cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Seeing the State: Transparency as Metaphor

When applied as a public administrative norm, the term and concept “transparency” has two intertwined meanings. First, it refers to those constitutional and legislative tools that require the government to disclose information in order to inform the public and create a more accountable, responsive state. Second, it operates as a metaphor that identifies and decries the distance between the public and the state, and that drives and shapes the desire for a more perfect democratic order. Viewed together, these two meanings both demand efforts to impose legal obligations on the state to be “open” and suggest that such efforts are necessary to allow the public to eradicate the state’s physical, organizational, and affective remove or mitigate its ill-effects. This article considers the implications of the latter meaning, and that meaning’s effect on efforts to develop and implement the technocratic tools in the former meaning. It argues that the state cannot in fact be made thoroughly visible - that the state’s organizational complexity, territorial dispersal across space, and enclosure within buildings inevitably obstruct the public’s view. Reviewing the law and culture of “transparency,” the article concludes that the metaphoric meaning’s logical end, a reversal of Bentham’s Panopticon, demonstrates the impossibility and unattractive consequences of imposing a fully visible state. Nevertheless, the article argues, the populist understanding of transparency is too embedded within our political culture to ignore or avoid entirely, demonstrating that technocratic advances in making the state appear more open must ultimately rely upon metaphoric, populist gestures.
What Happens When Extremists Win Primaries

This article studies the interplay of U.S. primary and general elections. I examine how the nomination of an extremist changes general-election outcomes and legislative behavior in the U.S. House, 1980–2010, using a regression discontinuity design in primary elections. When an extremist—as measured by primary-election campaign receipt patterns—wins a “coin-flip” election over a more moderate candidate, the party’s general-election vote share decreases on average by approximately 9–13 percentage points, and the probability that the party wins the seat decreases by 35–54 percentage points. This electoral penalty is so large that nominating the more extreme primary candidate causes the district’s subsequent roll-call representation to reverse, on average, becoming more liberal when an extreme Republican is nominated and more conservative when an extreme Democrat is nominated. Overall, the findings show how general-election voters act as a moderating filter in response to primary nominations.
Sovereign Wealth Funds: The Norwegian Experience

Sovereign wealth funds have rapidly become significant international institutions. The performance of funds varies substantially across countries, but comprehensive and systematic analyses of funds have been hampered by the lack of transparency of most funds. The relative transparency of the Norway Fund allows us to do an econometric analysis of the Fund’s performance. The record resembles that of a mutual fund that has taken on greater risk over time. There is no evidence that the Fund has disrupted foreign financial markets more than mutual funds do. There remains a question as to whether the Fund and its Finance Ministry have been effective agents for the Norwegian citizens whose assets they are managing.
A Field Experiment on the Impact of Incentives on Milk Choice in the Lunchroom

Almost a third of US children ages two to nineteen are deemed overweight or obese, and part of the problem is the habitual decision to consume high-calorie, low-nutrient foods. We propose that the ...
Who Decides on Liberty

Whether approached as a matter of executive discretion, judicial role, or individual rights, questions about security are never far removed from questions about liberty. Tradeoffs between liberty and security often seem unavoidable. Defenders of unbounded executive power argue that security relies on experts to whom citizens and courts alike must defer. But, if the tradeoff between security and liberty is to be a real weighing of the risks, costs, benefits, burdens, and consequences of various policy decisions, then who has the necessary expertise to decide on liberty? After all, to make decisions about the appropriate balance between security and liberty implies that a decision-maker be an expert not only about security, but also about liberty. Otherwise, the idea of a balanced tradeoff is empty; either citizens and courts have non-exclusive authority to decide on both, or courts must grant executive officials expansive deference on matters of both security and liberty. This Article argues that the latter proposition is untenable and that, therefore, citizens and courts must have non-exclusive authority to make decisions about both national security and individual liberty. Nowhere in American constitutional traditions and practice can we find unchecked executive authority over matters of liberty. As a consequence, we should expect institutionally allocated authority over both liberty and security. Apart from the special knowledge citizens and courts might have about particular matters of liberty, an interest in allocating authority over questions of liberty is in part justified by the harms of concentrated decision-making a polity seeks to avoid. Advocates of unbounded executive authority argue that concern over tyranny is a phobia. Against this view, this Article argues that far from emotional responses to crises, American constitutional culture disperses authority over both liberty and security as a constitutive feature of constrained political practice.
Insider trading patterns

Abstract We revisit the information content of stock trading by corporate insiders with an expectation that opportunistic insiders will spread their trades over longer periods of time when they have a longer-lived informational advantage, and trade in a short window of time when their advantage is fleeting. Controlling for the duration of insiders' trading strategies, we find robust new evidence that both insiders' sales and purchases predict abnormal stock returns. In addition, we provide evidence that insiders attempt to preserve their informational advantages and increase their trading profits by disclosing their trades after the market has closed. When insiders report their trades after business hours, they are more likely to engage in longer series of trades, they trade more shares overall, and their trades are associated with larger abnormal returns. Finally, we show how accounting for these trading patterns sharpens screens for corporate insiders who trade on infor- mation.
From Sunshine to Moonshine: How the Louisiana Legislature Hid the Governor's Records in the Name of Transparency

People paid attention, then, when Governor Bobby Jindal proposed legislation in 2009 to rework the way public records law applies to the governor’s office. Of the mountains of public records in this state, the governor’s have some of the highest value. A governor is elected, in large part, to make decisions that affect the entire state. Governor Jindal swept into office in 2008 on a wave of voter dissatisfaction over perceived government mismanagement during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. He declared a “war on corruption and incompetence in government”; then, in his first year of office, he fought and won an entrenched battle with the Louisiana Legislature over changes to the state’s ethics rules. In 2009, Governor Jindal turned his attention to the availability of public records in his own office. The governor’s representatives touted the measure as a “transformational” move toward greater transparency in government. The opposition thought differently, to put it mildly. Critics described the governor’s rhetoric as Orwellian and called the bill “a devastating blow to open government.” Newspaper editorials described the bill as “ill-considered and dangerous” and wondered what the governor “has to hide.” One legislator, state Senator Robert Adley, Jindal’s fellow Republican, said the bill would result in Louisiana being more closed than a Communist state like Cuba. The bill, Adley said, would “take the state of Louisiana from sunshine to moonshine.”
Can Foreign Experience Inform U.S. Policy on Killings of and by Police

Every modern state has police agencies to enforce laws and resolve disputes. This article surveys available statistics on police use of deadly force in an effort to put the data in the United States in comparative perspective. Specifically, this article provides a brief survey of police killings in five nations and then does a more sustained analysis of killings by and of police in Germany and the United Kingdom. To what extent is the United States unique in the character and rate of killing as a byproduct of urban policing? What can the experience of other nations tell us about whether the dangers confronting police require their use of lethal force and what alternative countermeasures exist to keep police safe? The material in this article will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming book on police use of lethal force in the United States.1 The empirical analysis in this article is organized under two headings. The first section of the article surveys rates of killings by police in several nations by presenting data from reports to the World Health Authority on deaths caused by “legal intervention.” The second part of the article collects a wider variety of data on both police use of deadly force and the vulnerability of police to life-threatening violence in two European nations—Germany and the United Kingdom. The systematic analysis of data on both attacks against police and police use of lethal force provides important perspective on why American police kill so often and on alternative paths to protection of police with less resort to killing. In the United States, the rate of killings by police is vastly higher than in other developed nations, and the vulnerability of police to fatal assaults is also substantially higher than in other developed nations. The third section of the article discusses the differences between the United States and other comparable nations and the lessons to be learned.
The effect of ownership structure on the price earnings ratio — returns anomaly☆

Abstract It is well known that firms with low price to earnings ratios (value firms) earn higher stock returns in the long term than high price to earnings firms (growth firms). This study investigates how insider ownership affects this relation. We show that when insider ownership is high, returns decline for low P/E firms and improve for high P/E firms. These findings are rationalized in the context of entrenchment and alignment of incentive effects. For low P/E firms, low stock returns reflect the inability of boards of directors and outside shareholders to influence poorly performing entrenched management. For high P/E firms, boards of directors and outside shareholders are less likely to intervene since higher returns reflect increased agency incentives for value-creating managers.
The Culture of Science and the Regulation and Litigation of Biodefense Research

This article addresses the conflict of interest in America between research for humankind and national security. Professor Sutton examines the historical development of the select agent rules, the civil and criminal aspects of these rules, and how they have impacted the biodefense research community, including those members who have been found in violation of these rules. This examination of the development of the select agent rules captures some of the contrasting interests between the culture of science and the culture of law. This study can provide insight into the processes that drive science, which can be useful to lawmakers and regulators and to those in the legal academy in the interdisciplinary area of law and science. The development of environmental law and regulation through the 1970s and 1980s provides a model for examining the new regime of regulation of biodefense research through the select agent rules. Finally, this article considers whether the normative regulatory processes effectively achieve the legislative goals of national and homeland security in the area of life sciences biodefense research.
Ground-Level Ozone Following Astrophysical Ionizing Radiation Events: An Additional Biological Hazard?

Abstract Astrophysical ionizing radiation events such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and solar proton events have been recognized as a potential threat to life on Earth, primarily through depletion of stratospheric ozone and subsequent increase in solar UV radiation at Earth's surface and in the upper levels of the ocean. Other work has also considered the potential impact of nitric acid rainout, concluding that no significant threat is likely. Not yet studied to date is the potential impact of ozone produced in the lower atmosphere following an ionizing radiation event. Ozone is a known irritant to organisms on land and in water and therefore may be a significant additional hazard. Using previously completed atmospheric chemistry modeling, we examined the amount of ozone produced in the lower atmosphere for the case of a gamma-ray burst and found that the values are too small to pose a significant additional threat to the biosphere. These results may be extended to other ionizing radiation events, incl...
Social Security Investment in Equities

This paper explores the general-equilibrium impact of social security portfolio diversification into private securities, either through the trust fund or private accounts. The analysis depends critically on heterogeneities in saving, production, assets, and taxes. Limited diversification weakly increases interest rates, reduces the expected return on short-term investment (and the equity premium), decreases safe investment, increases risky investment, and increases a suitably weighted social welfare function. However, the effects on aggregate investment, long-term capital values, and the utility of young savers hinges on assumptions about technology. Aggregate investment and long-term asset values can move in opposite directions. (JEL H55)
Naturalism in Epistemology and the Philosophy of Law

In this paper, I challenge an influential understanding of naturalization according to which work on traditional problems in the philosophy of law should be replaced with sociological or psychological explanations of how judges decide cases. W.V. Quine famously proposed the ‘naturalization of epistemology’. In a prominent series of papers and a book, Brian Leiter has raised the intriguing idea that Quine’s naturalization of epistemology is a useful model for philosophy of law. I examine Quine’s naturalization of epistemology and Leiter’s suggested parallel and argue that the parallel does not hold up. Even granting Leiter’s substantive assumption that the law is indeterminate, there is no philosophical confusion or overreaching in the legal case that is parallel to the philosophical overreaching of Cartesian foundationalism in epistemology. Moreover, if we take seriously Leiter’s analogy, the upshot is almost the opposite of what Leiter suggests. The closest parallel in the legal case to Quine’s position would be the rejection of the philosophical positions that lead to the indeterminacy thesis.
Limited attention and the earnings announcement returns of past stock market winners

We document that stocks with the strongest prior 12-month returns experience a significant average market-adjusted return of 1.58% during the five trading days before their earnings announcements and a significant average market-adjusted return of −1.86% in the five trading days afterward. These returns remain significant even after accounting for transactions costs. We empirically test a limited attention explanation for these anomalous returns—that stocks with sharp run-ups tend to attract individual investors’ attention and investment dollars, particularly before their earnings announcements. Our analysis suggests that the trading decisions of individual investors are at least partly responsible for the return pattern that we observe.
Economics of ancient law

Contents: Acknowledgements Introduction Geoffrey P. Miller PART I GENERAL APPROACHES 1. Richard A. Epstein (1997), 'The Modern Uses of Ancient Law' 2. Saul Levmore (1986), 'Rethinking Comparative Law: Variety and Uniformity in Ancient and Modern Tort Law' 3. Richard Posner (1983), 'A Theory of Primitive Society, with Special Reference to Law' PART II LIABILITY SYSTEMS 4. Francesco Parisi and Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci (2004), 'The Rise and Fall of Communal Liability in Ancient Law' 5. Francesco Parisi (2001), 'The Genesis of Liability in Ancient Law' 6. Saul Levmore (1995), 'Rethinking Group Responsibility and Strategic Threats in Biblical Texts and Modern Law' PART III FAMILY LAW 7. Maristella Botticini and Aloysius Siow (2003), 'Why Dowries?' 8. Rick Geddes and Paul J. Zak (2002), 'The Rule of One-Third' PART IV LAND LAW 9. M.I. Finley (1953), 'Land, Debt, and the Man of Property in Classical Athens' 10. Robert C. Ellickson and Charles DiA. Thorland (1995), 'Ancient Land Law: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel' 11. Francesco Parisi (2004), 'The Origins and Evolution of Property Rights Systems' PART V CRIMINAL LAW 12. James Lindgren (1996), 'Why the Ancients May Not Have Needed a System of Criminal Law' 13. Thomas J. Miceli and Kathleen Segerson (2007), 'Punishing the Innocent along with the Guilty: The Economics of Individual versus Group Punishment' PART VI COMMERCIAL LAW 14. David Daube (1979), 'Money and Justiciability' 15. Geoffrey P. Miller (1993), 'Contracts of Genesis' 16. Geoffrey P. Miller (1993), 'Ritual and Regulation: A Legal-Economic Interpretation of Selected Biblical Texts' PART VII ECONOMIC MARKETS AND INSTITUTIONS 17. Peter Temin (2001), 'A Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire' 18. Keith Sharfman (2007), 'The Law and Economics of Hoarding' 19. Henry Hansmann, Reinier Kraakman and Richard Squire (2006), 'Law and the Rise of the Firm' PART VIII BANKRUPTCY AND RISK 20. Robert J. Aumann (2003), 'Risk Aversion in the Talmud' 21. Robert J. Aumann and Michael Maschler (1985), 'Game Theoretic Analysis of a Bankruptcy Problem from the Talmud' PART IX CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW 22. Robert K. Fleck and F. Andrew Hanssen (2006), 'The Origins of Democracy: A Model with Application to Ancient Greece' 23. Geoffrey P. Miller (1995), 'J as Constitutionalist: A Political Interpretation of Exodus 17:8-16 and Related Texts' 24. Adam S. Chodorow (2007), 'Biblical Tax Systems and the Case for Progressive Taxation'
Single cell resolution of SARS-CoV-2 tropism, antiviral responses, and susceptibility to therapies in primary human airway epithelium

The human airway epithelium is the initial site of SARS-CoV-2 infection. We used flow cytometry and single cell RNA-sequencing to understand how the heterogeneity of this diverse cell population contributes to elements of viral tropism and pathogenesis, antiviral immunity, and treatment response to remdesivir. We found that, while a variety of epithelial cell types are susceptible to infection, ciliated cells are the predominant cell target of SARS-CoV-2. The host protease TMPRSS2 was required for infection of these cells. Importantly, remdesivir treatment effectively inhibited viral replication across cell types, and blunted hyperinflammatory responses. Induction of interferon responses within infected cells was rare and there was significant heterogeneity in the antiviral gene signatures, varying with the burden of infection in each cell. We also found that heavily infected secretory cells expressed abundant IL-6, a potential mediator of COVID-19 pathogenesis.
Project Screening with Tiered Evaluation

We study a Bayesian game of two-sided incomplete information in which an agent, who owns a project of unknown quality, considers proposing it to an evaluator, who has the choice of whether or not to accept it. There exist two distinct tiers of evaluation that differ in the benefits they deliver to the agent upon acceptance of a project. The agent has to select the tier to which the project is submitted for review. Making a proposal incurs a cost on the agent in the form of a submission fee. We examine the effect of a change in the submission fees at the two tiers of evaluation on the expected quality of projects that are implemented by the evaluator.
Do Cognitive Test Scores Explain Higher U.S. Wage Inequality

Using microdata from the 1994–1998 International Adult Literacy Survey for nine countries, we examine the role of cognitive skills in explaining higher wage inequality in the United States. We find that while the greater dispersion of cognitive test scores in the United States plays a part in explaining higher U.S. wage inequality, higher labor market prices (i.e., higher returns to measured human capital and cognitive performance) and greater residual inequality still play important roles, and are, on average, quantitatively considerably more important than differences in the distribution of test scores in explaining higher U.S. wage inequality.
Impact of school district demographics and financial status on E-Rate funding: Analysis of Pennsylvania data for 1999 and 2004

The E-Rate program was mandated by the 1996 Telecommunications Act to bridge the gap in telecommunications and internet access between rich and poor communities in the United States. Though the funding process embraces specific formulas to direct support at the most needy schools and school districts, a concern has been raised that the complex, multi-stage application process may prevent some school districts from availing themselves of E-Rate funds due to lack of technical expertise and administrative support. The objective of the paper is to assess the cumulative impact of these two contradictory effects. Changes in funding patterns over time are also examined. Data on all E-Rate projects where the recipient is a school district were collected for two years, 1999 and 2004, for the state of Pennsylvania. Results show that E-Rate funding was significantly positively correlated with the poverty rate and percentage of minority students fulfilling the policy intent, but school districts receiving more revenue per student also obtained higher E-Rate support. Location too was found to be a significant predictor of E-Rate funding. The policy implications of these findings are discussed in the conclusion.
Economic development, legality, and the transplant effect

Abstract We analyze the determinants of effective legal institutions (legality) using data from 49 countries. We show that the way the law was initially transplanted and received is a more important determinant than the supply of law from a particular legal family. Countries that have developed legal orders internally, adapted the transplanted law, and/or had a population that was already familiar with basic principles of the transplanted law have more effective legality than countries that received foreign law without any similar predispositions. The transplanting process has a strong indirect effect on economic development via its impact on legality, while the impact of particular legal families is weaker and not robust to alternative legality measures.
Conflicting Transfer Pricing Incentives and the Role of Coordination

Our study evaluates the role of coordination, at both the government and the firm level, on the transfer prices set by U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) when income taxes and duties cannot be jointly minimized with a single transfer price. We find that either the presence of a coordinated income tax and customs enforcement regime or coordination between the income tax and customs functions alters transfer prices for these firms. Our analyses have implications for both firms and taxing authorities. Specifically, our findings suggest that MNCs might decrease their aggregate tax burdens by increasing coordination within the firm or that governments might increase their aggregate revenues by improving coordinating enforcement across taxing authorities. Our study is novel in that we document, in a specific setting, how coordination influences MNCs’ tax reporting behavior. Les auteures evaluent le role de la coordination, tant a l’echelon des administrations fiscales qu’a celui de l'entreprise, dans l’etablissement de prix de cession interne par les societes multinationales des Etats‐Unis lorsqu'un prix de cession interne ne permet pas de reduire au minimum a la fois les impots sur les benefices et les droits de douane. Elles constatent que la presence d'un regime coordonne d'application de l'impot sur le revenu et des droits de douane ou une coordination des fonctions fiscale et douaniere modifie les prix de cession interne de ces societes. Leurs analyses ont des repercussions tant pour les entreprises que pour les administrations fiscales. Plus precisement, les resultats de ces analyses laissent croire que les societes multinationales pourraient reduire leur fardeau fiscal global grâce a une meilleure coordination au sein de l'entreprise ou que les administrations fiscales pourraient accroitre leurs recettes globales en ameliorant la coordination de l'application de l'impot et des droits de douane dans les differentes administrations fiscales. L’etude est novatrice en ce que les auteures documentent, dans un contexte defini, de quelle facon la coordination influe sur le comportement des societes multinationales en matiere de declarations fiscales.
Friend or Foe? A Natural Experiment of the Prisoner's Dilemma

Abstract This study examines data drawn from the game show Friend or Foe? which is similar to the classic prisoner's dilemma tale: partnerships are endogenously determined, and players work together to earn money, after which they play a one-shot prisoner's dilemma game over large stakes: varying from $200 to (potentially) more than $22,000. The data reveal several interesting insights; perhaps most provocatively, they suggest that even though the game is played in front of an audience of millions of viewers, some of the evidence is consistent with a model of discrimination. The observed patterns of social discrimination are unanticipated, however.
Due Process Land Use Claims After Lingle

The Supreme Court held in Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc., 125 S. Ct. 2074 (2005), that challenges to the validity of land use regulations for failing to advance governmental interests must be brought under the Due Process Clause, rather than the Takings Clause, and must be evaluated under a deferential standard. In this paper, Professor Byrne analyzes and evaluates the probable course of such judicial review. He concludes that federal courts will resist due process review of land use decisions for good reasons but not always with an adequate doctrinal explanation. He recognizes, however, a role for state courts using due process to provide state level supervision of local land use decisions in the absence of other legislative or administrative checks on local discretion. He argues that such judicial review should focus on decisions reflecting distortions in the local political process.
An Action Language for Multi-Agent Domains: Foundations

In multi-agent domains, an agent’s action may not just change the world and the agent’s knowledge and beliefs about the world, but also may change other agents’ knowledge and beliefs about the world and their knowledge and beliefs about other agents’ knowledge and beliefs about the world. Similarly, the goals of an agent in a multi-agent world may involve manipulating the knowledge and beliefs of other agents’ and again, not just their knowledge about the world, but also their knowledge about other agents’ knowledge about the world. The goal of this paper is to present an action language, called mA+, that has the necessary features to address the above aspects in representing and reasoning about actions and change in multi-agent domains. This action language can be viewed as a generalization of the single-agent action languages extensively studied in the literature, to the case of multi-agent domains. The language allows the representation of and reasoning about different types of actions that an agent can perform in a domain where many other agents might be present—such as world-altering actions, sensing actions, and announcement/communication actions. The action language also allows the specification of agents’ dynamic awareness of action occurrences which has future implications on what agents’ know about the world and other agents’ knowledge about the world. The language mA+ considers three different types of awareness: full awareness, partial awareness, and complete oblivion of an action occurrence and its effects. This keeps the language simple, yet powerful enough to address a large variety of knowledge manipulation scenarios in multi-agent domains. The semantics of the language relies on the notion of state, which is described by a pointed Kripke model and is used to encode the agent’s knowledge and the real state of the world. The semantics is defined by a transition function that maps pairs of actions and states into sets of states. The paper illustrates properties of the action theories, including properties that guarantee finiteness of the set of initial states and their practical implementability. Finally, the paper relates mA+ to other related formalisms that contribute to reasoning about actions in multi-agent domains.
Real exchange-rate variability under pegged and floating nominal exchange-rate systems: An equilibrium theory

This paper proposes a new explanation for the greater variability of real exchange rates under pegged than under floating nominal exchange rate systems. The explanation hinges on the propensity of governments to use international trade restrictions and financial restrictions for balance-of-payments purposes under pegged exchange rates. In particular. these restrictions become more likely during periods of time when countries suffer losses of international reserves than might. without policy changes. lead to a balance-of-payments crisis. This covariation of restrictions with reserve changes implies that real exchange rates will vary less under pegged than under floating exchange rates.
Physician-assisted suicide: a common law roadmap for state courts.

Part I examines the development of the law legalizing passively hastening death and how this development relied significantly on distinguishing passively hastening death from actively hastening death. Part II subjects the arguments used to legitimate passively hastening death to a traditional criminal law analysis and demonstrates their weaknesses which were simple to conceal when there was little enthusiasm for, and discussion of, the legalization of actively hastening death. The central role of consent in legitimating passively hastening death is analyzed in Part III. Although passively hastening death technically satisfies all of the elements of the crimes of assisted suicide and homicide, it is not illegal because it is legitimated by consent – consent of a competent patient or consent of the surrogate of an incompetent patient. Consent is the mechanism for implementing the fundamental principle. This analysis is applied to actively hastening death in Part IV. Because there is no legally significant distinction between actively and passively hastening death, consent legitimates actively hastening death just as it does passively hastening death. Nonetheless, Part V explores other reasons why actively hastening death ought to be prohibited and concludes that any arguments of any substance that can be made against actively hastening death can be equally applied to passively hastening death and should, therefore, be rejected in the latter as they are in the former. Safeguards must be established to prevent abuse of actively hastening death just as they have for passively hastening death. PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE: A COMMON LAW ROADMAP FOR STATE COURTS
The Effects of Multicultural Diversity in Real Estate Brokerage

This study examines the changing diversity of home buyers and the steps brokerage firms are taking to adapt to these changes. The results reveal that larger firms are experiencing a greater increas...
Early-stage entrepreneurial financing: A signaling perspective

We analyze an entrepreneur’s choice between angel and venture capital (VC) financing in a competitive investment market, where the entrepreneur seeks to maintain his ownership share as well as equity value. The key to our analysis is the idea that a negative signal is inferred by the market if an inside investor chooses not to follow on a subsequent investment. We first show that when ventures are ex-ante identical, entrepreneurs retain higher ownership shares by financing with angel investors who commit to not participate in a future round. When entrepreneurs are ex-ante heterogeneous, there is a separating equilibrium where entrepreneurs with higher (lower) likelihoods of success choose VC financing (angel financing) in the first round.
Natural genetic variation in Drosophila melanogaster reveals genes associated with Coxiella burnetii infection.

The gram-negative bacterium Coxiella burnetii is the causative agent of Query (Q) fever in humans and coxiellosis in livestock. Host genetics are associated with C. burnetii pathogenesis both in humans and animals; however, it remains unknown if specific genes are associated with severity of infection. We employed the Drosophila Genetics Reference Panel to perform a genome-wide association study to identify host genetic variants that affect host survival to C. burnetii infection. The genome-wide association study identified 64 unique variants (P < 10-5) associated with 25 candidate genes. We examined the role each candidate gene contributes to host survival during C. burnetii infection using flies carrying a null mutation or RNAi knockdown of each candidate. We validated 15 of the 25 candidate genes using at least one method. This is the first report establishing involvement of many of these genes or their homologs with C. burnetii susceptibility in any system. Among the validated genes, FER and tara play roles in the JAK/STAT, JNK, and decapentaplegic/TGF-β signaling pathways which are components of known innate immune responses to C. burnetii infection. CG42673 and DIP-e play roles in bacterial infection and synaptic signaling but have no previous association with C. burnetii pathogenesis. Furthermore, since the mammalian ortholog of CG13404 (PLGRKT) is an important regulator of macrophage function, CG13404 could play a role in host susceptibility to C. burnetii through hemocyte regulation. These insights provide a foundation for further investigation regarding the genetics of C. burnetii susceptibility across a wide variety of hosts.
Ethical issues for late-stage trials of multipurpose prevention technologies for HIV and pregnancy

Multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) designed to simultaneously prevent pregnancy and HIV could provide urgently needed tools to address unmet sexual and reproductive health needs of women worldwide. Late-stage clinical trials will be complex given the need to demonstrate efficacy for HIV and contraceptive indications simultaneously from a single product. Currently, HIV and pregnancy prevention trials have distinctive design features that will need to be reconciled in MPT trials. This article identifies several ethical issues uniquely associated with this research that will benefit from future deliberation and guidance to ensure that this globally important research can proceed efficiently and expeditiously.
Trade and Environmental Quality in African Countries: Do Institutions Matter?

We examine the impact of trade and political institutions on environmental quality in Africa and explore whether political institutions matter to the trade–environment relationship. We use data from a large group of African countries, covering the period 1990–2008 and two indicators of environmental quality: net forest depletion and CO2 emissions. Results from GMM-SYS estimates suggest that political institutions influence the relationship between trade and environmental quality only in the case of CO2 emissions. Interestingly, we find that polity has a U relationship with net forest depletion. In addition, the results are in favor of an environmental Kuznets curve in the case of pollution but not in the case of net forest depletion. Finally, the results suggest that urbanization has a positive and linear impact on CO2 emissions, while it has a U-shaped relationship with deforestation. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.
BIOMEDICAL PATENTS AT THE SUPREME COURT: A PATH FORWARD.

Although most would argue that software patents pose a bigger challenge, the U.S. Supreme Court has recently focused on biomedical patents. Two of the Court's recent decisions scaling back such patents, Mayo v. Prometheus and AMP v. Myriad, have provoked justifiable anxiety for those concerned about biomedical innovation, particularly in the area of personalized medicine. While acknowledging significant limitations in the Court's reasoning in both cases, this Essay sketches a reading that is consistent with the results and innovation-friendly.
Training auditors to perform analytical procedures using metacognitive skills

ABSTRACT: Although lower-level auditors increasingly carry out mandatory analytical procedures (APs) in audits, they do not perform as well as partners and managers. In order to improve performance in APs by lower-level auditors, we investigated tasks requiring creativity, where training in metacognition—consciously thinking about one's thought process—improves task performance. As a result, we train lower-level auditors to use a sequential thought process comprised of two metacognitive skills: divergent thinking, where they generate explanations for unusual evidence, followed by convergent thinking, where they evaluate explanations generated and eliminate those judged infeasible. To test the efficacy of our training, we conducted an experiment with three conditions: both divergent and convergent thinking, divergent thinking only, and a control. We found that training auditors in only divergent thinking increases both the number and quality of explanations generated for an unusual situation. However, the ...
When Is a War Not a War? The Myth of the Global War on Terror

It is essential to correctly classify situations in the world as ones of war or peace: human lives depend on the distinction, but so do liberty, property, and the integrity of the natural environment. President Bush's "war on terror" finds war where suspected members of al Qaeda are found. By contrast, war under international law exists where hostilities are on-going. To the extent there is ambiguity, the United States should err on the side of pursuing terrorists within the peacetime criminal law enforcement paradigm, not a wartime one. Not only does the criminal law better protect important human rights and other interests, it avoids elevating terrorists to the status of combatants in a war with the world's only superpower.
The value spread

Authors decompose the cross-sectional variance of firms book-to-market ratios using both a long U.S. panel and a shorter international panel. In contrast to typical aggregate time-series results, transitory cross-sectional variation in expected 15-year stock returns causes only a relatively small fraction (20-25 percent) of the total cross-sectional variance. The remaining dispersion can be explained by expected 15-year profitability and persistence of valuation levels. Furthermore, this fraction appears stable across time and across types of stocks. They also showed that the expected return on value-minus-growth strategies is atypically high at times when the value spread (the difference between the book-to-market ratio of a typical value stock and a typical growth stock) is wide.
The Loss of Loss Aversion: Will It Loom Larger Than Its Gain?

Loss aversion, the principle that losses loom larger than gains, is among the most widely accepted ideas in the social sciences. The first part of this article introduces and discusses the construct of loss aversion. The second part of this article reviews evidence in support of loss aversion. The upshot of this review is that current evidence does not support that losses, on balance, tend to be any more impactful than gains. The third part of this article aims to address the question of why acceptance of loss aversion as a general principle remains pervasive and persistent among social scientists, including consumer psychologists, despite evidence to the contrary. This analysis aims to connect the persistence of a belief in loss aversion to more general ideas about belief acceptance and persistence in science. The final part of the article discusses how a more contextualized perspective of the relative impact of losses versus gains can open new areas of inquiry that are squarely in the domain of consumer psychology.
Risk reporting quality: implications of academic research for financial reporting policy

In this paper, I survey empirical research on the relevance of firms’ financial report information for the evaluation of their risk. I recommend that financial reporting policymakers require or encourage firms to enhance their risk reporting quality in four ways. First, firms should report comprehensive income statements that: (1) use fair value or a similarly information-rich accounting measurement attribute and (2) separate the components of comprehensive income that are primarily driven by variation in cash flows from those that are primarily driven by variation in costs of capital. Such comprehensive income statements would provide users of financial reports with the flexibility to calculate alternative summary accounting numbers and to perform different types of risk assessment analyses. Second, firms should conduct and disclose the results of back-tests of prior significant accrual estimates, indicating any identified trends in and drivers of revisions to those estimates, and describing the effects ...
Joining Forces in Search for Answers: The Use of Therapeutic Jurisprudence in the Realm of Mediation Ethics

The Mediation process is part of the Alternative Dispute Resolution movement (ADR) whose modern history begins at the end of the 1970s. Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ) is a younger movement which has started to gain recognition in the 1990s. The two schools of thought share similarities, a fact which makes their study beneficial for both. This article explores some of those similarities in order to evaluate the possible contribution of TJ to mediation ethics. What is sought is a normative reading of the mediation process with the aid of the therapeutic lens. Such reading suggests, so it is argued, behavioral guidelines for mediators and for other participants in the process such as the parties' lawyers. In addition, a large volume of writing published in recent years has raised and discussed the concern that mediation is losing its special qualities and strengths due to its acceptance by the legal system as a method for solving legal disputes. Thus another theme of the article is that TJ may help protect the uniqueness of mediation against such institutional pressures.
Fear and Loathing: Shame, Shaming, and Intellectual Property

This paper investigates the relationship between intellectual property protection, shame, and shaming. Although some scholars have examined shame and shaming as they relate to criminal law and behavior, none have considered how shame and shaming govern intellectual property and copying behavior. This paper identifies and focuses on two significant intersections: First, shame shapes the behavior of would-be copiers, who abide by anti-copying norms even in the absence of formal intellectual property protection. Second, public shaming shapes the behavior of intellectual property owners, who refrain from aggressively enforcing their rights to avoid being identified as bullies or trolls. These two shame/shaming effects have opposing results — on one hand, restriction on copying, and on the other, the freedom to copy — but they unite to establish and enforce intellectual property “negative spaces” where innovation and creation thrive without significant formal intellectual property protection or enforcement. In areas beyond the reach of formal intellectual property protection, shame helps define the boundaries of informal or norms-based intellectual property practices. In areas governed by formal intellectual property protection, shaming helps define the boundaries of rights holders’ enforcement forbearance. The result of these effects is an overlay of shame- and shaming-driven behavior that sits atop, and informally adjusts, the boundaries of formal intellectual property protection. This, in turn, requires us to adjust our thinking about the ideal boundaries of formal protection. Shame and shaming are not suitable substitutes for formal law, nor are they miracle cures for law’s failings, but they may act as guideposts for determining where to draw the lines of formal legal protection.
Aid, policies, and growth

The authors of this paper use a new database on foreign aid to examine the relationships among foreign aid, economic policies, and growth of per capita GDP. In panel growth regressions for 56 developing countries and 6 four-year periods (1970-93), they find that the policies that have a great effect on growth are those related to fiscal surplus, inflation, and trade openness. They construct an index for those three policies and have that index interact with foreign aid. They have instruments for both aid and aid interacting with policies. They find that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal, monetary and trade policies. In the presence of poor policies, aid has no positive effect on growth. This result is robust in a variety of specifications, which include or exclude middle-income countries, include or exclude outliers, and treat policies as exogenous or endogenous. They examine the determinants of policy and find no evidence that aid has systematically affected policies, either for good or for ill. They estimate an aid allocation equation and show that any tendency for aid to reward good policies has been overwhelmed by donors' pursuit of their own strategic interests. In a counterfactual, they reallocate aid, reduce the role of donor interests and increasing the importance of policy. Such a reallocation would have a large positive effect on developing countries' growth rates.
Changing One's Mind when the Facts Change: Incentives of Experts and the Design of Reporting Protocols

Experts often collect and report information over time. What reporting protocol elicits the most information? Here, a principal receives reports sequentially from an agent with privately known ability, who observes two signals about the state of the world. The signals differ in initial quality and, unlike previous work, differ in quality improvement. The paper finds that “mind changes” (inconsistent reports) can signal talent if a smart agent improves faster. Also, sequential reports dominate when the principal’s decision is very sensitive to information; a single report dominates if the mediocre agent’s signals improve faster or the agent is likely mediocre.