cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Watching the Watchdog: China's State Compensation Law as a Remedy for Procuratorial Misconduct

In 1994, China enacted a comprehensive State Compensation Law (“SCL”). The SCL provides individuals and legal entities with the right to compensation in a limited number of situations in which they are harmed by illegal government acts. The purpose of the law is twofold: (1) to guarantee the rights of individuals and legal entities to obtain compensation and (2) to encourage state officials to exercise their powers lawfully. In theory, the SCL provides an important check on the conduct of procurators and other government officials. China's procurators serve dual roles as criminal prosecutors and as supervisors of the legal process. As supervisors of the legal process, procurators are largely responsible for policing themselves and preventing procuratorial misconduct. There are few external controls on procurators, and the controls that exist are weak and seldom applied in practice. This Comment examines the issue of whether the SCL will provide an adequate citizen-based check on procuratorial power. It argues that while the SCL should be considered a positive step towards promoting greater official accountability and protecting individual rights in China, limitations on the scope of the law, flaws in the procedures for state compensation, the limited liability of individual procurators for compensation expenses, and official resistance to the SCL's implementation severely limit the utility of the law as a remedy for procuratorial and other official misconduct.
REIT and REOC Systematic Risk Sensitivity

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Real Estate Operating Companies (REOCs) seem to have different systematic risk levels even though both invest almost exclusively in real estate-related ass...
Similarity in peer college preferences: New evidence from texas.

Abstract In this paper, I use survey data from high school students in Texas to examine the magnitude of peer correlation in college preferences and choices. In this survey, respondents (and their classmates) recorded their preferences for attending specific colleges, and a follow up survey recorded their college enrollment decisions. This paper uses this information to present the first empirical examination of whether individuals who report preferences for “popular” colleges are more likely to attend their preferred college. The rich data set allows the use of often unavailable information such as distance to college, and the construction of the “popularity” variable allows the use of school-level fixed effects. Results indicate that individuals with 10 percentage points more classmates with matching college preferences are 3 percentage points more likely to enroll in their preferred college.
Do sell-side analysts exhibit differential target price forecasting ability?

We examine the overall and individual analyst performance of 12-month-ahead target price forecasts over the 10 years from 2000 through 2009. Implied target price-based returns exceed actual returns by an average of 15 %, and absolute target price forecast errors average 45 %. At the end of the 12-month forecast horizon, only 38 % of target prices are met, but 64 % are met at some time during the forecast horizon. We find statistically significant but economically weak evidence of persistent differential abilities by sell-side analysts to forecast target prices. Target price announcement period return analyses indicate no differential market reactions to analysts’ target price revisions conditional on their recent target price forecast performance. This finding is consistent with the market understanding that analysts have, at best, limited abilities to persistently provide accurate target price forecasts.
Adultery by Doctor: Artificial Insemination, 1890–1945

In 1945, American judges decided the first court cases involving assisted conception. The challenges posed by assisted reproductive technologies to law and society made national news then, and have continued to do so into the twenty-first century. This article considers the first technique of assisted conception, artificial insemination, from the late nineteenth century to 1945, the period in which doctors and their patients worked to transform it from a curiosity into an accepted medical technique, a transformation that also changed a largely clandestine medical practice into one of the most pressing medicolegal problems of the mid-twentieth century. Doctors and lawyers alike worried whether insemination using donor sperm was adultery by doctor, producing illegitimate offspring. Drawing upon the legal and scientific literatures, case law, popular sources and medical archives, I argue that insemination became identified in medicine and law as a pressing problem at mid-century after decades of quiet use because of the increasing success of the technique, increasing patient demand, and increasing use -- three interrelated trends that led to increasing numbers of babies whose origins were “in the test tube.” In examining the history of a medical procedure becoming a legal problem, I also trace the development of a medical practice in the face of legal uncertainty and the shifting control of the medical profession over assisted conception. I argue that doctors modified the way they treated patients in response to perceived social and legal condemnation of artificial insemination, keeping tight control over all aspects of the procedure, but that doctors’ persistence in meeting patient demand for fertility treatments despite such condemnation helped make artificial insemination into a medicolegal problem. Once it became identified as a medicolegal problem, artificial insemination became the subject of a broad social discussion, in which medical voices did not receive automatic deference, and medical control was challenged.
Temperature, human health, and adaptation: A review of the empirical literature

Abstract This paper presents a survey of the empirical literature studying the relationship between health outcomes, temperature, and adaptation to temperature extremes. The objectives of the paper are to highlight the many remaining gaps in the empirical literature and to provide guidelines for improving the current Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) literature that seeks to incorporate human health and adaptation in its framework. I begin by presenting the conceptual and methodological issues associated with the measurement of the effect of temperature extremes on health, and the role of adaptation in possibly muting these effects. The main conclusion that emerges from the literature is that despite the wide variety of data sets and settings most studies find that temperature extremes lead to significant reductions in health, generally measured with excess mortality. Regarding the role of adaptation in mitigating the effects of extreme temperature on health, the available knowledge is limited, in part due to the few real-world data sets on adaptation behaviors. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of the currently available evidence for assessments of potential human health impacts of global climate change.
MANDATE THE ELECTRONIC RECORDING OF POLICE INTERROGATIONS

This article argues that mandatory electronic recording of police interrogation is a policy reform for which the overwhelming benefits and minimal costs can no longer be denied. By creating an objective and reviewable record, electronic recording promotes truth-finding in the criminal process, relegates "swearing contests" to the past, and saves scarce resources at multiple levels of the criminal justice system. Electronic recording of interrogations will not only benefit police and prosecutors by increasing the accuracy of confessions and convictions, and thus better protect public safety, but it will also reduce the number of police-induced false confessions and the wrongful convictions they cause.
Structural Constitutionalism as Counterterrorism

During the past decade, federal courts have adjudicated proliferating challenges to novel policy responses to terrorism. Judges often resolve the individual rights and statutory interpretation questions implicated in those controversies by deploying presumptions or rules of thumb derived from the Constitution’s Separation of Powers. These “structural constitutional presumptions” serve as heuristics to facilitate adjudication and to enable judicial bypass of difficult legal, policy, and factual questions. This Article challenges the use of such structural presumptions in counterterrorism cases. Drawing upon recent empirical research in political science, political psychology, and security studies, it demonstrates that abstract eighteenth-century Separation of Powers ideals do not translate into robust and empirically defensible generalizations for twenty-first-century security decisions. Structural constitutionalism thus cannot serve as a foundation for heuristics or shortcuts in the judicial consideration of new security measures. To the extent courts properly pass on the legality of counterterrorism policies, judges should rely instead on the ordinary tools of doctrine, statutory construction, and fact finding. The ensuing jurisprudence of counterterrorism would look much more like ordinary public law.
What Research With Stored Samples Teaches Us About Research With Human Subjects

There is widespread discussion concerning the safeguards appropriate for human research subjects. Less discussed is the fact that the safeguards one deems appropriate depend, in large part, on the model of research participation that one assumes. Therefore, to determine what safeguards are appropriate, it is necessary first to clarify the competing models of research participation. The ostensibly obscure debate over informed consent for research on stored biological samples is of particular interest in this regard because such research can involve varying subsets of the three central elements of research involvement. As a result, analysis of this debate provides an opportunity to identify the competing models of research participation. Based on this analysis, this paper describes a new model of research participation that is emerging, and considers its implications for clinical research.
A Note on the Geographic Interdependencies of Retail Market Areas

Central place theory describes an orderly hierarchy of places, with particular retail services developing for lower-ordered places as they reach a threshold. Yet it is likely that nearby areas could serve simultaneously as a source of demand and a source of competing supply for retail stores in a place. This paper contributes to the understanding of local economic development by modeling and estimating the geographic interdependence between a place and its neighboring areas. The simultaneous equation Tobit results suggest that such geographical interdependence exists for most retail industries, with spatial competition on the supply side being particularly important.
Price-based return comovement ☆

Abstract Similarly priced stocks move together. Stocks that undergo splits experience an increase in comovement with low-priced stocks and a decrease in their comovement with high-priced stocks. Price-based comovement is not explained by economic fundamentals, firm size, or changes in liquidity or information diffusion. The shift in comovement following splits is greater for large stocks, high-priced stocks, and when investor sentiment is high. In the full cross-section, price-based portfolios explain variation in stock-level returns after controlling for movements in the market and industry portfolios as well as portfolios based on size, book-to-market, transaction costs, and return momentum. The results suggest that investors categorize stocks based on price.
Cases 003 and 004 at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal: The Definition of “Most Responsible” Individuals According to International Criminal Law

The commission of genocide and other large-scale international crimes typically involves a multitude of perpetrators acting in concert. As such, the pursuit of individual criminal accountability following the perpetration of mass crimes has involved oft-controversial decisions of whom to prosecute. This challenge is exemplified by the ongoing controversy in Cambodia concerning the proper scope of prosecutions at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975-1979, as the Court’s third and fourth cases have languished amidst considerable controversy for years. This paper examines whether the presumed suspects in the two cases legally qualify as individuals “most responsible” for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge period in Cambodia by considering known information about each suspect in light of available international criminal law jurisprudence and argues that all suspects fall well within any reasonable legal definition of the term “most responsible” as each is implicated directly in extremely grave crimes. As such, it is concluded that there is no viable legal alternative available to bring the two cases to a close save for trial.
Efficient horizontal mergers: The effects of internal capital reallocation and organizational form

Abstract This paper analyzes the resource reallocation problem in merged firms when the merged firms have a choice to retain competition between the merging partners. We consider horizontal mergers between firms that differ only in their initial capital levels. When initial capital levels are unequal, evenly distributing total capital between merging partners improves the overall cost efficiency of the merged firm. In this case, the merger often results in the multidivisional structure (the M-form) rather than the conventional structure of completely integrating merging partners because, under the M-form, the profits from aggressive production expansion backed by efficiency-improving capital reallocation is higher than the profits from output contraction and rationalization under complete integration. Such a merger enhances market competition. On the contrary, mergers between identical firms always induce complete integration.
Rights, Constitutions and the Perils of Panglossianism

The HLA Hart Memorial Lecture, delivered at Oxford on 9 May 2017, addresses the related questions of conflicts between rights and interests, between rights and other rights, and between or among interests. Using the metaphor of Voltaire’s (in Candide) eternally optimistic Dr. Pangloss, the lecture and ensuing article identify a common Panglossian tendency of officials and commentators to understand (or distort) the facts about the empirical world so as to avoid conflicts with constraining rights, and to understand (and distort) the shape and definition of those constraining rights so as to avoid conflicts with interests. Such efforts may be understandable attempts by the commentators and officials to avoid cognitive dissonance and achieve cognitive consistency, but may nevertheless produce a warped understanding of the empirical world and of the contours of the rights that appropriately limit even the wise policies that officials may otherwise pursue.
The Finance and Growth Nexus Re-Examined: Do All Countries Benefit Equally?

A large theoretical and empirical literature has focused on the impact of financial deepening on economic growth throughout the world. This paper contributes to the literature by investigating whether this impact differs across regions and types of economy. Using a rich dataset for more than 130 countries for the period 1975-2005, cross-section and dynamic panel estimation results suggest that the beneficial effect of financial deepening on economic growth in fact displays measurable heterogeneity; it is generally smaller in oil exporting countries; in certain regions, such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and in lower-income countries. Further analysis suggests that these differences might be driven by regulatory/supervisory characteristics and related to differing performance on financial access for a given level of depth.
Sustaining society with ecological capitalism

The research question is how to achieve a prosperous environmentally sustainable global society. The objective is incompatible with economic policies of full employment or of uninhibited use of non-renewable resources. Politically attractive incentives of smaller taxes are identified as a way of changing the way capitalistic economies operates by introducing ecological forms of owning and controlling realty, firms and money. Ecological capitalism facilitates increases in prosperity even with de- growth from a declining and aging population. Crucially, it introduces localisation in citizen ownership and control of the means of production and exchange to provide a basic minimum dividend income for all citizens. A basic income allows full employment policies to be replaced with policies of fulfillment in employment and/or leisure. The cost of welfare and the size of government reduced from the tax reductions creates the political incentive for change. Localisation also enriches democracy with the power for citizens to nurture their host environment. Increased life expectancy with depopulation is already occurring in over twenty countries and this is expected to spread globally in the current century. This phenomenon with current environmental degradation creates an imperative for introducing ecological capitalism as an answer to the research question sooner rather than later.
Economic value in tranching of syndicated loans

Abstract This paper presents a theory to explain the economic value of tranching and provides empirical evidence to support the theoretical implications. I show that riskier firms are more likely to take loans with multiple tranches. Therefore, the average credit spread on a syndicated loan with multiple tranches is higher than that on a non-tranched loan. However, after accounting for the risk characteristics of a tranched loan, I show that borrowings that are a part of tranched loans have lower credit spreads than otherwise identical non-tranched loans. I also show that the benefits of tranching accrue primarily to riskier borrowers.
Parametric Insurance: Using Objective Measures to Address the Impacts of Natural Disasters and Climate Change

Parametric insurance is a promising alternative to traditional insurance when it comes to addressing catastrophic weather events and their impact on developing nations. Where available, traditional insurance is expensive and can involve protracted claim adjustment. Parametric insurance, on the other hand, provides coverage monies automatically upon the existence of certain objective weather-related parameters based upon a set formula. This model has been shown to work in the Caribbean Basin, but requires international cooperation in pooling, measuring, and managing risk. The immediate availability of emergency-response funds can be crucial in mitigating the impacts of climate change and related severe weather events.
Liability, regulation and policy in surgical innovation: the cutting edge of research and therapy.

Serious patient safety concerns are raised by limited oversight and the risks borne by patients as surgeons develop and refine novel procedures. These concerns must be balanced with the encouragement of medical progress. Surgical innovation can currently follow alternate legal pathways: (1) medical practice, involving tort liability and retrospective judgment of alleged medical malpractice, and (2) human subjects research, allowing prospective review and retrospective imposition of liability. Analysis of these pathways and a case study of surgical innovation leads to a recommendation for a tailored policy approach, including monitoring, local institutional oversight, and educational initiatives.
Information Acquisition in the Era of Fair Disclosure: An Application of Asymmetric Awareness

As the cost of financial information dissemination continues to decline, investors, firms, and regulators are gradually adopting the principle of fair disclosure, which requires no preferential public disclosure. We use a simple model to examine the impact of this change on information acquisition with two alternative assumptions: (1) Investors have symmetric awareness about the underlying uncertainties, or (2) this awareness is asymmetric among them. Under the first assumption, the change reduces information asymmetry among investors and induces acquisition of high-quality information. Under the second assumption, however, the reduction of information asymmetry may be limited, and information acquisition is either reduced or less efficient. Specifically, investors with high awareness may either acquire high-quality information at a higher cost or not acquire it; investors with low awareness only acquire low-quality information. The loss in overall information quality is greater when awareness asymmetry is moderate than when it is high or low; this causes information asymmetry between the insiders and outside investors as a whole. These results offer explanations for intriguing empirical findings regarding the effect of a recent accounting regulation (Regulation Fair Disclosure).
The economics of “Certaine Lewd and Ill-Disposed Persons”: Comment on Leeson

In The Invisible Hook, Peter T. Leeson explores “the hidden economics of pirates.” The implications of his work are many, and there are several clear ways in which scholars can build on his insights. First, exploring piracy helps us better understand the rent-seeking societies of mercantilist Europe. Second, public and private policy toward pirates helps us better understand the institutions and organizations that emerge in order to govern and manage common resources. Third, the nearly universal condemnation of pirates by religious authorities and political leaders as well as the association of pirates with the demonic and satanic suggests further directions for research into the interactions between ideology, politics, and economic institutions.
On the Accuracy and Cost of Numerical Integration in Several Variable

Identical numerical integration experiments are performed on a CYBER 205 and an IBM 3081 in order to gauge the relative performance of several methods of integration. The methods employed are the general methods of Gauss-Legendre, iterated Gauss-Legendre, Newton-Cotes, Romberg and Monte Carlo as well as three methods, due to Owen, Dutt, and Clark respectively, for integrating the normal density. The bi- and trivariate normal densities and four other functions are integrated; the latter four have integrals expressible in closed form and some of them can be parameterized to exhibit singularities or highly periodic behavior. The various Gauss-Legendre methods tend to be most accurate (when applied to the normal density they are even more accurate than the special purpose methods designed for the normal) and while they are not the fastest, they are at least competitive. In scalar mode the CYBER is about 2-6 times faster than the IBM 3081 and the speed advantage of vectorised to scalar mode ranges from 6 to 15...
Do Bank Relationships Affect the Firm's Underwriter Choice in the Corporate‐Bond Underwriting Market?

This paper studies the effect of bank relationships on underwriter choice in the U.S. corporate-bond underwriting market following the 1989 commercial-bank entry. I find that bank relationships have positive and significant effects on a firm's underwriter choice, over and above their effects on fees. This result is sharply stronger for junk-bond issuers and first-time issuers. I also find that there is a significant fee discount when there are relationships between firms and commercial banks. Finally, I find that serving as arranger of past loan transactions has the strongest effect on underwriter choice, whereas serving merely as participant has no effect.
An economic analysis of a drug-selling gang's finances

We analyze a unique data set detailing the financial activities of a drug-selling street gang on a monthly basis over a four-year period in the recent past. The data, originally compiled by the gang leader to aid in managing the organization, contain detailed information on both the sources of revenues (e.g. drug sales, extortion) and expenditrues (e.g. costs of drugs sold, weapons, tribute to the central gang organization, wages paid to various levels of the gang). Street-level drug dealing appears to be less lucrative than is generally though. We estimate the average wage in the organization to rise from roughly $6 per hour to $11 per hour over the time period studied. The distribution of wages, however, is extremely skewed. Gang leaders earn far more than they could in the legitimate sector, but the actual street-level dealers appear to earn less than the minimum wage throughout most of our sample, in spite of the substantial risks associated with such activities (the annual violent death rate in our sample is 0.07), There is some evidence consistent both with compensating differentials and efficiency wages. The markup on drugs suggests that the gang has substantial local market power. Gang wars appear to have an important strategic component: violence on another gang's turf shifts demand away from that area. The gang we observe responds to such attacks by pricing below marginal cost, suggesting either economic punishment for the rival gang or the presence of switching for users that makes market share maintenance valuable. We investigate a range of alternative methods for estimating the willingness of gang members to accept risks of death, all of which suggest that the implicit value that gang members place on their own lives is very low.
In Search of an International Human Right to Receive Information

Reasonable access to information has become a necessity for all nations and individuals. A state or regime which exercises coercion to bar access to information effectively controls and shapes the destiny of its people. This Article explores the international human right to receive information. This right is broadly conceived and includes the right to access specific types of data (for example, health or political information), as well as more general types of knowledge obtainable through education, training or employment. The right is especially important when considering the plight of women and other minorities, including ethnic populations denied access to cultural history and disenfranchised groups denied access to voting and other socio-political data. After discussing the relevant international legal documents, and methods for their effective enforcement, the Article turns to an examination of the so-called "cultural defense" which highlights the basic tension between state sovereignty and national self-determination, on the one hand, and individual freedom and international human rights, on the other. Women's oppression, for example, often is premised on religious, cultural or societal stigmas promoted by private parties. Violations may be tacitly sanctioned by the state or, in a practical sense, be beyond the power of a particular state to control. In cases such as these there may be only limited avenues available to effectuate change. The Article concludes with recommendations for stronger enforcement procedures and clearer guidelines to better protect and enforce an individual's right to receive information.
Imagination and Choice

Individual choice is a central feature of the psychological portrait drawn by nearly every established school of thought in modern American jurisprudence. Legal scholars are increasingly interested in piercing the conceptual surface of choice to inquire into its actual psychological workings. The study of choice in this emerging behavioral legal scholarship draws primarily from cognitive psychology. This article argues that this important inquiry into choice should be broadened to include modern psychoanalytic ideas about imagination. An example of the importance of a psychoanalytic perspective on imagination is provided by the law governing the enforceability of prenuptial agreements. As this discussion illustrates, psychoanalytic psychology, in conjunction with research from the cognitive sciences, provides a valuable framework for examining assumptions about individual choice in law.
Structural Change in Meat Demand: The End of the "Chicken Little" Era

Meat consumption patterns have changed in the United States. A cursory inspection of the disappearance statistics for meat in the United States reveals that generally, the consumption of red meats has decreased or remained constant while the consumption of poultry and other meats has increased. Economists have had only modest success in developing cogent explanations for these changed consumption patterns, and a "chicken little" psychology has come to dominate much of the recent discourse. Arguments, for the most part not based on demand theory, have been put forth that recent consumption changes cannot be explained by relative prices, income, and simple demographic effects. Conjecture about lifestyles, health concerns, consumer attitudes toward red meats, and other factors suggest implicit prophesy of doom for the beef industry. Systematic analyses of consumption changes and assessments of the theory are needed to address these largely unsupported suppositions.
Identifying the Structural Correlates of African American Killings What Can We Learn From Data Disaggregation

The present study extends the understanding of the structural determinants of African American killings by analyzing the impact of key socioeconomic and demographic factors on disaggregated Black homicide rates in St. Louis neighborhoods. The findings reveal that (a) there is significant variation within Black homicides in terms of motive, victim and offender characteristics, victim-offender relationship, and type of death; (b) concentrated disadvantage is significantly associated with some but not all types of Black killings; and (c) residential instability is not significantly related to most Black killings but has a small negative effect on gang homicide. The findings reinforce the necessity of disaggregating homicide rates to understand the race-violence relationship. The theoretical, methodological, and policy implications of the findings are discussed.
Following Trendsetters: Collective Decisions in Online Social Networks

The convenience of sharing information online led to a tremendous amount of information available to Web users. The present work examines how people process information in online social networks, using Digg as an example. In Digg, users submit and vote for news stories they like, and the collective decisions of the users determine which news stories become prominent. How do Digg users scan the sea of submissions for stories they like? The results from the statistical analyses and computer simulations of Digg users' voting behavior reveal that users filter out stories using the choices of trendsetters, rather than using the majority decisions. Stories that trendsetters like attract many followers and gain vast popularity.
The Military Response to Criminal Violent Extremist Groups: Aligning Use of Force Presumptions with Threat Reality

In 1949, the inclusion of Common Article 3 to the four Geneva Conventions represented a significant advance in the regulation of armed hostilities. That article extended international humanitarian law to the realm of non-international armed conflicts. At that time, these conflicts were considered synonymous with intrastate conflicts such as civil wars. While the scope of applicability of Common Article 3 to internal threats and disturbances has witnessed what is arguably a significant evolution since that time, it is unclear whether and when this baseline humanitarian obligation – and the broader customary laws and customs of war applicable to non-international armed conflicts once this article is triggered – are applicable when a state confronts organised criminal gangs who possess a capability to engage in violence and wreak havoc that rivals, if not exceeds, that of traditional insurgent threats. Much of this uncertainty derives from the fact that the response to criminal disturbances appears to have been specifically excluded from situations triggering Common Article 3 when it was adopted in 1949. However, it is unlikely that the drafters of the Conventions at that time anticipated the nature of organised criminal gangs and the destabilising effect these groups have today in many areas of the world. The nature of this threat has resulted in the increasingly common utilisation of regular military forces to restore government control in areas in which they operate. This results in the use of force and the exercise of incapacitation powers that far exceed normal law enforcement response authority. It is therefore the thesis of this article that when the nature of these threats exceeds the normal law enforcement response authority and compels the state to resort to regular military force to restore order, international humanitarian law, or the law of armed conflict, provides the only viable legal regulatory framework for such operations. However, it is also the view of the authors that the risk of excess of authority inherent in this legal framework necessitates a carefully tailored package of rules of engagement to mitigate the risk that the effort to restore order will result in the unjustified deprivation of life, liberty and property.
Revisiting the question – Does corporate headquarters location matter for stock returns?

We show that the ordinary least squares applied to right-hand-side variables consisting of averages of neighbouring observations such as stock returns representing a portfolio of firms in the same location or industry result in biased and inconsistent estimates. A maximum likelihood estimation procedure that will produce consistent estimates for this type of model is set forth. In addition, we show how to correctly interpret the maximum likelihood parameter estimates.
Is Experimentation Invariant to Group Size? A Laboratory Analysis of Innovation Contests

Abstract This paper uses a laboratory experiment to investigate the role of group size in an innovation contest. Subjects compete in a discrete time innovation contest, based on Halac, Kartik, and Liu (2017), where subjects, at the start of each period, are informed of the aggregate number of innovation attempts. I compare two innovation contests, a two-person and four-person contest, that only differ by contest size and have the same probability of obtaining an innovation in equilibrium. The four-person contest results in more innovations and induces more aggregate innovation attempts than the two-person contest. However, there is some evidence that the two-person contest induces more innovation attempts from an individual than the four-person contest.
Can South Asia adopt a common currency

The paper examines if the seven South Asian countries satisfy the criteria to form an optimal currency area. The empirical part of the paper reveals some positive attributes (such as the existence of positive shocks for major economies like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka). The paper provides geo-political reasoning for more economic cooperation among the countries, suggesting areas where cooperation could be mutually beneficial to the economies. This paper argues that the benefits of a common currency would accrue from the peace that economic integration would bring between India and Pakistan. The paper also compares this region with Western Europe and Southeast Asia.
Does the Long–run PPP Hypothesis Hold for Africa? Evidence from a Panel Cointegration Study

The long–run purchasing power parity (PPP) concept is empirically studied using the parallel market exchange rates of 17 African countries and employing the panel cointegration method. This approach is particularly useful when analysing African countries, which do not have long time–series. This paper presents results that support the weak–form of the long–run PPP hypothesis in Africa, which does not require a homogeneity restriction on prices.
Harnessing Reciprocity to Promote Cooperation and the Provisioning of Public Goods

How can we maximize the common good? This is a central organizing question of public policy design, across political parties and ideologies. The answer typically involves the provisioning of public goods such as fresh air, national defense, and knowledge. Public goods are costly to produce but benefit everyone, thus creating a social dilemma: Individual and collective interests are in tension. Although individuals may want a public good to be produced, they typically would prefer not to be the ones who have to pay for it. Understanding how to motivate individuals to pay these costs is therefore of great importance for policy makers. Research provides advice on how to promote this type of “cooperative” behavior. Synthesizing a large body of research demonstrates the power of “reciprocity” for inducing cooperation: When others know that you have helped them, or acted to benefit the greater good, they are often more likely to reciprocate and help you in turn. Several conclusions stem from this line of thinki...
The Place of Covert Surveillance in Democratic Societies: A Comparative Study of the United States and Germany

My study of undercover policing explores the ways in which democratic legal systems change when they legalize highly contested police practices that have long been quietly tolerated and accorded minimal scrutiny. Undercover policing is a prime of example of such a practice. It has long been subject to remarkably little legislative oversight and systematic regulation in the United States and Western Europe. It exists in a twilight of legality—a necessary evil, but one inviting anxieties about its legitimacy and consonance with the rule of law. Under pressure from the European Court of Human Rights, Germany (along with other Western European countries) has attempted to regulate covert operations in a more systematic fashion. The German experience examined in my article suggests how difficult it is to tame and legitimate a constantly changing and normatively contested practice such as undercover policing. The article contrasts German attempts to create an explicit legal basis for this power –and a comprehensive regulatory system – with American willingness to leave covert practices largely unregulated. The article focuses on the consequences of these divergent approaches for the legitimacy of covert practices. German legal and administrative reforms succeeded in improving legitimacy along some dimensions while undermining it along others, and, indeed, introducing new bases on which the legitimacy of undercover police work is subject to challenge. In the United States, by contrast, law enforcement agencies have succeeded in defusing a variety of reform initiatives through internal reforms, with little legislative or judicial supervision. As a result, many problems of legitimacy persist – with little visibility. American challenges to the legitimacy of covert tactics now focus less on criminal cases than on the use of such tactics in domestic intelligence investigation. My analysis of German covert policing rests on 89 field interviews that I conducted between 2002 and 2004 with state and federal police officials, undercover agents, training and supervisory officials, control officers, prosecutors, and judges in fifteen of the sixteen German states. I also compared evidence from interviews with a variety of written sources, including ministry guidelines, training materials, prosecutors’ memoranda, judicial opinions, scholarly criticism, and news stories. The open-ended, qualitative field interviews are at the heart of the project. They help to uncover the principles animating otherwise shadowy German covert operations. And they illustrate the dilemmas inherent in the practices; the obstacles to reform; and the different tradeoffs which the American and German regulatory systems have made in securing the legitimacy of these practices.
Chasing a Moving Target: Exploitation and Exploration in Dynamic Environments

A common justification for organizational change is that the circumstances in which the organization finds itself have changed, thereby eroding the value of utilizing existing knowledge. On the surface, the claim that organizations should adapt by generating new knowledge seems obvious and compelling. However, this standard wisdom overlooks the possibility that the reward to generating new knowledge may itself be eroded if change is an ongoing property of the environment. This observation in turn suggests that environmental change is not a self-evident call for strategies of greater exploration. Indeed, under some conditions the appropriate response to environmental change is a renewed focus on exploiting existing knowledge and opportunities. We develop a computational model based on the canonical multiarmed bandit formulation of exploration and exploitation. We endeavor to understand the mechanisms by which environmental change acts to make purposeful efforts at organizational adaptation less (or more) valuable. This paper was accepted by Jesper Sorensen, organizations.
Time for a reality check: Is business willing to support a smart mix of complementary regulation in private governance?

In recent years, scholars and policymakers have become interested in the idea of a smart mix of voluntary and regulatory measures in private governance. If public and private actors are to share th...
Socially optimal coordination : characterization and policy implications

In recent years there has been a growing interest in macro models with heterogeneity in information and complementarity in actions. These models deliver promising positive properties, such as heightened inertia and volatility. But they also raise important normative questions, such as whether the heightened inertia and volatility are socially undesirable, whether there is room for policies that correct the way agents use information in equilibrium, and what are the wel
Judicial Review and the Limits of Arbitral Authority: Lessons from the Law of Contract

Arbitration may be conceptualized either as a species of adjudication or as a species of contract. In the former model, the arbitrator is a private judge, hired by the parties but tasked with performing the same sorts of functions that public judges normally perform: finding facts and applying predetermined rules (normally legal rules) to those facts in order to assign rights and obligations. In the latter model, the arbitrator is a "contract reader," serving as the parties' agent designated by them in advance to supply the terms of their agreement that they did not foresee and that are necessary to resolve a conflict between them. Scholars concerned with the expansion of binding contractual arbitration into public law areas such as employment discrimination have argued that arbitration should be subject to the requirements of due process. Application of due process to arbitration would almost certainly require some degree of judicial oversight beyond the minimal judicial review currently allowed. Courts have resisted those calls, in part by invoking the contractarian model of arbitration. Courts insist that arbitration is a purely private matter and that no state action is involved because court enforcement of arbitral awards is equivalent to court enforcement of private contracts generally. In this article, I argue that rigorous application of the contractarian model would require significantly greater judicial review of arbitral awards than courts have acknowledged. Under the contractarian model, the award is the equivalent of a contract term agreed upon by the parties ex ante. When an arbitrator issues an award that denies a claimant rights the claimant could have enforced in court, the claimant can be understood to have waived its rights with respect to that claim. That waiver functions, in effect, like an exculpatory contract. Basic principles of contract law hold exculpatory contracts unenforceable in many areas, including intentional torts and the provision of medical services, in which arbitration is most controversial. I contend that these principles compel heightened judicial review of arbitral awards in those areas.
Anger at Angry Jurors

This article reviews the continuing relevance of the play, Twelve Angry Men, for contemporary jury studies. The author argues that instances of hung juries, jury nullification, and jury misconduct are exaggerated in popular accounts of the jury
Inverse problems for Jacobi operators with mixed spectral data

We consider semi-infinite Jacobi matrices with discrete spectrum. We prove that a Jacobi operator can be uniquely recovered from one spectrum and subsets of another spectrum and norming constants c...
Technology Shocks, Statistical Models, and The Great Moderation

In this paper we compare the cyclical features implied by an RBC model with two technology shocks under several statistical specifications for the stochastic processes governing technological change. We conclude that while a trend-stationary model accounts better for the observed volatilities, a dierence-station ary model does a relatively better job of accounting for the correlation of the variables of interest with output. We also explore some counterfactuals to assess the ability of our model to replicate the volatility slowdown of the mid 1980s. First, we conclude that the stochastic growth model outperforms the deterministic growth model in accounting for the Great Moderation. Finally, we obtain that even though the neutral technology shock is the main driving force in the volatility slowdown, allowing for a larger financial flexibility in the form of a smaller volatility for the investment-specific innovation improves the ability of our model to account for the magnitude of the Great Moderation.
Why Do Countries Commit to Human Rights Treaties

This article examines states' decisions to commit to human rights treaties. It argues that the effect of a treaty on a state—and hence the state's willingness to commit to it—is largely determined by the domestic enforcement of the treaty and the treaty's collateral consequences. These broad claims give rise to several specific predictions. For example, states with less democratic institutions will be no less likely to commit to human rights treaties if they have poor human rights records, because there is little prospect that the treaties will be enforced. Conversely, states with more democratic institutions will be less likely to commit to human rights treaties if they have poor human rights records—precisely because treaties are likely to lead to changes in behavior. These predictions are tested by examining the practices of more than 160 countries over several decades.