cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Experiments with Three Approaches to Recognizing Lexical Entailment

Inference in natural language often involves recognizing lexical entailment (RLE), that is, identifying whether one word entails another. For example, buy entails own. Two general strategies for RLE have been proposed: One strategy is to manually construct an asymmetric similarity measure for context vectors (directional similarity) and another is to treat RLE as a problem of learning to recognize semantic relations using supervised machine-learning techniques (relation classification). In this paper, we experiment with two recent state-of-the-art representatives of the two general strategies. The first approach is an asymmetric similarity measure (an instance of the directional similarity strategy), designed to capture the degree to which the contexts of a word, a, form a subset of the contexts of another word, b. The second approach (an instance of the relation classification strategy) represents a word pair, a: b, with a feature vector that is the concatenation of the context vectors of a and b, and then applies supervised learning to a training set of labeled feature vectors. In addition, we introduce a third approach that is a new instance of the relation classification strategy. The third approach represents a word pair, a: b, with a feature vector in which the features are the differences in the similarities of a and b to a set of reference words. All three approaches use vector space models of semantics, based on word–context matrices. We perform an extensive evaluation of the three approaches using three different datasets. The proposed new approach (similarity differences) performs significantly better than the other two approaches on some datasets and there is no dataset for which it is significantly worse. Along the way, we address some of the concerns raised in past research, regarding the treatment of RLE as a problem of semantic relation classification, and we suggest, it is beneficial to make connections between the research in lexical entailment and the research in semantic relation classification.
12 Years of X-Ray Variability in M31 Globular Clusters, Including 8 Black Hole Candidates, as Seen by Chandra

We examined 134 Chandra observations of the population of X-ray sources associated with globular clusters (GCs) in the central region of M31. These are expected to be X-ray binary systems (XBs), consisting of a neutron star or black hole accreting material from a close companion. We created long-term light curves for these sources, correcting for background, interstellar absorption, and instrumental effects. We tested for variability by examining the goodness of fit for the best-fit constant intensity. We also created structure functions (SFs) for every object in our sample, the first time this technique has been applied to XBs. We found significant variability in 28 out of 34 GCs and GC candidates; the other 6 sources had 0.3‐10 keV luminosities fainter than ∼2 × 10 36 erg s −1 , limiting our ability to detect similar variability. The SFs of XBs with 0.3‐10 keV luminosities ∼2‐50 × 10 36 erg s −1 generally showed considerably more variability than the published ensemble SF of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Our brightest XBs were mostly consistent with the AGN SF; however, their 2‐10 keV fluxes could be matched by <1 AGN per square degree. These encouraging results suggest that examining the long-term light curves of other X-ray sources in the field may provide an important distinction between X-ray binaries and background galaxies, as the X-ray emission spectra from these two classes of X-ray sources are similar. Additionally, we identify 3 new black hole candidates (BHCs) using additional XMM-Newton data, bringing the total number of M31 GC BHCs to 9, with 8 covered in this survey.
RADIATION FROM COMOVING POYNTING FLUX ACCELERATION

We derive analytic formulas for the radiation power output when electrons are accelerated by a relativistic comoving kinetic Poynting flux, and validate these analytic results with particle-in-cell simulations. We also derive analytically the critical frequency of the radiation spectrum. Potential astrophysical applications of these results are discussed. A quantitative model of gamma-ray bursts based on the breakout of kinetic Poynting flux is presented.
A Conversation with Alan Gelfand

Alan E. Gelfand was born April 17, 1945, in the Bronx, New York. He attended public grade schools and did his undergraduate work at what was then called City College of New York (CCNY, now CUNY), excelling at mathematics. He then surprised and saddened his mother by going all the way across the country to Stanford to graduate school, where he completed his dissertation in 1969 under the direction of Professor Herbert Solomon, making him an academic grandson of Herman Rubin and Harold Hotelling. Alan then accepted a faculty position at the University of Connecticut (UConn) where he was promoted to tenured associate professor in 1975 and to full professor in 1980. A few years later he became interested in decision theory, then empirical Bayes, which eventually led to the publication of Gelfand and Smith [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 85 (1990) 398–409], the paper that introduced the Gibbs sampler to most statisticians and revolutionized Bayesian computing. In the mid-1990s, Alan’s interests turned strongly to spatial statistics, leading to fundamental contributions in spatially-varying coefficient models, coregionalization, and spatial boundary analysis (wombling). He spent 33 years on the faculty at UConn, retiring in 2002 to become the James B. Duke Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University, serving as chair from 2007–2012. At Duke, he has continued his work in spatial methodology while increasing his impact in the environmental sciences. To date, he has published over 260 papers and 6 books; he has also supervised 36 Ph.D. dissertations and 10 postdocs. This interview was done just prior to a conference of his family, academic descendants, and colleagues to celebrate his 70th birthday and his contributions to statistics which took place on April 19–22, 2015 at Duke University.
QCD at finite density and color superconductivity

The paper contains a brief review of recent applications of many-body theory to quark matter. We discuss the progress in theory of dense quark matter during the last two years, especially color superconductivity. We emphasize that there are two basic dynamical reasons for it: short-range forces induced by instantons and long-range ones mediated by exchanges of magnetic gluons. For quark matter which is supposed to be found in neutron stars, both lead to superconducting gaps on the order of 100 MeV. The most surprising facts are the rather impressive richness of different phases and their robustness in respect to variation of the fundamental interaction.
Measurement of optical attenuation in acrylic light guides for a dark matter detector

Acrylic is a common material used in dark matter and neutrino detectors for light guides, transparent vessels, and neutron shielding, creating an intermediate medium between the target volume and photodetectors. Acrylic has low absorption within the visible spectrum and has a high capture cross section for neutrons. The natural radioactivity in photodetectors is a major source of background neutrons for low background detectors making the use of acrylic attractive for shielding and background reduction. To test the optical properties of acrylic we measured the transmittance and attenuation length of fourteen samples of acrylic from four different manufacturers. Samples were evaluated at five different wavelengths between 375 nm and 632 nm. We found that all samples had excellent transmittance at wavelengths greater than 550 nm. Transmittance was found to decrease below 550 nm. As expected, UV-absorbing samples showed a sharp decrease in transmittance below 425 nm compared to UV-transmitting samples. We report attenuation lengths for the three shortest wavelengths for comparison and discuss how the acrylic was evaluated for use in the MiniCLEAN single-phase dark matter detector.
Exploring Magnetic Resonance with a Compass

Magnetic resonance is a quantum phenomenon and describes a resonant interaction of spins with electromagnetic fields. Its understanding requires advanced knowledge of quantum mechanics and condensed matter physics and thus often remains elusive to students. However, the great impact of this phenomenon on medicine, science, and technology makes magnetic resonance an important subject for general education, and it requires a graspable model for translating the physical concepts without resorting to advanced physics. One of the most common and familiar objects related to magnetism is the compass. Here, we develop an inexpensive tabletop demonstration experiment for magnetic resonance. The compass is placed into the magnetic field of a permanent magnet (strong refrigerator magnet); an alternating field of an electromagnetic coil (solenoid) excites a resonant oscillation of the compass needle. The experiment has been proven to catch the attention of audiences of all ages.
Impact of CIR Storms on Thermosphere Density Variability during the Solar Minimum of 2008

The solar minimum of 2008 was exceptionally quiet, with sunspot numbers at their lowest in 75 years. During this unique solar-minimum epoch, however, solar-wind high-speed streams emanating from near-equatorial coronal holes occurred frequently and were the primary contributor to the recurrent geomagnetic activity at Earth. These condi- tions enabled the isolation of forcing by geomagnetic activity on the preconditioned solar minimum state of the upper atmosphere caused by Corotating Interaction Regions (CIRs). Thermosphere density observations around 400 km from the CHAMP satellite are used to study the thermosphere density response to solar-wind high-speed streams/CIRs. Super- posed epoch results show that the thermosphere density responds to high-speed streams globally, and the density at 400 km changes by 75% on average. The relative changes of neutral density are comparable at different latitudes, although its variability is largest at high latitudes. In addition, the response of thermosphere density to high-speed streams is larger at night than in daytime, indicating the preconditioning effect of the thermosphere response to storms. Finally, the thermosphere density variations at the periods of 9 and 13.5 days associated with CIRs are linked to the spatial distribution of low - middle latitude coronal holes on the basis of the EUVI observations from STEREO.
High Dimensional Channel Estimation Using Deep Generative Networks

This paper presents a novel compressed sensing (CS) approach to high dimensional wireless channel estimation by optimizing the input to a deep generative network. Channel estimation using generative networks relies on the assumption that the reconstructed channel lies in the range of a generative model. Channel reconstruction using generative priors outperforms conventional CS techniques and requires fewer pilots. It also eliminates the need of a priori knowledge of the sparsifying basis, instead using the structure captured by the deep generative model as a prior. Using this prior, we also perform channel estimation from one-bit quantized pilot measurements, and propose a novel optimization objective function that attempts to maximize the correlation between the received signal and the generator’s channel estimate while minimizing the rank of the channel estimate. Our approach significantly outperforms sparse signal recovery methods such as Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) and Approximate Message Passing (AMP) algorithms such as EM-GM-AMP for narrowband mmWave channel reconstruction, and its execution time is not noticeably affected by the increase in the number of received pilot symbols.
Postembryonic screen for mutations affecting spine development in zebrafish.

Abstract The spine gives structural support for the adult body, protects the spinal cord, and provides muscle attachment for moving through the environment. The development and maturation of the spine and its physiology involve the integration of multiple musculoskeletal tissues including bone, cartilage, and fibrocartilaginous joints, as well as innervation and control by the nervous system. One of the most common disorders of the spine in human is adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), which is characterized by the onset of an abnormal lateral curvature of the spine of
Fast Identification of Saturated Cut-sets using Graph Search Techniques

When multiple outages occur in rapid succession, it is important to know quickly if the power transfer capability of different interconnections (or cut-sets) of the power network are limited. The algorithm developed in this paper identifies such limited cut-sets very fast, thereby enhancing the real-time situational awareness of power system operators. The significance of the proposed approach is described using the IEEE 39-bus test system, while its computational benefits are demonstrated using relatively large test-cases containing thousands of buses. The results indicate that the proposed network analysis can estimate the impact of an outage on any cut-set of the system and screen out the cut-set that gets saturated by the largest margin, very quickly.
Distributed Mixed Voltage Angle and Frequency Droop Control of Microgrid Interconnections With Loss of Distribution-PMU Measurements

Recent advances in distribution-level phasor measurement unit (D-PMU) technology have enabled the use of voltage phase angle measurements for direct load sharing control in distribution-level microgrid interconnections with high penetration of renewable distributed energy resources (DERs). In particular, D-PMU enabled voltage angle droop control has the potential to enhance stability and transient performance in such microgrid interconnections. However, these angle droop control designs are vulnerable to D-PMU angle measurement losses that frequently occur due to the unavailability of a global positioning system (GPS) signal for synchronization. In the event of such measurement losses, angle droop controlled microgrid interconnections may suffer from poor performance and potentially lose stability. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed mixed voltage angle and frequency droop control (D-MAFD) framework to improve the reliability of angle droop controlled microgrid interconnections. In this framework, when the D-PMU phase angle measurement is lost at a microgrid, conventional frequency droop control is temporarily used for primary control in place of angle droop control to guarantee stability. We model the microgrid interconnection with this primary control architecture as a nonlinear switched system and design distributed secondary controllers to guarantee stability of the network. Further, we incorporate performance specifications such as robustness to generation-load mismatch and network topology changes in the distributed control design. We demonstrate the performance of this control framework by simulation on a test 123-feeder distribution network.
Smooth Strongly Convex Regression

Convex regression (CR) is the problem of fitting a convex function to a finite number of noisy observations of an underlying convex function. CR is important in many domains and one of its workhorses is the non-parametric least square estimator (LSE). Currently, LSE delivers only non-smooth non-strongly convex function estimates. In this paper, leveraging recent results in convex interpolation, we generalize LSE to smooth strongly convex regression problems. The resulting algorithm relies on a convex quadratically constrained quadratic program. We also propose a parallel implementation, which leverages ADMM, that lessens the overall computational complexity to a tight O(n2) for n observations. Numerical results support our findings.
CommunityClick: Capturing and Reporting Community Feedback from Town Halls to Improve Inclusivity

Local governments still depend on traditional town halls for community consultation, despite problems such as a lack of inclusive participation for attendees and difficulty for civic organizers to capture attendees' feedback in reports. Building on a formative study with 66 town hall attendees and 20 organizers, we designed and developed CommunityClick, a communitysourcing system that captures attendees' feedback in an inclusive manner and enables organizers to author more comprehensive reports. During the meeting, in addition to recording meeting audio to capture vocal attendees' feedback, we modify iClickers to give voice to reticent attendees by allowing them to provide real-time feedback beyond a binary signal. This information then automatically feeds into a meeting transcript augmented with attendees' feedback and organizers' tags. The augmented transcript along with a feedback-weighted summary of the transcript generated from text analysis methods is incorporated into an interactive authoring tool for organizers to write reports. From a field experiment at a town hall meeting, we demonstrate how CommunityClick can improve inclusivity by providing multiple avenues for attendees to share opinions. Additionally, interviews with eight expert organizers demonstrate CommunityClick's utility in creating more comprehensive and accurate reports to inform critical civic decision-making. We discuss the possibility of integrating CommunityClick with town hall meetings in the future as well as expanding to other domains.
Does Universal Preschool Hit the Target? Program Access and Preschool Impacts

This paper studies the cost efficacy of universal over means-tested (targeted) programs, taking advantage of the rich diversity in state rules governing access to state-funded preschool in the U.S. Using age-eligibility rules for identification, I find that attending a state-funded universal preschool generates substantial immediate test score gains, particularly for poor children. Gains for poor children from attending targeted preschool are significantly smaller. These findings are robust to many specification checks, and cross-state differences in alternative care options, demographics, and other key features of the program environment cannot explain the difference in attendance impacts across program types. Impacts of universal public kindergarten and universal pre-K also look substantively similar within the same data, supporting an access interpretation. Benefit-cost ratios of universal programs are favorable despite their relatively high costs per poor child.
Development and validation of the technology adoption propensity (TAP) index

Abstract The present study develops and empirically tests a parsimonious new multiple-item scale to measure consumers' propensities to adopt new technologies. We show that a consumer's likelihood to embrace new technologies can reliably be measured by a 14-item index that combines assessments of consumers' positive and negative attitudes towards technology. Consistent with prior work on technology readiness, we show four distinct dimensions of consumers' technology adoption propensity: two inhibiting factors, dependence and vulnerability, and two contributing factors, optimism and proficiency. We develop the index on a cross-sectional dataset of U.S. consumers then establish the validity of each of the four component scales on two dissimilar validation sets. The resulting index shows sound psychometric properties and may be used by researchers interested in the antecedents or effects of each of the independent sub-scales.
Dads, disease, and death: determinants of daughter discrimination

Existing evidence suggests that girls are differentially affected by income shocks and changes in bargaining power. Most studies, however, ignore household production and confound differential opportunity costs with changes in income or bargaining power. I disentangle these determinants of gender discrimination—preferences, income and time allocation—by comparing households with varying degrees of parental involvement. Results indicate that, controlling for household fixed effects, reducing the time available for household production has a disproportionately negative effect on daughters. But, for a transitory income shock, daughters’ education is less income-elastic. Increasing mothers’ bargaining power is most effective in narrowing the gender gap.
Min, Max, and Sum

Abstract This paper provides characterization theorems for preferences that can be represented by U ( x 1 , …, x n )=min{ x k }, U ( x 1 , …, x n )=max{ x k }, U ( x 1 , …, x n )=∑ u ( x k ), or combinations of these functionals. The main assumption is partial separability, where changing a common component of two vectors does not reverse strict preferences, but may turn strict preferences into indifference. We discuss applications of our results to social choice. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C0, D1, D6.
A Memo on the Falsification of Employment Applications: An Arbitral Perspective

Falsification of employment applications has become a major concern of both white and blue collar employers. Arbitrations resolving falsification discharges provide standards applicable to both employment sectors. This memo will examine the standards established by arbitrators in such cases and categorize several pertinent decisions made by arbitrators in recent years.In making such decisions, arbitrators must carefully consider the employer's right to full, honest disclosure of all information related to making an employment determination. Given that falsification does occur,' arbitrators must also consider the employee's right to retain his employee status following a falsification unrelated to the employee's responsibilities or job performance.
Domination and regularity

We discuss the close relationship between structural theorems in (generalized) stability theory, and graph regularity theorems.
Designing Antitrust Agencies for More Effective Outcomes: What Antitrust Can Learn From Restaurant Guides

=975102. 20. Along with a box for “not applicable.” 21. See generally Warren S. Grimes, Transparency in Federal Antitrust Enforcement, 51 BUFF. L. REV. 937 (2003) (offering thoughts on transparency in merger enforcement). 22. John M. Nannes, Transparency in Federal Antitrust Enforcement Decisions: A Reaction to Professor Grimes, 51 BUFF. L. REV. 1017, 1017–18 (2003). 23. Malcolm B. Coate, Theory Meets Practice: Barriers to Entry in Merger Analysis (Feb. 18, 2008) (unpublished manuscript), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=988423; Malcolm B. Coate, Alive and Kicking: Collusion Theories in Merger Analysis at the Federal Trade Commission (Jan. 1, 2008) (unpublished manuscript), available at http://ssrn.com/
Taxes, Firm Financial Policy and the Cost of Capital: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract This paper develops a theoretical model of firm behavior consistent with the maximization of shareholder utility, and derives empirically testable implications of different theories of equity finance. Using data on firm earnings and previous investment and financial behavior, we assess whether firms treat new share issues as a more expensive source of finance than retentions, and whether such behavior varies across firms according to the composition of their shareholders. Our results support the hypothesis that firms perceive a higher cost of capital when issuing new shares, and that the cost of capital varies significantly across firms having different estimated tax clienteles, as theory would predict.
The Effect of Format Changes and Ownership Consolidation on Radio Station Outcomes

Analyzing a panel dataset tracking format changes and ownership consolidation in local radio markets, we find that format changes frequently have enabled stations to improve their performance, The success of reformatting varies widely across format, and the likelihood that changing to another format will boost station performance declines as that format space becomes more crowded, Successful reformatting is not limited to large radio groups, In fact, weak evidence that radio groups garner economies of scope from owning multiple stations in the same format is the only indication we find that larger radio groups have been able to choose formats strategically in order to obtain a boost in their listening shares. In the face of substantial and, ongoing ownership consolidation in local radio markets, our results suggest that format changes by smaller station groups may counter the potential exercise of market power by a radio group that acquires a substantial share of a particular audience demographic through merger.
Firm performance and mutual fund voting

Abstract We employ a new comprehensive proxy voting records database to investigate whether mutual funds consider prior firm performance when they vote on a diverse range of management- and shareholder-sponsored proposals relating to governance, compensation, and director election. We argue that prior firm performance plays a role in the monitoring effort of mutual funds as they fulfill their fiduciary duties. Results show that voting is related to prior firm performance for selected management and shareholder proposals and that it is consistent with Institutional Shareholder Services’ recommendations. Mutual funds support management (shareholder) proposals less (more) when prior firm performance has been weak. Furthermore, even when mutual funds deviate from their fund family’s voting policies, they attach importance to prior firm performance, and their voting is, to a certain degree, affected by business ties.
Floor versus screen trading in the stock market: Comment

Theissen's [2002] paper analyzes bid-ask spreads namely, the difference between the lowest available quote to sell (the "ask" price) and the highest available quote to buy (the "bid" price) in the context of electronic and floor trading systems. The analysis is supported by solid empirical data gathered from the wealth of new information available from simultaneous trading on the floor and screen markets. According to the general wisdom in the finance literature, the bid-ask spread on a security is viewed as a form of transaction cost faced by security traders. In both floor and screen markets, traders are willing to pay this transaction cost in order to obtain immediacy in the execution of their transaction. The dealer sets his ask and bid prices on the basis of the expected conditions of the market and the marketability of the specific security, thus providing immediate liquidity to potential buyers and sellers (Tinic [1972]). Dealers generally set the ask and bid prices around the actual price, expecting profits from the random orders of buyers and sellers. Given the specific function of the dealers, the theoretical finance literature has identified three main determinants of the bid-ask spread in a competitive market. Namely, the spread represents a measure of the price of the dealer's services given (a) the operational efficiency of the trading system (operational-efficiency formulation); (b) the degree of a security's marketability (inventory hypothesis); and (c) the presence of private information of the traders (adverse-information hypothesis).
Selection bias and pseudo discoveries on the constancy of stock return anomalies

There are now a large and rapidly growing number of studies that test the constancy of stock return anomalies. In this study, we produce new and convincing evidence that the standard constancy test is heavily influenced by selection bias. Backed by a carefully designed Monte Carlo simulation, we show that selection bias predisposes the standard constancy test to reject the null by a factor of five to 12 times more than normally expected. Failure to recognize this bias can result in publication of the type of pseudo discoveries that Harvey (J Finance 72(4):1399–1440, 2017) warns about in his Presidential Address to the American Finance Association. We then describe the Quandt/Andrews test, a correct and unbiased test for anomalies and changes in anomalies, and apply it to test the constancy of 15 well-known stock return anomalies.
The impact of tax law uncertainty on the development of the Sarbanes-Oxley auditor independence rules with regard to tax shelters

Abstract The paper examines the impact of tax rule uncertainty on the development of the Sarbanes-Oxley auditor independence rules. We show that the inability of Congress to articulate a concise and agreed-upon tax shelter definition forced the SEC to adopt their own definition that incorporates two characteristics common to most tax shelters: contingent fee arrangements and confidentiality. We also consider whether this definition eliminates the subjectivity in the tax shelter identification process because it reinstates the significant purpose standard (used for tax enforcement purposes) to assist auditors (and their public company clients) identify tax shelter transactions. We conclude that the new definition has reduced the incentive of auditors to provide tax related services to their public company clients.
Rating Agencies in the Face of Regulation

Abstract This paper develops a theoretical framework to shed light on variation in credit rating standards over time and across asset classes. Ratings issued by credit rating agencies serve a dual role: they provide information to investors and are used to regulate institutional investors. We show that introducing rating-contingent regulation that favors highly rated securities may increase or decrease rating informativeness, but unambiguously increases the volume of highly rated securities. If the regulatory advantage of highly rated securities is sufficiently large, delegated information acquisition is unsustainable, since the rating agency prefers to facilitate regulatory arbitrage by inflating ratings. Our model relates rating informativeness to the quality distribution of issuers, the complexity of assets, and issuers' outside options. We reconcile our results with the existing empirical literature and highlight new, testable implications, such as repercussions of the Dodd-Frank Act.
"The sexual freedom cases"? Contraception, abortion, abstinence, and the Constitution.

Many constitutional scholars--including Richard Mohr, Richard Posner, Laurence Tribe, and Robin West--have taken a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s and 1970s invalidating anti-contraception and anti-abortion laws to reflect judicial recognition of a constitutional right to engage in sexual activity for nonprocreative purposes. Protection of sexual activity is said to be a logical entailment of these "sexual freedom cases" because the anti-contraception and anti-abortion laws are treated as not interfering significantly with reproductive control, since people retained the option of abstaining from potentially reproductive sexual acts. This Article assesses this interpretation of the "sexual freedom cases" by considering a number of competing interpretations that have been offered. Although many of these accounts do not provide a persuasive alternative to the right-to-sex interpretation, approaches sounding in gender equality, bodily integrity, or procreative autonomy are capable of providing sufficiently plausible alternative accounts that the right-to-sex interpretation should not be viewed as logically dictated. To do so, however, these alternative interpretations need some method of bridging the gap in their logic exploited by the argument from abstinence. This Article offers ways of bridging that gap that rely on a constitutional constraint on the means by which government may pursue its ends, ruling out efforts that threaten physical harm or the creation of new persons. Thus supplemented, however, these alternative approaches treat the Supreme Court's contraception decisions and abortion decisions as grounded in different principles, thus disrupting the conceptual unity which the Court itself has treated the sexual freedom cases as possessing.
The Summons Power and the Limits of Theory: A Reply to Professor Hyman

Professor David Hyman's recent article, "When Rules Collide: Procedural Intersection and the Rule of Law," which appeared in the last issue of the Tulane Law Review, explains the problems associated with what he terms "procedural intersections." Professor Hyman finds that a "procedural intersection" occurs when parties are engaged in separate adjudicative proceedings in different fora, regarding the same issue, and each forum offers competing procedural rules. Dean Martinez's criticism of Professor Hyman's theory is not centered on the grand vision Professor Hyman takes, but rather on the narrow grounds that would appear to preclude the use of the administrative summons power in the Tax Court. The criticism is in three parts. The first part is that Professor Hyman's theory understates the extent of the sovereign's power to tax. The second is that Professor Hyman's theory emphasizes the "level playing field" in the tax context to an unjustified extent. The third is that Professor Hyman's theoretical construct simply does not apply in the Tax Court.
The sensitivity of bank stock returns to market, interest and exchange rate risks

Abstract This paper presents and estimates a multifactor model of bank stock returns that incorporates market return, interest rate and exchange rate risk factors. A model of the optimizing behavior of an international banking firm is used to derive the sensitivity coefficients of the alternative factors. Regression equations are estimated that are based on either actual or unexpected values of the underlying factors with a post-October 1979 time dummy variable and with a money-center bank dummy variable. Standard results are obtained for the market and interest rate variables while new results are derived for the exchange rate variable. The specific effects of the latter variable are found to be dependent on the time period of observation and the money-center status of banks.
Empirical or Invariant Risk Minimization? A Sample Complexity Perspective

Recently, invariant risk minimization (IRM) was proposed as a promising solution to address out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization. However, it is unclear when IRM should be preferred over the widely-employed empirical risk minimization (ERM) framework. In this work, we analyze both these frameworks from the perspective of sample complexity, thus taking a firm step towards answering this important question. We find that depending on the type of data generation mechanism, the two approaches might have very different finite sample and asymptotic behavior. For example, in the covariate shift setting we see that the two approaches not only arrive at the same asymptotic solution, but also have similar finite sample behavior with no clear winner. For other distribution shifts such as those involving confounders or anti-causal variables, however, the two approaches arrive at different asymptotic solutions where IRM is guaranteed to be close to the desired OOD solutions in the finite sample regime, while ERM is biased even asymptotically. We further investigate how different factors --- the number of environments, complexity of the model, and IRM penalty weight --- impact the sample complexity of IRM in relation to its distance from the OOD solutions.
IMMIGRATION AND DISABILITY IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Disability arises from the dynamic between people’s physical and mental conditions and the physical and attitudinal barriers in the environment. Applying this idea about disability to United States and Canadian immigration law draws attention to barriers to entry and eventual citizenship for individuals who have disabilities. Historically, North American law excluded many classes of immigrants, including those with intellectual disabilities, mental illness, physical defects, and conditions likely to cause dependency. Though exclusions for individuals likely to draw excessive public resources and those with communicable diseases still exist in Canada and the United States, in recent years the United States permitted legalization for severely disabled undocumented immigrants already in the country, and both countries abolished most exclusions from entry for immigrants with specific disabling conditions. Liberalization also occurred with regard to U.S. naturalization requirements. Challenges continue, however. Under U.S. law, vast discretion remains with regard to the likely-public-charge exclusion, because consular officers abroad decide unilaterally whether to issue immigrant visas. Moreover, conduct related to mental disability, including petty criminality, can result in removal from the United States, and individuals with mental disabilities have only modest safeguards in removal proceedings. In Canada, families who have children with disabilities find themselves excluded from legal status because of supposed excessive demands on public resources, although an individual’s disability may provide grounds for avoiding removal in certain cases. The relaxation of some immigration exclusions in Canada and the U.S. and of some U.S. requirements for citizenship illustrates a significant, though conspicuously incomplete, removal of disability-related barriers in North American law and society.
Fascism and Monopoly

The recent revival of political interest in antitrust has resurfaced a longstanding debate about the role of industrial concentration and monopoly in enabling Hitler’s rise to power and the Third Reich’s wars of aggression. Proponents of stronger antitrust enforcement argue that monopolies and cartels brought the Nazis to power and warn that rising concentration in the American economy could similarly threaten democracy. Skeptics demur, observing that German big business largely opposed Hitler during the crucial years of his ascent. Drawing on business histories and archival material from the U.S. Office of Military Government’s Decartelization Unit, this Article assesses the historical record on the role of industrial concentration in facilitating Nazism. It finds compelling evidence that, while German big business principally did not support Hitler before he won the Chancellorship in 1933, the extreme concentration of market power during the Weimar period enabled Hitler to seize and consolidate totalitarian power through a variety of mechanisms. Hence, the German experience with Nazism lends support to the idea that extreme concentration of economic power enables extreme concentration of political power. However, most of the conduct that created the radical economic concentration of the Weimar period would be unlawful under contemporary antitrust principles, which casts doubt on claims that a significant shift in antitrust enforcement is necessary to forestall anti-democratic forces.
Leading Indicators of Goodwill Impairment

This paper examines whether financial disclosures on acquired entities allow investors to effectively predict goodwill impairment, a task that has become more important following the recent abolish...
Transactions Costs and Internal Labor Markets

The concept of transactions costs used by Coase in "The Nature of the Firm" is applied to the internal labor market of an organization. Under joint production it is shown that the number of transaction-specific prices necessary to decentralize labor allocations rises geometrically with the size of the work force. Complexity of calculation and costs of implementation constrains the possibilities for internal decentralization through a price mechanism and substitutes a more authoritarian system of allocation instead. These same issues of complexity and implementation costs limit the usefulness of agency theory as a conceptual framework for this problem. The analysis suggests that an internal labor market must be viewed in a more comprehensive framework of a personnel management system.
The Asset-Pricing Implications of Government Economic Policy Uncertainty

Using the news-based measure of Baker et al. [Baker SR, Bloom N, Davis SJ 2013 Measuring economic policy uncertainty. Working paper, Stanford University, Stanford, CA] to capture economic policy uncertainty EPU in the United States, we find that EPU positively forecasts log excess market returns. An increase of one standard deviation in EPU is associated with a 1.5% increase in forecasted three-month abnormal returns 6.1% annualized. Furthermore, innovations in EPU earn a significant negative risk premium in the Fama-French 25 size-momentum portfolios. Among the Fama-French 25 portfolios formed on size and momentum returns, the portfolio with the greatest EPU beta underperforms the portfolio with the lowest EPU beta by 5.53% per annum, controlling for exposure to the Carhart four factors as well as implied and realized volatility. These findings suggest that EPU is an economically important risk factor for equities. This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance.
Casualties of the War on Crime: Fairness, Reliability and the Credibility of Criminal Justice Systems

Due process of law has become a casualty of the war on crime. As representatives of both parties compete to show which is the toughest on crime, the criminal justice systems in the United States have become so result-oriented that little attention is paid to the fairness and reliability of the process which leads to those results. In the quest to obtain more convictions and death sentences, little concern is being shown for the likelihood of error and the need to provide equal justice for persons of color and the poor.To change this, judges must be selected on merit and insulated from political pressures, public defender programs must be established and adequately funded to provide competent legal assistance to poor people accused of crimes, and all parts of the community must be involved in the process. Such changes will begin to come about only when there is a realization that demagoguery on the issue of crime does not make citizens safer, that the Bill of Rights is not a collection of technicalities, and that everyone has an interest in the fairness and integrity of the courts.
Associative Political Obligations

Rejetant les trois arguments les plus plausibles en faveur de la justification de l'obligation politique, c'est-a-dire l'argument conceptuel defendu par C. Pateman, la theorie non volontariste du contrat defendue par M. Gilbert et la theorie communautariste defendue par A. MacIntyre, l'A. montre qu'aucune de nos obligations politiques n'appartient au domaine des obligations associatives
Why do U.S. securities laws matter to non-U.S. firms? Evidence from private class-action lawsuits

A continuing controversy is whether U.S. securities laws are enforced against foreign firms, since public enforcement actions by the SEC are infrequent and often result in insignificant penalties. We examine private enforcement actions of U.S. securities laws and find that 269 securities class-action lawsuits were filed against foreign firms from 1996 to 2008. We document the severity of the penalties imposed on foreign firms and show that while firms paid a total of $9 billion to settle lawsuits brought against them, the monetary penalties levied by the market are even larger. During the three-day period surrounding the lawsuit filing date, there is a significant negative stock price reaction of -6.16%, which translates to an average loss of $392 million dollars. Aggregating over all firms, the total dollar loss is $73 billion. Even foreign firms without significant U.S. assets experience significant valuation losses. Moreover, insiders of the firm bear direct financial losses through their shareholdings. Our results provide evidence that enforcement actions of U.S. securities laws against foreign firms are neither uncommon nor economically insignificant events.
Fending for Themselves: Why Securities Regulations Should Encourage Angel Groups

America loves its startup companies in good times and bad. Widespread losses from the dot-com bubble are not far behind us, 1 yet we continue to praise entrepreneurs as engines of economic growth and job creation. 2 More recent economic turmoil and upheaval only strengthened the sentiment. Thomas Friedman put it succinctly in a 2009 editorial: ―Start-ups, not bailouts: nurture the next Google, don‘t nurse the old G.M.‘s.‖ 3
A Density‐Ratio Model of Crop Yield Distributions

This paper proposes a density ratio estimator of crop yield distributions, wherein the number of observations for individual distributions is often quite small. The density ratio approach models individual densities as distortions from a common baseline density. We introduce a probability integral transformation to the density ratio method that simplifies the modeling of distortion functions. We further present an implementation approach based on the Poisson regression, which facilitates model estimation and diagnostics. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate good finite sample performance of the proposed method. We apply this method to estimate the corn yield distributions of ninety-nine Iowa counties, and to calculate crop insurance premiums. Lastly, we illustrate that we can employ the proposed method to effectively identify profitable insurance policies.
What if Madison Had Won? Imagining a Constitutional World of Legislative Supremacy

Identifying the proper degree of federal supremacy and the best means of building it into the constitutional structure were central concerns for many members of the founding generation. At the Constitutional Convention, James Madison proposed granting Congress the power to veto state legislation. Madison’s “negative” was intended to connect Congress and the states in a single compound legislature, giving Congress the power either to veto or to ratify by silence the acts of state legislatures. The negative failed to gain the approval of the convention delegates, however, and they instead chose to build federal supremacy into the Constitution via the judiciary-centered mechanisms of the Supremacy Clause and Article III. This essay asks what would have happened if Madison’s negative had carried the day, and the Constitution had implemented federal supremacy by way of a legislative rather than a judicial device. One potential answer is that the negative should be understood as the functional equivalent of modern preemption doctrine. Had the negative been incorporated into the Constitution in 1787, however, the combined force of the negative’s distinctive characteristics might well have led not to a stronger union but to forceful resistance to federal power by diverse state legislatures in a variety of circumstances. Two nineteenth-century case studies illustrate this point: the controversy over the Bank of the United States, and the debate over Congress’s power to supplant state legislation in the area of interstate commerce. In contrast to Madison’s and many modern commentators’ understanding of the negative as a highly centralizing mechanism, these case studies show that the negative would likely have led to fragmentation and disintegration between the federal center and the state peripheries long before the antebellum sectional crisis.
How does household production affect measured income inequality

Theory predicts that lower-income households will produce more goods at home. Thus extended income, which includes household production, should be more equally distributed than money income. Previous studies have confirmed the greater equality of extended income and speculated that the result is due to the weak correlation between money income and household production. We also confirm this result and identify the true reason. We show that the weak correlation cannot be the explanation and that virtually all of the difference in measured inequality between the two measures is due to the addition of a large constant—the average value of household production—to money income.