cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Individualized Injunctions and No-Modification Terms: Challenging “Anti-Reform” Provisions in Arbitration Clauses

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors have considered only whether class actions for monetary damages may be barred by arbitration clauses requiring individual adjudication. The Justices have not examined the enforceability of arbitration clauses or arbitral rules which explicitly prohibit claimants from seeking or arbitrators from granting broad injunctive relief in an individual dispute. I term these "anti-reform" provisions because they broadly prohibit an individual arbitral claimant from seeking to end a practice, change a rule, or enjoin an act that causes injury to itself and to similarly-situated non-parties. This essay is the first to consider the enforceability of such provisions, and to provide a framework for analyzing their enforceability.
Liquidity risk and accounting information

Abstract This paper highlights the different avenues through which stock liquidity can potentially transcend into accounting research. Recently, Lang and Maffett show that transparency reduces firm-level liquidity uncertainty, while Ng shows that increased information quality can reduce a firm's exposure to systematic liquidity risk. These studies respectively suggest that accounting variables can affect firm valuation and cost-of-capital through their impact on different aspects of liquidity. Although some doubt may arise about the economic significance of such effects on average, further evidence from the recent financial crisis presented in this paper confirms the important role of accounting information during liquidity events.
Age-induced acceleration of time: Implications for intertemporal choice

Abstract Our perception of time is both nonlinear and nonstationary, which makes preference reversals possible. I decompose the sources of dynamic inconsistency into a time acceleration effect and a time compression effect. Standard economic models focus only on the second effect. I show that when the perceived flow of time accelerates with age, the two effects can offset each other for hyperbolic discounters but not for exponential discounters. Such hyperbolic discounters would report discount rates that seem to imply dynamic inconsistency but would nonetheless manifest dynamic consistency in actual choices over time.
The Impact of Health Care Reform On Hospital and Preventive Care: Evidence from Massachusetts

In April 2006, Massachusetts passed legislation aimed at achieving near-universal health insurance coverage. The key features of this legislation were a model for national health reform, passed in March 2010. The reform gives us a novel opportunity to examine the impact of expansion to near-universal coverage state-wide. Among hospital discharges in Massachusetts, we find that the reform decreased uninsurance by 36% relative to its initial level and to other states. Reform affected utilization by decreasing length of stay, the number of inpatient admissions originating from the emergency room, and preventable admissions. At the same time, hospital cost growth did not increase.
What makes something psychoanalytic

QUESTIONS about the "essence" or boundary of a subject matter are both useful and hazardous. These concerns can coalesce or divide, divert or focus, affirm or degrade. With the hazards in mind, I wish to identify the forms of activity specific to psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts apart from other disciplines and practitioners. Given the variety of practices and the competing and complimentary theories, psychoanalysts have grown uncertain and defensive about the special domain of their inquiry. What makes something psychoanalytic?
Governance and Payout Precommitment

Abstract We examine how firms structure payout and debt commitments to address governance weaknesses. Firms with severe agency conflicts precommit through a combination of dividends and debt or through dividends rather than debt alone. Such firms also shift their shareholder payouts towards regular quarterly dividends—a stronger commitment than special dividends or repurchases. Although dividend commitments are implicit, event study evidence supports their credibility and value relevance for firms with weak governance. Despite harsher penalties, debt alone cannot replace shareholder payouts as a means of addressing managerial agency conflicts.
Deep impact: impact factors and accounting research

The impact of accounting research has been the subject of several studies over the past 30 years. Impact factors using citation analysis is the major method of evaluating the impact of accounting research and ranking accounting journals. Studies of the impact of accounting research using citation analysis have been conducted on faculty, doctoral students, and departments of accounting. Impact factor and citation analysis are considered by some to serve as proxies for the value or contribution of a journal or article. However, few question the meaning of impact factors or understand how impact factors are calculated. This paper discusses the meaning of impact factors and their importance in accounting research, and the potential for manipulating impact factors to the detriment of developing and producing accounting knowledge. The purpose of the paper is to pull back the curtain that veils the true meaning of impact factors.
Secondary Buyouts: Why Buy and at What Price?

Abstract This paper studies the economic logic and pricing of secondary buyouts, a form of leveraged buyout that has become increasingly popular. I investigate three potential explanations for secondary buyouts: efficiency gains, liquidity-based market timing, and collusion. The results are most consistent with the liquidity-based market timing hypothesis. Specifically, firms are more likely to exit through secondary buyouts when: the equity market is “cold”, the debt market condition is favorable, and the sellers face a high demand for liquidity. While this hypothesis shows a constrained optimal strategy for private equity firms, I do not find any strong efficiency gains for the target firms. Further, my analyses on pricing show that secondary buyouts are priced higher than first-time buyouts due to favorable debt market conditions. Overall, the results are consistent with the notion that secondary buyouts serve no purpose aside from alleviating the financial needs of private equity firms.
A bold move or biting off more than they can chew: examining the performance of small acquirers

Small acquirers enjoy announcement period returns that are significantly higher than announcement returns for larger acquirers, but small acquirers significantly underperform after the acquisition is consummated. We investigate why the market appears to “get it wrong” at the announcement of an acquisition by a small firm. We provide evidence consistent with an initial optimistic overreaction, followed by a correction as updated information is revealed. Overreaction is clustered in small acquirers offering stock and acquiring relatively larger targets. Low post-acquisition returns and poor fundamental performance are clustered in small acquirers offering stock and diversifying.
How Credit Card Payments Increase Unhealthy Food Purchases: Visceral Regulation of Vices

Some food items that are commonly considered unhealthy also tend to elicit impulsive responses. The pain of paying in cash can curb impulsive urges to purchase such unhealthy food products. Credit card payments, in contrast, are relatively painless and weaken impulse control. Consequently, consumers are more likely to buy unhealthy food products when they pay by credit card than when they pay in cash. Results from four studies support these hypotheses. Analysis of actual shopping behavior of 1,000 households over a period of 6 months revealed that shopping baskets have a larger proportion of food items rated as impulsive and unhealthy when shoppers use credit or debit cards to pay for the purchases (study 1). Follow-up experiments (studies 2–4) show that the vice-regulation effect of cash payments is mediated by pain of payment and moderated by chronic sensitivity to pain of payment. Implications for consumer welfare and theories of impulsive consumption are discussed.
The Consequences of Academic Match between Students and Colleges

We consider the effects of student ability, college quality, and the interaction between the two on academic outcomes and earnings, using data on two cohorts of college enrollees. Student ability and college quality strongly improve degree completion and earnings for all students. We find evidence of meaningful complementarity between student ability and college quality in degree completion at four years and in long-term earnings, but not in degree completion at six years or STEM degree completion. This complementarity implies some trade-off between equity and efficiency for policies that move lower-ability students to higher-quality colleges. [End Page 767] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Lafler, Frye, and the Subtle Art of Winning by Losing

In its recent decisions, Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Court recognized defendants’ rights to effective assistance of plea-bargaining counsel. Counter-intuitively, however, it is the government that may come to benefit most from the Court’s rulings against it, not only because a well-regulated plea-bargaining market facilitates frequent and expeditious plea deals, but also because prosecutors exercise terrific control over that market. Indeed, by making plea offers that are too attractive to reasonably refuse, prosecutors may constitutionally conscript defense counsel to persuade defendants to plead guilty. Moreover, prosecutors shape the practice norms against which the competency of bargaining counsel is now measured.
Tobacco Control Strategies: Past Efficacy and Future Promise

The public health impact of smoking remains as prominent as ever. At present, over 400,000 premature deaths - far and away the highest tally for any product or substance on the market - are attributable to smoking. And, per capita use and trend rates suggest no reason for relaxed regulatory scrutiny. In this article, I offer a view of past efficacy and future promise of tobacco control strategies. After a brief treatment of the demographics of smoking, indicating the distance that has been covered in reducing tobacco use, I discuss the main factors contributing to that partial success story; in particular, informational initiatives, clean air regulations, and taxation. Then, I address the strategies that, to my mind, have been somewhat less successful: litigation and advertising controls. Finally, I comment on the array of public health initiatives that might sensibly be considered at this point in time, with particular emphasis on reducing the prevalence of youth smoking.
The Big Bang, modern cosmology and the fate of the Universe: impacts upon culture

Cosmological discoveries over the past century have completely changed our picture of our place in the universe. New observations have a realistic chance of probing nature on heretofore unimaginable scales, and as a result are changing the nature of fundamental science. Perhaps no other domain of science has an equal capacity to completely change our perspective of the world in which we live.
How Do Auditors Weight Informal Contrary Advice? The Joint Influence of Advisor Social Bond and Advice Justifiability

ABSTRACT: Auditors frequently seek informal advice from peers to improve judgment quality, but the conditions under which advice improves auditor judgment are poorly understood. We predict and find evidence of a trust heuristic among auditors receiving advice from advisors with whom they share a social bond. This heuristic is evident among non-specialists, who weight advice according to its justifiability when it is received from a weaker social bond advisor, but fail to objectively assess the quality of advice received and weight it heavily when it comes from a stronger social bond advisor, regardless of its justifiability. Specialists, while less prone to the trust heuristic in advice weighting, show inconsistencies in advice weighting and their assessments of advice quality. In particular, specialists discount better justified advice from stronger social bond advisors, despite rating this advice as being of relatively high quality. This defensiveness likely arises from an aversive social comparison pro...
Supersanctions and sovereign debt repayment

Abstract What might happen if a third-party entity had the power to implement fiscal reforms and/or punish sovereign debt defaulters? In contrast to recent history, extreme sanctions such as gunboat diplomacy and “fiscal house arrest” were used to punish debt defaulters during the period 1870–1913. We find that, after a “supersanction” was imposed, a country improved its fiscal discipline. As a result, ex ante default probabilities on new issues fell dramatically and the country spent no additional time in default. Our results suggest some type of external fiscal or monetary control may be effective in imposing discipline on serial debt defaulters.
Application of the Federal Mail and Wire Fraud Statutes to Criminal Liability For Stock Market Insider Trading and Tipping

SEC Rule 10b-5 covers a great deal of stock market insider trading and tipping, but certainly not all. For insider trading defendants, some elements of criminal liability may be different and possibly easier to satisfy under mail/wire fraud than under SEC Rule 10b-5 (e.g., materiality, and the requirements for tipper and tippee liability recently tightened for Rule 10b-5 by the Second Circuit). Generally, courts have not addressed these possible differences.
Reforming Corporate Governance: What History Can Teach Us

In this article, I briefly review the history of corporate law, and then describe current legal distinctions among organizational forms in order to argue that one of the characteristics that distinguishes corporations from partnership-type forms is the set of default rules that help organizers to lock in capital, without locking in the investors. I argue that such lock-in is probably attractive because it allows business organizers to precommit not to withdraw capital from the venture prematurely or capriciously. I then propose that corporate governance reform proposals be distinguished according to whether their purpose and effect is to strengthen the independence and information available to boards, to enhance shareholder "voice," or to make it easier for shareholders to "exit." If the purpose and effect of a corporate governance reform proposal is to make it easier for shareholders to "exit," by, say, requiring boards to submit takeover offers to a shareholder vote, or permitting shareholders to propose and mandate (by election) distributions, dissolution or asset sales, I argue in this paper that such a proposal is at odds with the "lock-in" function of corporate law. Since business organizers would find it difficult to achieve effective lock-in using other currently available organizational forms, eliminating or weakening the lock-in potential of the corporate law choice by statutorily requiring corporations to give shareholders such powers would take away an important organizational option that business organizers and investors currently have. This option has been eagerly sought out and used by business organizers in the U.S. for more than 150 years, and appears to be associated with substantial economic innovation and growth. Thus, it seems unwise on the face of it to change the law in ways that would eliminate this option. On the other hand, if the purpose and effect of a corporate governance reform proposal is to enhance the monitoring capabilities of corporate boards, or to facilitate shareholder "voice," such a proposal is not obviously at odds with the lock-in function of the corporate form, and may well reduce agency costs without unduly subverting the role that the corporate form serves in addressing the team production problem.
An Introduction to Partition Logic

Classical logic is usually interpreted as the logic of propositions. But from Boole's original development up to modern categorical logic, there has always been the alternative interpretation of classical logic as the logic of subsets of any given (nonempty) universe set. Partitions on a universe set are dual to subsets of a universe set in the sense of the reverse-the-arrows category-theoretic duality--which is reflected in the duality between quotient objects and subobjects throughout algebra. Hence the idea arises of a dual logic of partitions. That dual logic is described here. Partition logic is at the same mathematical level as subset logic since models for both are constructed from (partitions on or subsets of) arbitrary unstructured sets with no ordering relations, compatibility or accessibility relations, or topologies on the sets. Just as Boole developed logical finite probability theory as a quantitative treatment of subset logic, applying the analogous mathematical steps to partition logic yields a logical notion of entropy so that information theory can be refounded on partition logic. But the biggest application is that when partition logic and the accompanying logical information theory are "lifted" to complex vector spaces, then the mathematical framework of quantum mechanics is obtained. Partition logic models indefiniteness (i.e., numerical attributes on a set become more definite as the inverse-image partition becomes more refined) while subset logic models the definiteness of classical physics (an entity either definitely has a property or definitely does not). Hence partition logic provides the backstory so the old idea of "objective indefiniteness" in QM can be fleshed out to a full interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Failed Protectors: The Indian Trust and Killers of the Flower Moon

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. By David Grann. New York: Doubleday. 2017. P. 291. Cloth, $28.95; paper, $16.95. David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon: Th...
Professionalism: The Deep Theory

Can our personal ethics and our professional ethics be in opposition? Our professional identity as lawyers is at the center of our personal morality. The legal profession is in crisis because we have lost sight of the deep theory of professionalism. This article focuses on our ultimate motivation for obeying rules, concentrating on three common categories: goal-based, rights-based, and duty-based theories. By examining these theories, the article argues that lawyers must turn away from the modern trend of goal instrumentalism and refocus legal practice on its humanistic roots.
Capital controls or macroprudential regulation

International capital flows can create significant financial instability in emerging economies. Does this make it optimal to impose capital controls or should policymakers rely on domestic macroprudential regulation in their quest for greater financial stability? This paper shows that it is desirable to employ both instruments to mitigate contractionary exchange rate depreciations: Macroprudential regulation reduces the amount and riskiness of financial liabilities, no matter whether they are financed by domestic or foreign lenders; capital controls increase the aggregate net worth of the economy by reducing net inflows. Both types of policy measures make the economy more stable and reduce the incidence and severity of crises. They should be set higher the greater an economy's debt burden and the higher domestic inequality. In a calibration based on the East Asian crisis countries, we find that it is optimal to impose both capital controls and macroprudential regulation that amount to a 2% tax on debt flows or equivalent quantity regulations. In advanced countries where the risk of contractionary exchange rate depreciations is more limited, the role for capital controls subsides. However, macroprudential regulation remains essential to mitigate booms and busts in asset prices.
Wal-Mart and the geography of grocery retailing

Abstract This paper empirically examines the impact of entry by Wal-Mart on competition in the supermarket industry. Using a detailed panel dataset spanning 1994–2006, we estimate the impact of Wal-Mart on firm outcomes and market structure, controlling for persistent local trends and systematic differences across markets by exploiting the detailed spatial structure of our store-level census. We find that Wal-Mart’s impact is highly localized, affecting firms only within a tight, two-mile radius of its location. Within this radius, the bulk of the impact falls on declining firms and mostly on the intensive margin. Entry of new firms is essentially unaffected. Moreover, the stores most damaged by Wal-Mart’s entry are the outlets of larger chains. This suggests that Wal-Mart’s expansion into groceries is quite distinct from its earlier experience in the discount industry, where the primary casualties were small chains and sole proprietorships that were forced to exit the market. This contrast sheds light on the role density economies play in shaping both equilibrium market structure and economic geography. In the case of grocery competition, high travel costs and the perishable nature of groceries appear to impart horizontal differentiation between firms. This differentiation in demand appears to reduce impact of scale economies advantages that Wal-Mart exploited to the detriment of far-flung competitors in the discount store industry.
Feminist Approaches to Tort Law

This article observes that one of the most interesting developments in tort scholarship during recent years has been the emergence of a literature analyzing tort problems from feminist perspectives. The article looks at three of the areas that feminist writers have explored: the possibility of a "reasonable woman" standard as an alternative to the "reasonable man"; the possible recognition of a duty to rescue, which allegedly would be in harmony with feminist ethics; and the issue of how the tort system should respond to types of harms that are disproportionately suffered by women. The article concludes that the feminist discussions of these topics have enriched the discourse of tort. Still, those discussions have been, in significant respects, inadequate. They have failed, for example, to take advantage of the relevant empirical information; and certain key issues relating to legal history and legal theory have remained underdeveloped.
Cash savings and capital markets

Abstract A growing literature argues that firms plan their cash policies while considering dynamics in the supply of capital. Evidence from the U.S. shows firms making large equity issues when stock prices are high for the purpose of building precautionary cash savings. We confirm this U.S. evidence, and find these effects internationally in countries like the U.S. where external finance is more accessible. In these countries, the relation between precautionary motives and cash savings disappears if the proceeds from net equity issues are removed from cash. In contrast, high precautionary motive firms do not build cash with equity issues in countries where external finance is costlier, suggesting the benefits of holding cash are outweighed by issuance costs. Our findings show that access to equity finance has a first order impact on cash policy.
Optimal Volume of Environmentally Damaging Trade

It is controversial whether international trade enhances or degrades the global environment. In this model, environmental quality, as measured by biodiversity, is damaged by the consequences of trade, which include the commercialization of natural habitat, pollution and bioinvasion. However, there are also benefits of trade. When both countries internalize the external costs of production and trade, measures of environmental quality may be higher or lower as a consequence of trade, but there is always, unambiguously, less trade the more environmentally damaging it is.
Remittances, Institutions and Growth: A Semiparametric Study

In this article we re-examine the relationship between remittances and economic growth placing special attention on the nonlinearity of this relationship. Previous studies have ignored the non-linearity of the relationship between remittances and economic growth or have used a quadratic term to capture nonlinearity. We show that the relationship between remittances and growth is neither linear nor quadratic and propose the use of a semiparametric model to avoid the risk of misspecification bias from imposing an arbitrary functional form. We find evidence of a positive relationship between remittances and growth in parametric estimations; however, such a relationship disappears when nonlinearity is taken into account using non-parametric techniques.
Protecting Minorities in Large Binary Elections. A Test of Storable Votes Using Field Data

Democratic systems are built, with good reason, on majoritarian principles, but their legitimacy requires the protection of strongly held minority preferences. The challenge is to do so while treating every voter equally and preserving aggregate welfare. One possible solution is storable votes: granting each voter a budget of votes to cast as desired over multiple decisions. During the 2006 student elections at Columbia University, we tested a simple version of this idea: voters were asked to rank the importance of the different contests and to choose where to cast a single extra "bonus vote," had one been available. We used these responses to construct distributions of intensities and electoral outcomes, both without and with the bonus vote. Bootstrapping techniques provided estimates of the probable impact of the bonus vote. The bonus vote performs well: when minority preferences are particularly intense, the minority wins at least one of the contests with 15--30 percent probability; and, when the minority wins, aggregate welfare increases with 85--95 percent probability. When majority and minority preferences are equally intense, the effect of the bonus vote is smaller and more variable but on balance still positive.
State wage-payment laws, the Pension Protection Act of 2006, and 401(k) saving behavior

Abstract I show empirically that state wage-payment laws, which forbid deductions from wages and salaries without the written permission of the employee, constituted a binding constraint on firms’ choices to adopt automatic enrollment in 401(k) plans prior to 2006.
Sharpening the effectiveness of natural experiments as an analytical tool

The importance of using natural experiments in economic research has long been recognized. Yet, it is only in recent years that natural experiments have become an integral part of the economist's analytical toolbox, thanks to the efforts of Meyer, Card, Peters, Krueger, Gruber, and others. This use promises to shed new light on a variety of public policy issues and has already caused a major challenge to some tightly held beliefs in economics, most vividly illustrated by the finding of a positive effect of a minimum wage increase on the employment of low-wage workers. Although currently in vogue in economic research, the analysis of natural experiments could be substantially strengthened. This paper discusses several methodological approaches that would increase the precision and reliability of the results stemming from the analysis of natural experiments. A theme underlying all of these proposals is how best to measure the effect of a treatment on a variable, as opposed to explaining a level or change in a variable.
Evaluating Food Systems in Comprehensive Planning: Is the Mississippi Gulf Coast Planning for Food?

The Mississippi Gulf Coast is famous for its shrimp, oysters, and crabs. Seafood is an essential part of both the culture and the diet of coastal residents. The last five years have been hard on the seafood industry, due first to Hurricane Katrina, then the national recession, and then the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In the five years following the hurricane, all of the cities and counties on the Mississippi Gulf Coast prepared comprehensive plans covering the future of the land use, public facilities, and housing for the community for 20 or more years. This paper examines the degree to which food systems have been incorporated into the comprehensive plans developed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It finds that food systems have not been adequately integrated into the plans. The comprehensive plans for the region begin to touch on food systems, but fail to create a factual basis to support planning for those systems, such as identification of the proportion of retail food establishments that accept food assistance programs. They set limited goals to support food systems and propose limited implementation measures in support of them. While the region as a whole has not yet planned for food systems, there are instances where communities are examining the future of food. This article concludes by offering recommendations on how communities can improve their plans relative to food systems as they move into their next phase of regional planning.
Recent publishing trends at the AER, JPE and QJE

This note summarizes recent trends in institutional affiliation of authors who publish in three leading general interest journals, American Economic Review (AER), Journal of Political Economy (JPE), and Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE). The statistics show that well over 40% of the pages published in the QJE between 2000 and 2003 are by authors affiliated with one of four institutions. This represents a significant increase from analogous figures during the 1980s and earlier periods. The concentrations of affiliations are not as high at the AER or JPE, but they still show a reversal of the declining trend in concentration that occurred from 1950 to 1989.
Distribution and politics: a brief history and prospect

A brief, historical review of the study of the interdependency between politics and economic distribution is offered. While the impact of economic interests on politics has been acknowledged for thousands of years, and the impact of politics on distribution for hundreds, it is only in the last thirty years that formal models of the interdependency between economic distribution and politics have been formulated. A general model of political-economic equilibrium is proposed, in which political competition and economic distribution jointly determine each other. Several examples are given. The author proposes that political economy, conceived of as studying this process of joint determination, is in its infancy.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Tax-Avoidance Activities of U.S. Multinational Corporations*

This paper investigates whether economies of scale exist for tax planning. In particular, do larger, more profitable, multinational corporations avoid more taxes than other firms, resulting in lower effective tax rates? While the empirical results indicate that, ceteris paribus, larger corporations have higher effective tax rates, firms with greater pre-tax income have lower effective tax rates. The negative relation between effective tax rates (ETRs) and pretax income is consistent with firms with greater pre-tax income having more incentives and resources to engage in tax planning. Consistent with multinational corporations being able to avoid income taxes that domestic-only companies cannot, I find that multinational corporations in general, and multinational corporations with more extensive foreign operations, have lower worldwide ETRs than other firms. Finally, in a sample of multinational corporations only, I find that higher levels of U.S. pre-tax income are associated with lower U.S. and foreign ETRs, while higher levels of foreign pre-tax income are associated with higher U.S. and foreign ETRs. Thus, large amounts of foreign income are associated with higher corporate tax burdens. Overall, I find substantial evidence of economies of scale to tax planning.
Video Evidence and Summary Judgment: The Procedure of Scott v. Harris

In Scott v. Harris (2007), the Supreme Court granted summary judgment on a Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim brought by a motorist injured when a pursuing law-enforcement officer terminated a high-speed pursuit by bumping the plaintiff's car. The Court relied almost exclusively on a video of the chase captured from the officer's dash-mounted camera and disregarded witness testimony that contradicted the video. In granting summary judgment in this circumstance, the Court fell sway to the myth of video evidence as able to speak for itself, as an objective, unambiguous, and singularly accurate depiction of real-world events, not subject to any interpretation or subjective analysis. For the majority, there was no need for a fact-finder to review the video or to compare the video with the competing testimony of eyewitnesses, because what the majority saw in the video was true. The reality, however, is that video evidence is not so singularly objective or definitive in its meaning and message; instead, video presents one perspective on events and is subject to the interpretation and close analysis reserved for the jury at trial. This essay critiques the Court's approach in Scott, both the immediate decision and with an eye on the increasing use of video recording of encounters between police and the likelihood that video will be an increasingly common element of civil rights litigation.
On the origin of shared beliefs (and corporate culture)

This article shows how corporate culture, in the sense of shared beliefs and values, originates (often unintentionally) through screening, self-sorting, and manager-directed joint learning. It shows that such culture will be stronger among more important employees and in older and more successful firms where employees make important decisions and the manager has strong beliefs. It further shows how a manager’s beliefs influence culture, how culture persists despite turnover, and why the suggested link between culture and performance may be a case of inverse causality. It finally shows that, from an outsider’s perspective, organizations may tend to overinvest in corporate culture.
Who's to blame for all the heartache?: A response to anti‐capitalistic mentalities after Katrina

Purpose – The wake of a natural disaster is a tumultuous setting. Resources are scarce, actions are quick, and emotions are high. Social commentators have often brought complaints against capitalism for promoting greed and selfishness during and after natural catastrophes. Most recently academics have introduced a unique perspective in addition to the more traditional criticisms. They claim that free‐market advocates have imposed capitalist theories and policies in the wake of crises to the detriment of traditional policies, preferred cultures, and democratically selected institutions. This paper aims to investigate these claims.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a discursive analysis.Findings – It is argued that the left overlooks the case that capitalism and corporate businesses may be a natural part of local cultures and recovery processes. If such a claim is true, then the normative case against capitalist responses to natural disasters is weaker than has been presented. The two perspectives a...
Substituting the End for the Whole: Why Voters Respond Primarily to the Election-Year Economy

According to numerous studies, the election-year economy influences presidential election results far more than cumulative growth throughout the term. Here we describe a series of surveys and experiments that point to an intriguing explanation for this pattern that runs contrary to standard political science explanations, but one that accords with a large psychological literature. Voters, we find, actually intend to judge presidents on cumulative growth. However, since that characteristic is not readily available to them, voters inadvertently substitute election-year performance because it is more easily accessible. This �end-heuristic� explanation for voters� election-year emphasis reflects a general tendency for people to simplify retrospective assessments by substituting conditions at the end for the whole. The end-heuristic explanation also suggests a remedy, a way to align voters� actions with their intentions. Providing people with the attribute they are seeking�cumulative growth�eliminates the election-year emphasis.
Decentralized Banking: Monetary Technocracy in the Digital Age

Bitcoin has ushered in the age of blockchain-based digital currency systems. Secured by cryptography and computing power, and distributed across a decentralized network of anonymous nodes, these novel systems could potentially disrupt the way that monetary policy is administered—moving away from today’s human-fallible central bankers and towards a technocratic, rules-based algorithmic approach. It can be argued that modern central banks have failed to stem macro-economic crises, and may have, in fact, exacerbated negative outcomes by incentivizing excessive risk-taking and moral hazard via unconventional monetary tools such as quantitative easing and negative interest rates. A central bank typically serves three primary functions: to issue and regulate the supply of money; to serve as clearinghouse for settlement of payments transactions; and to serve as lender of last resort. Could a digital currency system serve as a rational substitute for a central bank? This perspective paper examines that question, and then suggests that indeed it could be plausible. While Bitcoin in its current form will prove to be inadequate to function as monetary authority, I put forward what an operative case could resemble.
From Private Consultation to Public Crusade: Assessing Eisenhower's Legislative Strategies on Foreign Policy

Existing scholarship describes Congress as deferring to Dwight Eisenhower on foreign policy during the majority of his presidency. In this article, I demonstrate that Congress resisted key elements of Eisenhower's foreign policy agenda throughout his presidency, and that Eisenhower needed to employ a variety of sophisticated strategies to obtain congressional backing. On foreign aid—one of his top presidential priorities—Eisenhower launched a multifaceted and innovative campaign to build congressional support, which included the establishment of White House-funded private advocacy groups to educate the public about the issue. Eisenhower's approach on foreign aid reveals that he was willing to depart from his “hidden-hand” leadership style when necessary to advance a top priority, but that even when going public, Eisenhower relied in part on others to deliver his message.
A Social Movement History of Title VII Disparate Impact Analysis

This Article examines the history of Title VII disparate impact law in light of the policy and potential constitutional questions the Court’s recent decision in Ricci v. DeStefano raises. My analysis shows that, contrary to popular assumptions, disparate impact doctrine was not a last-minute, illconceived invention of the EEOC following Title VII’s passage. Instead, it arose out of a moderate, experimentalist regulatory tradition that sought to use laws to motivate employers to reform employment practices that posed structural bars to employment opportunities for racial minorities, regardless of invidious intent. Non-lawyer activists within the National Urban League first pioneered these experimentalist regulatory strategies at the state level. They then passed them on to the EEOC for use in the early years of its existence, backed by the potential litigation threat posed by the NAACP. This Article argues that a closer look at the origins of disparate impact law should change the assessments of participants on all sides of the current debate about the future of this doctrine. Both critics of Ricci and disparate impact law should realize that this doctrine can do important legal work even if Ricci creates a new defense for employers who undertake good faith efforts to comply with disparate impact standards. Those who question the doctrine’s constitutionality should recognize its legitimacy as a “soft” regulatory approach that can lead to an appropriate balancing of pro-employer concerns about preserving business discretion and enhancing business rationality with the civil rights movement’s central concerns about identifying and dismantling intent-neutral but historically laden sources of unnecessary structural exclusion.
How the biden administration can reinvigorate global health security, institutions, and governance

Joseph R Biden was elected President of the United States during a period of compound crises for global health and security: the worst pandemic in a century, as well as steep reverses in progress toward reducing poverty, hunger, and disease The United States has been in full retreat from global health leadership, fraying relationships with allies, weakening global institutions, and engaging in nationalist populism that threatens global cooperation to address worldwide challenges Yet these tragic circumstances are also fertile soil for deep structural reforms President Biden can both bolster the immediate responses to COVID-19 and its vast ramifications, and spearhead lasting changes to create a healthier and safer world, from which the United States would richly benefit 1 His immediate task will be to bring U S economic and scientific strength to the COVID-19 response in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) The Biden administration should also assume financial and strategic leadership in bolstering world efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including its singular pledge to leave no one behind Finally, President Biden should empower the WHO and lead on reforms to the global health architecture to advance the right to health At a time when the United States is facing its own COVID-19 crisis, the agenda we propose for President Biden is ambitious And global health leadership will need to complement other, related actions to address pressing global crises that have immense health consequences, like climate change and mass migration Yet bold leadership on global health will benefit all people, including Americans As COVID-19 devastatingly demonstrates, Americans' health security is inextricably tied to global health security Healthier populations are more economically productive;better global health will mean larger markets for U S goods and services U S global health leadership will open doors for cooperation on global challenges that themselves threaten the United States, from climate change and antimicrobial resistant organisms to cybersecurity Such leadership should also help the United States to gain allies for stopping the global advance of authoritarianism and the erosion of human rights While requiring new funds, the spending linked to our proposals would be minute compared to the overall federal budget, much less the U S economy © Lawrence O Gostin, Eric A Friedman, Sarah Wetter 2021 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons org/licenses/by/4 0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
The Dynamics of Chronic Failure: A Longitudinal Study

Over a 25-year period, due to its continued under-performance, repeated efforts were made to reduce the costs and refocus the efforts of a regional office of a national agency. Eventually these efforts resulted in the office being effectively eliminated. This article argues that the processes used during organization change efforts were so flawed that they actually accentuated chronic failure. Even with highly dedicated professional staff and the desire to properly spend public money, an organization can fail in the institutional domain while still protesting and pursuing success in the client domain.
Two Sides of the Same Coin: Judicial Review of Administrative Agency Action and Inaction

Judicial review of agency inaction under Section 706(1) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) has been often been doctrinally incoherent and unclear. There is confusion about proper standard of review, the distinction between agency action and inaction, and the full scope of the presumption of unreviewability for agency non-enforcement decisions laid out by the Supreme Court in Heckler v. Chaney. The result is not just problematic on an abstract level - judicial review of agency inaction is increasingly important in regulatory fields such as environmental law, as shown by the Supreme Court's recent decision in Massachusetts v. EPA that rejected the Environmental Protection Agency's claim that it had no jurisdiction to regulate greenhouse gases produced by automobiles. This paper applies a framework that identifies judicial deference to agency resource allocation decisions as a crucial factor in administrative law, and uses that framework to bring coherence and clarity to the doctrine of judicial review of agency inaction. In particular, the paper shows that there is no fundamental difference between judicial review of agency inaction or action under the APA. The same underlying principles of administrative law apply in both circumstances, with the level of deference varying depending on the importance that resource allocation plays in the agency's decision. Likewise, a wide range of exceptions to judicial review of agency decisions that the Supreme Court has carved out can be properly understood as the result of judicial deference to agency resource allocation.
From Club to Market: The Evolving Role of Business Lawyers

The traditional protection against undesirable legal representation is the attorney's independence from the client backed by the threat of withdrawal. That protection, however, has eroded as the legal services market evolved from club to competitive forms of organization. The problems of reduced lawyer independence have come to the fore as a result of the share market bubble of 1995-2000 and corporate scandals that to one degree or another were related to the bubble economy: Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and HealthSouth being prime examples. If counsel had exercised a higher degree of independence, some of the harms might have been mitigated or avoided. Having identified the transition from club to competitive organization and the bubble economy as two principal economic developments that have impacted attorney independence, this paper addressed several proposals for reform: up-the-ladder reporting, noisy withdrawal, enhanced permission to reveal client confidences, and changes in the self-identity of the profession. An awareness of the background economic developments provides helpful insights into the policy arguments for and against these proposed changes.