cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Rural Disparities in Early Childhood Well Child Visit Attendance

Abstract Purpose Children should attend well child visits (WCVs) during early childhood so that developmental disorders may be identified as early as possible, so treatment can begin. The aim of this research was to determine if rurality impacts access to WCV during early childhood, and if altering rurality measurement methods impacts outcomes. Design and methods We utilized a longitudinal correlational design with early childhood data gathered from the Virginia All Payer Claims Database, which contains claims data from Medicaid and the majority of Virginia commercial insurance payers (n = 6349). WCV attendance was evaluated against three rurality metrics: a traditional metric using Rural-Urban Commuting Area codes, a developed land variable, and a distance to care variable, at a zip code level. Results Two of the rurality methods revealed that rural children attend fewer WCVs than their urban counterparts, (67% vs. 50% respectively, using a traditional metric; and a 0.035 increase in WCV attendance for every percent increase in developed land). Differences were attenuated by insurance payer; children with Medicaid attend fewer WCVs than those with private insurance. Conclusions Young children in rural Virginia attend fewer WCVs than their non-rural counterparts, placing them at higher risk for missing timely developmental disorder screenings. The coronavirus disease pandemic has been associated with an abrupt and significant reduction in vaccination rates, which likely indicates fewer WCVs and concomitant developmental screenings. Pediatric nurses should encourage families of young children to develop a plan for continued WCVs, so that early identification of developmental disorders can be achieved.
Split-Treatment Analysis to Rank Heterogeneous Causal Effects for Prospective Interventions

For many kinds of interventions, such as a new advertisement, marketing intervention, or feature recommendation, it is important to target a specific subset of people for maximizing its benefits at minimum cost or potential harm. However, a key challenge is that no data is available about the effect of such a prospective intervention since it has not been deployed yet. In this work, we propose a split-treatment analysis that ranks the individuals most likely to be positively affected by a prospective intervention using past observational data. Unlike standard causal inference methods, the split-treatment method does not need any observations of the target treatments themselves. Instead it relies on observations of a proxy treatment that is caused by the target treatment. Under reasonable assumptions, we show that the ranking of heterogeneous causal effect based on the proxy treatment is the same as the ranking based on the target treatment's effect. In the absence of any interventional data for cross-validation, Split-Treatment uses sensitivity analyses for unobserved confounding to eliminate unreliable models. We apply Split-Treatment to simulated data and a large-scale, real-world targeting task and validate our discovered rankings via a randomized experiment for the latter.
FeatMatch: Feature-Based Augmentation for Semi-supervised Learning

Recent state-of-the-art semi-supervised learning (SSL) methods use a combination of image-based transformations and consistency regularization as core components. Such methods, however, are limited to simple transformations such as traditional data augmentation or convex combinations of two images. In this paper, we propose a novel learned feature-based refinement and augmentation method that produces a varied set of complex transformations. Importantly, these transformations also use information from both within-class and across-class prototypical representations that we extract through clustering. We use features already computed across iterations by storing them in a memory bank, obviating the need for significant extra computation. These transformations, combined with traditional image-based augmentation, are then used as part of the consistency-based regularization loss. We demonstrate that our method is comparable to current state of art for smaller datasets (CIFAR-10 and SVHN) while being able to scale up to larger datasets such as CIFAR-100 and mini-Imagenet where we achieve significant gains over the state of art (e.g., absolute 17.44% gain on mini-ImageNet). We further test our method on DomainNet, demonstrating better robustness to out-of-domain unlabeled data, and perform rigorous ablations and analysis to validate the method. Code is available here: https://sites.google.com/view/chiawen-kuo/home/featmatch.
Optimal $\ell_1$ Column Subset Selection and a Fast PTAS for Low Rank Approximation

We study the problem of entrywise $\ell_1$ low rank approximation. We give the first polynomial time column subset selection-based $\ell_1$ low rank approximation algorithm sampling $\tilde{O}(k)$ columns and achieving an $\tilde{O}(k^{1/2})$-approximation for any $k$, improving upon the previous best $\tilde{O}(k)$-approximation and matching a prior lower bound for column subset selection-based $\ell_1$-low rank approximation which holds for any $\text{poly}(k)$ number of columns. We extend our results to obtain tight upper and lower bounds for column subset selection-based $\ell_p$ low rank approximation for any $1 < p < 2$, closing a long line of work on this problem. We next give a $(1 + \varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm for entrywise $\ell_p$ low rank approximation, for $1 \leq p < 2$, that is not a column subset selection algorithm. First, we obtain an algorithm which, given a matrix $A \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times d}$, returns a rank-$k$ matrix $\hat{A}$ in $2^{\text{poly}(k/\varepsilon)} + \text{poly}(nd)$ running time such that: $$\|A - \hat{A}\|_p \leq (1 + \varepsilon) \cdot OPT + \frac{\varepsilon}{\text{poly}(k)}\|A\|_p$$ where $OPT = \min_{A_k \text{ rank }k} \|A - A_k\|_p$. Using this algorithm, in the same running time we give an algorithm which obtains error at most $(1 + \varepsilon) \cdot OPT$ and outputs a matrix of rank at most $3k$ -- these algorithms significantly improve upon all previous $(1 + \varepsilon)$- and $O(1)$-approximation algorithms for the $\ell_p$ low rank approximation problem, which required at least $n^{\text{poly}(k/\varepsilon)}$ or $n^{\text{poly}(k)}$ running time, and either required strong bit complexity assumptions (our algorithms do not) or had bicriteria rank $3k$. Finally, we show hardness results which nearly match our $2^{\text{poly}(k)} + \text{poly}(nd)$ running time and the above additive error guarantee.
Accelerating Binarized Neural Networks via Bit-Tensor-Cores in Turing GPUs

Despite foreseeing tremendous speedups over conventional deep neural networks, the performance advantage of binarized neural networks (BNNs) has merely been showcased on general-purpose processors such as CPUs and GPUs. In fact, due to being unable to leverage bit-level-parallelism with a word-based architecture, GPUs have been criticized for extremely low utilization (1 percent) when executing BNNs. Consequently, the latest tensorcores in NVIDIA Turing GPUs start to experimentally support bit computation. In this article, we look into this brand new bit computation capability and characterize its unique features. We show that the stride of memory access can significantly affect performance delivery and a data-format co-design is highly desired to support the tensorcores for achieving superior performance than existing software solutions without tensorcores. We realize the tensorcore-accelerated BNN design, particularly the major functions for fully-connect and convolution layers — bit matrix multiplication and bit convolution. Evaluations on two NVIDIA Turing GPUs show that, with ResNet-18, our BTC-BNN design can process ImageNet at a rate of 5.6K images per second, 77 percent faster than state-of-the-art. Our BNN approach is released on https://github.com/pnnl/TCBNN .
Patients with depression are less likely to go home after critical limb revascularization

Abstract Background Although often overlooked during the preoperative evaluation, recent evidence has suggested that depression in patients with peripheral artery disease is associated with increased postoperative complications, including decreased primary and secondary patency after revascularization and an increased risk of major amputation and mortality. Postoperative nonhome discharge (NHD) is an important outcome for patients and has also been associated with other adverse outcomes; however, the effect that depression has on NHD after vascular surgery has remained unexplored. We hypothesized that depression would be associated with an increased risk of NHD after revascularization for chronic limb threatening ischemia (CLTI). Methods Endovascular, open, and hybrid (combined open and endovascular) cases of revascularization for CLTI were identified from the 2012 to 2014 National (Nationwide) Inpatient Sample. CLTI, diagnoses of depression, and medical comorbidities were defined using the corresponding International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification codes. A hierarchical multivariable binary logistic regression controlling for hospital level variation and for confounders meeting P Results A total of 64,817 cases were identified, of which 5472 (8.4%) included a diagnosis of depression and 16,524 (25.5%) NHD. The patients with depression were younger and more likely to be women and white, have multiple comorbidities and a nonelective admission, and experience a postoperative complication (P Conclusions To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first to identify an association between depression and NHD after revascularization for CLTI. These results provide further evidence of the negative effects that comorbid depression has on patients undergoing revascularization for CLTI. Future studies should examine whether treating depression can improve the outcomes in this patient population.
Equivariant Hodge theory and noncommutative geometry

We develop a version of Hodge theory for a large class of smooth formally proper quotient stacks X∕G analogous to Hodge theory for smooth projective schemes. We show that the noncommutative Hodge–de Rham sequence for the category of equivariant coherent sheaves degenerates. This spectral sequence converges to the periodic cyclic homology, which we canonically identify with the topological equivariant K–theory of X with respect to a maximal compact subgroup of G, equipping the latter with a canonical pure Hodge structure. We also establish Hodge–de Rham degeneration for categories of matrix factorizations for a large class of equivariant Landau–Ginzburg models.
Recurrent Neural Network Controllers for Signal Temporal Logic Specifications Subject to Safety Constraints

We propose a framework based on Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) to determine an optimal control strategy for a discrete-time system that is required to satisfy specifications given as Signal Temporal Logic (STL) formulae. RNNs can store information of a system over time, thus, enable us to determine satisfaction of the dynamic temporal requirements specified in STL formulae. Given a STL formula, a dataset of satisfying system executions and corresponding control policies, we can use RNNs to predict a control policy at each time based on the current and previous states of system. We use Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) to guarantee the safety of the predicted control policy. We validate our theoretical formulation and demonstrate its performance in an optimal control problem subject to partially unknown safety constraints through simulations.
Rule-making in the WTO: lessons from the case of bribery and corruption

During the 1990s, the OECD and numerous other international organizations adopted conventions and other instruments designed to control bribery and corruption in international business. The WTO, however, took no such action, and a related initiative on transparency in government procurement has not yet produced any results. This article examines what one can learn about rule-making in the WTO from its failure to act in this case. Much of the explanation for the inaction lay outside the organization, in the political incentives facing major actors. Yet structural characteristics of the WTO, its approach to legalization, and its negotiating processes also played significant roles. These factors should be addressed if the organization is to deal effectively with the controversial issues now on its agenda.
On some global properties of Gorman class demand systems

Abstract This letter explores some global properties of the Gorman class of demand functions. We find that generalizing the homothetic preferences case to non-homotheticity gives rise to an unexpected global problem. In particular, interaction of the bounded budget share condition with either Slutsky symmetry or with homogeneity reduces the set of admissible Gorman class demand functions to but one — the polar form.
Regulating Research for the Decisionally Impaired: Implications for Mental Health Professionals

Mental health professionals, in fulfilling their different roles, often become involved with research protocols involving decisionally impaired current or prospective human subjects, many of whom are elderly. The opening section of this paper briefly describes the present regulatory environment regarding human subjects research, followed by an overview of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process. There then ensues an enumeration of some of the general criticisms of the current regulatory scheme that have been enunciated recently. Particular concerns concerning decisionally impaired persons as research subjects are then addressed, referring when applicable to the recommendations made by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) in its 1998 report on this subject and the implications of those recommendations for mental health professionals.
The Right to Physician–Assisted Suicide On Demand

This article argues for the right to physician–assisted suicide under any circumstance defined by the client or individual making the request. Its perspective is oriented within the field of social welfare. It examines conflicts between values of autonomy and the preservation of life and compares Dutch and United States right–to–die legislation. The article also discusses responsibilities of both the individual and society toward each other within the scope of physician–assisted suicide, socio–economic causes of suicide, suggestions for suicide prevention, and promotes physician–assisted suicide on demand based on the literature and the social work value of self–determination.
Pricing the commonality across alternative measures of liquidity

Abstract We estimate latent factor models of liquidity, aggregated across various liquidity measures. Shocks to assets’ liquidity have a common component across measures which accounts for most of the explained variation in individual liquidity measures. We find that across-measure systematic liquidity is a priced factor while within-measure systematic liquidity does not exhibit additional pricing information. Controlling for across-measure systematic liquidity risk, there is some evidence that liquidity, as a characteristic of assets, is priced in the cross-section. Our results are robust to the inclusion of other equity characteristics and risk factors, such as market capitalization, book-to-market, and momentum.
Beyond the Hero Judge: Institutional Reform Litigation as Litigation

In 1955, in its second decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court suggested that federal courts might be called upon to engage in long-term oversight of once-segregated schools.3 Through the 1960s, southern resistance pushed federal district and appellate judges to turn that possibility into a reality.4 The impact of this saga on litigation practice extended beyond school desegregation, and even beyond the struggle for African-American equality; through implementation of Brown, the nation’s litigants, lawyers, and judges grew accustomed both to issuance of perma-
On some aspects of ecological resilience and the conservation of species

The importance of the notion of resilience in determining the static and the intertemporal behaviour of jointly determined ecological-economic systems has long been recognized by ecologists. This notwithstanding, there are very few formal studies of such systems which explicitly analyse the ecological and the economic aspects of the problem. Consequently, this paper has two objectives. First, a new stationary probability-based method is proposed to characterize the notion of ecological resilience. Next, this characterization is used to study the problem of optimal species conservation.
The Influence of a Credit Rating Change on Dividend and Investment Policy Interactions

We examine firms’ alterations in dividend and investment activities following credit rating changes. We find that downgraded firms reduce both dividends and investments more than no-rating-change firms. However, a silver lining of this doubly negative impact for shareholders is an increase in investment efficiency in firms that are most likely to overinvest. For upgraded firms, investments increase, but dividend outlays do not, compared to firms without rating changes. Our findings of asymmetric dividend stickiness and symmetric investment changes on a credit shock suggest that dividends and investments should not always be considered competing uses of funds.
White Sexual Imperialism: A Theory of Asian Feminist Jurisprudence

This Article studies the intersection of race and gender, examining it through the lens of Western imperialism. Even though both critical race and feminist scholarship have addressed this intersection, few if any offer a precise theory for understanding the imperialized experience. This Article seeks to fill that void. The social inequality minority women face, in particular those of Asian descent, can be best articulated by a theory this Article calls white sexual
Exploiting the guilt aversion of others: do agents do it and is it effective?

The general idea of guilt aversion is that agents may be motivated to avoid letting others down, even at the expense of their own material payoff. Several experimental studies have documented behavior that is consistent with agents exhibiting guilt averse motivations in social interactions. However, there are strategic implications of guilt aversion, which can impact economic outcomes in important ways, that have yet to be explored. I introduce a game that admits the possibility for agents to induce guilt upon others in a manner consistent with the method posited by Baumeister et al. (Psychol Bull 115:243–267, 1994). This game enables me to experimentally test whether agents attempt to exploit the guilt aversion of others by inducing guilt upon them, and whether agents are actually susceptible to this exploitation. Additionally, the design enables me to test whether agents exhibit higher degrees of trust when they are given such an opportunity to exploit the guilt aversion of others. The data suggest that agents do not attempt to fully exploit the guilt aversion of other agents by inducing guilt upon them; however, the data suggest that agents would have been susceptible to guilt induction.
Constitutional Transplants, Borrowing, and Migrations

This paper, which will be published in the Oxford Handbook on Comparative Constitutional Law (M. Rosenfeld & A. Sajo, eds., forthcoming 2012), explores the borrowing and migration of constitutional ideas and institutions across jurisdictions. Despite the fact that comparative constitutional law is a form of comparative law, comparative constitutionalism has thus far largely ignored the rich debates in comparative law on the topic of legal transplants. I argue that those debates can illuminate our understanding of how constitutional doctrines and ideas travel. After noting the missing legacy of comparative legal thought in the constitutional realm, the paper studies the anatomy of constitutional transplants (object, timing, motivations and patterns) and provides a framework for their normative justifications. The paper concludes with remarks on constitutional convergence.
The Unification of Law in the Russian Federation

How have fluctuating approaches to federalism in post-Soviet Russia affected its legal system? This article examines the core legal subjects, processes, and institutions composing the Russian legal system. The source of legal changes, as Russian federalism has shifted from decentralized beginnings under Yel'tsin to the current centralized system under Medvedev and Putin, is evaluated. Seeds for centralization in the original 1993 Constitution and the roles of "top down," "bottom up," and "outside in" pressures to centralize the federal system are examined. The degree of unification and centralization of Russian law and the de facto nature of the legal system are analyzed.
Blowing Bubbles: Heuristics and Biases in the Run-Up of Stock Prices

Ads of stocks and mutual funds typically tout their past performance, despite a disclosure that past performance does not guarantee future returns. Are consumers motivated to buy or sell based on past performance of assets? More generally, do consumers (wrongly) use sequential information about past performance of assets to make suboptimal decisions? Use of this heuristic leads to two well-known biases: the hot hand and the gambler’s fallacy. This study proposes a theory of hype that integrates these two biases; that a positive run could inflate prices, while a negative run could depress them, although the pattern could reverse on extended runs. Tests on two experiments and one event study of stock purchases strongly suggest that consumers dump “losers” and buy “winners.” The latter phenomenon could lead to hyped-up prices on the stock market for winning stocks. The authors discuss the managerial, public policy, and research implications of the results.
Global voxel transformer networks for augmented microscopy

Advances in deep learning have led to remarkable success in augmented microscopy, enabling us to obtain high-quality microscope images without using expensive microscopy hardware and sample preparation techniques. Current deep learning models for augmented microscopy are mostly U-Net-based neural networks, thus sharing certain drawbacks that limit the performance. In particular, U-Nets are composed of local operators only and lack dynamic non-local information aggregation. In this work, we introduce global voxel transformer networks (GVTNets), a deep learning tool for augmented microscopy that overcomes intrinsic limitations of the current U-Net-based models and achieves improved performance. GVTNets are built on global voxel transformer operators, which are able to aggregate global information, as opposed to local operators like convolutions. We apply the proposed methods on existing datasets for three different augmented microscopy tasks under various settings. Computational augmentation of microscopic images aims at reducing the need to chemically label or stain cells to extract information. The popular U-Net model often employed for these tasks uses mostly local information. A new method for augmenting microscopic images is presented that allows for global information to be used at each step of the process.
India’s System of Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations

This paper examines several aspects of India’s system of Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations (IGFR). It first reviews the origins and context within which the IGFR system was established and examines how it has evolved. It describes the nature of the system, including assignment of powers and functions, intergovernmental fiscal transfers and the principles that guide their design. It examines several other dimensions of the IGFR system, such as its interface with policy imperatives, evolution of norms, and recent institutional developments. It concludes with an assessment of lessons learned so far, and key challenges that lie ahead.
Supervisory Colleges: The Global Financial Crisis and Improving International Supervisory Coordination

The current financial crisis has caused many governments and international bodies to reconsider the tools governments have used to supervise financial institutions, particularly those systemically important institutions with cross-border operations. This article describes and analyzes one of those tools – the increased use of supervisory colleges in regulating international banks. The article begins with a brief review of the use of supervisory colleges in the 1980s and 1990s and particularly the failure of supervisors to cooperate in detecting the massive fraud committed by managers of BCCI resulting in the one of the largest international bank failures of the 20th century. The article then analyzes and describes in detail the use of colleges in the European Union. The development of EU law and EU-wide agencies is discussed, particularly the Lamfalussy committees, the recommendations of the Larosiere report and the financial services legislation proposed by the European Commission creating three European supervisory authorities. The article also discusses the standards issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision regarding the operations of supervisory colleges and the more recent emphasis of the newly empowered G-20 on the use of colleges as a tool to both improve supervisory cooperation and improve surveillance of individual financial institutions. Finally, the article highlights the limitations of supervisory colleges as decision-making bodies. The author argues for the need of an international resolution regime for financial institutions that would buttress the use of colleges of supervisors as a micro-prudential supervisory tool. Until such a regime consisting of harmonized substantive law is in place, the benefit of supervisory colleges will generally be limited to the improved exchange of micro-prudential information.
SENTIMENTS, CONDUCT, AND TRUST IN THE LABORATORY

In this essay we provide a brief account and interpretation of The Theory of Moral Sentiments showing that it departs fundamentally from contemporary patterns of thought in economics that are believed to govern individual behavior in small groups, and contains strong testable propositions governing the expression of that behavior. We also state a formal representation of the model for individual choice of action, apply the propositions to the prediction of actions in trust games, report two experiments testing these predictions, and interpret the results in terms directly related to the model. In short, we argue that the system of sociability developed by Adam Smith provides a coherent non-utilitarian model that is consistent with the pattern of results in trust games, and leads to testable new predictions, some of which we test.
Doctors, Patients, and Pills--A System Popping Under Too Much Physician Discretion? A Law-Policy Prescription to Make Drug Approval More Meaningful in the Delivery of Health Care

This article challenges the scope of physician discretion to engage in off-label use of prescription drugs. The discretion to prescribe dimensions beyond the clinical research that puts new drugs on pharmacy shelves has been shaped by two historic influences: a legacy of physician paternalism, solidarity, autonomy, and selfdetermination that predates the contemporary commercialization of medicine by more than half a century, and regulatory necessity due to the limits of science and innate crudeness of pharmaceuticals prior to the genomics revolution (drug development and delivery based upon genetic expression). Although both factors have changed immensely, the standard for drug approval has lingered. This article proposes that doctor discretion to prescribe off label must be modified and the regulatory standard for new drug approvals raised given the proliferation of adverse events, drug ineffectiveness, the need to make choices among treatment options under time pressures, the increasing complexity of biopharmaceuticals, health care cost pressures, and the vulnerability of patients—seekers of health care, not research subjects protected under the scrutiny of regulations to protect human subjects. The article concludes that, although some physician discretion to prescribe off label still is necessary, law-policy reforms to shift more of the drug discovery process from the clinical care of patients to clinical research in drug development are long overdue. Proposals to accomplish this, drawn from recent legislation and ongoing health care reform, include heightening the regulatory standards for new drug approvals and drug reimbursement. ∗ Michael Malinowski is the Ernest R. and Iris M. Eldred Professor of Law, Paul M. Herbert Law Center, Louisiana State University. He received his JD from Yale Law School, where he was an Articles Editor for the Yale Law Journal, and his BA, summa cum laude, from Tufts University.
How to deform an egg yolk? On the study of soft matter deformation in a liquid environment

In this paper, we report a novel experimental study to examine the response of a soft capsule bathed in a liquid environment to sudden external impacts. Taking an egg yolk as an example, we found that the soft matter is not sensitive to translational impacts but is very sensitive to rotational, especially decelerating-rotational, impacts, during which the centrifugal force and the shape of the membrane together play a critical role in causing the deformation of the soft object. This finding, as the first study of its kind, reveals the fundamental physics behind the motion and deformation of a membrane-bound soft object, e.g., egg yolk, cells, and soft brain matter, in response to external impacts.
The regulation of private equity, hedge funds, and state funds

This United States report responds to a questionnaire that the general reporter for the project prepared. The project describes United States law features of hedge funds, private equity funds and sovereign wealth funds and identifies critical current issues in their regulation and governance. The report also includes discussion of recent United States legislation on financial services that affects those pooled investment vehicles.
Monetary Union with Voluntary Participation

A monetary union is modelled as a technology that makes a surprise policy deviation impossible and requires voluntarily participating countries to follow the same monetary policy. Within a fully dynamic context, we show that such an arrangement may dominate a regime with independent national currencies. Two new results are delivered by the voluntary participation assumption. First, the optimal plan is shown to respond to a country's temptation to leave the union by tilting both current and future policy in its favour. This yields a non-linear rule according to which each country weight in policy decisions is time-varying and depends on its incentive to abandon the union. Second, we show that there might be conditions such that a break-up of the union, as has occurred in some historical episodes, is efficient. The paper thus provides a first formal analysis of the incentives behind the formation, sustainability, and disruption of a monetary union.
The local dayside reconnection rate for oblique interplanetary magnetic fields

We present an analysis of local properties of magnetic reconnection at the dayside magnetopause for various interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) orientations in global magnetospheric simulations. This has heretofore not been practical because it is difficult to locate where reconnection occurs for oblique IMF, but new techniques make this possible. The approach is to identify magnetic separators, the curves separating four regions of differing magnetic topology, which map the reconnection X-line. The electric field parallel to the X-line is the local reconnection rate. We compare results to a simple model of local two-dimensional asymmetric reconnection. To do so, we find the plasma parameters that locally drive reconnection in the magnetosheath and magnetosphere in planes perpendicular to the X-line at a large number of points along the X-line. The global magnetohydrodynamic simulations are from the three-dimensional Block-Adaptive, Tree Solarwind Roe-type Upwind Scheme (BATS-R-US) code with a uniform resistivity, although the techniques described here are extensible to any global magnetospheric simulation model. We find that the predicted local reconnection rates scale well with the measured values for all simulations, being nearly exact for due southward IMF. However, the absolute predictions differ by an undetermined constant of proportionality, whose magnitude increases as the IMF clock angle changes from southward to northward. We also show similar scaling agreement in a simulation with oblique southward IMF and a dipole tilt. The present results will be an important component of a full understanding of the local and global properties of dayside reconnection.
Endogenous intermediation in over-the-counter markets

Abstract We provide a theory of trading through intermediaries in over-the-counter markets. The role of intermediaries is to sustain trade. In our model, traders are connected through an informational network. Agents observe their neighbors’ actions and can trade with their counterparty in a given period through a path of intermediaries in the network. Nevertheless, agents can renege on their obligations. We show that trading through an informational network is essential to support trade when agents infrequently meet the same counteparty. However, intermediaries must receive fees to implement trades. Concentrated intermediation, as represented by a star network, is both constrained efficient and stable when agents incur linking costs. The center agent in a star can receive higher fees as well.
Convincing the crowd: entrepreneurial storytelling in crowdfunding campaigns

This study examines the structure of entrepreneurial stories in pursuit of mobilizing resources from crowds. Based on a comparative analysis of Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns, we examine in particular how, across different project types, project histories and potential futures are framed and interlinked in narratives to appeal to funders. We find that projects are narrated in different styles—as “ongoing journeys” or “results-in-progress”—to convey project value. The former style narrates projects as longer-term endeavors powered by creative initial ideas and a bold vision, inviting audiences to “join the journey”; the latter narrates projects more narrowly as a progression of accomplishments, engaging the audience instrumentally to support next steps. We find that styles are used and combined in different ways, reflecting the tangibility of project outcomes, the sophistication of technology, and the social orientation of projects. Also, successful differ from unsuccessful campaigns in using narrative...
SHROUDED ATTRIBUTES, CONSUMER MYOPIA, AND INFORMATION SUPPRESSION IN COMPETITIVE MARKETS

Bayesian consumers infer that hidden add-on prices (e.g., the cost of ink for a printer) are likely to be high prices. If consumers are Bayesian, firms will not shroud information in equilibrium. However, shrouding may occur in an economy with some myopic (or unaware) consumers. Such shrouding creates an inefficiency, which firms may have an incentive to eliminate by educating their competitors' customers. However, if add-ons have close substitutes, a "curse of debiasing" arises, and firms will not be able to profitably debias consumers by unshrouding add-ons. In equilibrium, two kinds of exploitation coexist. Optimizing firms exploit myopic consumers through marketing schemes that shroud high-priced add-ons. In turn, sophisticated consumers exploit these marketing schemes. It is not possible to profitably drive away the business of sophisticates. It is also not possible to profitably lure either myopes or sophisticates to nonexploitative firms. We show that informational shrouding flourishes even in highly competitive markets, even in markets with costless advertising, and even when the shrouding generates allocational inefficiencies.
Cultural mechanisms and the persistence of neighborhood violence

Sociologists have given considerable attention to identifying the neighborhood-level social-interactional mechanisms that influence outcomes such as crime, educational attainment, and health. Yet, cultural mechanisms are often overlooked in quantitative studies of neighborhood effects. This paper adds a cultural dimension to neighborhood effects research by exploring the consequences of legal cynicism. Legal cynicism refers to a cultural frame in which people perceive the law as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety. The authors find that legal cynicism explains why homicide persisted in certain Chicago neighborhoods during the 1990s despite declines in poverty and declines in violence citywide.
Making Sense of Customary International Law

This Article addresses a longstanding puzzle about customary international law (CIL): How can it be, at once, so central to the practice of international law—routinely invoked and applied in a broad range of settings—and the source of such persistent confusion and derision? The centrality of CIL suggests that, for the many people who use it, it is not only comprehensible but worthwhile. They presumably use it for a reason. But then, what accounts for all the muddle and disdain? The Article argues that the problem lies less in the everyday operation of CIL than in the conceptual baggage that is brought to bear on it. Most contemporary accounts of CIL reflect what can be called a “rulebook conception.” They presuppose that, in order for a given proposition to be CIL, it must apply more or less in the same way in all cases of a given type, rather than fluctuate without established criteria from one situation to the next. This rulebook conception is wrong. It does not accurately describe the range of normative material that global actors, in the ordinary course, use and treat as CIL. And because it is wrong, it systematically sows confusion and leads analysists to devalue CIL as a kind of international law. We should stop imagining that CIL operates like a rulebook and should recognize that it is an inherently contingent and variable kind of law.
Short Sales and Trade Classification Algorithms

Abstract This paper demonstrates that short sales are often misclassified as buyer-initiated by the Lee–Ready and other commonly used trade classification algorithms. This result is due in part to regulations which require that short sales be executed on an uptick or zero-uptick. In addition, while the literature considers “immediacy premiums” in determining trade direction, it ignores the often larger borrowing premiums that short sellers must pay. Since short sales constitute approximately 30% of all trade volume on U.S. exchanges, these results are important to the empirical market microstructure literature, as well as to measures that rely upon trade classification, such as the probability of informed trading (PIN) metric.
Charles Sumner: History's Misunderstood Idealist

Few historical figures in the history of the United States have received such contrasting treatment by historians and scholars than Senator Charles Sumner. One view of Sumner mainly focuses on Sumner as a “Cardboard Yankee,” a figure who was arrogantly too tied to principle and was someone who seldom tried to understand others, was lacking in humor, was a pedant, lacked the judgment and self-control to be effective in settling disputes, and was unable to compromise.A more recent “revised” interpretation of Sumner contends Sumner was driven into reform movements and politics for two reasons: first, that Sumner believed the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment represented the best foundation for the public good and second, that Sumner responded to the duty of the individual to work toward that public good.In this article, I not only address Sumner’s philosophy, but contend the “revised” interpretation best interprets Sumner’s legal philosophy and political motivations throughout his illustrious Senatorial career by focusing on a particularly painful moment for Sumner – his perplexing decision to leave the Republican Party and endorse the Liberal Republican movement in the presidential election in 1872. Sumner’s strong belief in the transformative nature of the words of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution moved him from neutral to an endorsement of the Liberal Republican movement in 1872 and also that the power of the written word, that of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, as well as platform of the Liberal Republican Party – could cure all deficiencies, even the hostility of many Democrats to civil rights legislation and to the Radical Republican ideals of Reconstruction. Thus, the “revised” interpretation, emphasizing Sumner’s dedication to natural law principles, natural rights, equality of all under the law, and belief in the intellectual and moral potential of the human person, best explains the life and career of one of the most idealistic, but yet misunderstood, leaders who deserves a new hearing in American legal, intellectual, and political history.
Joining Longer Queues: Information Externalities in Queue Choice

A classic example that illustrates how observed customer behavior impacts other customers' decisions is the selection of a restaurant whose quality is uncertain. Customers often choose the busier restaurant, inferring that other customers in that restaurant know something that they do not. In an environment with random arrival and service times, customer behavior is reflected in the lengths of the queues that form at the individual servers. Therefore, queue lengths could signal two factors---potentially higher arrivals to the server or potentially slower service at the server. In this paper, we focus on both factors when customers' waiting costs are negligible. This allows us to understand how information externalities due to congestion impact customers' service choice behavior. In our model, based on private information about both the service-quality and queue-length information, customers decide which queue to join. When the service rates are the same and known, we confirm that it may be rational to ignore private information and purchase from the service provider with the longer queue when only one additional customer is present in the longer queue. We find that, due to the information externalities contained in queue lengths, there exist cycles during which one service firm is thriving whereas the other is not. Which service provider is thriving depends on luck; i.e., it is determined by the private signal of the customer arriving when both service providers are idle. These phenomena continue to hold when each service facility has multiple servers, or when a facility may go out of business when it cannot attract customers for a certain amount of time. Finally, we find that when the service rates are unknown but are negatively correlated with service values, our results are strengthened; long queues are now doubly informative. The market share of the high-quality firm is higher when there is service rate uncertainty, and it increases as the service rate decreases. When the service rates are positively correlated with unknown service values, long queues become less informative and customers might even join shorter queues.
The Exxon Valdez Resurfaces in the Gulf of Mexico ... and the Hazards of “Megasystem Centripetal Di-Polarity”

The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon blowout spill in the Gulf of Mexico shocked the nation with the amount of oil and harm it unleashed upon the Gulf and its natural and human ecosystems. As details of the calamity became available, they revealed frustrating parallels to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in the Gulf of Alaska in terms of causation and impaired response capability. Similar systemic deficits characterized the actions of corporate managers and state and federal regulators in the oil industry of both Gulfs. In a “di-polar” system where industry and government regulators come too close together, responsible overall management of operations and risks suffers. The lessons and recommendations incorporated in the 1990 Alaska Oil Spill Commission’s Final Report on the Exxon Valdez spill, including watchdog citizen councils, were highly germane but largely ignored or forgotten in the decades between the Alaska Report’s release and the 2010 BP tragedy. This Article reviews the Gulf of Mexico spill in light of the Gulf of Alaska spill, and notes how this time around we must finally learn how to deal more seriously with the mega-risks posed when di-polar convergences occur in these megasystems of hydrocarbon production and transport. * © 2011, Zygmunt J.B. Plater, Professor of Law, Boston College Law School. The author chaired the State of Alaska Oil Commission’s legal task force after the 1989 wreck of the M.S. Exxon Valdez. This Article is built upon a shorter piece, published as part of an Environmental Law Institute Report. See Zygmunt J.B. Plater, Learning from Disasters: TwentyOne Years After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Will Reactions to the Deepwater Horizon Blowout Finally Address the Systemic Flaws Revealed in Alaska? 40 Envtl. L. Rep. 11,041, 11,041 n.2 (2010), available at http://www.elr.info/articles/vol40/40.11041.pdf. Both pieces benefited from the help, gratefully acknowledged, of two research assistants, Brendan Boyle and Joseph Horton, both of the Boston College Law School Class of 2012. The views expressed here, other than those cited to the Commission and other sources, are the author’s own and not those of the Commission or of my research assistants. Given the onrolling current events underlying this present analysis, a number of citations herein are necessarily given to press accounts which may be revised with further information. While noting this caveat, it is evident that many solid journalistic reports have come from the oiled waters and beaches of the Gulf, and that over time the factual record will, of course, be substantially deepened by historical vetting.
Consumer myopia, standardization and aftermarket monopolization

Abstract In this paper, I show that the standard Bertrand competition argument does not apply when firms compete for myopic consumers who optimize period-by-period. I develop the model in the context of aftermarket. With overlapping-generations of consumers, simultaneous product offerings in the primary market and aftermarket establishes a price floor for the primary good. This constraint prevents aftermarket rents from being dissipated by the primary market competition. Duopoly firms earn positive profits despite price competition with undifferentiated products. Nonetheless, government interventions to reinforce aftermarket competition such as a standardization requirement may lead to the partial collapse of the primary market.
The role of institutional investors in seasoned equity offerings

Abstract Do institutional investors possess private information about seasoned equity offerings (SEOs)? If so, do they use this private information to trade in a direction opposite to this information (a manipulative trading role) or in the same direction (an information production role)? We use a large sample of transaction-level institutional trading data to distinguish between these two roles of institutional investors. We explicitly identify institutional SEO allocations for the first time in the literature. We analyze the consequences of the private information possessed by institutional investors for SEO share allocation, institutional trading before and after the SEO and realized trading profitability, and the SEO discount. We find that institutions are able to identify and obtain more allocations in SEOs with better long-run stock returns, they trade in the same direction as their private information, and their post-SEO trading significantly outperforms a naive buy-and-hold trading strategy. Further, more pre-offer institutional net buying and larger institutional SEO allocations are associated with a smaller SEO discount. Overall, our results are consistent with institutions possessing private information about SEOs and with an information production instead of a manipulative trading role for institutional investors in SEOs.