cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Evaluating food retailing efficiency: the role of information technology

Information and internet-based technologies have fostered new supply chain initiatives in food retailing but little research has evaluated performance and efficiency impacts. A distance function based on three key performance measures for food retailers is used to evaluate store performance and efficiency. The effects of store format, membership in a chain, unionization, and the adoption of a variety of information technologies. Supply chain technologies are groups into three general categories including data sharing technologies, decision sharing technologies, and technologies that support product assortment, pricing, and merchandising decisions.
Dynamics of Information Exchange in Endogenous Social Networks

We develop a model of information exchange through communication and investigate its implications for information aggregation in large societies. An underlying state determines payoffs from different actions. Agents decide which other agents to form a costly communication link with, incurring the associated cost. After receiving a private signal correlated with the underlying state, the agents exchange information over the induced communication network until they take an (irreversible) action. We define asymptotic learning as the fraction of agents who take the correct action, converging to 1 as a society grows large. Under truthful communication, we show that asymptotic learning occurs if (and under some additional conditions, also only if ) in the induced communication network most agents are a short distance away from “information hubs,” which receive and distribute a large amount of information. Asymptotic learning therefore requires information to be aggregated in the hands of a few agents. We also show that while truthful communication may not always be a best response, it is an equilibrium when the communication network induces asymptotic learning. Moreover, we contrast equilibrium behavior with a socially optimal strategy profile, that is, a profile that maximizes aggregate welfare. We show that when the network induces asymptotic learning, equilibrium behavior leads to maximum aggregate welfare, but this may not be the case when asymptotic learning does not occur. We then provide a systematic investigation of what types of cost structures and associated social cliques (consisting of groups of individuals linked to each other at zero cost, such as friendship networks) ensure the emergence of communication networks that lead to asymptotic learning. Our result shows that societies with
Bonuses and Non-Public Information in Publicly Traded Firms

Recent research in accounting explores how firms use “individual” or “non-financial” measures of performance in executive compensation contracts. We model a firm that conditions bonus payments to executives on information that is not available to those outside the firm. This raises two issues. First, market participants may use the magnitude of such payments to infer the non-public information. Second, because information that is non-public is, by extension, non-verifiable, the firm cannot write explicit contracts based on it. Combining the relational incentive contracts and financial signaling literatures, we examine equilibria of a signaling game in which bonus payments from a firm to a manager convey non-public information regarding the firm’s future cash flows. Our main result is that increases in corporate myopia can, under some conditions, lead to increased profits. This finding is contrary to that typically found in financial signaling models.
Reading Back, Reading Black

This essay builds on post-colonial theory and black literary theory to pose a pair of questions. If the reading of Western literature can be enriched by examining the great canonical texts through the lens of race, can a similar enrichment obtain from using a similar reading practice to read the law? Stanley Fish has argued that we each belong to interpretive communities, and that members of these communities are guided in their readings of texts by a common consciousness, which produces interpretive "strategies [that] exist prior to the act of reading and therefore determine the shape of what is read." If this is true, what does it mean for the study of law to have a community of black readers? This essay engages these questions and attempts to describe a reading practice of reading black. To illustrate the reading practice, the essay examines two cases that do not appear to be engaged in race work at all, The Queen v. Dudley & Stephens, and Muller v. Oregon. The essay demonstrates that far from diminishing these opinions - these grand narratives, these master texts - reading black reveals other layers, other meanings, and in the process deepens and widens our understanding not only of the holdings of these opinions, but also the how and why of them.
The Electronic Lawyer

The organizers of this conference have asked us to reflect on future challenges for the legal profession. I begin with an image from popular culture. Anyone who has seen the movie Michael Clayton has seen one vision of the future (or possibly contemporary) American lawyer. In the movie, George Clooney plays the title role as a lawyer who works for a 600-lawyer New York law firm that is acting as the “fixer” for a large agricultural products company sued for allegedly causing the deaths of small farmers in the Midwest. The head of the litigation department, who is in charge of the case, “gets religion” when he discovers incriminating documents in the client's files, and declares that he will bring down the company. Michael Clayton is the law firm's fixer, and his job is to rein in the wayward litigation chief. But that proves difficult, and the client resorts to illegal means to contain things.
The Folly of Expecting Evil: Reconsidering the Bar's Character and Fitness Requirement

The bar’s character and fitness inquiry seeks to protect the public. As part of this inquiry, bar applicants are required to produce detailed information about their past histories. The rationale for this inquiry is that this information can be used to identify who will subsequently become a problematic lawyer. Bar applicants bear the burden of providing their “good” character even though there is little evidence that past conduct predicts who will become a problematic lawyer. This article looks at psychological and other research that attempt to identify factors that might predict future misconduct in the work place. It also reports on a study of Connecticut lawyers which was designed to determine whether information obtained during the bar admissions process predicts future discipline. The data reveal that while some bar application information is predictive of future misconduct, the effect sizes are extremely low. It is highly unlikely that anyone would be denied admission to the bar based on the slight increase in risk these applicants present. The article considers the implications of certain findings and suggests areas that merit further research. It also suggests some alternatives to the current character and fitness inquiry.
Taxing the Bandit Kings

The rise of significant inbound capital flows originating from sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) has occasioned a debate over the appropriate regulatory and tax treatment of these funds. In particular, it has been argued that the tax exemption currently enjoyed by SWFs confers an advantage on these entities as providers of capital to U.S. firms relative to private foreign investors, and that a tax should be imposed on SWFs to restore fairness. This brief essay argues that the distinctive nature of the portfolio choices facing SWFs negates this fairness argument. Indeed, changing the tax treatment of SWFs as has been proposed would distort choices that are otherwise efficient and would handicap U.S. firms and workers.
Getting Beyond the Crossfire Phenomenon: A Militant Moderate's Take on the Role of Foreign Authority in Constitutional Interpretation

Just a few weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court revisited the issue that, in many respects, kicked off the twenty-first-century debate over the relationship between international law and the U.S. Constitution. In the aptly named Kennedy v. Louisiana,1 Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a five-member majority, held that the use of the death penalty for child rape violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.2 For anti–death penalty advocates, Kennedy provides important evidence that key victories of the last decade (in Roper v. Simmons3 and Atkins v. Virginia4) thus far have withstood the recent conservative turn of the Court. For advocates of the use of foreign and international law in constitutional interpretation, however, the decision offers a very different, and bleaker, picture. For international lawyers, Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Kennedy is a far cry from his groundbreaking majority opinion in Roper just three years earlier.5 Kennedy is striking in the absence from the opinion of any discussion of foreign authority and the role that it should play in constitutional interpretation. Justice Kennedy passed on the opportunity to reiterate—and strengthen—Roper’s holding that “international opinion” can
Law, Science, and the Continental Shelf: The Russian Federation and the Promise of Arctic Cooperation

The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and least understood ocean in the world, yet it contains more than one-quarter of the earth’s entire continental shelf. In recent years, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS” or “Convention”) has emerged as a powerful driver for acquiring scientific data about the Arctic continental shelf and seafloor and for encouraging new forms of scientific and diplomatic cooperation in the wild, pristine and diminishingly icy but still dangerous seascape of the Arctic Ocean. This article demonstrates how UNCLOS has provided Russia and its Arctic neighbors with a legal framework for scientific and diplomatic cooperation that can extend beyond mapping the Arctic continental shelf. It also underlines the fundamental reliance of law on science in the continental shelf mapping process, showing how recent mapping efforts have contributed to the unprecedented availability of information about the nature and history of the Arctic Ocean. In doing so, it examines how lawyers and scientists approach the same treaty provisions from their respective disciplinary perspectives. The article concludes by considering how recent U.S. and Russian statements of national policy regarding the Arctic, and how nurturing joint scientific projects there, can strengthen science and international cooperation in the region.
Interest group activity and long-run stock market performance

This paper provides evidence that interest group activity is negatively related to aggregate stock market performance. In particular, the findings imply that a one percent increase in the number of interest groups in a country is associated with a reduction in average annual stock market returns of roughly 2–5%, and a reduction in the volatility of annual stock returns of roughly 6–14%. In addition, the findings indicate that many of the same fundamentals that drive economic growth also explain stock market performance.
Untapped Potential: A Study of Academic Online Legal Research Guides

This article explores the current state of online legal research guides. It surveys guides from 197 ABA-accredited law school libraries and (1) identifies four major types of guides and (2) calculates the total number of academic-law-library-produced online legal research guides. The article also takes a closer look at the content and format of online legal research guides, with immigration-focused guides as an illustration. After analyzing the survey results, the article suggests some best practices for format regardless of the guide type. Ideally, an awareness of the breadth and depth of existing online legal research guides will result in less duplication of efforts among law librarians and more current, accurate, and functional online legal research guides.
The effect of listing price strategy on real estate negotiations: An experimental study

Abstract When selling a home, an important decision facing the homeowner is choosing an optimal listing price. This decision will depend in large part on how the chosen list price impacts the post negotiation final sale price of the home. In this study, we design an experiment that enables us to identify how different types of common list price strategies affect housing negotiations. Specifically, we examine how rounded, just below, and precise list prices impact the negotiation behavior of the buyer and seller and, ultimately, the final sale price of the home. Our results indicate that the initial list price strategy does play an important role in the negotiation process. Most notably, a high precise price generates the highest final sale price, smallest percentage discount off the list price, and the largest fraction of the surplus to the seller, while just below pricing leads to the lowest final price, largest percentage discount, and smallest fraction of the surplus to the seller. This pattern seems to be largely driven by sellers making persistently higher and more precise counter-offers throughout the negotiation process when the initial list price is high precise. Interestingly, these effects generally attenuate with negotiating experience. Importantly, our experimental results are generally consistent, both in direction and magnitude, with the limited transactions-based empirical studies relating to real estate listing prices.
Iraq, Secured Transactions & the Promise of Islamic Law,

When Iraq regains political stability, major reconstruction projects will have to be funded and local businesses will need financing in order to gain a foothold in the new economy. In order to attract the necessary capital, the Iraqi law of secured transactions must be reformed to allow for lenders to take security in the assets of their borrowers. However, the challenge of reforming Iraqi commercial law is complicated by the requirement under the new Iraqi Constitution that any new statutes enacted by the Iraqi legislature comply with the principles of Islamic law. This Article sets forth proposals for reform that comply with Islamic law and explains how Islamic law, far from being inimical to the needs of international financial institutions, actually allows for each of the essential elements of a progressive law of secured transactions. This amenability of Islamic law to the requirements of the modern international economy holds great promise, not only for Iraq, but for all Islamic states that are seeking to invigorate their economies with the aid of foreign investment. * Assistant Professor of Law, Cleveland State University, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. The author would like to thank the following people for their generous assistance: Prof. John Andrew Spanogle, Jr., Dr. Farooq Hassan, Shaykh Yusuf DeLorenzo, Prof. Abed el-Rahman Tayyara, Muddassir Siddiqui, Nabil Issa, Patrick Campos, Bob Spjut, James Rayis, Ali Zaidi, Amgad Husein, Chuck Prinz, Herb Wolfson, and Prof. David Forte. This project was greatly enhanced by the tireless assistance of the research librarians at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and, in particular, Thomas Hurray.
Potential for Significant Reductions in Dropout Rates: Analysis of an Entire 3rd Grade State Cohort.

Abstract Nineteen percent of 1997–98 North Carolina 3rd graders were observed to drop out of high school. A series of logits predict probabilities of dropping out on determinants such as math and reading test scores, absenteeism, suspension, and retention, at the following grade levels: 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 9th. The same cohort and variables are used to estimate benefits to the 15,737 students admitted to a special program ostensibly for academically and intellectually gifted children. I estimate the probability of admission for schoolmates with similar ability in math and reading to be substantially higher for those from upper income households. Finally, I conclude that extending similar resources to an equal number of high-risk students, as determined by their 3rd grade predicted probabilities, would lead to a 25% reduction in the total cohort dropout rate, and that even dividing existing resources between the two groups could cut dropout rates by half that.
The future of gene patents and the implications for medicine

The Supreme Court decision in Myriad Genetics struck down the patenting of human genomic DNA. What will this mean for genetic testing and medicine, more broadly?
When Everyone Runs for the Exit

The dangers of shouting “fire” in a crowded theater are well understood, but the dangers of rushing to the exit in the financial markets are more complex. Yet, the two events share several features, and I analyze why people crowd into theaters and trades, why they run, what determines the risk, whether to return to the theater or trade when the dust settles, and how much to pay for assets (or tickets) in light of this risk. These theoretical considerations shed light on the recent global liquidity crisis and, in particular, the quant event of 2007.
Real-Time Forecast Evaluation of DSGE Models with Stochastic Volatility

Recent work has analyzed the forecasting performance of standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models, but little attention has been given to DSGE models that incorporate nonlinearities in exogenous driving processes. Against that background,we explore whether incorporating stochastic volatility improves DSGE forecasts (point, interval, and density). We examine real-time forecast accuracy for key macroeconomic variables including output growth, inflation, and the policy rate. We find that incorporating stochastic volatility in DSGE models of macroeconomic fundamentals markedly improves their density forecasts, just as incorporating stochastic volatility in models of financial asset returns improves their density forecasts.
The Information Role of Conservatism

In this paper we argue that information asymmetry between firm insiders and outside equity investors generates conservatism in financial statements. Conservatism reduces the manager's incentives and ability to manipulate accounting numbers and so reduces information asymmetry and the deadweight losses that information asymmetry generates. This increases firm and equity values. Our empirical tests are consistent with our proposition that information asymmetry is significantly positively related to conservatism after controlling for other demands for conservatism. Further, our tests are more consistent with our prediction that changes in information asymmetry between equity investors lead to changes in conservatism than the FASB's proposition that conservatism produces information asymmetry among equity investors. An important implication is that, if the FASB was successful in meeting its stated goal of eliminating conservatism, then it would increase information asymmetry between investors, not reduce it. ...
Market conditions, fragility, and the economics of market making

Abstract Using audit-trail data from the Toronto Stock Exchange, we find that market makers scale back in unison when market conditions are unfavorable, which contributes to covariation in liquidity supply, both within and across stocks. Market conditions lower aggregate participation via their impact on trading profits and risk. Contrary to regulatory view, higher stock volatility is associated with more participation and higher profits, even after controlling for other market conditions, including stock volume. Fragility concerns extend to larger stocks and to active participants. The designated market maker mitigates periodic illiquidity created by synchronous withdrawal of market makers in large and small stocks.
Energy efficiency program evaluations: opportunities for learning and inputs to incentive mechanisms

We analyze the evaluations of California energy efficiency programs to assess the effectiveness of these evaluations in (1) improving our understanding of their performance and (2) providing a check on utility incentives to overstate energy savings. We find that third-party evaluations are useful tools to achieve both ends because the programs largely did not meet their energy savings projections and the utility-reported savings estimates are systematically higher than the evaluated savings estimates. We also find evidence that the choice of the third-party evaluator was influential in determining the estimate of evaluated savings.
Assessing Measures of Order Flow Toxicity and Early Warning Signals for Market Turbulence

Following the "flash crash" on May 6, 2010, warning signals for impending market stress have been in high demand, yet only the VPIN metric of Easley, Lopez de Prado, and O’Hara (ELO) has claimed success. In addition, ELO find the metric useful in predicting short-term volatility. VPIN involves decomposing volume into active buys and sells. We utilize quotes and trade data to construct an accurate trade classification measure for E-mini S&P 500 futures. Against this benchmark, the ELO Bulk Volume Classification (BVC) scheme is inferior to a standard tick rule. Moreover, VPIN predicts volatility solely because increasing volatility induces systematic classification errors in the BVC procedure. We conclude that VPIN is unsuitable for capturing order flow toxicity or signaling ensuing market turbulence.
Code to comment "translation": data, metrics, baselining & evaluation

The relationship of comments to code, and in particular, the task of generating useful comments given the code, has long been of interest. The earliest approaches have been based on strong syntactic theories of comment-structures, and relied on textual templates. More recently, researchers have applied deep-learning methods to this task---specifically, trainable generative translation models which are known to work very well for Natural Language translation (e.g., from German to English). We carefully examine the underlying assumption here: that the task of generating comments sufficiently resembles the task of translating between natural languages, and so similar models and evaluation metrics could be used. We analyze several recent code-comment datasets for this task: CodeNN, DeepCom, FunCom, and DocString. We compare them with WMT19, a standard dataset frequently used to train state-of-the-art natural language translators. We found some interesting differences between the code-comment data and the WMT19 natural language data. Next, we describe and conduct some studies to calibrate BLEU (which is commonly used as a measure of comment quality). using "affinity pairs" of methods, from different projects, in the same project, in the same class, etc; Our study suggests that the current performance on some datasets might need to be improved substantially. We also argue that fairly naive information retrieval (IR) methods do well enough at this task to be considered a reasonable baseline. Finally, we make some suggestions on how our findings might be used in future research in this area.
Issues in Anti‐Corruption Law: How Can Code of Conduct Laws Be Drafted in Order to Reduce Corruption in a Public Sector like Romania's

International organisations, like the UN and EU, have encouraged their Member States for years to increase civil servants' compliance with particular codes of conduct. Romania represents probably one of the most advanced countries in attempting to legislate on civil servant ethics through its Code of Conduct Law. Yet, the Romanian Code of Conduct Law possesses significant weaknesses, emanating both from the inherent difficulties of using hard law in a soft law area (like civil servants' ethics) and the Law's silence as to specific procedures, which government agencies should use in implementing the Law. Given these weaknesses, Romanian government agencies should adopt regulatory instruments that compensate for these weaknesses at the legislative level. In this paper, we present the provisions—particularly related to the establishment of agency‐level ethical doctrines—which regulatory drafters can use to implement these codes of conduct in a civil law system without running afoul of the basic requirements of civil law jurisprudence for clarity and predictability. We discuss the legal basis in Romanian administrative law for the elaboration of specific ethics‐related doctrines and the ways in which such a ‘doctrinal approach’ to administrative ethics can help achieve the objectives of the flawed Code of Conduct Law. We specifically discuss the ways in which Romanian governments can adopt such regulatory instruments and the types of provisions that should be included in order to help overcome the flaws of the Code of Conduct Law.
Economic Integration and Endogenous Growth

In a world with two similar, developed economies, economic integration can cause a permanent increase in the worldwide rate of growth. Starting from a position of isolation, closer integration can be achieved by increasing trade in goods or by increasing flows of ideas. We consider two models with different specifications of the research and development sector that is the source of growth. Either form of integration can increase the long-run rate of growth if it encourages the worldwide exploitation of increasing returns to scale in the research and development sector. I. INTRODUCTION Many economists believe that increased economic integration between the developed economies of the world has tended to increase the long-run rate of economic growth. If they were asked to make an intuitive prediction, they would suggest that prospects for growth would be permanently diminished if a barrier were erected that impeded the flow of all goods, ideas, and people between Asia, Europe, and North America. Yet it would be difficult for any of us to offer a rigorous model that has been (or even could be) calibrated to data and that could justify this belief. We know what some of the basic elements of such a growth model would be. Historical analysis (e.g., Rosenberg [1980]) shows that the creation and transmission of ideas has been extremely important in the development of modern standards of living. Theoretical arguments dating from Adam Smith's analysis of the pin factory have emphasized the potential importance of fixed costs and the extent of the market. There is a long tradition in trade theory of using models with Marshallian external effects to approach questions about increasing returns. More recently, static models with fixed costs and international specialization have been proposed that come closer to Smith's description of the sources of the gains from trade [Dixit and Norman, 1980; Ethier, 1982; Krugman, 1979, 1981; Lancaster, 1980]. There are also dynamic models with fixed costs and differentiated products in which output
Leverage and acquisition performance

From an agency perspective, leverage may have a positive effect on firm performance by limiting managers’ ability to allocate resources to unproductive uses, as well as increasing pressure on them to perform well. Consequently, we might expect leverage to have a positive impact on acquisition performance. However, the increased risks associated with higher leverage, combined with the other risks inherent in an acquisition, could also cause managers to take actions to reduce risk even if doing so is contrary to value maximization. High debt levels might also limit managerial discretion over how resources are allocated during the acquisition process, which can have a negative impact on performance. We investigate the effect of leverage on post-acquisition stock performance and find that post-acquisition performance is decreasing in leverage brought by the target firm and in additional leverage taken on to execute the acquisition. This negative performance is clustered among acquirers who are already financially constrained. Our results are robust to various returns measurement methodologies and to the inclusion of several controls known to predict future returns. Our results also represent viable investment strategies, and suggest that the market underestimates difficulties that arise from acquisition-related increases in leverage.
Safety‐Net Losses from Abandoning Glass–Steagall Restrictions

This paper evaluates the redistribution of gains surrounding regulatory relaxations in 1996 and 1997 and ultimate passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) of 1999. Gains in financial institution stocks may come from projected increases in efficiency, increases in the bargaining power of financial institutions, or greater access to the federal safety net. For customers seeking improved access to capital markets, gains in efficiency should result in increased benefits, but increases in bank bargaining power could increase funding costs and/or decrease capital market access. Customers may also lose as taxpayers who support the federal safety net. This paper finds evidence of potential taxpayer losses and increased bank bargaining power, especially vis-a-vis credit-constrained customers for whom safety-net subsidies are unlikely to be shifted forward. The stock prices of credit-constrained customers declined during FSMA event windows and in event windows associated with regulatory relaxations.
An Analysis of Risk-Taking Behavior for Public Defined Benefit Pension Plans

Abstract This paper presents the first comprehensive study on the determinants of public pension fund investment risk and reports several new important findings. Unlike private pension plans, public funds undertake more risk if they are underfunded and have lower investment returns in the previous years, consistent with the risk transfer hypothesis. Furthermore, pension funds in states facing fiscal constraints allocate more assets to equity and have higher betas. There also appears to be a herding effect in that CalPERS equity allocation or beta is mimicked by other pension funds. Finally, our results suggest that government accounting standards strongly affect pension fund risk, as higher return assumptions (used to discount pension liabilities) are associated with higher equity allocation and portfolio beta.
Unlawful Laws and the Authority of International Tribunals

International disputes often involve issues of both national and international law. Not infrequently, challenges are raised to the legitimacy of the national law invoked. Attention is then immediately switched to international law, to see whether it may have a corrective effect, by operation of such things as international minimum standards or international public policy. The main point of this lecture is to say: “Not so fast!” National laws themselves contain corrective norms, and they may be formidable. An international court or tribunal charged with applying a national law has both the duty and the authority to apply it as a whole. If it does so, there may be no need to determine whether international law trumps national law. In this way a confrontation of legal orders is avoided.
Triaging Appointed-Counsel Funding and Pro Se Access to Justice

INTRODUCTION 968 I. TOO MANY NEEDS, TOO FEW DOLLARS 972 A. Underfunding Criminal Counsel: Subverting Gideon 972 1. Capital Cases 972 2. Other Felonies 974 3. Misdemeanors 976 B. The Civil Gideon Movement 977 C. Unacknowledged Tradeoffs and Competing Demands 980 II. TURNER’S TURN TO REALITY 982 A. Gradations of Complexity and Need 982 B. Concerns with Formality and Delay 983 C. Less Intrusive Alternatives 984 III. TWO-AND-A-HALF CHEERS FOR TURNER 985 A. The Wisdom of Not Recognizing a Procrustean Right 985 B. More Sustainable Pro Se Court Reform 987 C. The Implicit Role of Resource Constraints 990 CONCLUSION 994
The Costs of Abusing Probationary Sentences: Overincarceration and the Erosion of Due Process

Something has gone terribly wrong in the American criminal justice system. In the process of moving from a system focused on the rehabilitative potential of the defendant to a system myopically focused on retribution, we have trampled not only upon our tool with the greatest rehabilitative potential, but also upon the due process protections that we supposedly hold most dear. By using probation as a default sentence for all of those whom we choose not to incarcerate, we have created burgeoning caseloads that prevent probation from serving any useful rehabilitative function. Many probationers go without any supervision whatsoever, and those who are in need of social services and support rarely get it. Not surprisingly, then, high percentages of probationers do not succeed on probation. Many of those wind up incarcerated, even though the system’s conclusion was that the underlying crime did not justify incarceration. The “crime” that we punish with incarceration is the inability to live up to the terms and conditions of probation, even if it was entirely unrealistic to expect the probationer to live up to those terms and conditions and entirely predictable that the probationer would fail. It may be hard to convince some constituencies to abandon the abuse of probation because they are wedded to what follows from that abuse: a shadow criminal justice system in which huge numbers of cases are processed not through the due process protections that come with the prosecution of a criminal charge, but through a probation violation hearing process that is devoid of virtually all of these protections. This process is certainly efficient, but does not reflect the values of justice that our system is supposed to represent. It is simply inappropriate to hold a violation hearing at which a criminal charge is adjudicated not through a criminal trial replete with protections for the innocent, but rather through a truncated procedure designed for a very different purpose. This article proposes the use of probation only in the limited circumstances in which it can serve a useful rehabilitative function, and only in numbers that will allow for appropriate supervision and services. And perhaps more importantly, this article proposes the abandonment of a system in which a probation violation hearing acts as a substitute for a criminal trial. The author proposes a far more logical system in which we use probation only when it can serve a legitimate function, we allow probation officers to actually do their jobs, we deal with future criminality on its own terms, and we honor and respect traditional notions of due process when we adjudicate criminal charges.
On political theology and the possibility of superseding it

The analogies between religious and secular juridical arguments interest political theorists because they suggest a hidden link between religion and politics. However, merely describing analogies does not show that the link is significant. Why are there such analogies? The question matters because answering is a prerequisite for determining whether there can be a neutral political background to religion. This paper argues that there are such analogies because arguments in theology and arguments in the juridical theory of the state share a common structure. This structure is such that the meaning of some concepts in the theory of the state, like political order and sovereignty, cannot be fully understood without reference to theological concepts. This thesis – political theology – has become associated with Carl Schmitt, but the argument in this paper differs importantly from his. Unlike Schmitt, this paper claims that in the contemporary state political theology can be superseded.
Wages, Sorting on Skill, and the Racial Composition of Jobs

Wages for black and white workers are substantially lower in occupations with a high density of black employees, following standard controls. Such correlations can exist absent discrimination or as a result of discrimination. In wage level equations, partial correlations fall sharply after controlling for occupational skills. Longitudinal estimates accounting for worker heterogeneity indicate little wage change associated with changes in racial composition. Results support a “quality sorting” rather than discrimination explanation, with racial density serving as an index of unmeasured skills. Discrimination reflected in racial wage gaps occurs within occupations or across occupations in a manner uncorrelated with racial composition.
Pollution and International Trade in Services

Two central topics in recent rounds of international trade negotiations have been environmental concerns and services trade. While each is undoubtedly important, they are unrelated. In this paper, I show that the services-environment link is small, for two reasons. First, services account for only a small fraction of overall pollution. For none of five major air pollutants does the service sector account for even 4% of total emissions; for three of the five services account for less than 1%. Second, those service industries that do pollute are the least likely to be traded internationally. Those services for which the United States collects and publishes international trade data—presumably those services that are traded internationally—are less polluting than services for which trade data do not exist—presumably because the services are not traded. Even if we limit attention to the services that are traded across borders, the service industries most intensively traded are the ones that pollute the least. The bottom line is simple. International services trade bears little relation to the environment, because services in general contribute relatively little to overall pollution, and those industries that are traded internationally are among the least polluting.
Common factors in Latin America's business cycles

This paper constructs new business cycle indices for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico based on common dynamic factors extracted from a comprehensive set of sectoral output, external trade, fiscal and financial variables. The analysis spans the 135 years since the insertion of these economies into the global economy in the 1870s. The constructed indices are used to derive a business cycle chronology for these countries and characterize a set of new stylized facts. In particular, we show that all four countries have historically displayed a striking combination of high business cycle volatility and persistence relative to benchmark countries, and that such volatility has been time-varying, with important differences across policy regimes. We also uncover a sizeable common factor across the four economies which has greatly limited scope for regional risk sharing.
The Islamic Commercial Crisis: Institutional Roots of Economic Underdevelopment in the Middle East

During the second millennium, the Middle East's commerce with Western Europe fell increasingly under European domination. Two factors played critical roles. First, the Islamic inheritance system, by raising the costs of dissolving a partnership following a partner's death, kept Middle Eastern commercial enterprises small and ephemeral. Second, certain European inheritance systems facilitated large and durable partnerships by reducing the likelihood of premature dissolution. The upshot is that European enterprises grew larger than those of the Islamic world. Moreover, while ever larger enterprises propelled further organizational transformations in Europe, persistently small enterprises inhibited economic modernization in the Middle East. f one challenge of the social sciences is to account for the rise of the West,I another is to explain how the Islamic Middle East2 became an underdeveloped region.3 A major symptom of this decline was that Muslim merchants lost ground to Westerners, and eventually also to religious minorities living in their midst. By the nineteenth century, when much of the Middle East fell prey to European colonialism, the Muslim role in the region's trade with Western Europe had slipped to insignificance.4 Moreover, many lucrative components of the Middle East's internal commerce had come to be dominated by local Christians and Jews.5 Although these patterns were not uniform across places or sectors, there is no serious disagreement over the general trends of interest here.
From Casual to Causal Inference in Accounting Research: The Need for Theoretical Foundations

From Casual to Causal Inference in Accounting Research: The Need for Theoretical Foundations
Pricing Ancillary Service Subscriptions

We investigate heterogeneous customer choice behavior in the presence of main products—ancillary services with options of pay-per-use and subscription—and outside option. The willingness to pay for...
A Response to the "Conservative Case" for Same-Sex Marriage: Same-Sex Marriage and "the Tragedy of the Commons"

After initially reporting on the status of the movement for same-sex marriage in the United States and around the world, this article reviews the five key claims of the "conservative case" for same-sex marriage ("we exist," stabilization, sexual taming, social gains, and no harm) and compares them to the seven core principles of conservatism (preservation, institutions, caution, experience, distrust, individualism, and morality). It finds that the claims for same-sex marriage are seriously deficient when measured against those conservative principles. It presents a conservative case against same-sex marriage both in terms of those key principles of conservatism as well by reference to the practical harms and detriments to society, families and individuals that have come and may be reasonably expected to flow from same-sex marriage. Borrowing Garrett Hardin's famous "tragedy of the commons" metaphor, this article suggests that lack of personal responsibility for the common interest in marriage underlies much of the acceptance of same-sex marriage, and concludes with a call to consider the ultimate accountability that the consequences of our social choices will produce.
The quest for non-resource-based FDI: Do taxes matter?

ABSTRACTUsing manufacturing and services firm-level data for 30 African countries, we show that taxation is not a significant driver for the location of foreign firms in Africa, while other investm...
The dynamics of patent citations

Abstract The use of patent citations as a measure of patent “quality” increased dramatically in recent years. I estimate the hazard of patent citation, and find evidence of unobserved heterogeneity. Hazard estimation provides a means to separate patent quality from citation “inflation”.
Ethical Issues Connected with Multi-Level Marketing Schemes

Multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes are one of the fastest growing types of business. However, little has been written about the ethics of MLMs. This oversight is somewhat surprising, especially because some prominent MLMs have been accused of being pyramid schemes. Pyramid schemes were the number one type of internet fraud in 1996, and the fourth most common form of internet fraud in 1997 (National Consumers League, 1997). This paper examines the nature of MLMs and their similarities with and differences from pyramid and endless chain schemes. The paper argues that MLMs pose some unique ethical issues, issues that are not easy to address or resolve.
Due-care standards in a market setting with legal error

Abstract We consider a monopoly market setup with legal error, where social welfare is negatively related to a firm's expected liability costs. In this context, we investigate the optimal location of the due-care standard vis-a-vis any given desired care level. It is found that when both the due-care standard and the penalty multiplier are choice variables, setting the due-care equal to the desired care is unlikely to be optimal and conditions under which it should be made relatively lenient or stringent are obtained. Exogenous restrictions on the penalty multiplier may restrict the extent to which the due-care can be manipulated to improve welfare.
Asset Valuation and Performance Measurement in a Dynamic Agency Setting

This paper examines the choice of asset valuation rules from a managerial control perspective. A manager creates value for a firm through his effort choices. To support its operating activities, the firm also engages in financing activities such as credit sales to its customers. Since such financing activities merely change the pattern of cash flows across periods, an optimal compensation scheme must shield the manager from the risk associated with the financing activities. We show that residual income combined with fair value accounting for receivables eliminates this risk and provides an optimal performance measure. In contrast, compensation schemes based only on realized cash flows can be optimal only under exceptional circumstances. We also consider a setting in which there is sufficiently disaggregated information about periodic cash flows so as to eliminate not only the risk associated with financing activities but also the risk associated with customer defaults. The principal then wants to depart from fair value accounting.
Citizens United : How The New Campaign Finance Jurisprudence Has Been Shaped By Previous Dissents

This article analyzes the new campaign finance jurisprudence as it relates to the independent expenditures of corporations. The primary purpose of the article is to examine the ways in which the Citizens United majority channeled the previous dissents of Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas in solidifying a new approach to campaign finance regulations that is centered on a robust protection of free speech rights. After establishing a brief background, the article first seeks to explain why the Court was correct in recognizing that the First Amendment was implicated by restrictions on a corporation’s ability to fund campaign speech. This argument relies largely on the Court’s commercial speech cases, in which the Court consistently recognizes that the First Amendment does protect (at least somewhat) the commercial speech of corporations. If purely commercial corporate speech is protected, the argument goes, then certainly political speech does not lose its protection merely because the speaker is a corporation. This part of the article also relies on longstanding First Amendment jurisprudence in addressing and seeking to discredit the argument that the First Amendment shouldn’t apply to campaign finance regulations because “money isn’t speech.” After explaining why the First Amendment is implicated by such regulations, the analysis turns to the various ways in which Citizens United was informed by the aforementioned dissents. The analysis proceeds by discussing four separate government interests that have been asserted as justifications for the previous regulatory regime. These interests are the now-discredited anti-distortion interest recognized in Austin, the longstanding interest in preventing corruption and the appearance thereof, the interest in protecting shareholder sensibilities, and the interest in leveling the playing field so that all political speech is given an equal forum. The article explains how the Court’s treatment of each interest in Citizens United was informed by the previous dissents of those who helped to form the new majority that decided the case.
The Moderating Effect of Relative Performance Evaluation on the Risk Incentive Properties of Executives’ Equity Portfolios

We offer evidence that the use of relative performance evaluation (RPE) in CEOs’ incentive contracts influences the effect of risk-taking incentives on both the magnitude and composition of firm risk. We find that, when the incentive design lacks RPE features, the incentive portfolio vega motivates CEOs to increase total risk through the systematic component because it can be hedged. In contrast, when the incentive design includes RPE features, CEOs prefer idiosyncratic risk because RPE filters out the systematic component of firm performance. We also document that the use of RPE reinforces the incentive portfolio vega's effect on the total risk