cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Foreword: The Most Confusing Branch

From time to time I have received a version of the following complaint from a student: 'I understood the material when I read it, but I left class more confused than when I arrived.' I usually reply with a line like this: 'Good. That means I have done my job.'If I were to leave things at that, I would probably qualify for some sort of prize for pedagogical sadism, but there is a method to this particular madness. I like to distinguish between what I call 'bad confusion' and 'good confusion.' A student who is confused about an issue to which the law provides a clear answer suffers from bad confusion. She or he simply needs to spend more time with the materials to master the content of the doctrine.Often, however, the law itself is in a state of confusion. One line of cases points in one direction; another line of cases points in another direction; and some new case falls either somewhere in between or, despite nominally falling within the scope of each doctrinal category, raises issues not raised or considered fully in either. Here the law is, if not completely contradictory, at least indeterminate. No student, indeed, no expert in the field, can make sense of the new situation simply by staring long enough at or thinking hard enough about the prior cases. A student who suffers good confusion can locate the law's gaps and ambiguities. He or she knows that an argument can be made for two or more different outcomes in some category of cases, and that nothing more determinate can be said about such arguments than that he or she finds one morepersuasive than another.
Fighting Past Economic Wars: Crisis and Austerity in Latin America

Political economy theory expects that changes in macroeconomic governance are often catalyzed by institutional factors, such as partisanship, elections, or International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionality. I challenge and contextualize this view by incorporating the role of technocratic advisors into a domestic policy-making framework. I contend that presidents from countries with crisis legacies are more likely to appoint mainstream economists that pursue budget discipline. Employing an originally constructed dataset, the Index of Economic Advisors, I conduct an econometric test of sixteen Latin American countries from 1961 to 2011. I find that politicians are most likely to appoint mainstream economists who embrace fiscal rectitude in countries with inflation-crisis legacies. Furthermore, these crisis legacies are enduring given the severity of inflationary trauma relative to other types of domestic economic volatility in Latin America. In fact, these effects hold when controlling for both historical and contemporaneous shocks to unemployment. Resumen Las teorias de la economia politica esperan que los cambios en la gobernanza macroeconomica sean frecuentemente catalizados por factores institucionales, como la afiliacion partidaria, las elecciones o la condicionalidad del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI). Aqui desafio y contextualizo este punto de vista incorporando el papel de los asesores tecnocraticos en el analisis de la elaboracion de politicas nacionales. Sostengo que los presidentes de paises con experiencia en crisis son mas propensos a nombrar a economistas convencionales que buscan imponer disciplina presupuestaria. Usando una base de datos original, el Indice de Asesores Economicos, realizo un analisis econometrico de dieciseis paises latinoamericanos de 1961 a 2011. Encuentro que los politicos son mas propensos a designar economistas convencionales que adopten posiciones fiscales ortodoxas en paises con experiencia de crisis inflacionarias. Ademas, estas experiencias de trauma inflacionario tienen efectos mas duraderos porque son mas graves en comparacion con otros tipos de volatilidad economica interna en America Latina. Estos efectos se mantienen cuando se controla tambien por shocks de desempleo historicos y contemporaneos.
Irreversible investment with uncertainty and scale economies

Abstract Optimal irreversible investment policy is analyzed when profits undergo multiplicative geometric Brownian shocks. The marginal product of capital increases initially and then decreases. In the latter range, it is optimal to add capacity gradually as the shock rises to a threshold where the expected return on the marginal unit is a multiple of its cost, reflecting the option value of waiting. The optimal policy in the increasing marginal product range obeys the same multiple, now applied to the total return on an optimal discrete capacity addition. Implications for economic growth, and suboptimal equilibria under external economies, are examined.
Tiny Salespeople: Mediated Transactions and the Internet of Things

If the Internet of Things becomes reality, everyday objects might try to sell you products and services. This presents both benefits and perils, the latter in the form of an increased "attack surface" for companies interested in jogging sales.
Why does overnight liquidity cost more than intraday liquidity

Abstract In this paper, we argue that the observed difference in the cost of intraday and overnight liquidity is part of an optimal payments system design. In our environment, overnight liquidity affects output while intraday liquidity affects only the distribution of resources between money holders and non-money holders. The low cost of intraday liquidity is explained by the Friedman rule. The optimal cost differential achieves the twin objective of reducing the incentive to overuse money at night and encouraging payment-risk sharing during the day.
Legal battles for sponsorship exclusivity: The cases of the World Cup and NASCAR

Abstract Theorists have emphasized brand differentiation in achieving a competitive advantage through sponsorship, and managers of sports sponsorships have recognized product category exclusivity as among the most valued rights afforded sponsoring firms. Yet the proliferation of sponsorships in the sports marketplace poses a challenge to sponsors attempting to establish a unique brand position apart from the clutter. The competition between corporate rivals for sponsorship exclusivity in the world's highest profile sporting arenas has begun to spill into the courtroom. The purpose of this paper is to review the cases of MasterCard versus FIFA, and AT&T versus NASCAR, and discuss the relevance of these contract disputes to sponsorship scholars and practitioners. Specifically, the courts’ finding of irreparable harm faced by the excluded sponsor offers an intriguing legal recognition of the theorized goodwill and inimitability of corporate affiliation with a specific sponsored enterprise. The cases also contribute an opposing view of best practices, where legal ramifications arise from treating sponsorship as a property-based resource and neglecting the relational dimensions of collaborative communication, trust, and commitment emphasized by contemporary sponsorship theory.
The beginning of personhood: a Thomistic biological analysis.

'When did I, a human person, begin to exist?' In developing an answer to this question, I utilize a Thomistic framework, which holds that the human person is a composite of a biological organism and an intellective soul. Eric Olson and Norman Ford both argue that beginning of an individual human biological organism occurs at the moment when implantation of the zygote in the uterus occurs and the 'primitive streak' begins to form. Prior to this point, there does not exist an individual human organism, but a cluster of biological cells which has the potential to split and develop as one or more separate human organisms (identical twinning). Ensoulment (the instantiation of a human intellective soul in biological matter) does not occur until the point of implantation. This conception of the beginning of human personhood has moral implications concerning the status of pre-implantation biological cell clusters. A new understanding of the beginning of human personhood entails a new understanding of the morality of certain medical procedures which have a direct affect on these cell clusters which contain human DNA. Such procedures discussed in this article are embryonic stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, procured abortion, and the use of abortifacient contraceptives.
Cross-country technology adoption: making the theories face the facts☆

Abstract We examine the diffusion of more than 20 technologies across 23 of the world's leading industrial economies. Our evidence covers major technology classes such as textile production, steel manufacture, communications, information technology, transportation, and electricity for the period 1788–2001. We document the common patterns observed in the diffusion of this broad range of technologies. Our results suggest a pattern of trickle-down diffusion that is remarkably robust across technologies. Most of the technologies that we consider originate in advanced economies and are adopted there first. Subsequently, they trickle down to countries that lag economically. Our panel data analysis indicates that the most important determinants of the speed at which a country adopts technologies are the country's human capital endowment, type of government, degree of openness to trade, and adoption of predecessor technologies. We also find that the overall rate of diffusion has increased markedly since World War II because of the convergence in these variables across countries.
Recombinant search and breakthrough idea generation: An analysis of high impact papers in the social sciences

Abstract Some ideas have dramatically more impact than others – they may overturn existing paradigms or launch new areas of scientific inquiry. Where do such high impact ideas come from? Are some search processes significantly more likely to lead to breakthrough idea generation than others? In this research, we compare “high impact” papers from the social sciences with random-but-matched articles published in the same journals in the same years. We find that search scope, search depth, and atypical connections between different research domains significantly increase a paper's impact, even when controlling for the experience and prior publishing success of the author(s).
Bankruptcy and Entrepreneurship: The Value of a Fresh Start

This article considers bankruptcy law design in a setting that is appropriate for entrepreneurial firms. These firms are characterized by a dependence on an owner-manager who is essential to the firm and must be given incentive through an ownership stake to maximize the value of the project. In a relationship-lending environment, the banks that fund entrepreneurs cannot capture the gains from providing the entrepreneur with this stake, and this leaves the entrepreneur emerging from bankruptcy with a larger debt burden than is socially efficient. In this setting, a “fresh-start” bankruptcy policy provides greater debt relief than the bank would approve voluntarily, and this generates greater social surplus. The results suggest the value of separate procedures for small business bankruptcies that allow some mandatory debt relief to preserve ex post incentives.
What’s My Style? The Influence of Top Managers on Voluntary Corporate Financial Disclosure

ABSTRACT: Financial economics has posited a limited role for idiosyncratic noneconomic manager-specific influences, but the strategic management literature suggests such individual influences can affect corporate outcomes. We investigate whether individual managers play an economically significant role in their firms’ voluntary financial disclosure choices. Tracking managers across firms over time, we find top executives exert unique and economically significant influence (manager-specific fixed effects) on their firms’ voluntary disclosures, incremental to known economic determinants of disclosure, and firm- and time-specific effects. Managers’ unique disclosure styles are associated with observable demographic characteristics of their personal backgrounds: managers promoted from finance, accounting, and legal career tracks, managers born before World War II, and those with military experience develop disclosure styles displaying certain conservative characteristics; and managers from finance and account...
Embracing morals in economics: The role of internal moral constraints in a market economy

Abstract Economists who adhere to the assumptions of homo economicus typically focus on altering external constraints through laws or regulations as the means of eliminating bad behavior. Reaching the optimal solution is simply a matter of having government adjust the price of unwanted behavior through punishments or fines. But Adam Smith highlighted the importance of another type of constraint, the internal moral constraint. In recent years behavioral, experimental, and other economists have documented that people often do not act according the assumptions of the homo economicus model and instead appear to incorporate moral constraints into their decision making process. In light of this growing body of research, this article argues that many economists have placed too much emphasis on external constraints and that more emphasis should be placed on internal moral constraints. After discussing possible sources of internal moral constraints, the paper describes how these constraints can help strengthen cooperation in the short and long run.
A Theory of Contract Law under Conditions of Radical Judicial Error

This paper introduces an informal model of contracting where courts are assumed to be radically incompetent, that is, they are unable to determine whether a party in a contract dispute has engaged in opportunistic behavior (breach), although they can determine whether parties intended to enter a legally enforceable contract. Under this assumption courts cannot perform their normal function in standard economic analysis of contract law, where they deter opportunistic breach because they can verify the promisor's behavior. Nonetheless, the model shows that despite judicial incompetence people will voluntarily enter legally enforceable, jointly valuable contracts. The reason is that when parties care about their reputations, and are engaged in repeated interaction, they can deter certain forms of otherwise profitable opportunism by credibly threatening a mutually destructive lawsuit. The law, on this theory, generates value not by directly deterring bad behavior, but by supplying parties with the ability to retaliate when they are harmed. The paper explores the model's implications for understanding contracting and contract law.
Amending the Economic Espionage Act to Require the Disclosure of National Security-Related Technology Thefts

Trade secret law protects the owner of the secret against unwanted knowledge diffusion to third parties. The current legal regime is largely designed to protect trade secrets from instances of domestic theft. Yet, the regime falls short of protecting many trade secrets that are stolen by foreign state-sponsored entities. This growing problem is serious enough alone to warrant attention, however, the problem is compounded when the secrets involve technologies relevant to national security. A good proxy for determining whether a technology is relevant to national security currently exists in the form of the export control laws. This article proposes amending the Economic Espionage Act to mandate suspected trade secret thefts related to any technology that is under export restriction. Mandated disclosure would help reduce the chronic problem of foreign trade secret theft under-reporting that reduces the existing laws’ deterrent goals. The mandated disclosure amendment would lead to better trade secret management practices, and would also protect whistle blowers from employer retaliation. The amendment would also encourage collaboration between firms involved in the development and commercialization of sensitive technologies and federal law enforcement agencies. Increased public-private collaboration will be increasingly necessary to safeguard the nation’s critical infrastructure and knowledge-based assets.
Risk loving after the storm: A Bayesian-Network study of Hurricane Katrina evacuees

We investigate risk preferences of a sample of hurricane Katrina evacuees shortly after they were evacuated and transported to Houston, and another sample from the same population taken a year later. We also consider a third sample of resident Houstonians with demographics similar to the Katrina evacuees. Conventional statistical methods fail to explain a strong risk-loving bias in the first Katrina-evacuees sample. We utilize Bayesian Networks to investigate all relevant conditional distributions for gamble choices, demographic variables, and responses to psychometric questionnaires. We uncover surprising results: Contrary to prior experimental evidence, we find that women in our sample were significantly more risk loving in the first Katrina sample and only mildly more risk averse in the other two samples. We find that gamble choices are best predicted by positive-emotion variables. We therefore explain the risk-loving choices of the first Katrina-evacuees sample by the detected primacy of negative-emotion variables in that sample and explain the latter by traumatic and heightened-stress experiences shortly after the hurricane.
Virtual Organizations as Electronic Services

Virtual organizations are flexible organizations, dynamically built from components of existing organizations. There are many advantages to virtual organizations, yet they are rare because successful implementation of such a dynamic design requires a significant technology infrastructure and a complex organizational architecture. This article takes a design approach and proposes such a technology infrastructure based on electronic services, formal semantics, and multi-dimensional ontologies. Organizational components are formally described as services, and placed in multi-dimensional ontologies, not only to capture their structural components, but also their organizational goals and audiences. Such multi-dimensional ontologies are not only useful to describe and search for organizational components, but also to efficiently build larger components from existing units. The architecture is extended to include virtual communities, virtual transactions, and virtual social institutions. The impact of such an architecture on transaction efficiency, organizational flexibility and adaptation, power structure, individual privacy, and organizational dissent are discussed.
Individual vs. Aggregate Preferences: The Case of a Small Fish in a Big Pond

We study the relationship between the risk preferences of individuals and the risk preferences of the aggregate economy. To emphasize the vast differences that can occur between individual and market preferences brought about through aggregation, we assume an economy consisting entirely of risk seekers. We show that such individuals can lead to an aggregate economy that is risk averse. The converse is also true. An aggregate economy that exhibits risk aversion does not imply an economy of individual risk averters. An economy demanding a risk premium can be formed from individuals who do not demand such compensation. Understanding the relationship between the preferences of individuals and the preferences of the aggregate economy is crucial for understanding the connection between the behavioral finance literature, which focuses on individual preferences, and the asset-pricing literature, which focuses on aggregate prices. We discuss empirical implications of these results. This paper was accepted by Wei Xiong, finance.
Why Not Privacy by Default

We live in a Track-Me world, one from which opting out is often not possible. Firms collect reams of data about all of us, quietly tracking our mobile devices, our web surfing, and our email for marketing, pricing, product development, and other purposes. Most consumers both oppose tracking and want many of the benefits tracking can provide. In response, policymakers have proposed to give consumers significant control over when, how, and by whom they are tracked through a system of defaults (i.e., “Track-Me” or “Don’t-Track-Me”) from which consumers can opt out. The use of a default scheme is premised on three assumptions. First, that for consumers with weak or conflicted preferences, any default chosen will be “sticky,” meaning that more consumers will stay in the default position than would choose it if reaching the position required an affirmative action. Second, that those consumers with a true preference for the opt-out position—and only those consumers—will opt out. Third, that where firms oppose the default position, convincing consumers to opt out will require the firms to explain the default position, resulting in well-informed decisions by consumers. This Article argues that for tracking defaults, these assumptions may not consistently hold. Past experience with the use of defaults in policymaking teaches that Track-Me defaults are likely to be too sticky, Don’t-Track-Me defaults are likely to be too slippery, and neither are likely to result in well-educated consumers. These conclusions should inform the “Do-Not-Track” policy discussions now taking place in the United States, in the European Union, and at the World Wide Web Consortium. They also cast doubt on the privacy and behavioral economics literatures that advocate the use of “nudges” to improve consumer decisions about privacy. © 2014 Lauren E. Willis. † Robert S. Braucher Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School and Professor of Law, Loyola Law School Los Angeles, lauren.willis@lls.edu. My thanks to Omri BenShahar, James Grimmelmann, Chris Hoofnagle, Paul Ohm, Jules Polonetsky, Paul Schwartz, Chris Soghoian, Lior Strahilevitz, Jessamyn West, Jonathan Zittrain, participants at the 2013 Privacy Law Scholars Conference, research assistant Natalie Kim, and the patient editors at the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. 62 BERKELEY TECHNOLOGY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 29:61
The benefits of autonomous vehicles for community-based trip sharing

Abstract This work reconsiders the concept of community-based trip sharing proposed by Hasan et al. (2018) that leverages the structure of commuting patterns and urban communities to optimize trip sharing. It aims at quantifying the benefits of autonomous vehicles for community-based trip sharing, compared to a car-pooling platform where vehicles are driven by their owners. In the considered problem, each rider specifies a desired arrival time for her inbound trip (commuting to work) and a departure time for her outbound trip (commuting back home). In addition, her commute time cannot deviate too much from the duration of a direct trip. Prior work motivated by reducing parking pressure and congestion in the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, showed that a car-pooling platform for community-based trip sharing could reduce the number of vehicles by close to 60%. This paper studies the potential benefits of autonomous vehicles in further reducing the number of vehicles needed to serve all these commuting trips. It proposes a column-generation procedure that generates and assembles mini routes to serve inbound and outbound trips, using a lexicographic objective that first minimizes the required vehicle count and then the total travel distance. The optimization algorithm is evaluated on a large-scale, real-world dataset of commute trips from the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The results of the optimization show that it can leverage autonomous vehicles to reduce the daily vehicle usage by 92%, improving upon the results of the original Commute Trip Sharing Problem by 34%, while also reducing daily vehicle miles traveled by approximately 30%. These results demonstrate the significant potential of autonomous vehicles for the shared commuting of a community to a common work destination.
Ethical Issues in Asbestos Litigation

33 Hofstra L. Rev. 833 (2005)Lester Brickman Professor of Law of LawBenjamin N Cardozo School of Law 55 Fifth Ave. New York , NY 10003 United States (212) 790-0327 (Phone) (212) 790-0205 (Fax) This paper can be downloaded free of charge from the Social Science Research Network athttp://ssrn.com/abstract=754188
Values and Interests: International Legalization in the Fight against Corruption

Abstract Standard rational choice analysis explains many but not all aspects of the highly political process of international legalization. Because law engages and affects not only the interests of actors but also their normative values, the development and operation of legal regimes can be understood only by considering both motivations together. We develop a simple model of the interaction of “value” and “interest” actors that shows how their different logics of behavior and distinctive strategies drive the politics of legalization—both in particular episodes and through deeper interrelationships over time. To demonstrate our argument empirically, we analyze how various turning points in the development of the 1997 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Anti‐bribery Convention can be fully understood only as resulting from the interplay of values and interests. Our analysis thus blends rational choice with normative or constructivist approaches to provide a richer account of international...
The Share of Systematic Variation in Bilateral Exchange Rates

Sorting countries by their dollar currency betas produces a novel cross section of average currency excess returns. A slope factor (long in high beta currencies and short in low beta currencies) accounts for this cross section of currency risk premia. This slope factor is orthogonal to the high-minus-low carry trade factor built from portfolios of countries sorted by their interest rates. The two high-minus-low risk factors account for 18% to 80% of the monthly exchange rate movements. The two risk factors suggest that stochastic discount factors in complete markets' models should feature at least two global shocks to describe exchange rates.
The relationship between top trading cycles mechanism and top trading cycles and chains mechanism

Abstract In this paper, we show that there is a relationship between two important matching mechanisms: the Top Trading Cycles mechanism (TTC mechanism proposed by Abdulkadiroglu and Sonmez, 1999) and the Top Trading Cycles and Chains mechanism (TTCC mechanism proposed by Roth, Sonmez, and Unver, 2004). Our main result is that when a specific chain selection rule proposed by Roth et al. is used, these two mechanisms are equivalent. While the equivalence is relevant for one specific case of the TTCC mechanism, it is a particularly interesting case since it is the only version identified by Roth et al. to be both Pareto-efficient and strategy-proof.
Linear regression and the Yule distribution

Abstract The Yule distribution is shown to have certain interesting properties in the area of regression analysis. In particular, it is shown that under certain conditions, a random variable Z will have linear regressions on another random variable X and on its observable part Y only when X has a Yule distribution. More generally, the regression on the observed part Y will be constant for a finite number of values of Y, say k, and linear otherwise, only when X has a Yule distribution with its first k frequencies truncated.
Penalty Shoot-Outs Before or After Extra Time?

This article proposes a rule to determine the winner of a soccer match, which is different from the traditional penalty shoot-outs at the end of extra time. The author shows that games can be more attractive if penalties are shot before extra time and the outcome counts only if the tie is preserved during extra time. In general, this rule will promote offense by the team that loses the penalty shoot-outs, and it will promote defense by the team that wins the penalty shoot-outs. The author provides conditions on the marginal effect of offensive play in the probabilities of scoring and conceding a goal such that the proposed rule dominates the current one. Last, this study determines a class of functions that satisfies these conditions. More generally, the article shows how the ordering of tasks may affect the incentives to exert and allocate effort.
Economic consequences of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 ☆

Abstract This paper investigates the economic consequences of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) by examining market reactions to related legislative events. Using concurrent stock returns of non-U.S.-traded foreign firms to estimate normal U.S. returns, I find that U.S. firms experienced a statistically significant negative cumulative abnormal return around key SOX events. I then examine the cross-sectional variation of U.S. firms’ returns around these events. Regression results are consistent with the non-audit services and governance provisions imposing net costs. Additional tests show that deferring the compliance of Section 404, which mandates an internal control test, resulted in significant cost savings for non-accelerated filers.
The Audio Broadcast Flag System – Can It Be a Solution?

Responding in part to radio's ongoing digital transition, the recording industry argues that digital audio broadcasts (DAB) constitute an unprecedented threat to their business. Accordingly, the recording industry has campaigned for the government-mandated adoption of a strong technological protection measure. As a result, the FCC and Congress have been considering the adoption of the audio broadcast flag (ABF) system as a mandatory content-protection measure for DAB. This article identifies problems inherent in the adoption of the ABF system for DAB and suggests that a compulsory license system can manage the DAB matter in a more socially beneficial way by finding an appropriate balance between the interests of copyright owners and the public. Examining the two relevant existing regulations, the article then proposes policy changes that modify the regulations' compulsory license systems in regards to the DAB matter.
The Forgotten Discovery of Gravity Models and the Inefficiency of Early Railway Networks

The routes of early railways around the world were generally inefficient because of the incorrect assumption that long distance travel between major cities would dominate. Modern planners rely on methods such as the “gravity models of spatial interaction,” which show quantitatively the importance of accommodating travel demands between smaller cities. Such models were not used in the 19th century. This paper shows that gravity models were discovered in 1846, a dozen years earlier than had been known previously. That discovery was published during the great Railway Mania in Britain. Had the validity and value of gravity models been recognized properly, the investment losses of that gigantic bubble could have been lessened, and more efficient rail systems in Britain and many other countries would have been built. This incident shows society’s early encounter with the “Big Data” of the day and the slow diffusion of economically significant information. The results of this study suggest that it will be increasingly feasible to use modern network science to analyze information dissemination in the 19th century. That might assist in understanding the diffusion of technologies and the origins of bubbles.
Uncertain Outcomes and Climate Change Policy

Abstract I incorporate distributions for temperature change and its economic impact in an analysis of climate change policy. As a measure of willingness to pay (WTP), I estimate the fraction of consumption w ⁎ ( τ ) that society would be willing to sacrifice to ensure that any increase in temperature at a future point is limited to τ . Using information on distributions for temperature change and economic impact from recent studies assembled by the IPCC and others, I fit displaced gamma distributions for these variables. These fitted distributions, which roughly reflect the “state of knowledge” regarding warming and its impact, generally yield values of w ⁎ ( τ ) below 2%, even for small values of τ , consistent with moderate abatement policies. I also calculate WTP for shifts in the mean and standard deviation of the temperature distribution, and show how WTP, and thus the demand for abatement, are driven more by outcome uncertainty than expected outcomes.
Leaning Against the Wind

During financial disruptions, market makers provide liquidity by absorbing external selling pressure. They buy when the pressure is large, accumulate inventories, and sell when the pressure alleviates. This paper studies optimal dynamic liquidity provision in a theoretical market setting with large and temporary selling pressure and order-execution delays. I show that competitive market makers offer the socially optimal amount of liquidity, provided they have access to sufficient capital. If raising capital is costly, this suggests a policy role for lenient central bank lending during financial disruptions.
Fair Housing Enforcement in the South and Non‐South*

Objective We compare outcomes in racial discrimination fair housing complaints processed by southern state and local civil rights agencies to those handled by state and local agencies outside the South and the federal agency, HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development). Methods Based on data obtained directly from HUD, we rely on a fixed effects logistic regression model with cluster-correlated standard errors. Results First, southern local agencies are significantly more likely to provide outcomes favorable to complainants in racial discrimination fair housing cases than are local agencies outside the South. Second, state and local agencies in the Deep South provide favorable outcomes to the same extent as their nonsouthern counterparts. Third, southern local agencies are more likely to provide favorable outcomes than is HUD, whereas southern state agencies provide favorable outcomes at roughly the same rate as HUD. Variations within the South partially explain these findings. Conclusion We find evidence of progressive changes in southern fair housing enforcement, although those changes occur in an uneven fashion depending on the state or locality.
The Benson - Symonds Invariant for Permutation Modules

In a recent paper, Dave Benson and Peter Symonds defined a new invariant γG(M) for a finite dimensional module M of a finite group G which attempts to quantify how close a module is to being projective. In this paper, we determine this invariant for permutation modules of the symmetric group corresponding to two-part partitions using tools from representation theory and combinatorics.
The Lingering Effects of Copyright's Response to the Invention of Photography

In 1884, the Supreme Court was presented with dichotomous views of photography. In one view, the photograph was an original, intellectual conception of the author—a fine art. In the other, it was the mere product of the soulless labor of the machine. Much was at stake in this dispute, including the booming market in photographs and the constitutional importance of the originality requirement in copyright law. This first confrontation between copyright law and technology provides invaluable insights into copyright law’s ability to adapt and accommodate in the face of a challenge. An examination of these historical debates about photography across the domains of law, art, commerce and technology, the social sciences, and popular culture suggests that the particular contours of the author that continue to pose problems—particularly its predilection for creation over selection—can be located and attributed to this historical moment. The “author” took a particular shape in response to historically specific constraints, and the resulting doctrine has left a lasting impression on the way we read photography today.
Accruals Management to Avoid Losses

This study examines whether firms engage in accruals management to beat the zero earnings benchmark from the perspective of earnings per share (EPS). Based on net income scaled by lagged market value of equity (E/MV) to define just-miss and just-beat test bins, previous studies provide no or inconclusive evidence of accruals management to beat the zero earnings benchmark. I conjecture that because managers focus on shares scaled earnings performance rather than market value scaled earnings performance, forming test bins based on EPS instead of E/MV is a better approach to detect accruals management. As expected, I find evidence of accruals management to beat the zero EPS benchmark. I also find that firms are more likely to manipulate accruals when managers have stronger incentives to beat the zero EPS benchmark. In addition, accruals of firms just beating the zero EPS benchmark are more likely to reverse the next year, resulting in relatively lower future earnings for firms just beating the benchmark compared with firms just missing the benchmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Tightwads and Spendthrifts

Consumers often behave differently than they would ideally like to behave. We propose that an anticipatory pain of paying drives “tightwads” to spend less than they would ideally like to spend. “Spendthrifts,” by contrast, experience too little pain of paying and typically spend more than they would ideally like to spend. This article introduces and validates the “spendthrift-tightwad” scale, a measure of individual differences in the pain of paying. Spending differences between tightwads and spendthrifts are greatest in situations that amplify the pain of paying and smallest in situations that diminish the pain of paying.
Incentives, wages, employment, and the division of labor in teams

We develop a theory of incentives, wages, and employment in the context of team production. A central insight is that specialization and division of labor not only improve productivity but also increase effort and the sensitivity of effort to incentives under moral hazard. We show that employment and incentives are complements for the principal when the positive effects of specialization and division of labor outweigh the increase in risk associated with additional employment and are substitutes otherwise. We provide new characterizations of the partnership, the firm, and the role of the budget-breaker that are quite different from the classical literature.
Patent Thickets, Licensing and Innovative Performance

We examine the relationship between fragmented intellectual property (IP) rights and innovative performance, taking into consideration the role played by in-licensing of IP. Controlling for a variety of firm and market characteristics, we find that firms facing more fragmented IP landscapes are more likely to report expenditures on in-licensing and for those firms that do incur license costs we find a weak positive association between licensing expenditure and fragmented IP rights in the relevant technology. We also observe a negative relationship between IP fragmentation and innovative performance, but only for firms that engage in in-licensing and only for product innovation. The relationship between fragmentation and innovative performance also depends on the size of a firm’s patent portfolio, which suggests an important strategic role for defensive patenting in the context of fragmented property rights.
Solidarity among the poor

Abstract We conduct a field experiment with low-income subjects in Dallas, Texas. We examine voluntary, informal risk sharing using a visual representation of the solidarity game developed for low-literacy populations. We find substantially more ‘fixed gift to loser’ behavior and less ‘egotistical’ behavior than in previous studies. Individuals who display ‘egotistical’ behavior are more risk tolerant. The amount of the conditional gifts is positively related to age, income, and connection to the community. However, trust and empathy, which are commonly discussed as drivers for solidarity, are not significantly related to the amount given.
Justifications, Excuses, and Affirmative Defenses

A defendant who admits to having committed an offense may nevertheless be acquitted if he can provide a legally cognizable justification or excuse for his actions by raising an affirmative defense. This article explains how affirmative defenses generate social benefits in the form of avoided unnecessary punishment. It then asks what kind of evidentiary standards must be used in order to balance these benefits against potential social costs arising from frivolous defense claims. It thereby provides an economic rationale for the uniformity across US jurisdictions in allocating the burden on the prosecution to prove the commission of the offense, as well as the variation across states in the standards of proof they use in determining the validity of affirmative defenses. The analysis also explains why mere assertions of undeterrability should not be considered as affirmative defenses.
Why Do REITs Repurchase Stock? Extricating the Effect of Managerial Signaling in Open Market Share Repurchase Announcements

This paper explores the effect of stock repurchase announcements on equity returns for publicly traded real estate investment trusts (REITs). In addition to providing analysis of the corporate deci...
Quantum algorithmic randomness

Quantum Martin-Lof randomness (q-MLR) for infinite qubit sequences was introduced by Nies and Scholz [J. Math. Phys. 60(9), 092201 (2019)]. We define a notion of quantum Solovay randomness, which is equivalent to q-MLR. The proof of this goes through a purely linear algebraic result about approximating density matrices by subspaces. We then show that random states form a convex set. Martin-Lof absolute continuity is shown to be a special case of q-MLR. Quantum Schnorr randomness is introduced. A quantum analog of the law of large numbers is shown to hold for quantum Schnorr random states.
L- Bodies are Novel RNA-Protein Condensates Driving RNA Transport in Xenopus Oocytes

RNP granules are membrane-less compartments within cells, formed by phase separation, that function as regulatory hubs for diverse biological processes. However, the mechanisms by which RNAs and proteins interact to promote RNP granule structure and function in vivo remain unclear. In Xenopus laevis oocytes, maternal mRNAs are transported as large RNPs to the vegetal hemisphere of the developing oocyte, where local translation is critical for proper embryonic patterning. Here, we demonstrate that vegetal transport RNPs represent a new class of cytoplasmic RNP granule, termed Localization-bodies (L-bodies). We show that L-bodies are multiphase RNP granules, containing a dynamic protein-containing phase surrounding a non-dynamic RNA-containing substructure. Our results support a role for RNA as a critical scaffold component within these RNP granules and suggest that cis-elements within localized mRNAs may drive subcellular RNA localization through control over phase behavior.
Sizing and Siting of Distributed Cloud Energy Storage Systems for a Shipboard Power System

The research on ship electrification is gaining renewed interest to take advantage of the numerous benefits offered by microgrids in the development of an all-electric ship (AES). A key aspect of the AES is in planning of cost effective and resilient shipboard power system (SPS). The integration of energy storage system (ESS) in SPS is found to help achieve this goal. An ESS can improve the fuel economy of diesel generators by regulating their load demand and provide emergency power promptly whenever necessary. This article proposes a planning strategy for sizing and siting of a special ESS integration configuration, distributed cloud ESS (DCESS), in the SPS. While the aim of DCESS sizing is minimizing the total cost of SPS, the objective of DCESS siting is to enhance the resilience of SPS. By stochastic programming, the optimal solution with respect to representative operating conditions and fault scenarios is obtained. The proposed DCESS configuration would facilitate easy power exchange among the electrical zones. A comparison with the conventional ESS configuration is presented and the benefit of DCESS configuration on resilience enhancement is demonstrated.
REAFFIRM: Model-Based Repair of Hybrid Systems for Improving Resiliency

Model-based design offers a promising approach for assisting developers to build reliable and secure cyber-physical systems in a systematic manner. In this methodology, a designer first constructs a model, with mathematically precise semantics, of the system under design, and performs extensive analysis with respect to correctness requirements before generating the implementation from the model. However, as new vulnerabilities are discovered, requirements evolve aimed at ensuring resiliency. There is currently a shortage of an inexpensive, automated software that can effectively repair the initial design, and a model-based system developer regularly needs to redesign and reimplement the system from scratch. In this paper, we propose a new methodology along with a MATLAB software called REAFFIRM to facilitate the model-based repair for improving the resiliency of cyber-physical systems. REAFFIRM takes as inputs 1) an original hybrid system modeled as a Simulink/Stateflow diagram, 2) a given resiliency pattern specified as a model transformation script, and 3) a safety requirement expressed as a Signal Temporal Logic formula, and outputs a repaired model which satisfies the requirement. The tool consists of two main modules, model transformation followed by model synthesis. While the latter component is built on top of the falsification tool Breach, to implement the former, we introduce a new model transformation language for hybrid systems, which we call HATL, to allow a designer to specify resiliency patterns. To evaluate the proposed approach, we use REAFFIRM to automatically synthesize the repaired models of four different case studies.
Polynomial Data Structure Lower Bounds in the Group Model

Proving super-logarithmic data structure lower bounds in the static group model has been a fundamental challenge in computational geometry since the early 80's. We prove a polynomial $(n^{\Omega(1)})$ lower bound for an explicit range counting problem of $n^{3}$ convex polygons in $\mathbb{R}^{2}$ (each with $n^{\tilde{O}(1)}$ facets/semialgebraic-complexity), against linear storage arithmetic data structures in the group model. Our construction and analysis are based on a combination of techniques in Diophantine approximation, pseudorandomness, and compressed sensing—in particular, on the existence and partial derandomization of optimal binary compressed sensing matrices in the polynomial sparsity regime $(k=n^{1-\delta})$ . As a byproduct, this establishes a (logarithmic) separation between compressed sensing matrices and the stronger RIP property.