for employees with Title VII claims in these tough times.
To Ghetto or Not to Ghetto: Ethnicity and Residential Segregation ☆ ☆☆

Abstract This paper analyzes the link between ethnicity and the choice of residing in ethnically segregated neighborhoods. Data drawn from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth show that there exist strong human capital externalities both within and across ethnic groups. As a result, the segregation choices made by particular households depend both on the household's economic opportunities and on aggregate characteristics of the ethnic groups. The evidence suggests that highly skilled persons who belong to disadvantaged groups have lower probabilities of ethnic residential segregation—relative to the choices made by the most skilled persons in the most skilled groups.
Sovereign Default Risk and Banks in a Monetary Union

This study seeks to understand the interplay between banks, bank regula- tion, sovereign default risk and central bank guarantees in a monetary union. I assume that banks can use sovereign bonds for repurchase agreements with a common central bank, and that their sovereign partially backs up any losses should the banks not be able to repurchase the bonds. I argue that regulators in risky countries have an incentive to allow their banks to hold home risky bonds and risk defaults, whereas regulators in other 'safe' countries will impose tighter regulation. As a result, governments in risky countries get to borrow more cheaply, effectively shifting the risk of some of the potential sovereign default losses on the common central bank.
How to Do Things with Boundaries: Redistricting and the Construction of Politics

Abstract After twenty-five years, the federal jurisprudence of partisan gerrymandering remains a mess. The Court's attempts to decide on the merits when power is unfairly distributed among parties and their supporters has foundered on its inability to agree on a normative baseline of fair power distribution from which deviations might be measured. A second strand of federal jurisprudence has looked to process—specifically, to whether a legislative majority has sacrificed other democratic values (“traditional districting principles”) to the pursuit of raw political power. This is a potentially promising move. The partition of the electorate through districting matters not only for its influence on who wins office, but also for its influence on important characteristics of democratic politics, broadly defined. Federal courts, however, have not explained what democratic values are served by an adherence to traditional districting principles. An account therefore is required of how the drawing of legislative ...
The Strategic Use of Information Technology by Nonprofit Organizations: Increasing Capacity and Untapped Potential

How are nonprofits using information technology to enhance mission-related outcomes and boost organizational performance? The authors examine a large-scale survey of nonprofits’ technology planning, acquisition, and implementation to assess the strategic use of IT in these organizations. They evaluate nonprofits’ strategic technology-use potential by examining IT-related competencies and practices that are critical for the successful strategic employment of technology resources. Several promising developments are found, alongside significant deficits in the strategic utilization of IT, especially in the areas of financial sustainability, strategic communications and relationship building, and collaborations and partnerships. To boost IT’s mission-related impact, nonprofits must enhance their organizational capacities in long-term IT planning, budgeting, staffing, and training; performance measurement; Internet and Web site capabilities; and the vision, support, and involvement of senior management.
If at First You Don't Succeed…: Profits, Prices, and Market Structure in a Model of Quality with Unknowable Consumer Heterogeneity*

Why are higher quality niches seen as intrinsically more profitable in business circles? Why do high quality products sometimes have a low real price, whereas it is unusual to see low quality products with high real prices? Can markets have quality differentiation as well as quality bunching? How does the rate at which fixed costs change with quality affect market structure? In this article we develop a new model of quality that casts light on such issues.
Accounting comparability and relative performance evaluation in CEO compensation

We investigate whether accounting comparability is associated with the likelihood that CEO compensation is tied to relative accounting performance (e.g., return on assets). We predict that higher accounting comparability increases the risk-sharing benefit of accounting-based RPE because peer firm performance better controls for common risk in RPE firm performance. Thus, firms that have higher accounting comparability with potential performance peers will be more likely to include accounting-based RPE as a component of the total CEO compensation contract. We find support for this prediction using (1) an explicit test design that relies on the ex ante terms of CEO compensation contracts obtained from proxy disclosures, and (2) an implicit design that relies on the actual realizations of CEO compensation. To provide further evidence, we examine the association between accounting comparability and the selection of performance peers when the CEO compensation contract includes an accounting-based RPE component. We find that higher comparability between the RPE firm and a potential peer firm increases (decreases) the potential peer firm’s likelihood of being selected into (dropped from) the peer group. Cross-sectional analyses show that this association is less pronounced, or not present, when the relative performance measure is price-based (as opposed to accounting-based), indicating that these results do not merely reflect a more general role of comparability in all RPE contracts.
A Fair Competition Theory of the Civil False Claims Act

Whistleblowers are helping recover over $5 billion a year of fraud against the federal government, but reliance on whistleblowers and prosecutorial discretion raises problems when fraud allegations stem from undisclosed regulatory violations. Courts have created a series of opaque, formalistic “false certification” doctrines that provide little principled guidance as to why, for example, knowingly naming the wrong physician supervisor does not constitute Medicare fraud under the False Claims Act, but naming the wrong physician provider does constitute fraud. I suggest that the principle of fair competition can distinguish between regulatory violations that should result in civil liability and those better handled within a preexisting regulatory regime. This clear, principled rule for liability can aid development of a fair, competitive marketplace not dominated by entities improperly profiting from regulatory violations.
Failure to exercise call options: An anomaly and a trading game

Abstract In the US, exchange-traded options are unprotected from cash dividend payments on the underlying stock. Consequently, it may become optimal to exercise deep in-the-money call options just prior to the ex-dividend day. In this study, we examine the extent to which option holders fail to exercise their call options on the day prior to an ex-dividend day when it is optimal to do so. Using a sample of call options on stocks with quarterly dividends of at least a penny per share during the period January 1996 through April 2006, we find that more than half of outstanding long positions go unexercised. We estimate that this failure to exercise has caused call option holders to lose over $491 million over a ten-year period. We also show how market makers capture the lion's share of the proceeds by using a dividend spread trading strategy.
The solution structures of higher-order human telomere G-quadruplex multimers.

Human telomeres contain the repeat DNA sequence 5'-d(TTAGGG), with duplex regions that are several kilobases long terminating in a 3' single-stranded overhang. The structure of the single-stranded overhang is not known with certainty, with disparate models proposed in the literature. We report here the results of an integrated structural biology approach that combines small-angle X-ray scattering, circular dichroism (CD), analytical ultracentrifugation, size-exclusion column chromatography and molecular dynamics simulations that provide the most detailed characterization to date of the structure of the telomeric overhang. We find that the single-stranded sequences 5'-d(TTAGGG)n, with n = 8, 12 and 16, fold into multimeric structures containing the maximal number (2, 3 and 4, respectively) of contiguous G4 units with no long gaps between units. The G4 units are a mixture of hybrid-1 and hybrid-2 conformers. In the multimeric structures, G4 units interact, at least transiently, at the interfaces between units to produce distinctive CD signatures. Global fitting of our hydrodynamic and scattering data to a worm-like chain (WLC) model indicates that these multimeric G4 structures are semi-flexible, with a persistence length of ∼34 A. Investigations of its flexibility using MD simulations reveal stacking, unstacking, and coiling movements, which yield unique sites for drug targeting.
Delegation and Nonmonetary Incentives

Abstract In many contracting settings, actions costly to one party but with no direct benefits to the other (money-burning) may be part of the explicit or implicit contract. A leading example is bureaucratic procedures in an employer–employee relationship. We study a model of delegation with an informed agent, where the principal may impose money-burning on the agent as a function of the agent's choice of action, and show that money-burning may be part of the optimal contract. This result holds even if action-contingent monetary transfers are possible, as long as transfers from the principal to the agent are bounded from below (as in limited liability or minimal wage requirements). In fact, the optimal contract can involve a combination of both efficient monetary incentives and inefficient nonmonetary incentives through money burning. Our model delivers some results novel to the delegation literature. First, money-burning is more likely if the principal is more “sensitive” to the choice of action than the agent. This is consistent with the perception that there is more bureaucratization in large organizations. Second, money-burning is more likely if the agent's limited liability constraint is tighter relative to his participation constraint. This implies that a higher minimum wage distorts employment contracts towards using socially wasteful nonmonetary incentives, leading to a Pareto inferior outcome as the agent is still held down to his reservation value through increased money burning.
The Fiscal Impact of Federal and State Aid to Large U.S. Cities: An Empirical Analysis of Budgetary Response

This article examines four types of aid programs to thirty-nine large U.S. cities federal revenue sharing, federal categorical aid, state general aid, and state categorical aid. The central finding is that there is significant variation in the magnitude of property tax reduction resulting from different types of state general aid. Property tax credits and exemptions are less effective approaches in reducing local property taxes than are state lump-sum aid or city use of piggybacked taxes Categorical state and federal aid mostly fund additional city spending and have small but important stimulative effects on the revenue side These results suggest that differences in the design of aid programs have important implications for their fiscal impact and their effectiveness in reducing property taxes.
A Sample Covariance-Based Approach For Spatial Binary Data

The field of landscape genetics enables the study of infectious disease dynamics by connecting the landscape features with evolutionary changes. Quantifying genetic correlation across space is helpful in providing insight into the rate of spread of an infectious disease. We investigate two genetic patterns in spatially referenced single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs): isolation by distance and isolation by resistance. We model the data using a Generalized Linear Mixed effect Model (GLMM) with spatially referenced random effects and provide a novel approach for estimating parameters in spatial GLMMs. In this approach, we use the links between binary probit models and bivariate normal probabilities to directly compute the model-based covariance function for spatial binary data. Parameter estimation is based on minimizing sum of squared distance between the elements of sample covariance and model-based covariance matrices. We analyze data including Brucella Abortus SNPs from spatially referenced hosts in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Securities regulation, household equity ownership, and trust in the stock market

Using aggregate data from national accounts, we study whether strengthening and harmonizing securities regulation across the European Union increases household equity ownership. We find a significant increase in the proportion of liquid assets invested in equity, both when a household’s own country adopts the regulation and when other countries adopt the regulation. To directly explore the mechanism through which households’ willingness to directly invest in the equity market increases, we show that the effect of securities regulation is stronger in countries where trust is low and between countries where cultural biases are most pronounced.
Global Poverty Estimates: A Sensitivity Analysis

Summary Current estimates of global poverty vary substantially across studies. We undertake a sensitivity analysis to highlight the importance of methodological choices by measuring global poverty using different data sources, parametric and nonparametric estimation methods, and multiple poverty lines. Our results indicate that estimates of global poverty vary significantly when they are based alternately on data from household surveys versus national accounts but are relatively consistent across estimation methods. The decline in poverty over the past decade is found to be robust across methodological choices.
The Asymmetric Effect of Reporting Flexibility on Priced Risk

Most firms covary more positively with downmarkets than upmarkets—a phenomenon I refer to as “risk asymmetry.” I predict and find that risk asymmetry is caused, at least in part, by a firm's ability to selectively obfuscate poor performance. Risk asymmetry decreases significantly when firms are required to adhere to the more stringent auditing standards mandated under Section 404 of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act, however this decrease is more muted for firms with weak internal controls. Consistent with my predictions, these patterns are stronger for more market‐sensitive firms and weaker for firms that include relative performance evaluation in their CEOs' pay packages. Taken together with prior literature (which documents that risk asymmetry is priced), my results suggest that a firm can lower its cost of capital by credibly reducing its ability to obfuscate value‐relevant information.
The Fiduciary Obligations of Financial Advisors Under the Law of Agency

This paper considers how agency fiduciary law might be applied to a financial advisor with discretionary trading authority over a client's account. It (i) surveys the agency problem to which the fiduciary obligation is directed; (ii) examines the legal context by considering how the fiduciary obligation undertakes to mitigate this problem; and (iii) examines several potential applications of agency fiduciary law to financial advisors, including principal trades and the role of informed consent by the client, organizing the discussion under the great fiduciary rubrics of loyalty and care. This paper was sponsored by Federated Investors, Inc.
Managerial Ability and Credit Ratings

We test whether credit rating analysts consider managerial ability as a credit risk factor and find that higher-ability managers obtain more favorable credit ratings. Controlling for past performance, these results suggest that managerial ability is itself a significant credit rating factor. Cross-sectional analyses indicate that managerial ability is beneficial specifically in firms facing financial or competitive pressure. We find that high-ability managers mitigate the adverse impact on ratings of other credit risk factors including negative earnings and low interest coverage. Our results contribute to a growing literature documenting economic benefits to hiring and retaining high-quality management. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
An Analysis of Managerial Use and Market Consequences of Earnings Management and Expectation Management

ABSTRACT: This study examines how managers coordinate the joint use of earnings management and expectation management by estimating the relationship between these instruments and how this relationship changes as their respective constraints change. We do this by estimating structural models of the two instruments that account for the constraints on their use as well as their effects on each other. Our results suggest that managers use earnings management and expectation management complementarily when managers' ability to use earnings management is less restricted. However, as the constraints on earnings management increase, managers substitute earnings management with expectation management. Moreover, we find that the extent of expectation management influences the extent of earnings management, but not vice versa. Examining the market consequences of the use of these instruments, we find that, while there are penalties for using both earnings management and expectation management, either as complements...
Examining CEO succession and the role of heuristics in early‐stage CEO evaluation

This study develops and tests predictions regarding factors that influence early-stage CEO evaluation. We suggest that contextual elements of the CEO succession process will influence the heuristics that directors employ to aid in their early evaluation of a CEO because traditional performance metrics, such as firm performance, are less diagnostic of CEO quality in the first years of their tenure. Broad empirical support for our theoretical arguments is shown in a sample of Fortune 1000 firms. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Market segmentation and collusive behavior

Abstract The recent literature on oligopolistic third-degree price discrimination has been primarily concerned with rival firms' incentives to acquire customer-specific information and the consequences of such information on firm profitability and welfare. This literature has taken mostly a static view of the interaction between competing firms. In contrast, in this paper we investigate the impact of customer-specific information on the likelihood of tacit collusion in a dynamic game of repeated interaction. This issue is very important because competitive price discrimination usually leads to a cutthroat price competition (prisoners' dilemma) among firms. Firms, therefore, may seek ways to soften competition and sustain higher prices. Our main result is that collusion becomes more difficult as the firms' ability to segment consumers improves.
The hysteresis of currency substitution: Currency risk vs. network externalities

Abstract It is widely documented that currency substitution (using foreign money in transactions) increases in periods of high inflation but does not decline once inflation is reduced. The paper uses survey data from Bulgaria, which experienced this phenomenon, to investigate the origins of this ratchet effect. We find that expected devaluation of the domestic currency, while relatively high, does not play a major role in sustaining the dollarization of transactions. Conversely, preferences for the use of foreign money are strongly influenced by people's perception that foreign money is already widely used in the economy.
On an implication of a theorem due to Gorman

Abstract This letter explores the robustness (in an approximating sense) of a class of demand systems which have been discussed by Gorman. This class is of fundamental interest because it is known to be the only class of demand systems which permits exact aggregation. We discuss the reasons which underlie the fact that one cannot guarantee that an integrable member of the Gorman class can be found which will be as close as one desires to an arbitrary, integrable demand system.
Buckling Under Pressure: An Empirical Test of the Expressive Effects of Law

Expressive theories of law assert that law has effects on behavior beyond simple deterrence. This Note tests legal expressivism by analyzing how seatbelt use has changed in response to differing state seatbelt laws. This Note separates the effects of the laws themselves from the effects of changing enforcement levels and finds that the laws have a robust effect on seatbelt use, even controlling for convictions or citations issued. Additionally, this Note finds that a highly publicized seatbelt law in one state can affect seatbelt use in other states. These findings support an expressive function of law.
Effectiveness of capital controls: the Case of Brazil

The emerging market crises of the past decade have led some observers to question the wisdom of a completely open capital account. But even if capital controls are desirable, empirical evidence is needed to demonstrate when and under what circumstances restrictions are effective. This paper investigates this issue for Brazil. Much analysis of policy effectiveness has been conducted with vector autoregressions. The validity of policy inference based on this technique has been cast into doubt, so this paper employs a more “narrative” method, modeling flows to Brazil as ARMAX processes. This approach yields the interesting result that controls can be effective when the reaction of financial market participants to restrictions is taken into account, and derivatives and debt market activities curtailed.
CITIZENS UNITED AND THE ILLUSION OF COHERENCE

The self-congratulatory tone of the majority and concurring opin ions in last term's controversial Supreme Court blockbuster, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, extended beyond the trumpeting of an absolutist vision of the First Amendment that allows corporations to spend unlimited sums independently to sup port or oppose candidates for office. The triumphalism extended to the majority's view that it had imposed coherence on the unwieldy body of campaign finance jurisprudence by excising an "outlier" 1990 opinion, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which had upheld such corporate limits, and parts of a 2003 opinion, McConnell v. FEC, extending Austin to unions and to a broader set of election-related television and radio broadcasts. The majority saw itself as returning the Court to the fountainhead of this juris prudence, the Court's 1976 opinion in Buckley v. Valeo. Citizens United indisputably harmonized campaign finance law on the ques tion of the constitutionality of spending limits on corporations, even if its view of Austin as an "outlier" remains contested. But the Court in doing so amplified and solidified other significant, inco herent aspects of its campaign finance jurisprudence. Part I of this Article situates Citizens United in the campaign fi nance jurisprudence that preceded it and describes in detail the key opinions in the case. Part II explains how the Court's analysis in Citizens United is likely to lead to new incoherence in the Court's campaign finance jurisprudence, because it is unlikely that the Court will follow the new case to its extreme, for example to allow spending by foreign nationals to influence candidate elections, to treat spending in judicial elections the same way as spending for other races, or to strike down reasonable limits on campaign con tributions made directly to candidates. Part III suggests that incoherence is likely to be an enduring feature of the Court's cam paign finance jurisprudence, because consistent application of a coherent approach could well be politically unpalatable for major ity of the Justices on the Court. It also considers the challenge such
Leadership positioning among U.S. firms investing in China

Abstract This study investigates leadership positioning by U.S. firms in China using the awareness, motivation, capability (AMC) perspective. We define leadership as first in industry to invest in China, and find that leaders have characteristics associated with higher AMC, evidenced by pre-existing multinational experience, higher product market orientation, smaller scale of operations, and higher input cost structure. Notably, the motivation to lower input costs and the prior capability in multinational operations mattered only for the first wave of firms leading industry investment earlier in time, while firms with smaller scale of operations exhibited a preference to lead investment in less popular provinces. Overall, these results provide a unique view on how AMC characteristics influence international investment decisions, suggesting that firms both strategically lead and strategically follow. In additional analysis, we examine how leaders and followers positioned themselves with respect to ownership, and find that leaders were more likely to choose entry modes that offered ownership control over flexibility, consistent with internalization theories.
Corporate distress and lobbying: Evidence from the Stimulus Act.

Abstract The literature on distressed firms has focused on these firms’ investment, capital structure, and labor decisions. This paper investigates a novel aspect of firm behavior in distress: how financial health affects a firm׳s lobbying and, consequently, its relationship with the government. We exploit the shock to nonfinancial firms during the 2008 financial crisis and the availability of the stimulus package in the first quarter of 2009. We find that firms with weaker financial health, as measured by credit default swap spreads, lobbied more. We also show that the amount spent on lobbying was associated with a greater likelihood of receiving stimulus funds.
Partisan Bias in Factual Beliefs about Politics

PARTISAN BIAS IN FACTUAL BELIEFS ABOUT POLITICS John G. Bullock Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station A1800 Austin, TX 78712 john.bullock@aya.yale.edu Alan S. Gerber Professor Department of Political Science Institution for Social and Policy Studies Yale University 77 Prospect Street, PO Box 208209 New Haven, CT 06520-8209 alan.gerber@yale.edu Seth J. Hill Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0521 sjhill@ucsd.edu Gregory A. Huber Professor Department of Political Science Institution for Social and Policy Studies Yale University 77 Prospect Street, PO Box 208209 New Haven, CT 06520-8209 gregory.huber@yale.edu April 20, 2015 An earlier version of this paper was circulated as NBER Working Paper #19080 and was presented at Harvard, MIT, NYU, Princeton, Stanford, UCSD, UT-Austin, Yale, and the American Political Science and Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meetings. We thank seminar participants at those institutions, as well as Kevin Arceneaux, Matias Bargsted, Michael Cobb, David Doherty, Conor Dowling, Mo Fiorina, Matt Levendusky, Neil Malhotra, Markus Prior, Bob Shapiro, Gaurav Sood, and the editors and reviewers, for useful comments and advice.
Doing Good by Telling Stories: Emotion in Social Entrepreneurship Communication

Despite growing academic interest in social entrepreneurship, a critical challenge facing social ventures has yet to receive attention: how do social entrepreneurs communicate with their diverse groups of stakeholders? This topic is examined using an exploratory, partially inductive study consisting of semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observation, and a critical review of the practitioner literature. The result is a framework explaining the role played by narratives and emotion in social entrepreneurship communication. The findings contribute to work on organizational narrative theory, new venture communication strategies, stakeholder evaluations of firms, and the marketing and entrepreneurship interface. Moreover, the study produces several practical implications for social entrepreneurs.
On the likelihood of finding the right partner in an arranged marriage

Abstract Although arranged marriages have been around for quite a while, the economics literature has paid scant attention to the nature of decision making in such marriages. Consequently, very little is known about the utility of traditional methods of decision making in arranged marriages. Given this state of affairs, this paper has three objectives. First, we formalize the traditional decision making process in arranged marriages. We then analyze the properties of this formalized decision making process from the perspective of a marrying agent. Finally, once again from the perspective of a marrying agent, we study the likelihood that the use of this decision making process will result in the agent finding the right partner for himself or herself.
Returns to Schooling in Russia and Ukraine: A Semiparametric Approach to Cross-Country Comparative Analysis ∗

This study provides the first set of estimates of the returns to schooling over an extended period in Russia and Ukraine (1985-2002). There has been an increase in returns to schooling in both countries but the increase is much bigger in Russia than in Ukraine. The intriguing question is why returns to schooling in Russia and Ukraine diverged so much over the transition period while the skill composition of employment did not. Our approach in analyzing the sources of cross-country differences in returns to schooling is to compare the Mincerian earnings functions between the two countries and then to employ decomposition techniques. Using semiparametric methods, we construct counterfactual wage distributions for university and secondary school graduates for Ukraine using the distributions of Russian characteristics, returns to characteristics, and unobservables. This allows us to decompose differences in returns to schooling between the two countries due to differences in the labor market returns (price effect), differences in unobservables (residual effect), and differences in the labor force composition (composition effect). We conclude that of these three effects the price effect makes a major contribution to the observed differences in the returns to schooling.
Individual accounts: Lessons from Sweden

Increasing numbers of countries are using mandatory funded individual accounts to provide retirement. Sweden in 2000 instituted a mandatory funded individual account system that differs in a number of ways from earlier such systems. It incorporates features that reflect lessons learned from other countries; in particular, ways to reduce the system's administrative costs.
Isolated Eigenvalues of the Ferromagnetic Spin-J XXZ Chain with Kink Boundary Conditions

We investigate the low-lying excited states of the spin J ferromagnetic XXZ chain with Ising anisotropy Δ and kink boundary conditions. Since the third component of the total magnetization, M, is conserved, it is meaningful to study the spectrum for each fixed value of M. We prove that for J≥3/2 the lowest excited eigenvalues are separated by a gap from the rest of the spectrum, uniformly in the length of the chain. In the thermodynamic limit, this means that there are a positive number of excitations above the ground state and below the essential spectrum.
The Role of Sales Presentations in Developing Customer Relationships

Abstract Personal selling and personal sales professionals use a number of tools to develop customer relationships. Among these, the sales presentation offers a number of advantages to the sales representative, including strategic advantages. Yet a review of the sales literature reveals that most research on personal selling tools tends to view the sales presentation as a tactical, not strategic, tool. Moreover, very little attention has been given to the special needs of services marketing and how sales presentations can add strategic value to the service marketing mix. This article reviews the literature on the role of sales presentations in relation to trust, relationship development, and communication theory and suggests that sales presentations may be used as a strategic tool for developing customer relationships. The value of this new strategic view of sales presentations for the marketing of services is also explored.