cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Motives for household private transfers in Burkina Faso

Abstract Resource transfers among households have received considerable interest among economists in recent years. Two of the main reasons for the surge of interest in household transfers are the information on human nature conveyed by transfer behavior and the implication on income redistribution policy that private transfer might have. Empirical studies, however, provide mixed results on transfer behavior. This is because previous inquiries were confronted with several estimation issues and have focused on data from developed countries where private transfers are already small. This paper contributes to the literature on transfer behavior by using a multifaceted econometric approach to examine the motives of household transfers in Burkina, a low-income country with a well-documented tradition of gift exchanges. The findings suggest that risk sharing is not central to transfers. Altruistic transfers are apparent for the middle income class, but not at low income level. The evidence implies that crowding out may be minimal at low income level, suggesting that public transfers targeting poor households may be effective.
Comparing Wealth Effects: The Stock Market Versus the Housing Market

We examine the link between increases in housing wealth, financial wealth, and consumer spending. We rely upon a panel of 14 countries observed annually for various periods during the past 25 years and a panel of U.S. states observed quarterly during the 1980s and 1990s. We impute the aggregate value of owner-occupied housing, the value of financial assets, and measures of aggregate consumption for each of the geographic units over time. We estimate regressions relating consumption to income and wealth measures, finding a statistically significant and rather large effect of housing wealth upon household consumption.
Gambling by auctions

Abstract We provide theoretical and empirical analysis of a selling mechanism used by an Internet web-site that combines important features of auctions and gambling. This is the first analysis of such a selling mechanism, which provides insights into how the two kinds of behavior might be related in real life. The winner of the object is the bidder with the highest bid not submitted by any other bidder. In the equilibrium of our game theoretical model, each bid made with positive probability yields the same probability of winning. Bidders are more likely to submit higher bids, and the bid distribution does not depend on the value of the object or the highest bid allowed if one controls for the number of bidders. Most of these key theoretical predictions are confirmed by the data.
Asset Sales, Investment Opportunities, and the Use of Proceeds

This study examines the allocation of cash proceeds following 400 subsidiary sales between 1990 and 1998. Retention probabilities are increasing in the divesting firm's contemporaneous growth opportunities and expected investment. Retaining firms, however, also systematically overinvest relative to an industry benchmark. Shareholder returns to retention decisions are positively correlated with growth opportunities and benchmarked investment, but negatively correlated with benchmarked investment for firms with poor growth opportunities. Shareholder returns to debt distributions are increasing in industry-benchmarked leverage. Overall, the results of this study cohere with the hypothesized trade-off between the investment efficiencies associated with retained proceeds and the agency costs of managerial discretion and debt. SALES OF LARGE CORPORATE SUBSIDIARIES became an increasingly common form of business restructuring by U.S. corporations through the decade of the 1990s. The Securities Data Corporation (SDC) reports that the number of large subsidiary sales, valued at $75 million or more, increased steadily from 127 transactions completed in 1990, to 535 transactions completed in 1998. Unlike other divestiture methods, such as asset spinoffs and carveouts involving the distribution of proceeds to a subsidiary, a divesting firm typically receives remuneration at the effective date of a sale. Often this compensation includes a substantial cash component. For example, average cash compensation was consistently in excess of 80% of transaction value in large subsidiary sales completed between 1990 and 1998. In this sense, asset sales rarely result in an immediate reduction in assets, but often substantially increase liquidity for the divesting firm. This observation is significant from a shareholder's perspective because, similar to free cash flow from operations, cash proceeds from a sale can be reallocated to the unfunded projects of the divesting firm, albeit at the discretion of management. The extant literature cites countervailing costs and benefits associated with the retention of sale proceeds for subsequent investment by a divesting firm. On the one hand, capital market frictions make raising external capital costly
MERGER, EASE OF ENTRY AND ENTRY DETERRENCE IN A DYNAMIC MODEL

We analyze whether ease and speed of entry can mitigate the anti-competititve effects of a merger, in a dynamic model of endogenous merger. In our model, if new firms can enter quickly, it is more likely that merger is motivated by efficiency as opposed to increased market power. Thus, there is less reason to challenge the merger. On the other hand, if entry of new firms becomes less costly, firms may have a stronger incentive to monopolize the industry through horizontal merger. We also show that when the incumbent can engage in entry deterrence activities, anti-merger policy can decrease welfare.
Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War †

Assassinations are a persistent feature of the political landscape. Using a new dataset of assassination attempts on all world leaders from 1875 to 2004, we exploit inherent randomness in the success or failure of assassination attempts to identify the effects of assassination. We find that, on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy. We also find that assassinations affect the intensity of small-scale conflicts. The results document a contemporary source of institutional change, inform theories of conflict, and show that small sources of randomness can have a pronounced effect on history.
Once Bitten, Twice Shy: The Relation between Outcomes of Earnings Guidance and Management Guidance Strategy

ABSTRACT: We examine how management quarterly guidance strategy is affected by various outcomes from previously issued guidance. We find that managers are less likely to provide quarterly earnings guidance for a given year when past management forecasts have been overly optimistic, when past forecasts were unsuccessful at influencing analysts’ expectations, when past forecasts failed to reduce information asymmetry, and when past forecasts resulted in earnings disappointments. For firms that continue to give guidance, adverse prior outcomes also affect the precision of future guidance and the number of quarters within a year for which they give guidance.
Fiber to the premise (FTTP) industry structure: implications of a wholesale-retail split

In some communities, we observe a single vertically integrated FTTP network owner and service provider that can either be profit maximizing or welfare maximizing. In other cases, either out of choice or regulation, we observe the network owner (the wholesaler) leasing facilities to competing service providers (retailers), who then provide voice, video and data service over the shared network (wholesale-retail split). The network owner can either wholesale dark fiber or "lit" transport (and can be profit maximizing or welfare maximizing). In this paper, using a simplified model where subscribers always buy voice service and choose between either broadband data service or video service or the video and data bundle, we show that such a wholesale-retail split interferes with the ability of the network owner to price discriminate. We conclude that for a bivariate correlated normal distribution of willingness to pay for data and video services, the supply side economics of FTTP (i.e., the fact that the marginal cost of provisioning the bundle is less than the sum of the marginal costs of provisioning the individual services) ensures that the bulk of the extractable economic surplus resides in the bundle and not in the individual services. Since the wholesale-retail split interferes with wholesaler's ability to extract economic surplus only from an individual service (video service) and not from the bundle, the implications (the difference between the profits of a profit maximizing wholesaler and a profit maximizing vertically integrated entity) are modest, at best. Our analysis also shows that municipalities or communities that build out FTTP and choose to be wholesalers (i) can realize sustainable prices, (ii) are likely to create greater welfare and (iii) are just as likely to recover costs (vis-a-vis vertically integrated entities)
The Unsolved Riddle of International Constitutionalism

The extremely diverse contributions present in the volume edited by Nicholas Tsagourias, Transnational Constitutionalism: International Law and European Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 377) are contextualized through an exploration of some of the different strands of international legal doctrine that have been making use of the constitutionalist vernacular in recent years. These strands include among others, the growth in European Union-related constitutionalist discourse and the emergence of a transnational comparative legal realm at the cross-roads of the European and the international spheres; the historical lineage and the contemporary appeal of the constitutional vernacular in the field of international organizations; and the phenomenon of the fragmentation of international law along with the upholding, in reaction to that fragmentation, of a hierarchy of international legal norms. It also includes an examination of the emergence of alternative vocabularies that sustain a “fragmented/societal” model of constitutionalism on the basis of systems-theory as well as an examination of a constitutionalist value ridden perspective of the international legal order that, in mirroring recent developments, attempts to “restate” a classic teleologically conceived narrative of progress without yet leaving the realm of positivism. This article, which confronts “in fine” the “international community school” with its critics, does not aim to provide a complete deconstructed genealogy of each converging strand of doctrine that one might locate behind the current appeal of constitutionalist talk at the dawn of a post-hegemonic era. Yet it is hoped that it might serve as a reminder of the multifaceted factors that lie behind the contemporary renewal of the international constitutionalist arena and, thus, help to strengthen the latter’s potential as a benchmark for diagnosing the legitimacy deficit(s) of international law.
Fixing Failed States

Failed states pose one of the deepest challenges to American national security and international peace and stability. Finding a comprehensive and effective solution to the challenges of terrorism, human rights violations, or poverty and economic development requires some understanding of how to restore failed states. The response of the United States and its allies has remained the same: to rebuild the institutions of state control, and, if lucky, to plant a working democracy and a market economy within existing state borders. But many international law scholars remain openly dubious about the ability of states to rebuild – the problem is not failed states but the nation-state as the primary actor in international relations. This paper argues that both American and U.N policy on the one hand, and the conventional academic wisdom on the other hand, are mistaken. Building a normal nation-state with full sovereignty on every territory in the world, without changing any borders, fails to understand why some states are failing in the first place. Viable states simply do not align with the borders recognized by the United Nations or created during the period of rapid decolonization in the decades after World War II. Academics who see in failed states the rise of alternatives to the nation-state have no practical solutions that do not depend on the political, economic, and military resources of strong nation-states. Without them, supra-national governments, trusteeships, or non-governmental organizations have shown little ability to fix failed states. This paper argues that powerful nations can help by performing the more modest role of promoting and guaranteeing power-sharing agreements between competing groups within failed states. It concludes by illustrating the thesis with the outcome of the surge in Iraq.
The Saucier Qualified Immunity Experiment: An Empirical Analysis

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the impact of the approach to qualified immunity that the Supreme Court first suggested in Siegert v. Gilley and later made mandatory in Saucier v. Katz. That approach dictates that lower courts should resolve constitutional issues prior to deciding whether a government official is shielded from liability by qualified immunity. A primary justification for this sequencing approach is the notion that where courts decide that constitutional law is not clearly established, and thus qualified immunity is available, future defendants can also escape liability for the same behavior. But the empirical analysis provided in this paper indicates that courts forced to resolve constitutional questions that, prior to Siegert and Saucier, they would have avoided, almost uniformly hold that no constitutional violation has occurred. To the extent that Siegert and Saucier have led to an increase in the articulation of constitutional law, therefore, this increase has solely benefited defendant government officers.Advances in cognitive psychology suggest an explanation for courts' reluctance to hold that a constitutional violation has occurred yet then grant qualified immunity. Where the law is not clearly established, and thus a defendant will escape liability in any case, it may create cognitive dissonance to hold that a plaintiff's constitutional rights were violated. In anticipation of the Supreme Court's revisitation of the sequencing approach in Pearson v. Callahan, this paper suggests that sequencing should not be mandatory so that judges will not be forced to decide constitutional questions against this backdrop of dissonance.
Blind Dates: When Should the Statute of Limitations Begin to Run on a Method-of-Execution Challenge?

This Article is the first to take a comprehensive look at the issue of statute-of-limitations accrual in method-of-execution cases. In other words, when does the clock start ticking on a death row inmate's right to challenge the way in which the state intends to execute him? Most circuit courts have held that method-of-execution challenges accrue at the completion of the direct appeal process. This means that death row inmates in these jurisdictions must file method-of-execution challenges years, and sometimes even decades, before an actual execution is scheduled. Although this approach has been the subject of much criticism, even the dissenting view would tie the accrual date to a particular stage of the death row inmate's appeals. This Article examines whether either rule-the majority's or the dissenters '-makes sense in light of the nature of method-of-execution Copyright @ 2011 by Ty Alper. t Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Death Penalty Clinic, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Many thanks for their advice and comments to Ginger Anders, Eric Berger, Emily Borgen, Deborah Denno, Robert Jones, Christopher Lasch, Megan McCracken, Jennifer Moreno, Melissa Murray, Alex Reinert, Jason Schultz, Elisabeth Semel, Giovanna Shay, David Sklansky, Kate Weisburd, and Chuck Weisselberg, as well as participants in the Berkeley Law faculty colloquium and the Berkeley Law junior faculty working group. Carolina Rodriguez (Berkeley Law Class of 2010) and Ginamarie Caya (Berkeley Law Class of 2011) provided me with excellent research assistance. As always, I am grateful for the guidance of Jason Brand, Jon Givner, and Ned Smock. I share any remaining errors with J.D. King. 866 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 60:865 challenges and the purposes of statutes of limitations. It concludes that, rather than using the appellate and postconviction process as a guide in determining when an unrelated challenge to the state's method of execution should accrue, courts should treat method-ofexecution claims as the unique tort claims that they are and should tie accrual to the future constitutional injury that has yet to occur. The approach proposed in this Article would allow death row inmates with meritorious claims to have their days in court. And it is more faithful to the historical purposes of statutes of limitations, more practical to administer, and no less consistent with the desire expressed by many courts to preclude dilatory lawsuits.
Does Mandatory Adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards in the European Union Reduce the Cost of Equity Capital

ABSTRACT: This study examines whether the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in the European Union (EU) in 2005 reduces the cost of equity capital. Using a sample of 6,456 firm‐year observations of 1,084 EU firms during the 1995 to 2006 period, I find evidence that, on average, the IFRS mandate significantly reduces the cost of equity for mandatory adopters by 47 basis points. I also find that this reduction is present only in countries with strong legal enforcement, and that increased disclosure and enhanced information comparability are two mechanisms behind the cost of equity reduction. Taken together, these findings suggest that while mandatory IFRS adoption significantly lowers firms' cost of equity, the effects depend on the strength of the countries' legal enforcement.
Collective action in an asymmetric world

Abstract A central authority possessing tax and expenditure responsibilities can readily provide an efficient level of a public good. Absent a central authority, voluntary arrangements must replace coercive ones, and significant under-provision must be expected. International public goods are particularly challenging due to the substantial asymmetries among nations. Small-interest nations have strong incentives to ride cheaply. Our empirical results reveal cheap riding intentions in providing for climate change mitigation, a critical international public good. The evidence is provided by individual nations' Intended Nationally Determined Contributions voluntarily pledged for the Paris Climate Change Conference. We find that larger nations made much larger pledges in proportion to both their Gross National Incomes and their historical emissions. Implications for the Nordhaus Climate Club and carbon-tax proposals are discussed. To achieve Pareto optimality despite disparate cheap-riding incentives, we propose the Cheap-Riding Efficient equilibrium. That solution takes the Nash equilibrium as a base point, and then applies the principles of either the Nash Bargaining solution or the Lindahl equilibrium to proceed to the Pareto frontier.
Punitive penal preferences and support for welfare: Applying the ‘governance of social marginality’ thesis to the individual level

The individual has, until recently, been generally excluded from law and society explorations of the twin increases in penal and welfare punitiveness. However, public opinion enjoys an implicit rol...
Experience-Based and Description-Based Perceptions of Long-Term Risk: Why Global Warming does not Scare us (Yet)

It should come as no surprise that the governments and citizenries of many countries show little concern about climate change and its consequences. Behavioral decision research over the last 30 years provides a series of lessons about the importance of affect in perceptions of risk and in decisions to take actions that reduce or manage perceived risks. Evidence from a range of domains suggests that worry drives risk management decisions. When people fail to be alarmed about a risk or hazard, they do not take precautions. Recent personal experience strongly influences the evaluation of a risky option. Low-probability events generate less concern than their probability warrants on average, but more concern than they deserve in those rare instances when they do occur. Personal experience with noticeable and serious consequences of global warming is still rare in many regions of the world. When people base their decisions on statistical descriptions about a hazard provided by others, characteristics of the hazard identified as psychological risk dimensions predict differences in alarm or worry across different classes of risk. The time-delayed, abstract, and often statistical nature of the risks of global warming does not evoke strong visceral reactions. These results suggest that we should find ways to evoke visceral reactions towards the risk of global warming, perhaps by simulations of its concrete future consequences for people's home or other regions they visit or value. Increased concern about global warming needs to solicited carefully, however, to prevent a decrease in concern about other relevant risks. The generation of worry or concern about global warming may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for desirable or appropriate protective or mitigating behavior on part of the general public.
Eligible Patent Matter—Gender Analysis of Patent Law: International and Comparative Perspectives

This article challenges our patent and other intellectual property systems and doctrine to be conscious of built-in biases and disparate impacts on gender in an effort to be more conducive to and welcoming of female participation. Looking at the realities of gendered invention from a global perspective and through a feminist lens, the article argues that the very framework underlying the discourse about intellectual property is lacking a focus on the imbalance between genders and the promotion of gender equality. In "Eligible Patent Matter-Gender Analysis of Patent Law: International and Comparative Perspectives", the article recognizes the minuscule percentage of women as patent inventors who own the property rights of their inventions, but focuses the analysis on why this is so. The article uses feminist and critical legal theory to argue that patent laws themselves are neither neutral nor objective. The article hones in on the definitions of "patentable inventions" and "inventor" as tending to exclude women. The article also explores several different definitional frameworks, including the narrow international definition provided by the TRIPS agreement adopted by many countries including Israel, and the broader and more flexible approach utilized by United States courts. The article argues that the globally prevalent rationale of promoting welfare only to narrow technological inventions discriminates against a majority of women who are responsible for the welfare achieved through inventions in other non-technical and "non-machine" fields. The article calls for a global rethinking of the definitional approach used and an expansion of the definition of patentable inventions, noting that recognition of patent protection for female innovation will encourage progress and development. The article posits that the law as it stands creates and perpetuates social gaps, but can be corrected if the criteria are rewritten to include women's experiences and grant them equal value through international treaties. Gender should be central to international intellectual property discourse, not discussed at the margins.
The Eye Alone Is the Judge: Images and Design Patents

Design patents are an area of intellectual property law focused entirely on the visual, unlike copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, or the various sui generis protections that have occasionally been enacted for specific types of innovation. Judges and lawyers in general are highly uncomfortable with images, yet design patents force direct legal engagement with images. This short piece offers an outsider’s view of what design patent law has to say about the use of images as legal tools, why tests for design patent infringement are likely to stay unsatisfactory, and what lessons other fields of intellectual property, specifically copyright, might take from design patent.
BANK FINANCING AND FIRM GROWTH: EVIDENCE FROM TRANSITION ECONOMIES

We examine the relation between financing patterns and firm growth in transition economies. Using a survey data set covering more than 20,000 firms in 30 Eastern European and Central Asian countries from 2002 to 2014, we find that firms using formal bank finance grow faster than those financed by informal sources. Our results hold after controlling for firm characteristics, country economic development, and potential endogeneity. The effect of bank finance on firm growth is more pronounced in nonâ€ OECD than OECD countries, indicating the overwhelming importance of bank finance in countries with less developed institutions.
AN ANALYSIS OF PRIVATE SCHOOL CLOSINGS

Abstract We add to the small literature on private school supply by exploring exits of K–12 private schools. We find that the closure of private schools is not an infrequent event and use national survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics to study closures of private schools. We assume that the probability of an exit is a function of excess supply of private schools over demand as well as of the school's characteristics, such as age, size, and religious affiliation. Our empirical results generally support the implications of the model.
Tax policy and business fixed investment in the United States

Abstract This paper derives and estimates models of nonresidential investment behavior in which current and future tax conditions directly affect the incentive to invest. The estimates suggest that taxes have played an independent role in affecting postwar U.S. investment behavior, particularly for investment in machinery and equipment. In addition, the paper develops a method for assessing the impact of tax policy on the volatility of investment when such policy is endogenous. Illustrative calculations using this technique, based on the paper's empirical estimates, suggest that tax policy has not served to stabilize investment in equipment or nonresidential structures during the sample period.
The Predictability of House Prices

The level and direction of autocorrelation in house price movements differ across areas and change over time. This finding reconciles the conflicting reports in the literature. When quarterly house...
What's My Line? A Comparison of Industry Classification Schemes for Capital Market Research

This study compares four broadly available industry classification schemes in a variety of applications common to capital market research. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes have been available since 1939 but are being replaced by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes. The Global Industry Classifications Standard (GICS)SM system, jointly developed by Standard & Poor's and Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI), is popular among financial practitioners, whereas the Fama and French [1997] algorithm is used primarily by academics. Our results show that GICS classifications are significantly better at explaining stock return comovements, as well as cross-sectional variations in valuation multiples, forecasted and realized growth rates, research and development expenditures, and various key financial ratios. The GICS advantage is consistent from year to year and is most pronounced among large firms. The other three methods differ little from each other in most applications.
Open Source Research in Sustainability

Most academics, who as researchers and teachers dedicate their lives to information sharing, would likely agree with much of the hacker ethic, which is a belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good and there is an ethical duty to share expertise by writing free and open-source code and facilitating access to information wherever possible. However, despite a well-established gift culture similar to that of the open source software movement in academic publishing and the tenure process many academics fail to openly provide the “source” (e.g. data sets, literature reviews, detailed experimental methodologies, designs, and open access to results) of their research. Closed research is particularly egregious when it could be used to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world and this transition is hobbled by antiquated research methodologies that slow the diffusion of innovation. To overcome this challenge, this paper reports on several experiments to embrace the use of open source methodologies in research for applied sustainability. Open-access and open-edit Internet technologies were used as both real-time research tools and a means of disseminating findings on appropriate technology and sustainability-related research to the broadest possible audience. The results of experiments on open source research found that more rapid deployment of sustainability technologies is possible by building on the foundations of the hacker ethic with i) massive peer-review in the development of background material and experimental design, ii) increased visibility, which leads to iii) increased funding opportunities and improved student recruitment, and iv) improved student research-related training and education.
Certification Intermediaries: Evidence from the Medical Device Industry

In many industries, intermediaries assess and signal quality before new products are brought to market. We evaluate the extent to which certifiers can be relied upon to report product quality accur...
What Firms Make vs. What They Know: How Firms' Production and Knowledge Boundaries Affect Competitive Advantage in the Face of Technological Change

Product innovation often hinges on technological changes in underlying components and architectures, requiring extensive coordination between upstream component development tasks and downstream product development tasks. We explore how differences in the ways in which firms are organized with respect to components affect their ability to manage technological change. We consider how firms are organized in terms of both division of labor and division of knowledge. We categorize product innovations according to whether they are enabled by changes in components or by changes in architectures. We test our predictions in the context of the global dynamic random access memory industry from 1974 to 2005, during which it transitioned through 12 distinct product generations. We find that vertically integrated firms had, on average, a faster time to market for new product generations than nonintegrated firms. The performance benefit that firms derived from vertical integration was greater when the new product generation was enabled by architectural change than when it was enabled by component change. We also find that although many nonintegrated firms extended their knowledge boundaries by developing knowledge of outsourced components, the performance benefits from such knowledge mostly accrued to “fully nonintegrated” firms (i.e., those that did not vertically integrate into any upstream component), rather than “partially integrated” firms (i.e., those that vertically integrated into some components but not others). Our study makes a strong case for the value of integrating the knowledge-and governance-based theoretical perspectives to broaden our examination of how firms organize for innovation and to uncover the technological and organizational sources of performance heterogeneity.
Eighths, sixteenths, and market depth: changes in tick size and liquidity provision on the NYSE ☆

Using limit order data provided by the NYSE, we investigate the impact of reducing the minimum tick size on the liquidity of the market. While both spreads and depths (quoted and on the limit order book) declined after the NYSE’s change from eighths to sixteenths, depth declined throughout the entire limit order book as well. The combined e!ect of smaller spreads and reduced cumulative limit order book depth has made liquidity demanders trading small orders better o!; however, traders who submitted
A Lesbian-Centered Critique of Second-Parent Adoptions

When lesbian couples start families, one woman often begins with all the legal entitlements of parenthood, either by giving birth or by virtue of adopting a child, while the other woman has no legal rights. She is a non-legal parent. Absent legal rights she suffers many critical disadvantages. Second-parent adoptions have been developed to allow lesbians to create families with two-legal parents. They have been widely hailed as a solution to the problem of the non-legal parent. This article argues, however, that for many women they may actually make matters worse. Because some women can use second-parent adoptions, women who do not use them will be at a greater disadvantage. And the community of women who do not use second-parent adoptions may be marked by class, race and other circumstances of disadvantage. As such, second-parent adoptions must be viewed critically rather than as an uncomplicated good.
Carolingians at the Doorstep? The Maturing Limited-Access Order of Early Medieval Europe

North et al. (2009) argue that accounting for different development outcomes requires understanding how different societies manage violence. Almost all societies have been limited-access orders where elites constrain violence to preserve their rents. Alternatively, in open-access orders, violence is constrained by a government characterized by widespread political participation. Open-access societies were the first cases of sustained economic development; almost all of them have been Western European or offshoots. Understanding why is important. North et al. elaborate on three necessary conditions for achieving open access: (1) rule of law for elites, (2) support for perpetually-lived organizations, and (3) centralization and consolidation of violence. These constitute the “doorstep” to an open-access order. I argue that significant progress towards this doorstep was affected by the Carolingians of the early medieval era. I emphasize their large-scale distributions of confiscated/conquered lands to vassals, cultivation of bonds with the Church, and regularization of assemblies. The Carolingians introduced governance innovations that impersonalized relationships between elites and encouraged their enforcement under the rule of law.
Properties of Concentration

INTRODUCTION Concentrated poverty is costly.1 Indeed, its negative effects on education,2 safety, and the overall life chances of children may be large enough to outweigh any gains produced at the high end of residential stratification. If this is so, then the process of residential grouping is not a zero-sum game, and collective action problems in residential grouping can produce suboptimal results. Why, then, is it unusual to
ACTION AND AGENCY IN THE CRIMINAL LAW

This paper offers a critical reconsideration of the traditional doctrine that responsibility for a crime requires a voluntary act. I defend three general propositions: first, that orthodox Anglo-American criminal theory (as represented by Michael Moore's updating of Austin's volitionalism) fails to explain adequately why criminal responsibility requires an act. Second, when it comes to the just definition of crimes, the act requirement is at best a rough generalization rather than a substantive limiting principle. Third, that the intuition underlying the so-called “act requirement” is better explained by what I call the “practical-agency condition,” according to which punishment in a specific instance is unjust unless the crime charged was caused or constituted by the agent's conduct (broadly understood) qua practically rational agent. The practical-agency condition is defended as a reconstruction of what is worth retaining in Anglo-American criminal law's traditional notion of an “act requirement.”
Employment Risk and Job-Seeker Performance

Using detailed labor recruitment data in combination with randomized variation in individuals’ outside job opportunities, I show that providing job certainty during recruitment leads to substantial job-seeker performance gains. Job-seeker performance is highest and effort lowest among those assigned to receive a guaranteed outside job offer (where employment risk is eliminated), while performance is lowest and effort highest among those receiving no chance of an outside job offer. Performance among those assigned uncertain outside job offers consistently lies between the two extremes. I conjecture that the pattern of results is most consistent with stress-induced performance reductions attributable to job uncertainty. I rule out several other competing theories.
INEQUALITY AND REDISTRIBUTION: EVIDENCE FROM U.S. COUNTIES AND STATES, 1890-1930

Abstract Does economic inequality affect redistributive policy? This paper turns to U.S. county data on land inequality over the period 1890 to 1930 to help address this fundamental question in political economy. Redistributive policy was primarily decided at the local level during this period, making county-level data particularly informative. Examining within-state variation also reduces the potential impact of latent institutional and political variables. The paper also uses a variety of identification strategies, including historic variables as well as county weather and crop characteristics, as instruments for land inequality. The evidence consistently suggests that greater inequality is significantly associated with less redistribution. This negative relationship is especially large in heavily rural counties, where concentrated landownership implied that landed elites also controlled the majority of economic production.
Commonality in liquidity: transmission of liquidity shocks across investors and securities

What are the causes and consequences of commonality in liquidity? We examine this issue using a model of liquidity trading in which liquidity shocks are decomposed into common (systematic) and idiosyncratic components. We show that common liquidity shocks do not give rise to commonality in trading volume. Indeed, trading volume is independent of systematic liquidity risk, and this risk is always priced irrespective of market liquidity. In contrast, idiosyncratic liquidity shocks create liquidity demand and volume, and investors can diversify their risk by trading. Hence, pricing of the risk of idiosyncratic liquidity shocks depends on market liquidity, with idiosyncratic liquidity risk being fully priced only in perfectly illiquid markets. While trading volume increases with the variance of idiosyncratic liquidity shocks, price volatility increases with the variance of both idiosyncratic and systematic liquidity shocks. Surprisingly, our results are largely independent of the number of different securities traded in the market. When asset returns are uncorrelated, there is no transmission of liquidity across assets even when investors experience common liquidity shocks, suggesting that such liquidity shocks may not be the source of commonality in liquidity across assets detected in the literature. However, under limited conditions, more liquid securities can act as substitutes for less liquid securities. Overall, our findings suggest that common factors in liquidity may be the outcome of covariation in investor heterogeneity (e.g., as measured by co-movements in the volatility of idiosyncratic liquidity shocks) rather than of common liquidity shocks. Moreover, we find that different liquidity proxies measure different things, which has implications for future empirical analysis.
Bank Lending During the Financial Crisis of 2008

This paper documents that new loans to large borrowers fell by 37% during the peak period of the financial crisis (September-November 2008) relative to the prior three-month period and by 68% relative to the peak of the credit boom (Mar-May 2007). New lending for real investment (such as capital expenditures) fell to the same extent as new lending for restructuring (LBOs, M&A, share repurchases). Banks that have access to deposit financing cut their lending less than banks with less access to deposit financing. In addition, there is a large overhang of revolving credit facilities, which may also have curtailed lending. We document an increase in drawdowns of revolving credit facilities. Many of these drawdowns were undertaken by low credit quality firms concerned about their access to funding. While helpful to these borrowers, they may limit the ability of banks to make other loans. Banks with more revolving lines outstanding relative to deposits reduced their lending more than those with less revolving line exposure.
Foster Children and the IDEA: The Fox No Longer Guarding the Henhouse?

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) creates a complex bundle of rights that protects parents of children with disabilities in an effort to provide each child that is eligible with a free appropriate public education (FAPE). Children in the dependency system, commonly referred to as foster children, also require a free appropriate public education when they have disabilities that affect their learning, but they have no one to advocate for them or assist them in securing an appropriate educational program. They need a surrogate to take the place of the parents who are unable to fill that role. The IDEA has always provided a mechanism for an educational surrogate parent to be appointed by the child’s school system, but the recent re-authorization of the Act goes further in protecting the rights of children with disabilities when it allowed dependency court judges the power to appoint them as well. The purpose of my article is to examine the challenges that face foster children in education generally, and more specifically the challenges faced by children in foster care who have disabilities that affect them educationally. It will explain why it is not in the school systems’ interest to appoint surrogate parents, and therefore, most school systems either have no program to do so. It further discusses a practical approach to setting up a surrogate parent program.This article will first discuss the background of and the need for special education services. Second, it will discuss the unique needs of foster children and how those needs impact their education. Third, it will discuss how those needs impact the children who require special education services, including whether children in the foster care system are improperly included in special education. Fourth, the paper will discuss the changes to the IDEA 2004 that affect children in foster care, including the definition of “parent” as well as changes to the appointment of surrogate parents process. Finally, fifth, the paper will explore whether this new provision has already helped, or may help the foster child population in the future.
Manufacturers’ Competition and Cooperation in Sustainability: Stable Recycling Alliances

Rather than organizing disposal of consumer-generated waste themselves, many states and countries have passed legislation that makes producers responsible for the proper disposal (i.e., recycling) ...
The Affirmative Action Controversy

This Article summarizes the law of affirmative action and argues that affirmative action constitutes reverse discrimination. If equal opportunity were truly the goal, then preference could be given based upon economic status. However, racial classifications should never be used - particularly after you consider this nations history of permitting discrimination.
Food neophiles: Profiling the adventurous eater

Objective The study objective was to identify how food neophilia—having an adventurous eating style for new/different foods—may relate to body mass index (BMI). Methods A nationwide online survey was conducted in 2012 with a group of 501 diverse young women (mean age = 26.8, mean BMI = 25.96). Items measured eating adventurousness, perceptions of novel foods, lifestyle and psychological characteristics, and BMI (dependent variable). Results Linear regressions were run to examine associations between eating adventurousness and weight-related outcomes. To examine mean differences between adventurous and non-adventurous eaters, a one-way ANOVA was run for variables on perceptions of novel foods, lifestyle, and psychology (significance level = P < 0.05). Food neophiles had lower BMIs (P < 0.01) and were more likely to cook to connect with their heritage, host friends for dinner, be physically active, and be concerned about the healthfulness of food, when compared to non-adventurous eaters (all P values < 0.05). Conclusions Promoting adventurous eating in adults could help individuals lose/maintain weight without feeling as restricted. Given the lack of research on food neophiles, future studies should examine their characteristics and behaviors, as well as how food neophiles may intersect with others interested in food (e.g., foodies).
The effects of passive leadership on workplace incivility

Summary In this article, we examine the effects of passive leadership on workplace incivility across two studies. Study 1 examines passive leadership–incivility relationships in a sample of employee–supervisor dyads, and Study 2 examines these relationships in a sample of employee–coworker dyads. Results from these studies suggest that passive leadership has a significant direct effect on behavioral incivility and an indirect effect through experienced incivility. Moreover, our results suggest that the relationship between experienced incivility and behavioral incivility is conditional on the level of passive leadership, such that the effect of experienced incivility on behavioral incivility is stronger at higher levels of passive leadership. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Successful treatment of IgG4-related hypertrophic pachymeningitis with induction rituximab and dexamethasone followed by maintenance rituximab.

IgG4-related disease (IgG4RD) with intracranial involvement is rare. We report a 56-year-old male who had an excellent response to rituximab and dexamethasone after going undiagnosed for 5 years. After 3 years of rituximab maintenance, he has no evidence of disease on brain MRI.
Insider trading as a vehicle to appropriate rent from R&D

While most insider trading is routine and legal, investors still treat it as new information about the firm's prospects—they assume that trades reflect managers' attempts to profit from their private information. This article explores insider trading as a mechanism to appropriate rent from R&D advances. We analyze stock price reactions to over 134,000 insider-trading events and find that insider purchases generate larger positive stock price reactions for R&D-intensive firms. Investors seem to assume that managers use insider trading to appropriate rent from R&D breakthroughs. We discuss how shareholders may prefer this rent appropriation mechanism over other forms of compensation that directly reduce the firm's income. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.