cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
An Empirical Investigation of IPO Underpricing and the Change to the LLP Organization of Audit Firms

This paper examines the relationship between the 1994 change in audit firm legal structure from general partnerships to limited liability partnerships (LLPs) on underpricing in the initial public offering (IPO) market. The change in legal structure of audit firms reduces an audit firm's wealth at risk from litigation damages and reduces the incentives for intrafirm monitoring by partners within an audit firm. Prior research suggests that underpricing protects underwriters from litigation damages, and that the level of underpricing varies inversely with both the amount of implicit insurance provided by the audit firm and the quality of the audit services provided. We hypothesize the change in audit firm legal structure reduced the assets available from audit firms in IPO‐related litigation and indirectly reduced audit quality by lowering intrafirm monitoring. As a result, underwriters have incentives as a joint and several defendant with the audit firms to increase IPO underpricing, particularly for high‐l...
Therapeutic jurisprudence and preventive law in child welfare proceedings: A family systems approach.

The field of child welfare law exemplifies opportunities and challenges facing the proponents of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and preventive law (PL). The field has held itself out as promoting a therapeutic standard and goal for children, and explicitly embraces a psychological preventive law theory. Nevertheless, it has failed to embrace contemporary mental health thinking about children and families, known as family systems theory, and reflects an outmoded, psychoanalytic, medical model. This model has contributed to an antitherapeutic child welfare system inconsistent with preventive law principles. Adopting a family systems approach requires a paradigm shift toward respecting and empowering the family as a unit. This approach is consistent with TJ preventive law principles and provides a better fit between the legal system and social reality.
The Wisselbank and Amsterdam Price Volatility: A fractal test of the Austrian fractional-reserve banking hypothesis

Using 1708-1788 historical data, we test the Austrian hypothesis that fractional-reserve banking destabilizes commodity prices, complicating eco­ nomic calculation and entrepreneurial planning, and contributes to boom-bust cycles. The Bank of Amsterdam («Wisselbank», 1609-1819) maintained high reserve requirements until the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-1784), when its reserve ratio plummeted from nearly 100% in 1778 to around 20% by 1788. We compare price volatilities for 1722-1779 and 1780-1788 using fractal Hurst exponents. For all commodity prices tested, fractal volatility was higher during the lower fractional reserve period, except for rye, wheat, and Hamburg Bills of Exchange. Bill of Exchange stability was likely attributable to Hamburg transport ships’ ability to evade British incursion and to the Wisselbank’s legal monopsony in the secondary commercial paper market. However, rye and wheat prices — directly indicative of bread prices — generally (and contrary to Austrian theory) stabilized even though British blockades significantly re­ duced Dutch bread grain imports. We attribute this unexpected result primarily to emergency wartime provision by the Amsterdam municipal granary. The Wisselbank experience may confirm, or at least does not clearly falsify, the economic relevance of the Austrian Fractional-Reserve Banking Hypothesis. Keywords: Fractional reserve banking, monetary expansion, price stability, equilibrium. JEL Codes: E42, E44, N13, N23, N83. Resumen: Analizando los datos historicos correspondientes al Banco de Ams­ terdam de 1708 a 1788 concluimos que la evidencia empirica confirma (o al menos no refuta) la hipotesis austriaca sobre los negativos efectos de la banca con reserve fraccionaria. Palabras clave: Banca con reserva fraccionaria, expansion monetaria, estabili­ dad de precios, equilibrio. Clasificacion JEL: E42, E44, N13, N23, N83.
Dynastic Entrepreneurship, Entry, and Non-Compete Enforcement

Abstract We investigate entry in a dynastic entrepreneurship (overlapping generations) environment created by employee spinoffs. Contracting failures, caused by non-verifiability of profits from new activities in original firms and overall profits from subsequent entrants, may lead respectively to implementation of new employee ideas in spinoffs and constraints on borrowing to buy out non-compete agreements. If borrowing constraints are not binding, enforcement of non-compete agreements unambiguously improves social welfare outcomes, increasing the entry of both original firms and subsequent generations of spinoffs. However, if employees are unable to buy out their non-compete covenants, enforcement of these agreements shuts down socially profitable spinoff firms. Non-enforcement sacrifices entry of original firms that would be marginally profitable in the absence of employee spinoffs, but otherwise clearly improves social welfare outcomes over enforcement in the presence of binding finance constraints.
Barriers to exit

Unlike previous empirical studies that focus on barriers to entry in international trade, we focus on barriers to exit as measured by passport costs for a cross-section of countries. We test four common theories on the determinants of such exit barriers and find that macroeconomic and brain-drain explanations do explain high barriers to exit. However, institutional and cultural hypotheses do not appear to be empirically robust explanations of such high barriers. Our findings hold when applying instrumental variables, changes in specification, and changes in cross-country periods.
The Power Politics of Regime Complexity: Human Rights Trade Conditionality in Europe

This article argues that international regime complexity has shaped Europe's politics of human rights trade conditionality by creating opportunities for various types of “forum shopping,” and, consequently, that some of the most significant politics of human rights enforcement have occurred in an entirely separate issue area—trade—which are being worked out partly during lawmaking and partly during implementation. The presence of nested and overlapping institutions creates incentives for rival political actors—whether states, institutions, or policymakers—to (1) forum shop for more power, (2) advantage themselves in the context of a parallel or overlapping regime, and (3) invoke institutions a la carte to govern a specific issue but not others. Each tactic creates competition between institutions and actors for authority over the rules, setting hurdles for IO performance. Even so, (4) regime complexity can make enforcement of rules that are impossible to implement in one area possible in another area.
Increased market response to earnings announcements in the 21st century: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract We examine the role of concurrent information in the striking increase in investor response to earnings announcements from 2001 to 2016, as measured by return variability and volume following Beaver (1968). We find management guidance, analyst forecasts, and disaggregated financial statement line items are more frequently bundled with earnings announcements, and each of these items explains part of the increase in market response. Furthermore, collectively, these concurrent information releases explain a substantial fraction of the increase in market response to earnings announcements since 2001. This is in contrast to the decline in market response to management guidance issued separately from earnings and the much smaller increase in market response to analyst forecasts issued separately from earnings over this time. The findings indicate that information arrival at earnings announcement dates has increased significantly over the past two decades, and that key components of this are increased disclosures by management of guidance and financial statement line items and forecasts by analysts.
Dynamics of an acoustically trapped sphere in beating sound waves

The authors show that an acoustically levitated sphere driven by a transverse sound wave is an archetypal wave-driven harmonic oscillator that passes through a hierarchy of dynamical transitions as a function of driving frequency.
Public Sector ERP Implementation: Successfully Engaging Middle-Management!

ERP implementation problems often occur due to cultural problems that lie deep within the organizational structure. Highly departmentalized (referred to as “stove-piped”) organizations are averse to the open flow of information and to process oriented management solutions. Nowhere are these problems more evident than in our public sector institutions. To increase the success of future public ERP initiatives, this paper focuses on the important role of middle management to proactively support and advocate an ERP project in the pre-planning and requirements definition phase of a project. The research identifies high value middle management attributes that need to be identified by ERP project managers to co-opt these individuals into the role of “trusted intermediaries” to act as managerial bridges between traditional, and often adversarial organizational “stovepipes”. Existing project work by the author and interviews with former public sector, project managers and implementation consultants show that the role of middle management is much more critical to the success of a public sector ERP implementation than in a corresponding private sector effort.
Global Intellectual Property Governance (Under Construction)

Top down as well as bottom-up models of regulation are shifting to a governance paradigm characterized by the greater interaction among public, private and civil society sectors, as well as potential increased flexibility of law. As applied to intellectual property, particularly in the international context, governance literature is emerging but still episodic. In this Article, I examine the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Development Agenda, currently being implemented through its Committee on Development and Intellectual Property. WIPO’s efforts to address global development goals with intellectual property can be theorized through the more participatory and dynamic legal mechanisms promised by global governance. Among the challenges are fragmentation, policy incoherence and a relative lack of due process of softer law, as enacted and as enforced. The pragmatic impact of this major WIPO initiative — evaluated both in terms of the projected benefits and risks of global governance — remains to be seen.
The Dilemma of Authority

The normal way to establish that a person has authority over another requires a rule-governed institutional setting. To have authority is to have power, in the juridical sense of the term, and power can only be conferred by norms constituting it. Power conferring norms are essentially institutional, and the obligation to comply with a legitimate authority’s decree is, first and foremost, institutional in nature. Thus, the main argument presented in this essay is that an explanation of practical authorities is a two-stage affair: the special, practical import of an authority can only be explained on the background of an institutional setting which constitutes the authority’s power and the corresponding obligation to comply. However, this obligation is not an all things considered obligation, it is conditioned on reasons to participate in the relevant institution or practice. A complete account of the reasons to regard authoritative decisions as binding must also rely on the reasons for having the institution or practice in question and the kind of authoritative structure that it has. This argument is presented here on the background of a critique of two alternative accounts, Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority and Stephen Darwall’s second personal standpoint account.
Sexual Relations between Psychotherapists and Their Patients: Toward Research or Restraint

Many psychotherapists have sexual relations with their patients. This practice persists despite unbending condemnation by professional organizations, licensing authorities, courts, and most of the psychotherapists who have written on the matter. Lately, however, a few therapists publicly have questioned the desirability of absolute bans. A small number have even argued that the activity can have therapeutic value. This intraprofessional conflict is troubling because neither position is supported by reliable information about the impact of therapistpatient sexual intimacy. Furthermore, existing social control devices almost ensure that this state of ignorance will continue. What follows is an exploration of how society should treat sexual activity between psychotherapists and their patients. Although such behavior occurs in other professions,' this Article centers on psychotherapists for three reasons: first, due to the emotional closeness that they develop with patients, psychotherapists may be particularly tempted to engage in sexual activity;2 second, the same emotional
The choice of corporate liquidity and corporate governance

This paper uses the second-generation antitakeover legislation as a natural experi- ment to understand corporate governance in‡uence on managerial decisions, speci…cally by examining in‡uences on …rms'liquidity choices between cash and loan commitments. These choices dier primarily in the allocation of ex-post control rights of …rms'liquid- ity reserves, which may lead to disagreement among stakeholders about …rms'liquidity choices. The resulting decisions are strongly in‡uenced by their relative bargaining pow- ers, i.e., corporate governance. The introduction of antitakeover laws during the 1980s and 1990s weakened managerial discipline by reducing the threat of takeover. Subse- quently, …rms with bad internal governance tended to increase cash holdings relative to loan commitments, but this tendency was signi…cantly weaker for …rms with good inter- nal governance. This is consistent with the optimizing behavior of management which balances private bene…ts of cash against fewer control challenges provided by increased oversight of loan commitments. Findings suggest the choice of corporate liquidity is a channel for corporate governance, and large cash holdings may be a sign of con…dence in good management.
On the Ills of Adjustment

Abstract We analyze market impediments to the process of structural adjustment. We focus on incomplete contract inefficiencies in the transactions between workers and firms that render the quasi-rents from ‘specific’ investment appropriable. During adjusment, the result is a depressed rate of creation of the new productive structure and excessive destruction of the old one, leading to an employment crisis. Moreover, appropriability weakens the incentives for extensive restructuring, and results in ‘clerotic’ productive structure. An adequate managed adjustment program ought to combine vigorous creation incentives in the expanding sector with measures to support employment in the contracting one. In contrast, the common prescription of gradualism does not act as an effective ‘synchronizer’ of creation and destruction, for it can only reduce destruction by also reducing an already depressed creation rate.
Pay Me Later: Inside Debt and Its Role in Managerial Compensation

Though widely used in executive compensation, inside debt has been almost entirely overlooked by prior work. We initiate this research by studying CEO pension arrangements in 237 large capitalization firms. Among our findings are that CEO compensation exhibits a balance between debt and equity incentives; the balance shifts systematically away from equity and toward debt as CEOs grow older; annual increases in pension entitlements represent about 10% of overall CEO compensation, and about 13% for CEOs aged 61–65; CEOs with high debt incentives manage their firms conservatively; and pension compensation influences patterns of CEO turnover and cash compensation.
Resolving the Intergenerational Conflicts of Real Property Law: Preserving Free Markets and Personal Autonomy for Future Generations

Introduction 1526 I. Land Ownership in the American Experience 1532 A. A Valuable Commodity 1533 B. Social Belonging 1535 C. Land and Democracy 1538 II. The Intergenerational Compact 1539 III. Competing Themes in American Land Law 1542 A. Freedom of Contract 1543 1. Efficiency 1543 a. Market benefits 1543 b. Differences with traditional contract 1545 2. Liberty 1547 B. Free Alienability 1549 1. Promoting a market economy 1550 2. Dead hand control 1553 IV. Accommodating Contract and Alienability for Future Generations 1555
The First Amendment Is an Information Policy

This essay, based on the 20th annual Hugo Black lecture at Wesleyan University, argues that we should think about individual liberties of freedom of speech, press, and assembly not in isolation, but in the larger context of policies for the spread and growth of knowledge and information.Although we normally think about the First Amendment as an individual right, we should also see it as an integral part of a knowledge and information policy for a democratic state. That is because the practical ability to speak rests on an infrastructure of free expression that involves a wide range of institutions, statutory frameworks, programs, technologies and practices.Using the examples of democratic protests in the Middle East and the controversy over WikiLeaks, the essay explains how free speech values are implicated in knowledge and information policies, in the design of digital networks and in the maintenance of infrastructure.Around the world today, the fight over free speech is a fight over knowledge and information policy, and, in particular, how the infrastructure that makes free speech possible will be designed and implemented. Although the First Amendment is a crucial information policy for democracy, it is only one information policy among many. It needs the assistance of an infrastructure of free expression to make good on its promises. We must design democratic values into the infrastructure of free expression if we want an infrastructure that protects democracy.
Stability of experimental and survey measures of risk, time, and social preferences: A review and some new results

Underlying preferences are often considered to be persistent, and are important inputs into economic models. We first conduct an extensive review of the disparate literature studying the stability of preferences measured in experiments. Then, we test the stability of individuals' choices in panel data from rural Paraguay over almost a decade. Answers to social preference survey questions are quite stable. Experimental measures of risk, time, and social preferences do not exhibit much stability. Correlations between experimental measures of risk aversion are a more precisely estimated zero, whereas correlations for time and social preferences are larger and noisier. We also find no systematic evidence that real world shocks influence play in games. We suggest that in a developing country context researchers should explore designing simpler experiments and including survey questions in addition to experiments to measure preferences.
REFORMING THE GIFT TAX AND MAKING IT ENFORCEABLE

INTRODUCTION 760 I. HISTORIC ROLE OF THE GIFT TAX 761 II. ANALYSIS OF THE GIFT TAX 764 A. The Gift Tax Base 764 1. Application of the Willing Buyer / Willing Seller Test......... 765 2. Valuing Trust Contributions 770 B. Reporting and Penalty Systems 774 1. The IRS’s Inability to Detect Noncompliance 774 2. The Inadequacies of the Existing Penalty Structure 777 C. Reverse Alchemy and the Process of Making Wealth (Temporarily) Disappear 780 III. REFORMS TO REINVIGORATE THE GIFT TAX 784 A. Broadening the Gift Tax Base 784 1. Elimination of Valuation Discounts 784 2. Treatment of Trust Contributions with a Retained Interest as Incomplete Gifts 789 B. Instituting a Functional Gift Tax Reporting and Penalty System 791 1. Institute a Meaningful Reporting System 792 2. Institute a Meaningful Penalty System 795 CONCLUSION 798
Convex Regularization behind Neural Reconstruction

Neural networks have shown tremendous potential for reconstructing high-resolution images in inverse problems. The non-convex and opaque nature of neural networks, however, hinders their utility in sensitive applications such as medical imaging. To cope with this challenge, this paper advocates a convex duality framework that makes a two-layer fully-convolutional ReLU denoising network amenable to convex optimization. The convex dual network not only offers the optimum training with convex solvers, but also facilitates interpreting training and prediction. In particular, it implies training neural networks with weight decay regularization induces path sparsity while the prediction is piecewise linear filtering. A range of experiments with MNIST and fastMRI datasets confirm the efficacy of the dual network optimization problem.
The Rhetoric of Self-Defense

The rhetoric of self-defense is a powerful instrument in the hands of legal actors to shape our understanding of justified violence in society. This rhetoric is based not in the legal definition of self-defense but rather in the paradigmatic situation of deadly response to deadly attack, which offers useful guidance in interpreting the law's required elements. However, the paradigm also tends to embrace claims of morality and right that threaten to expand self-defense beyond recognition to consider inappropriate values such as vengeance and punishment. In this Article, the author argues that self-defense should be viewed not only as a moral but also as a core political concept - one that inspires the formation of civil society and the state under social contract theory. According to this view, self-defense and the criminal law share a common aim: to prevent harm and preserve life for peaceable coexistence. This common aim, which is more particularly expressed through political theory rather than moral philosophy, forms the substantive justification for self-defense in the criminal law.
What Environmental Economists Think Every Conservation Biologist Should Know: Reply to Gowdy et al.

We believe that Gowdy et al. (2010), in their recent essay in Conservation Biology, do a disservice to the cause of increased understanding between economists and conservation professionals. They give the impression that economists and the economic theory and models they use are much more naive of the shortcomings of market outcomes than they actually are. The end result is that the reader is lead to believe that economic theory is useless and should be abandoned altogether or at least until economists “discard the current core economic model.” Given that Gowdy et al.’s apparent objective is to make evident the weaknesses of economics as it is applied to the environment, we find it inexplicable that they fail to mention the existence of environmental economics, a field at least a half-century old (Ciriacy-Wantrup 1952; Gordon 1954; Krutilla 1967). In fact, the very raison d’etre for environmental economics is the development of theories and models for use in analysis of environmental goods and services (e.g., Randall 1987; Baumol & Oates 1988; Freeman 1993). The theme throughout Gowdy et al. is that “the purpose of Walrasian economics [is] to establish that perfectly competitive markets lead to maximum efficiency in resource allocation.” But this is not the purpose of Walrasian economics; it is simply the conclusion of the model if certain conditions are met. One or more of these conditions typically do not hold for environmental goods. Most economists and economics textbooks, from introductory
The Internet and the Persistence of Law

Since legal commentators first confronted cyberspace, three broad stories have emerged to describe the interrelation of law and the Internet: the "no-law Internet,' the "Internet as a separate jurisdiction," and Internet law as "translation" of familiar legal concepts. This Article reviews these stories, focusing on how ongoing "translation" is giving way to a growing convergence in Internet law. The Article makes the case for convergence among legal responses to cyberspace and proposes a basic taxonomy for different models of convergence. With this taxonomy, the Article examines the ways in which convergence is occurring, as well as its effects on both Internet law and traditional. national legal norms. The Article concludes that the common legal norms being forged will affect national legal systems more deeply than traditional "international" or "transnational" law, and that the conversation on this affect has only just begun.
Commuting, Migration and Local Employment Elasticities

Many changes in the economic environment are local, including policy changes and infrastructure investments. The effect of these changes depends crucially on the ability of factors to move in response. Therefore a key object of interest for policy evaluation and design is the elasticity of local employment to these changes in the economic environment. We develop a quantitative general equilibrium model that incorporates spatial linkages between locations in goods markets (trade) and factor markets (commuting and migration). We find substantial heterogeneity across locations in local employment elasticities. We show that this heterogeneity can be well explained with theoretically motivated measures of commuting flows. Without taking into account this dependence, estimates of the local employment elasticity for one location are not generalizable to other locations. We also find that commuting flows and their importance cannot be accounted for with standard measures of size or wages at the county or commuting zone levels.
Hedonic Models and the Inclusion of Conditions of Sale in Commercial Real Estate Transactions: A Review of the Literature

Abstract In the hedonic analysis literature, there has been much discussion on the conditions of sale or the context, motivating factors, and contract specifics associated with real estate transactions. As conditions of sale are often present in commercial real estate transactions, the limited insight into their marginal price effects attenuates the effectiveness of both research and practice. The objective of this paper is to analyze the literature surrounding conditions of sale. We examine the hedonic literature to gain perspective on the extent to which conditions of sale could be an appropriate variable cluster added to hedonic analysis models. We summarize and thematically organize the empirical findings on specific conditions of sale in the real estate literature to help guide future ex ante empirical expectations.
Must we be Faithful to Original Meaning

This essay responds to essays written for a symposium on Living Originalism that will appear in the Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies. It expands and develops the book's argument for fidelity to original meaning. First, the essay explains why interpretive fidelity requires, at a minimum, fidelity to the basic framework -- the Constitution's original semantic meaning and the Constitution’s choice of rules, standards, and principles. This is a hypothetical imperative, not a categorical one. If Americans want to follow the plan of their Constitution, this is the least that fidelity requires. But they need not continue to do so. As they did with the Articles of Confederation, Americans could reject their present Constitution through a new act of constituent power. The argument assumes, however, that Americans are not deluded or disingenuous in asserting that they continue to accept their Constitution as amended. Second, the article argues for a "thin" theory of original meaning that both leaves room for and necessitates constitutional construction by subsequent generations. To be sure, framework originalism makes use of background context to infer some aspects of original meaning that are not explicitly stated by the text, but it limits these inferences to those necessary to make sense of the basic framework and its economy of delegation and constraint. A "thin" account of original meaning makes the best sense of Americans' actual practices of constitutional development. It is also the most consistent with the democratic legitimacy of an ancient constitution over time. A theory of original meaning that is too thick will increasingly undermine democratic legitimacy as time goes on. It will fail to make use of the institutional capacities of later generations to adapt government to technological, social and economic change. The problems of the increasing democratic deficit of originalism over time and of the limited institutional capacities of adopters are best solved by a thin theory of original meaning, which leaves ample room for constitutional construction. The essay concludes by comparing different theories of originalism -- including Living Originalism -- with different theories of Jewish law that explain or justify disagreement or change over time. An important difference must be noted at the outset: According to Jewish tradition, the Torah is the word of God, and therefore cannot be mistaken, while a political constitution is the work of fallible human beings. Nevertheless, the different rabbinic solutions to (or explanations of) disagreement and change in the Talmud correspond to different positions in American constitutional scholarship. The argument of Living Originalism, it turns out, is closest to the position of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner (the Dor Revi'i), who argued that while the Written Law does not change, the Oral Law must be dynamic in order to "not to tie the hands of the sages of every generation from interpreting Scripture according to their understanding."
The continuing importance of climate change litigation

This article analyses the ongoing role of climate change litigation as part of transnational efforts to address the problem. The article begins by examining the impacts of the litigation thus far, and mapping its ongoing role. It considers the litigation’s effect on governmental regulatory decision-making, corporate behavior, and public understanding of the problem. The article then builds upon this examination by exploring climate litigation’s influence upon particular actors at different levels of government over time. It argues that climate change litigation provides a valuable complement to other law and policy efforts because it fosters needed interaction across levels of government and different time periods. The article next engages these scalar dynamics more deeply through a diagonal federalism approach, which focuses on the disputes’ simultaneous vertical and horizontal elements. It applies a taxonomy of diagonal regulatory approaches to two examples of climate change litigation stemming from the US Clean Air Act, and considers the implications of that analysis for understanding the cases’ regulatory role. The article concludes by reflecting upon the continuing importance of this litigation in influencing the behavior of key public and private actors.
Paying for confidence: An experimental study of the demand for non-instrumental information

Abstract This paper presents experimental evidence that when individuals are about to make a given decision under risk, they are willing to pay for information on the likelihood that this decision is ex-post optimal, even if this information will not affect their decision . Our findings suggest that this demand for non-instrumental information is caused by what we refer to as a “confidence effect”: the desire to increase one's posterior belief by ruling out “bad news”, even when such news would have no effect on one's decision. We conduct various treatments to show that our subjects' behavior is not likely to be caused by an intrinsic preference for information, failure of backward induction or an attempt to minimize thinking costs.
Incentivizing Financial Regulators

I study how promotion incentives within the public sector affect financial regulation. I assemble individual data for all SEC enforcement attorneys between 2002 and 2017, including enforcement cases, salaries, and ranks. Consistent with tournament model, attorneys with stronger promotion incentives are involved in more enforcement, especially against severe misconduct, and in tougher settlement terms. For identification, I rely on cross-sectional tests within offices and ranks and on exogenous variation in salaries resulting from a conversion to a new pay system. The findings highlight a novel link between incentives and regulation and show that the regulator’s organizational design affects securities markets.
Supersymmetry after the Higgs

A brief review is given of the implications of a 126 GeV Higgs boson for the discovery of supersymmetry. Thus a 126 GeV Higgs boson is problematic within the Standard Model because of vacuum instability pointing to new physics beyond the Standard Model. The problem of vacuum stability is overcome in the SUGRA GUT model but the 126 GeV Higgs mass implies that the average SUSY scale lies in the several TeV region. The largeness of the SUSY scale relieves the tension on SUGRA models since it helps suppress flavor changing neutral currents and CP violating effects and also helps in extending the proton life time arising from baryon and lepton number violating dimension five operators. The geometry of radiative breaking of the electroweak symmetry and fine tuning in view of the large SUSY scale are analyzed.Consistency with the Brookhaven result is discussed. It is also shown that a large SUSY scale implied by the 126 GeV Higgs boson mass allows for light gauginos (gluino, charginos, neutralinos) and sleptons. These along with the lighter third generation squarks are the prime candidates for discovery at RUN II of the LHC. Implication of the 126 GeV Higgs boson for the direct search for dark matter is discussed. Also discussed are the sparticles mass hierarchies and their relationship with the simplified models under the Higgs boson mass constraint.
Intent and Trademark Infringement

This Article describes how and why the use of intent in trademark infringement cases has become unintelligible. It does so by first identifying the supposed relevance of intent to trademark infringement. Leading cases state that a defendant’s intent matters because defendants who deliberately try to confuse consumers must believe that consumers are susceptible to confusion. Accordingly, a defendant’s intent to infringe functions like an implied assertion that the defendant’s behavior is likely to cause the desired confusion. This Article then explains how problems have arisen because courts do not use intent in this specific manner. Instead, courts use intent to portray innocent defendants as faulty actors who deserve liability for infringement. Such use of intent may make intuitive sense, but it is inconsistent with the reasons given for intent’s relevance in the first place. This Article describes how such improper use of intent makes the law unintelligible, and it argues that the law can be improved by paying proper attention to the given reasons for intent’s importance to trademark infringement cases.
On Watson's Non-Forcing Contracts and Renegotiation

Watson (2002) proposes non-forcing contracts as a way to show the limitations of the mechanism design program with ex-post renegotiation (Maskin and Moore (1999)). If one takes a partial implementation approach, as Watson does, we show that non-forcing contracts do not constitute an intermediate paradigm between implementation with no renegotiation and with ex-post renegotiation. Moreover, taking a full implementation approach, non-forcing contracts fail if and only if one goes outside of the constraints identified by Maskin and Moore, because of the appearance of undesirable equilibria.
Time-varying conditional covariances in tests of asset pricing models

Abstract This paper proposes tests of asset pricing models that allow for time variation in conditional covariances. The evidence indicates that the conditional covariances do change through time. Estimates of the expected excess return on the market divided by the variance of the market (reward-to-risk ratio) are presented for the Sharpe-Lintner CAPM, as well as a number of tests of the model specification. The patterns of the pricing errors through time suggest the model's inability to capture the dynamic behavior of assets returns.
Fast response to infection spread and cyber attacks on large-scale networks

We present a strategy for designing fast and practical methods of response to cyber attacks and infection spread on complex weighted networks. In these networks, vertices can be interpreted as primitive elements of the system, and weighted edges reflect the strength of interaction among these elements. The proposed strategy belongs to the family of multiscale methods whose goal is to approximate the system at multiple scales of coarseness and to obtain a solution of microscopic scale by combining the information from coarse scales. In recent years, these methods have demonstrated their potential for solving optimization and analysis problems on large-scale networks. We consider an optimization problem that is based on the susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) epidemiological model. The objective is to detect the network vertices that have to be secured (or immunized) in order to keep a low level of infection in the system.
Understanding the Elusive Black Box of Dynamic Capabilities

A major challenge for managers in turbulent environments is to make sound decisions quickly. Dynamic capabilities have been proposed as a means for addressing turbulent environments by helping managers extend, modify, and reconfigure existing operational capabilities into new ones that better match the environment. However, because dynamic capabilities have been viewed as an elusive black box, it is difficult for managers to make sound decisions in turbulent environments if they cannot effectively measure dynamic capabilities. Therefore, we first seek to propose a measurable model of dynamic capabilities by conceptualizing, operationalizing, and measuring dynamic capabilities. Specifically, drawing upon the dynamic capabilities literature, we identify a set of capabilities—sensing the environment, learning, coordinating, and integrating—that help reconfigure existing operational capabilities into new ones that better match the environment. Second, we propose a structural model where dynamic capabilities influence performance by reconfiguring existing operational capabilities in the context of new product development (NPD). Data from 180 NPD units support both the measurable model of dynamic capabilities and also the structural model by which dynamic capabilities influence performance in NPD by reconfiguring operational capabilities, particularly in higher levels of environmental turbulence. The study's implications for managerial decision making in turbulent environments by capturing the elusive black box of dynamic capabilities are discussed.
Feedback Control for Autonomous Riding of Hovershoes by a Cassie Bipedal Robot

Motivated towards achieving multi-modal locomotion, in this paper, we develop a framework for a bipedal robot to dynamically ride a pair of Hovershoes over various terrain. Our developed control strategy enables the Cassie bipedal robot to interact with the Hovershoes to balance, regulate forward and rotational velocities, achieve fast turns, and move over flat terrain, slopes, stairs, and rough outdoor terrain. Our sensor suite comprising of tracking and depth cameras for visual SLAM as well as our Dijkstra-based global planner and timed elastic band-based local planning framework enables us to achieve autonomous riding on the Hovershoes while navigating an obstacle course. We present numerical and experimental validations of our work.
Graph Drawing via Gradient Descent, \((GD)^2\)

Readability criteria, such as distance or neighborhood preservation, are often used to optimize node-link representations of graphs to enable the comprehension of the underlying data. With few exceptions, graph drawing algorithms typically optimize one such criterion, usually at the expense of others. We propose a layout approach, Graph Drawing via Gradient Descent, \((GD)^2\), that can handle multiple readability criteria. \((GD)^2\) can optimize any criterion that can be described by a smooth function. If the criterion cannot be captured by a smooth function, a non-smooth function for the criterion is combined with another smooth function, or auto-differentiation tools are used for the optimization. Our approach is flexible and can be used to optimize several criteria that have already been considered earlier (e.g., obtaining ideal edge lengths, stress, neighborhood preservation) as well as other criteria which have not yet been explicitly optimized in such fashion (e.g., vertex resolution, angular resolution, aspect ratio). We provide quantitative and qualitative evidence of the effectiveness of \((GD)^2\) with experimental data and a functional prototype: http://hdc.cs.arizona.edu/~mwli/graph-drawing/.
Signaling Equilibria for Dynamic LQG Games With Asymmetric Information

In this article, we consider a finite-horizon dynamic game with two players who observe their types privately and take actions that are publicly observed. Players’ types evolve as conditionally independent, controlled linear Gaussian processes, and players incur quadratic instantaneous costs. This forms a dynamic linear quadratic Gaussian game with asymmetric information. We show that under certain conditions, players’ strategies that are linear in their private types, together with Gaussian beliefs, form a perfect Bayesian equilibrium (PBE) of the game. This is a signaling equilibrium due to the fact that future beliefs on players’ types are affected by the equilibrium strategies. We provide a backward–forward algorithm to find the PBE. Each step of the backward algorithm reduces to solving an algebraic matrix equation for every possible realization of the state estimate covariance matrix. The forward algorithm consists of Kalman filter recursions, where state estimate covariance matrices depend on equilibrium strategies. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of the solution of the algebraic matrix equation for scalar actions. Finally, we present numerical examples.
On primes and practical numbers

A number n is practical if every integer in [1, n] can be expressed as a subset sum of the positive divisors of n. We consider the distribution of practical numbers that are also shifted primes, improving a theorem of Guo and Weingartner. In addition, essentially proving a conjecture of Margenstern, we show that all large odd numbers are the sum of a prime and a practical number. We also consider an analogue of the prime k-tuples conjecture for practical numbers, proving the “correct” upper bound, and for pairs, improving on a lower bound of Melfi.
Range-Visual-Inertial Odometry: Scale Observability Without Excitation

Traveling at constant velocity is the most efficient trajectory for most robotics applications. Unfortunately without accelerometer excitation, monocular Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO) cannot observe scale and suffers severe error drift. This was the main motivation for incorporating a 1D laser range finder in the navigation system for NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. However, Ingenuity 's simplified approach was limited to flat terrains. The current letter introduces a novel range measurement update model based on using facet constraints. The resulting range-VIO approach is no longer limited to flat scenes, but extends to any arbitrary structure for generic robotic applications. An important theoretical result shows that scale is no longer in the right nullspace of the observability matrix for zero or constant acceleration motion. In practical terms, this means that scale becomes observable under constant-velocity motion, which enables simple and robust autonomous operations over arbitrary terrain. Due to the small range finder footprint, range-VIO retains the minimal size, weight, and power attributes of VIO, with similar runtime. The benefits are evaluated on real flight data representative of common aerial robotics scenarios. Robustness is demonstrated using indoor stress data and full-state ground truth. We release our software framework, called xVIO, as open source.
COVID-19 mortality in California based on death certificates: disproportionate impacts across racial/ethnic groups and nativity.

ABSTRACT Purpose To examine characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) decedents in California (CA) and evaluate for disproportionate mortality across race/ethnicity and ethnicity/nativity. Methods COVID-19 deaths were identified from death certificates. Age-adjusted mortality rate ratios (MRR) were compared across race/ethnicity. Proportionate mortality rates (PMR) were compared across race/ethnicity and by ethnicity/nativity. Results We identified 10,200 COVID-19 deaths in CA occurring February 1 through July 31, 2020. The most frequently observed characteristics among decedents were age 65 years or above, male, Hispanic, foreign-born, and educational attainment of High School or below. MRR indicated elevated COVID-19 morality rates among Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, and Hispanic groups compared with the White group, with Black and Hispanic groups having the highest MRR at 2.75 (95%CI: 2.54–2.97) and 4.18 (95%CI: 3.99–4.37), respectively. Disparities were larger at younger ages. Similar results were observed with PMR, and patterns of age-racial/ethnic disparities remained in analyses stratified by education. Elevated PMR were observed in all ethnicity/nativity groups, especially foreign-born Hispanic individuals, relative to U.S.-born non-Hispanic individuals. These were generally larger at younger ages and persisted after stratifying by education. Conclusions Differential COVID-19 mortality was observed in California across racial/ethnic groups and by ethnicity/nativity groups with evidence of greater disparities among younger age groups. Identifying COVID-19 disparities is an initial step toward mitigating disease impacts in vulnerable communities.
Properties of protons in nuclear medium with AdS/QCD model with a quadratic modified dilaton

A modified version of the usual AdS/QCD soft wall model with quadratic dilaton is presented to study proton properties inside the atomic nucleus. We suggest a dilaton that catches the variation of the proton mass inside nuclei, called nuclear dilaton, and with this, we calculated electromagnetic form factors and magnetic moments for protons inside the atomic nucleus.
Hutch++: Optimal Stochastic Trace Estimation.

We study the problem of estimating the trace of a matrix A that can only be accessed through matrix-vector multiplication. We introduce a new randomized algorithm, Hutch++, which computes a (1 ± e) approximation to tr( A ) for any positive semidefinite (PSD) A using just O(1/e) matrix-vector products. This improves on the ubiquitous Hutchinson's estimator, which requires O(1/e2) matrix-vector products. Our approach is based on a simple technique for reducing the variance of Hutchinson's estimator using a low-rank approximation step, and is easy to implement and analyze. Moreover, we prove that, up to a logarithmic factor, the complexity of Hutch++ is optimal amongst all matrix-vector query algorithms, even when queries can be chosen adaptively. We show that it significantly outperforms Hutchinson's method in experiments. While our theory requires A to be positive semidefinite, empirical gains extend to applications involving non-PSD matrices, such as triangle estimation in networks.