cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Bad Bond Math: An Object Lesson Using Bloomberg’s After-Tax Yields on Market Discount Bonds

Defining information to be a subset of data (information is data that has utility in decision making), the author offers an object lesson to demonstrate the challenge facing an investor using after-tax yield data presented on a widely viewed Bloomberg page. He demonstrates that users of “black box” technologies need to be able to confirm the numbers that are presented to them by data suppliers and check those calculations and underlying assumptions on a regular basis. Failure to understand these assumptions can lead investors to erroneous conclusions, as illustrated in the comparison of two categories of bonds, deeply discounted U.S. corporate bonds, distressed tax-exempt U.S. municipal bonds, and the projected after-tax rates of return on all of the securities under consideration (given assumed tax rates on ordinary income and capital gains and, of course, assuming no default).
Gunboats, reputation, and sovereign repayment: lessons from the Southern Confederacy

Abstract Many states that formed the Southern Confederacy defaulted on sovereign debt sold in international capital markets during the 1840s. The Confederacy also elected President Jefferson Davis, who openly advocated the repudiation of U.S. states' debts while a member of Congress. Despite its poor credit record, the Confederate government managed to float cotton bonds in England that constituted under 2% of its expenditures. The bonds were largely issued to settle overdue debts with gun contractors who had cut off trade credit. The South serviced the bonds as late as March 1865, a time of domestic hyperinflation and weeks before the fall of Richmond. Although the Confederate experience shows that trade sanctions can promote debt repayment, the gunboat model can only account for a small amount of lending. A reputation or another type of sanction would be necessary to support higher levels of lending in international capital markets.
Five Years Later: Reconsidering the Original ABA Report on MDP

Reconsidering the original report issued in 1999 by the ABA Commission on Multidisciplinary Practice, this essay suggests that that report properly attempted to deal with questions of legal ethics that might arise if the practice of law by lawyers were integrated into an enterprise in which nonlawyers had a significant degree of ultimate control, but that the commission, perhaps because of undue time pressure, neglected to pursue these questions deeply enough. This essay suggests that more was needed than a proposed mechanism for self-certification of compliance with rules of legal ethics, coupled with possible review of compliance. The “more” that was needed, this essay further suggests, was a proposal for the licensing of an enterprise in which lawyers do not have exclusive ultimate control, as a precondition to permitting lawyers in the enterprise to offer legal services to the general public. Thus, before it could offer legal services to the general public, such an enterprise would need to comply with requirements for obtaining a license, and noncompliance with rules of legal ethics could bring into play traditional disciplinary measures including, where appropriate, suspension or revocation of the license.
Inter-market competition and bank loan spreads: Evidence from the securities offering reform

Abstract I provide evidence of a new mechanism by which access to public securities mitigates the bank hold-up problem and reduces loan spreads – it increases a borrower's bargaining power vis-a-vis a lender by offering a bank loan substitute. Difference-in-differences results indicate that loan spreads decline following legislation that makes public securities more attractive, but only when public securities represent a credible substitute for the bank loan (i.e., for term loans taken out by credit rated borrowers). Spreads on revolving lines of credit, which are more complementary with public securities, increase.
Studying Negotiations in Context: An Ethnographic Approach

Ethnographic research offers an alternative approach which can provide insights into the types of complex situations that negotiators really face. This approach is not easy – it can be more time consuming, costly, and difficult than other research methods – but the payoff comes from the way these in-depth studies challenge scholars to develop new ideas and theories, based on what really happens in negotiations rather than on the logical next step in a series of experiments.
Nutrition Report Cards: an opportunity to improve school lunch selection.

Objective To explore the feasibility and implementation efficiency of Nutritional Report Cards(NRCs) in helping children make healthier food choices at school. Methods Pilot testing was conducted in a rural New York school district (K-12). Over a five-week period, 27 parents received a weekly e-mail containing a NRC listing how many meal components (fruits, vegetables, starches, milk), snacks, and a-la-carte foods their child selected. We analyzed choices of students in the NRC group vs. the control group, both prior to and during the intervention period. Point-of-sale system data for a-la-carte items was analyzed using Generalized Least Squares regressions with clustered standard errors. Results NRCs encouraged more home conversations about nutrition and more awareness of food selections. Despite the small sample, the NRC was associated with reduced selection of some items, such as the percentage of those selecting cookies which decreased from 14.3 to 6.5 percent. Additionally, despite requiring new keys on the check-out registers to generate the NRC, checkout times increased by only 0.16 seconds per transaction, and compiling and sending the NRCs required a total weekly investment of 30 minutes of staff time. Conclusions This test of concept suggests that NRCs are a feasible and inexpensive tool to guide children towards healthier choices.
Fashion groups, gender, and boredom proneness

This study examined differences between men and women and among fashion consumer groups (fashion innovators, fashion opinion leaders, innovative communicators, and fashion followers) in propensity toward boredom. Participants (126 male, 130 female university students) completed questionnaires measuring fashion group membership, boredom proneness, and demographics. anova revealed significant effects for fashion group for two dimensions of boredom proneness: internal stimulation and constraint. Innovative communicators indicated lower propensity for boredom because of need for internal stimulation but more propensity for boredom because of constraint than fashion followers. Men indicated greater propensity for boredom because of need for external stimulation than women did.
The Changing Property Tax in the West: State Centralization of Local Finances

Diminished local government autonomy and increased fiscal centralization in the hands of state government are the consequences of the restrictions on the local property tax imposed in the western states in the past twenty years. While the trend is a national one, it is more evident in the West than in other regions. Statewide voter initiatives account for some of the restrictions, particularly the more severe ones, but legislatures and governors also impose these limitations. In tracing the recent course of the centralization of local finance, this article details the property tax restrictions adopted in individual western states, examines the initiative and conventional legislative sources of these actions, and provides quantitative and qualitative evidence for the centralization thesis. In many western states the property tax has lost much of its local character, becoming in large part a fiscal and political tool for state policymakers.
Ratings Changes, Ratings Levels, and the Predictive Value of Analysts’ Recommendations

We show that abnormal returns to analysts’ recommendations stem from both the ratings levels assigned and the changes in those ratings. Conditional on the ratings change, buy and strong buy recommendations have greater returns than do holds, sells, and strong sells. Conditional on the ratings level, upgrades earn the highest returns and downgrades the lowest. We also find that both ratings levels and changes predict future unexpected earnings and the associated market reaction. Our results imply that 1) investment returns may be enhanced by conditioning on both recommendation levels and changes; 2) the predictive power of analysts’ recommendations reflects, at least partially, analysts’ ability to generate valuable private information; and 3) some inconsistency exists between analysts’ ratings and the formal ratings definitions issued by securities firms. It has been well established in the academic literature that analysts’ stock recommendations can predict security returns. 1 What has not been established is whether this predictive power stems from the ratings level assigned by analysts or the change in the ratings level (or both). The goal of this paper is to provide insights into the sources of recommendations’ predictive value and, as a consequence, enhance our understanding of how they can best be employed as part of an investment strategy. Virtually all of the research papers to date that analyze recommendation returns focus on either ratings changes or ratings levels, but not both. Since changes and levels are positively correlated, such analyses cannot generate insights into the source(s) of recommendations’ predictive value. In contrast, we include both recommendation levels and changes in our analysis. This allows us to calculate the stock returns associated with changes in analysts’ ratings, conditional on ratings level, and the returns associated with analyst ratings levels, conditional on ratings change. We find that both ratings changes and ratings levels have incremental predictive power for security returns. In a recent paper, Jegadeesh et al. (2004) examine both ratings changes and levels. They find that the magnitude of analyst consensus recommendation changes is significantly associated with future returns. In contrast, no significant relation is found between the consensus recommendation levels, themselves, and future returns (after controlling for other known drivers of stock returns).
The Joint identification of utility and discount functions from stated choice data: An application to durable goods adoption

We present a survey design that generalizes static conjoint experiments to elicit inter-temporal adoption decisions for durable goods. We show that consumers’ utility and discount functions in a dynamic discrete choice model are jointly identified using data generated by this specific design. In contrast, based on revealed preference data, the utility and discount functions are generally not jointly identified even if consumers’ expectations are known. The separation of current-period preferences from discounting is necessary to forecast the diffusion of a durable good under alternative marketing strategies. We illustrate the approach using two surveys eliciting Blu-ray player adoption decisions. Both model-free evidence and the estimates based on a dynamic discrete choice model indicate that consumers make forward-looking adoption decisions. In both surveys the average discount rate is 43 percent, corresponding to a substantially higher degree of impatience than the rate implied by aggregate asset returns. The estimates also reveal a large degree of heterogeneity in the discount rates across consumers, but only little evidence for hyperbolic discounting.
On Not Revisiting Official Discount Rates: Institutional Inertia and the Social Cost of Carbon†

Within the executive branch, important decisions result from both substantive judgments and institutional constraints. The constraints take the form of three sets of costs: decision costs, opportunity costs, and political costs. In exploring the workings of government, economists and economically oriented law professors have placed far too much emphasis on the role of interest groups and far too little emphasis on a far larger set of institutional constraints, of which interest-group activity is at most one part. Because of those constraints, it can be costly and difficult to change existing policies, especially when such changes typically require a consensus among diverse people, who may have strong views and who have many demands on their time. For public officials, a degree of institutional inertia is often a product of a considered analysis of the full set of costs and benefits. Both decision costs and error costs must be taken into account. With respect to discount rates in the domain of regulation, the central governing document is Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-4, issued in 2003 (OMB 2003). Circular A-4 was produced by officials within the executive branch, coming from diverse parts of the federal government; both political appointees and career officials played a role. The Council of Economic Advisers and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) were particularly important. An initial version was presented to the public for comments and also subjected to peer review. OMB Circular A-4
Exploring the First Amendment Rights of Teens in Relationship to Sexting and Censorship

This Article explores child pornography law in relation to teen sexting conduct. Recently, some teens who engaged in teen sexting have been convicted under child pornography laws and have been required to register as sexual predators. The criminalization of teens for developmentally typical behavior, mimicking the conduct of adults, can result in grave harm to most teens. Furthermore, the application of child pornography laws to teen sexting conduct demonstrates the constitutional overbreadth of the current definition of child pornography. Photographs have an emblematic role in society -- capturing and celebrating youth. Moreover, the creation of teen sexting images accompanies a teen's developmental quest for a sexual identity and individuation. Thus, teen sexting images constitute teen sexual speech and are entitled to some degree of constitutional protection, so long as the images are not obscene. The variable obscenity standard of Ginsberg v. New York has since been modified by the Bellotti v. Baird strict scrutiny standard. Thus, any legislation related to teen sexual speech must be narrowly tailored to protect the minor from harm, or further another compelling state interest. This Article tests the author's proposed teen sexting legislation under the Bellotti test.
Causes of corruption: History, geography and government ☆

Abstract This paper adds to the extant literature by using cross-country data for about 100 nations to examine the role of historical factors, geographic influences and the government on corruption. Important innovations include considering a wide set of historical, geographical and government determinants of corruption and examining some of the previously considered determinants at a finer level of detail. Two key questions addressed are: What are the effects of the size and scope of government on the incidence of corruption across countries? How important are historical and geographic influences in affecting corruption? Overall, the answer to the first question is that government does matter in important ways in its impact on corruption. Both the size and scope of government matter. Regarding the second question, the historical inertia of institutions that induce corruption persists, as do rent-seeking opportunities in new countries. Some geographic factors, on the other hand, can mitigate corruption. Policy implications are discussed.
Race, Dignity, and the Right to Marry

Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges1 asserts legal marriage’s capacity to afford same-sex couples a measure of “equal dignity” and belonging too long denied.2 In this Essay, I ask whether there is any reason to believe that marriage could do the same for African Americans. Could broader entrance into marriage, as some conservatives suggest, provide Blacks—gay and straight—a measure of belonging that has been frustratingly elusive,3 even as the nation prepares to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment’s ratification? The language of Justice Kennedy’s opinion—which casts marriage as an “enduring bond, [through which] two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality,” irrespective of sexual orientation, gender, or race—suggests that this question should be answered in the affirmative.4 But I am deeply skeptical of this claim. While I do not dispute that exclusion from legal marriage imposes real citizenship harms5 and celebrate the outcome in Obergefell, I am not convinced that access to marital rights, without more, magically cures the stigma, deprivation, disparate treatment, and harm that come with outsider status. Indeed, marriage regulation, in some instances, could very well exacerbate these wrongs.6 Even as it secures rights for LGBT Americans, Obergefell crafts a whitewashed version of marriage and dignity inconsistent with the actual experience of African Americans and other minorities with marriage. The relevant history demonstrates that legal marriage in this country has, in fact, too often not enhanced dignity for African Americans and other minority
Amnesty in immigration: forgetting, forgiving, freedom

Whether or not to grant ‘amnesty’ has been a contentious policy issue in a wide range of settings, from human rights violations to draft avoidance to library fines. Recently, the idea of amnesty has come to structure many debates over irregular immigration. While amnesty’s meaning is usually treated as self-evident, the term in fact signifies in a variety of normative directions. This article employs amnesty as an optic to examine accountability questions that structure normative debates over irregular immigration in liberal states. It distinguishes among conceptions of amnesty emphasizing forgiveness, erasure and vindication, and argues that developing a vindicatory account of amnesty is both particularly difficult and particularly necessary in the immigration setting.
Copyright's Excess Revisited

In the United States, copyright’s fundamental premise is that more incentives will lead to more and better original works of authorship. That is the premise on which copyright was enacted. That is the premise on which copyright has been built. My 2018 book, COPYRIGHT’S EXCESS: MONEY AND MUSIC IN THE US RECORDING INDUSTRY (2018), presented a detailed and rigorous empirical test of that premise in the music industry over fifty-four years from 1962 through 2015. Industry revenue over that period first rose sharply, from under $4 billion in constant 2013 dollars in 1961 to over $20 billion in 1999, and then with the rise of file sharing, fell sharply, to under $7 billion by 2014. Using four different measures of the quantity and quality of music output, I tested whether there was a parallel rise and fall in popular music output. There was not. Either there was no statistically significant correlation between incentives and music output. Or where the correlation was statistically significant, it was negative. More money meant less music. Since the book’s publication, I have presented the findings in a variety of settings, and a number of questions have been raised. In this essay, I present new data that confirms the key finding that more money led to less and worse music and address some of the questions that have been raised.
Inside the Black Box: How do OSHA Inspections Lead to Reductions in Workplace Injuries?*

We examine different models of employers’ responses to OSHA inspections. The “detection/correction” model assumes that responses are limited to correcting the violations that inspectors cite. The “behavioral shock” model assumes that firms respond by paying more attention to safety issues, even those unrelated to OSHA standards. We test whether some injury types are more affected by inspections than others, or by citations of particular OSHA standards. We conclude that, although citing particular standards can reduce injury types specifically related to those hazards, inspections also affect a wider range of injuries, suggesting a broader impact on managerial attention to safety.
S parameter and parity doubling below the conformal window

Recently the Lattice Strong Dynamics Collaboration reported a reduction of the electroweak S parameter for SU(3) gauge theory with N f = 6 fermions in the fundamental representation, compared to scaled-up QCD. Here I provide additional details of our calculation. I discuss our use of conserved lattice currents; the relation to vector–axial parity doubling; finite-volume effects; and the sensitivity of our results to the number of fermion doublets with chiral electroweak couplings. Results presented here include additional data, and do not affect our previously-published conclusions.
Cry Me a River: The Limits of a Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools

This article is a response to Richard H. Sander's article, A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools, which recently appeared in the Stanford Law Review. In his article, Professor Sander argues that affirmative action in law schools harms, rather than helps, African American law students by setting up African American students, who are out-matched by their white peers in terms of undergraduate grade point average and LSAT scores, for failure. Specifically, Professor Sander contends that because affirmative action enables African Americans to attend law schools for which they are unqualified, they are more likely to perform poorly in law school, drop out, fail the bar examination, and never become lawyers. In this brief response, we contend that Professor Sander's analysis is misdirected and narrow, and we highlight two shortcomings of the article. First, noting other studies that maintain that Professor Sander's empirical work does not support his conclusions about the effects of affirmative action on African American law students, we raise the important issue of maintaining racial diversity in law schools, a key point relevant to affirmative action, which Professor Sander ignores throughout his article. In so doing, we examine Professor Sander's failure to offer alternatives of what policies might more fully diversify law schools and ensure educational opportunity for all. We also explore Professor Sander's charges of a lack of candor by law schools about the salience of race in admissions decisions, charges that not only mischaracterize the admission process at many law schools but also fail to encourage an open and honest dialogue about the problem of minority underrepresentation in law schools. Second, we critically examine Professor Sander's assumption that relatively lower undergraduate GPAs and LSAT scores explain why African-American students fail to fare as well academically in law school as their white peers. In so doing, we highlight Professor Sander's neglect of other significant factors likely to correlate with poor performance, in particular the well-documented hostile environment faced by African American, and other minority, students in law schools and the manner in which such an environment may adversely affect their academic performance. Finally, this article explores steps that law schools may take to improve the experiences of African American and other minority students within their corridors.
Capital in the Twenty-First Century: A Review Essay

The empirical work in Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty First Century is simply breathtaking, but his use of the terms capital and marketable wealth interchangeably leads us to consider the implications of distinguishing between them, and calls our attention to important issues that deserve further exploration. In the title of his 1968 review of early research in Cliometrics, Lance Davis opined that “it will never be literature.” One of Thomas Piketty’s many achievements in Capital in the Twenty First Century is to prove Davis wrong. Piketty’s book is both an exemplary work in quantitative economic history and economic literature in the finest sense, written with the Cartesian clarity we associate with the French scientific tradition. It is, moreover, quite remarkably, also about literature, in particular about the novels of Jane Austen, Henry James, and Honore de Balzac, and the nineteenth century wealth dynamics they brought to life.
Strategic pricing with rational inattention to quality

This paper studies, both theoretically and experimentally, the pricing strategy of a …rm that faces a consumer who is “rationally inattentive” to product quality (Sims [2003]). In a standard sequential pricing game, rational inattention to quality produces two types of mixed strategy perfect Bayesian equilibria: one where sellers pool at a low price and buyers are fully inattentive to quality and one where there is semi-pooling at a high price and buyers are selectively attentive to quality. I characterize these
Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress: A Proposal for a Consistent Theory of Tort Recovery for Bystanders and Direct Victims

American courts traditionally have been suspicious of emotional distress injury claims. Most jurisdictions carefully circumscribe liability for intangible emotional distress injuries. Court are concerned that negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) claims may be fraudulent and fear that excessive liability may be imposed on defendants whose culpability may be relatively minor. This article examines the direct victim/bystander dichotomy that courts have developed. It recommends that courts abandon their diverse approaches that have led to inconsistent treatment of bystanders and direct victims in NIED actions and instead follow a three part 'primary purpose test.' To recover plaintiffs must prove that: (1) the plaintiff or an injury victim closely related to the plaintiff has a preexisting relationship with the defendant; (2) one of the primary purposes of the preexisting relationship is to protect the plaintiff's emotional tranquility; and (3) as a result of defendant's tortious conduct, the plaintiff has suffered severe emotional distress. The application of this three part test will lead to consistent results and will limit defendants? exposure to an amount proportionate to their culpability.
Does deposit insurance increase banking system stability? - an empirical investigation

Based on evidence of 61 countries in 1980-97, the authors find that explicit deposit insurance tends to be detrimental to bank stability, the more so where bank interest rates are deregulated and the institutional environment is weak. The adverse impact of deposit insurance on bank stability tends to be stronger the more extensive is the coverage offered to depositors, and where the scheme is funded and run by the government rather than the private sector.
The Passing of Nonsectarianism--Some Reflections on the School Prayer Case

Engel v. Vitale was a landmark case which marked a jurisprudential shift in the constitutional meaning of the Establishment Clause. This paper, written in the aftermath of this important case, reflects on, and contrasts, England's historical establishment of the Church with historical nonsectarianism in the United States. After analyzing the role which the tripartite Protestant-Catholic-Jew nonsectariansm played in society before Engle, the paper suggests that nonsectarianism served the beneficial purpose of directing the whole institutional structure of society toward the last end of human beings. With the passing of nonsectarianism, the nation is left with the problem of accurately and adequately institutionalizing the defining national religious consensus that we, as a nation, continue to feel. This paper concludes that, resonant with the religious consensus and spirit of freedom in brotherhood which permeate this nation, the old system of nonsectarianism can best be replaced by a system of dialogue, based on mutual understanding and respect rather than on agreement.
Trends in the Level and Distribution of Income Support

Executive Summary Means‐tested and social insurance programs in the United States have been transformed over the last 25 years, with expansions in Medicare and Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Supplemental Security Income and with contractions in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. We examine the effect of these changes on benefits received by families. We find that transfer program expenditures in total rose from 1984 to 2004, but the increase was spread unevenly across different demographic groups and income classes. Very poor elderly, disabled, and childless families received greatly increased expenditures, mostly arising from Social Security, Social Security Disability Insurance, SSI, and the health programs. Very poor single‐parent and two‐parent households experienced declines in expenditures, driven largely by lower recipiency rates, benefit receipt, or both in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children/TANF and Food Stamp programs. For example, AFDC/TANF participation for one‐adul...
Performance implications of strategic performance measurement in financial services firms

Abstract This study examines the relation between measurement system satisfaction, economic performance, and two general approaches to strategic performance measurement: greater measurement diversity and improved alignment with firm strategy and value drivers. We find consistent evidence that firms making more extensive use of a broad set of financial and (particularly) non-financial measures than firms with similar strategies or value drivers have higher measurement system satisfaction and stock market returns. However, we find little support for the alignment hypothesis that more or less extensive measurement than predicted by the firm's strategy or value drivers adversely affect performance. Instead, our results indicate that greater measurement emphasis and diversity than predicted by our benchmark model is associated with higher satisfaction and stock market performance. Our results also suggest that greater measurement diversity relative to firms with similar value drivers has a stronger relationship with stock market performance than greater measurement on an absolute scale. Finally, the balanced scorecard process, economic value measurement, and causal business modeling are associated with higher measurement system satisfaction, but exhibit almost no association with economic performance.
The World, through the Judge’s Eye

Constitutional interpretation is increasingly performed on a world stage, as judges refer to international and comparative law as a relevant - but not binding - source of law. Yet the practice is an uneven one, with some courts - and some judges - being more open to international engagement than others. This disparity unsettles the conventions of the judicial role, such as decision-making by majority when its members disagree. In a telling example, Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia was often alone and in dissent when citing international and comparative law, especially when interpreting the Australian Constitution. The Australian example demonstrates the way in which references to foreign law allow minority judges to introduce a new quantity - a new plurality - of informal judicial support. The article goes on to outline constitutionalism as a model of international engagement that justifies this technique. It contrasts this model with the alternative justifications of internationalism and judicial worldliness, two models that are less able to resolve questions of authority and relevance.
Responsibility and Control

In two recent cases, Kansas v. Hendricks and Kansas v. Crane, the Supreme Court upheld sex predator legislation. The Kansas statute, which is similar to legislation adopted in other states, provides for the indefinite detention of those classified as sex predators. The detention is to begin after the offender has served a prison term and will continue for as long as he remains dangerous. One objection to the legislation had been that it permitted the detention of individuals who were considered legally sane and who were not being punished for any past crime (having paid the penalty for the crime that brought them to the law’s attention). Some thought that approving preventive detention in such cases was an abuse of traditionally recognized rights under the Constitution.
Lending Booms, Smart Bankers, and Financial Crises

This paper develops a theory that explains why financial crises follow profitable lending booms. When agents exhibit the "availability heuristic" and there is a long period of banking profitability, all agents—banks, their investors and regulators—end up in an "availability cascade," overestimating bankers' risk-management skills and underestimating the probability that observed outcomes are due to good luck. Consequently, banks profitably invest in riskier assets. Subsequently, if a public signal reveals that outcomes are luck-driven, investors withdraw funds, liquidity evaporates, and a crisis ensues. A loan resale market improves liquidity but increases the probability of a crisis.
On the optimal management of a class of aquatic ecological–economic systems

Abstract This paper studies aquatic ecological–economic systems such as the Chesapeake Bay. The stability of such ecological–economic systems depends on the successful functioning of a small number of generalist species in a wide range of ecological and economic conditions. We first characterize the persistence of such systems. We then analyze the dynamic and the stochastic aspects of the resource allocation problem faced by the manager of an aquatic ecological–economic system. This manager wishes to allocate his scarce financial resources optimally among economic activities and the maintenance of the generalists species of the aquatic ecological–economic system.
Gender and Organizational Rule Abidance

A long-standing contention in the public and private management literatures is that women use rule abidance as a way to compensate for their relative lack of organizational power. Many of the studies making this assertion rely on anecdotal evidence rather than theory-guided empirical studies. In this paper, the authors use survey data collected from four cities in a midwestern state to empirically test gender dimensions of rule abidance. The findings support long-asserted gender differences in rule abidance. Contrary to recent scholarship, however, the findings suggest that rule abidance among women is inversely related to organizational status, with higher-level women abiding by rules more so than women lower in the hierarchy.
Congress, the Deficit, and Budget Reconciliation

President Clinton's veto of the 1995 reconciliation bill, the largest and most ambitious such legislation ever passed by Congress, was the first time a reconciliation bill was ever rejected by a president. It was also the first reconciliation bill in two decades to include a tax reduction rather than a tax increase. The fate of this bill, and its scope and contents, suggest the need to assess the evolution of reconciliation within the congressional budget process. In the early 1980s, Congress altered budget reconciliation procedures, putting in place a powerful new capability for deficit reduction. Reconciliation became the primary means within the budget process of restraining entitlement spending and increasing taxes as part of congressional efforts to reduce the deficit. Gramm-Rudman-Hollings magnified certain problems Congress encountered in using reconciliation to control entitlements, producing increased pressure to cut discretionary spending. While the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 included new authority to use reconciliation to restrain entitlements, congressional spending priorities combined with the Peace Dividend to maintain the relative sanctuary entitlement programs have enjoyed. The limits of reconciliation as a deficit reduction tool, both in terms of increasing revenues and curtailing entitlements, are detailed. The inherent procedural advantages accorded to entitlements are contrasted with the treatment of discretionary programs, explaining in part the widening gulf between these two categories of spending. Congress has attempted, without success, to find alternatives to reconciliation. The failure of the seven-year, deficit-eliminating reconciliation bill of 1995 may indicate that certain Limits on the use of reconciliation may have been reached.
Asset pricing with extreme liquidity risk

Abstract Defining extreme liquidity as the tail of the illiquidity for all stocks, I propose a direct measure of market-wide extreme liquidity risk and find that it is priced cross-sectionally in the U.S. Between 1973 and 2014, the stocks with high extreme liquidity risk beta earned value-weighted average return of 5.88% annually higher than the stocks with low extreme liquidity risk beta, adjusted for the illiquidity level premium and exposures to aggregate liquidity risk as well as the market, size and value factors. The extreme liquidity risk premium is different from that on aggregate liquidity risk documented in Pastor and Stambaugh (2003) as well as that based on the tail risk in return of Kelly and Jiang (2014). Extreme liquidity risk provides an advance warning about extreme liquidity events. I explore potential economic mechanisms through which the rare and large fluctuations in stock-level liquidity are priced.
Antitrust Enforcement and Sectoral Regulation: The Competition Policy Benefits of Concurrent Enforcement in the Communications Sector

In this article, Jonathan Baker discusses how concurrent jurisdiction may help protect competition using as an example the US communication industry. He suggests that capture is a threat when the regulated industry can manage information and consequently shape an agencies point of view. Nevertheless, when looking at the FCC, Baker notes that it has been better positioned to deal with fast-moving markets than an antitrust agency would have been, taking A¢â‚¬A“a more expansive view of potential and future competition."
The ALFALFA Search for (Almost) Dark Galaxies across the HI Mass Function

The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey is a second generation blind extragalactic HI survey currently in progess which is exploiting Arecibo's superior sensitivity, angular resolution and digital technology to derive a census of the local HI universe over a cosmo- logically signican t volume. As of the time of this meeting, some 4500 good quality extragalactic HI line sources have been identied in about 15% of the nal survey area. ALFALFA is detecting HI masses as low as 10 6 M and as large as 10 10:8 M with positional accuracies typically better than 20 00 , allowing immediate identication of the most probable optical counterparts. Only 3% of all extragalactic HI sources and less than 1% of detections with MHI > 10 9:5 M cannot be identied with a stellar component. Because ALFALFA is far from complete, the discussion here focuses on limitations of past surveys that ALFALFA will overcome because of its greater vol- ume, sensitivity and reduced susceptibility to source confusion and on a sampling of illustrative preliminary results. First ALFALFA results already suggest, in agreement with previous studies, that there does not appear to be a cosmologically signican t population of optically dark but HI rich galaxies. ALFALFA promises a wealthy dataset for the exploration of many issues in near-eld cosmology and galaxy evolution studies, setting the stage for their extension to higher redshifts in the future with the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).
Galaxy gas fractions at high redshift: the tension between observations and cosmological simulations

CO measurements of z ∼ 1–4 galaxies have found that their baryonic gas fractions are significantly higher than those for galaxies at z = 0, with values ranging from 20 to 80 per cent. Here, we suggest that the gas fractions inferred from observations of star-forming galaxies at high-z are overestimated, owing to the adoption of locally calibrated CO–H2 conversion factors (αCO). Evidence from both observations and numerical models suggests that αCO varies smoothly with the physical properties of galaxies, and that αCO can be parametrized simply as a function of both gas-phase metallicity and observed CO surface brightness. When applying this functional form, we find fgas ≈ 10–40 per cent in galaxies with M* = 1010–1012 M⊙. Moreover, the scatter in the observed fgas–M* relation is lowered by a factor of 2. The lower inferred gas fractions arise physically because the interstellar media of high-z galaxies have higher velocity dispersions and gas temperatures than their local counterparts, which results in an αCO that is lower than the z = 0 value for both quiescent discs and starbursts. We further compare these gas fractions to those predicted by cosmological galaxy formation models. We show that while the canonically inferred gas fractions from observations are a factor of 2–3 larger at a given stellar mass than predicted by models, our rederived αCO values for z = 1–4 galaxies result in revised gas fractions that agree significantly better with the simulations.
Behavioral Biases in Annuity Choice: An Experiment

We conduct a neutral-context laboratory experiment to systematically investigate the role of the hit-by-bus concern in explaining the annuitization puzzle: the low rate of retirement-asset annuitization relative to the predictions of standard models. We vary endowed asset (annuity vs. stock of wealth vs. no explicit endowment), and find a strong endowment effect. Furthermore, we find that the ordering of survival risks matters. Compared to a frame in which a single draw from a known distribution determines survival outcome, annuity choice is lower when subjects must sequentially survive early periods to reach periods in which the annuity dominates. We conclude with policy implications.
Learning about Monetary Policy Rules when Long-Horizon Expectations Matter

This paper considers the implications of an important source of model misspecification for the design of monetary policy rules: the assumed manner of expectations formation. In the model considered here, private agents seek to maximize their objectives subject to standard constraints and the restriction of using an econometric model to make inferences about future uncertainty. Because agents solve a multiperiod decision problem, their actions depend on forecasts of macroeconomic conditions many periods into the future, unlike the analysis of Bullard and Mitra (2002) and Evans and Honkapohja (2002). A Taylor rule ensures convergence to the rational expectations equilibrium associated with this policy if the so-called Taylor principle is satisfied. This suggests the Taylor rule to be desirable from the point of view of eliminating instability due to self-fulfilling expectations.
The mixed blessing of a deregulatory endpoint for the public switched telephone network

Receiving authority to dismantle the wireline public switched telephone network (PSTN) will deliver a mixture of financial benefits and costs to incumbent carriers and also jeopardize longstanding legislative and regulatory goals seeking ubiquitous, affordable and fully interconnected networks. Even if incumbent carriers continue to provide basic telephone services via wireless facilities, they will benefit from substantial relaxation of common carriage duties, no longer having to serve as the carrier of last resort and having the opportunity to decide whether and where to provide service. On the other hand, incumbent carriers may have underestimated the substantial financial and marketplace advantages they also will likely lose in the deregulatory process. Legislators and policy makers also may have underestimated the impact of no longer having the ability to impose common carrier mandates that require carriers to interconnect so that end users have complete access to network services regardless of location. This paper will identify the potential problems resulting from prospective decisions by National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs), such as the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to grant authority for telecommunications service providers to discontinue PSTN services. The paper also will consider whether in the absence of common carrier duties, private carriers providing telephone services, including Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP), voluntarily will agree to interconnect their networks. The paper will examine three recent carrier interconnection issues with an eye toward assessing whether a largely unregulated marketplace will create incentives for carriers to interconnect networks so that consumers will have ubiquitous access to PSTN replacement and other broadband services. The paper concludes that private carrier interconnection models and information service regulatory oversight may not solve all disputes, or promote universal service public policy goals. Recent Internet interconnection and television program carriage disputes involving major players such as Comcast, Level 3, Fox, Cablevision and Google point to the possibility of increasingly contentious negotiations that could result in balkanized telecommunications networks with at least temporary blockages to desired content and services by some consumers.
An Anthropological Approach to Modern Forfeiture Law: The Symbolic Function of Legal Actions Against Objects

In 1996, the Supreme Court issued two opinions, Bennis v. Michigan and United States v. Ursery, emphasizing the constitutionality of civil forfeiture schemes under both the Due Process and Double Jeopardy Clauses of the Fifth Amendment. These decisions, and civil forfeiture schemes generally, have faced strong criticism from scholars and civil libertarians. Among the arguments advanced against civil forfeiture has been one based on its origins. The so-called "legal fiction" underlying forfeiture is that the government is acting against the property itself, rather than against the owner. Commentators have traced this fiction to the Middle Ages. Under the law of the deodand, an inanimate object that caused a death was deemed to be "guilty" of a crime and therefore was offered to God through forfeiture to the King. Those opposed to today's forfeiture laws have seized upon this history to demonstrate the supposedly senseless origins of forfeiture. The Supreme Court also has invoked the history of civil forfeiture, but for a different purpose. Although the Court has sometimes acknowledged that the fiction underlying civil forfeiture may seem unfair, it has nevertheless upheld forfeiture schemes based on the historical prevalence and acceptance of the practice. Thus, while both the critics and the Court have used the history of forfeiture actions to support their conclusions, neither side has made any serious attempt to understand this history. This Article closely examines the widespread historical practice of conducting legal actions against both inanimate objects and animals. It is unsatisfying simply to conclude that these trials were the product of irrationality or superstitiousness. Instead, this Article speculates on whether these trials may have performed important social functions for the community. In particular, the trials may have permitted the community to heal itself after the breach of a social norm by creating a narrative whereby a symbolic transgressor of the established order was deemed to be "guilty" of a "crime" and cast beyond the boundaries of the society. This Article then suggests that at least some aspects of modern civil forfeiture law may fulfill a similar function. Still today, a forfeiture proceeding can serve to remove an offensive symbol of wrongdoing from the community, a function that is quite distinct from the desire to punish the culpable individual who may have used the object. Indeed, the importance of this symbolic aspect of civil forfeiture may provide a way of thinking about the Supreme Court's recent jurisprudence in this area.