cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
THE CRAB PULSAR AT CENTIMETER WAVELENGTHS. II. SINGLE PULSES

We have carried out new, high-frequency, high-time-resolution observations of the Crab pulsar. Combining these with our previous data, we characterize bright single pulses associated with the Main Pulse, both the Low-Frequency and High-Frequency Interpulses, and the two High-Frequency Components. Our data include observations at frequencies ranging from 1 to 43 GHz with time resolutions down to a fraction of a nanosecond. We find that at least two types of emission physics are operating in this pulsar. Both Main Pulses and Low-Frequency Interpulses, up to ~10 GHz, are characterized by nanoshot emission—overlapping clumps of narrowband nanoshots, each with its own polarization signature. High-Frequency Interpulses, between 5 and 30 GHz, are characterized by spectral band emission—linearly polarized emission containing ~30 proportionately spaced spectral bands. We cannot say whether the longer-duration High-Frequency Components pulses are due to a scattering process, or if they come from yet another type of emission physics.
What Sets the Initial Rotation Rates of Massive Stars

The physical mechanisms that set the initial rotation rates in massive stars are a crucial unknown in current star formation theory. Observations of young, massive stars provide evidence that they form in a similar fashion to their low-mass counterparts. The magnetic coupling between a star and its accretion disk may be sufficient to spin down low-mass pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars to well below breakup at the end stage of their formation when the accretion rate is low. However, we show that these magnetic torques are insufficient to spin down massive PMS stars due to their short formation times and high accretion rates. We develop a model for the angular momentum evolution of stars over a wide range in mass, considering both magnetic and gravitational torques. We find that magnetic torques are unable to spin down either low-mass or high-mass stars during the main accretion phase, and that massive stars cannot be spun down significantly by magnetic torques during the end stage of their formation either. Spin-down occurs only if massive stars' disk lifetimes are substantially longer or their magnetic fields are much stronger than current observations suggest.
A HOT BIG BANG THEORY: MAGNETIC FIELDS AND THE EARLY EVOLUTION OF THE PROTOLUNAR DISK

The leading theory for the formation of the Earth’s moon invokes a collision between a Mars-sized body and the proto-Earth to produce a disk of orbiting material that later condenses to form the Moon. Here we argue, following earlier work by Charnoz and Michaut, and Carballido et al., that the disk is likely to be strongly coupled to magnetic fields that are dynamically important in the post-impact evolution. We consider a scenario in which magnetic fields lead to a brief, hot phase where the disk is geometrically thick, with strong turbulent mixing. The disk cools by spreading until it decouples from the field. We point out that approximately half the accretion energy is dissipated in the boundary layer where the disk meets the Earth’s surface. This creates high entropy material close to the Earth, driving convection and mixing. Finally, a hot, magnetized disk could drive bipolar outflows that remove mass and angular momentum from the Earth-Moon system.
On the Origin of the Slow Speed Solar Wind: Helium Abundance Variations

The first ionization potential (FIP) effect is the by now well-known enhancement in abundance over photospheric values of Fe and other elements with FIP below about 10 eV observed in the solar corona and slow speed solar wind. In our model, this fractionation is achieved by means of the ponderomotive force, arising as Alfven waves propagate through or reflect from steep density gradients in the solar chromosphere. This is also the region where low FIP elements are ionized, and high FIP elements are largely neutral leading to the fractionation as ions interact with the waves but neutrals do not. Helium, the element with the highest FIP and consequently the last to remain neutral as one moves upward, can be depleted in such models. Here, we investigate this depletion for varying loop lengths and magnetic field strengths. Variations in this depletion arise as the concentration of the ponderomotive force at the top of the chromosphere varies in response to Alfven wave frequency with respect to the resonant frequency of the overlying coronal loop, the magnetic field, and possibly also the loop length. We find that stronger depletions of He are obtained for weaker magnetic field, at frequencies close to or justmore » above the loop resonance. These results may have relevance to observed variations of the slow wind solar He abundance with wind speed, with slower slow speed solar wind having a stronger depletion of He.« less
Constitutionalizing nature’s law: dignity and the regulation of biotechnology in Switzerland

The Swiss Constitution was amended by referendum in 1992 to include two unique provisions: Article 119, which imposes strict limits on genetic and reproductive technologies in humans in order to protect ‘human dignity’, and Article 120, which commits the Swiss federal government to limiting genetic technologies in non-human species on the basis of the ‘dignity of the creature’. This article analyzes the role of ‘dignity’ as a limit on biotechnologies in the Swiss constitutional order. It concludes that the understanding of dignity the constitution embraces codifies a contestable metaphysical theory of value at the constitutional level. Specifically, the Swiss constitutional concept of dignity embraces the normative theory that the natural order is a source of moral value. Because this theory speaks directly to contested questions of the good life, Switzerland’s adoption of it as a constitutional principle is analogous to the adoption of a religious theory in a constitution. The concept of dignity as understood in the Swiss constitutional order is contrary to the commitment to epistemic humility characteristic of liberal constitutions.
Electrical switching in a magnetically intercalated transition metal dichalcogenide.

Advances in controlling the correlated behaviour of transition metal dichalcogenides have opened a new frontier of many-body physics in two dimensions. A field where these materials have yet to make a deep impact is antiferromagnetic spintronics—a relatively new research direction promising technologies with fast switching times, insensitivity to magnetic perturbations and reduced cross-talk1–3. Here, we present measurements on the intercalated transition metal dichalcogenide Fe1/3NbS2 that exhibits antiferromagnetic ordering below 42 K (refs. 4,5). We find that remarkably low current densities of the order of 104 A cm−2 can reorient the magnetic order, which can be detected through changes in the sample resistance, demonstrating its use as an electronically accessible antiferromagnetic switch. Fe1/3NbS2 is part of a larger family of magnetically intercalated transition metal dichalcogenides, some of which may exhibit switching at room temperature, forming a platform from which to build tuneable antiferromagnetic spintronic devices6,7. A remarkably low critical current is found to reorient the magnetic order in a magnetically intercalated transition metal dichalcogenide, suggesting this class of materials could form a basis for antiferromagnetic spintronics.
Recovering a Single Community With Side Information

We study the effect of the quality and quantity of side information on the recovery of a hidden community of size $K=o(n)$ in a graph of size $n$ . Side information for each node in the graph is modeled by a random vector in which either the vector dimension or the LLR of each component with respect to node labels is independent of $n$ . These two models represent the variation in quality and quantity of side information. Under maximum likelihood detection, we calculate tight necessary and sufficient conditions for exact recovery of the labels. We demonstrate how side information needs to evolve with $n$ in terms of either its quantity, or quality, to improve the exact recovery threshold. A similar set of results are obtained for weak recovery. Under belief propagation, tight necessary and sufficient conditions for weak recovery are calculated when the LLRs are constant, and sufficient conditions when the LLRs vary with $n$ . Moreover, we design and analyze a local voting procedure using side information that can achieve exact recovery when applied after belief propagation.
Rapid trial-and-error learning with simulation supports flexible tool use and physical reasoning

Many animals, and an increasing number of artificial agents, display sophisticated capabilities to perceive and manipulate objects. But human beings remain distinctive in their capacity for flexible, creative tool use-using objects in new ways to act on the world, achieve a goal, or solve a problem. To study this type of general physical problem solving, we introduce the Virtual Tools game. In this game, people solve a large range of challenging physical puzzles in just a handful of attempts. We propose that the flexibility of human physical problem solving rests on an ability to imagine the effects of hypothesized actions, while the efficiency of human search arises from rich action priors which are updated via observations of the world. We instantiate these components in the "sample, simulate, update" (SSUP) model and show that it captures human performance across 30 levels of the Virtual Tools game. More broadly, this model provides a mechanism for explaining how people condense general physical knowledge into actionable, task-specific plans to achieve flexible and efficient physical problem solving.
Weakly-Supervised Learning for Single-Step Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping

Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) utilizes MRI phase information to estimate tissue magnetic susceptibility. The generation of QSM requires solving ill-posed background field removal (BFR) and field-to-source inversion problems. Because current QSM techniques struggle to generate reliable QSM in clinical contexts, QSM clinical translation is greatly hindered. Recently, deep learning (DL) approaches for QSM reconstruction have shown impressive performance. Due to inherent non-existent ground-truth, these DL techniques use either calculation of susceptibility through multiple orientation sampling (COSMOS) maps or synthetic data for network training, which are constrained by the availability and accuracy of COSMOS maps or domain shift when training data and testing data have different domains. To address these limitations, we propose a weakly-supervised single-step QSM reconstruction method, denoted as wTFI, to directly reconstruct QSM from the total field without BFR. wTFI uses the BFR method RESHARP local fields as supervision to perform a multi-task learning of local tissue fields and QSM, and is capable of recovering magnetic susceptibility estimates near the edges of the brain where are eroded in RESHARP and realize whole brain QSM estimation. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation shows that wTFI can generate high-quality local field and susceptibility maps in a variety of neuroimaging contexts.
Oxygen Vacancies Altering the Trapping in the Proton Conduction Landscape of Doped Barium Zirconate

Acceptor-doped barium zirconate is one of the most promising proton conducting materials for stationary hydrogen fuel cells. Dopant-defect proton traps shape the proton conduction landscape. Inspir...
Fast-Convergent Federated Learning

Federated learning has emerged recently as a promising solution for distributing machine learning tasks through modern networks of mobile devices. Recent studies have obtained lower bounds on the expected decrease in model loss that is achieved through each round of federated learning. However, convergence generally requires a large number of communication rounds, which induces delay in model training and is costly in terms of network resources. In this paper, we propose a fast-convergent federated learning algorithm, called $\mathsf {FOLB}$ , which performs intelligent sampling of devices in each round of model training to optimize the expected convergence speed. We first theoretically characterize a lower bound on improvement that can be obtained in each round if devices are selected according to the expected improvement their local models will provide to the current global model. Then, we show that $\mathsf {FOLB}$ obtains this bound through uniform sampling by weighting device updates according to their gradient information. $\mathsf {FOLB}$ is able to handle both communication and computation heterogeneity of devices by adapting the aggregations according to estimates of device’s capabilities of contributing to the updates. We evaluate $\mathsf {FOLB}$ in comparison with existing federated learning algorithms and experimentally show its improvement in trained model accuracy, convergence speed, and/or model stability across various machine learning tasks and datasets.
Active Learning Pipeline for Brain Mapping in a High Performance Computing Environment

This paper describes a scalable active learning pipeline prototype for large-scale brain mapping that leverages high performance computing power. It enables high-throughput evaluation of algorithm results, which, after human review, are used for iterative machine learning model training. Image processing and machine learning are performed in a batch layer. Benchmark testing of image processing using pMATLAB shows that a 100x increase in throughput (10,000%) can be achieved while total processing time only increases by 9% on Xeon-G6 CPUs and by 22% on Xeon-E5 CPUs, indicating robust scalability. The images and algorithm results are provided through a serving layer to a browser-based user interface for interactive review. This pipeline has the potential to greatly reduce the manual annotation burden and improve the overall performance of machine learning-based brain mapping.
Adsorption of methyl iodide on reduced silver-functionalized silica aerogel: Kinetics and modeling

The low concentration methyl iodides (CH3I) adsorption process on reduced silver-functionalized silica aerogel (Ag0-Aerogel) was studied. The kinetic data were acquired using a continuous flow adsorption system. Because the corresponding physical process was observed, the shrinking core model (SCM) was modified and applied. An average CH3I pore diffusivity was calculated, the CH3I-Ag0-Aerogel reaction was identified as a 1.37 order reaction instead of first order reaction, and the nth order reaction rate constant was determined. This modified SCM significantly increases the accuracy of adsorption behavior prediction at low adsorbate concentration. Modeling results indicate that the overall adsorption process is controlled by the pore diffusion. However, at low adsorbate concentration (<100 ppbv), the CH3I adsorption is limited to the surface reaction due to the low uptake rate in a predictable time period.
AutoNLU: An On-demand Cloud-based Natural Language Understanding System for Enterprises.

With the renaissance of deep learning, neural networks have achieved promising results on many natural language understanding (NLU) tasks. Even though the source codes of many neural network models are publicly available, there is still a large gap from open-sourced models to solving real-world problems in enterprises. Therefore, to fill this gap, we introduce AutoNLU, an on-demand cloud-based system with an easy-to-use interface that covers all common use-cases and steps in developing an NLU model. AutoNLU has supported many product teams within Adobe with different use-cases and datasets, quickly delivering them working models. To demonstrate the effectiveness of AutoNLU, we present two case studies. i) We build a practical NLU model for handling various image-editing requests in Photoshop. ii) We build powerful keyphrase extraction models that achieve state-of-the-art results on two public benchmarks. In both cases, end users only need to write a small amount of code to convert their datasets into a common format used by AutoNLU.
A Visual Analytics Approach to Debugging Cooperative, Autonomous Multi-Robot Systems’ Worldviews

Autonomous multi-robot systems, where a team of robots shares information to perform tasks that are beyond an individual robot’s abilities, hold great promise for a number of applications, such as planetary exploration missions. Each robot in a multi-robot system that uses the shared-world coordination paradigm autonomously schedules which robot should perform a given task, and when, using its worldview–the robot’s internal representation of its belief about both its own state, and other robots’ states. A key problem for operators is that robots’ worldviews can fall out of sync (often due to weak communication links), leading to desynchronization of the robots’ scheduling decisions and inconsistent emergent behavior (e.g., tasks not performed, or performed by multiple robots). Operators face the time-consuming and difficult task of making sense of the robots’ scheduling decisions, detecting de-synchronizations, and pinpointing the cause by comparing every robot’s worldview. To address these challenges, we introduce MOSAIC Viewer, a visual analytics system that helps operators (i) make sense of the robots’ schedules and (ii) detect and conduct a root cause analysis of the robots’ desynchronized worldviews. Over a year-long partnership with roboticists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we conduct a formative study to identify the necessary system design requirements and a qualitative evaluation with 12 roboticists. We find that MOSAIC Viewer is faster- and easier-to-use than the users’ current approaches, and it allows them to stitch low-level details to formulate a high-level understanding of the robots’ schedules and detect and pinpoint the cause of the desynchronized worldviews.
Does cleanup of hazardous waste sites raise housing values? Evidence of spatially localized benefits

Economists often rely on publicly available data provided at coarse geographical resolution to value spatially localized amenities. We propose a simple refinement to the hedonic method that accommodates this reality: specifically, we measure localized benefits from the cleanup of hazardous waste sites at the sub-census tract level by examining the entire within-tract housing value distribution, rather than simply focusing on the tract median. Our point estimates indicate that the cleanup leads to larger appreciation in house prices at the lower percentiles of the within-tract house value distribution than at higher percentiles. Though not statistically different from one another, the estimates are monotonically ordered from 24.4% at the 10th percentile, 20.8% at the median and 18.7% at the 90th percentile, respectively. We confirm these results in two ways. First, our analysis using restricted access census block data finds comparable results that cleanup leads to a 14.7% appreciation in the median block-level housing values. Second, our analysis of proprietary housing transactions data show that cheaper houses within a census tract are indeed more likely to be closer to a hazardous waste site, explaining the greater impacts they receive from the cleanup process.
Does Financial Liberalization Spur Growth

Abstract We show that equity market liberalizations, on average, lead to a 1% increase in annual real economic growth. The effect is robust to alternative definitions of liberalization and does not reflect variation in the world business cycle. The effect also remains intact when an exogenous measure of growth opportunities is included in the regression. We find that capital account liberalization also plays a role in future economic growth, but, importantly, it does not subsume the contribution of equity market liberalizations. Other simultaneous reforms only partially account for the equity market liberalization effect. Finally, the largest growth response occurs in countries with high-quality institutions.
Did Dubious Mortgage Origination Practices Distort House Prices

ZIP codes with high concentrations of originators who misreported mortgage information experienced a 75% larger relative increase in house prices from 2003 to 2006 and a 90% larger relative decrease from 2007 to 2012 compared with other ZIP codes. Several causality tests show that high fractions of dubious originators in a ZIP code lead to large price distortions. Originators with high misreporting gave credit to borrowers with high ex ante risk, yet further understated the borrowers' true risk. Overall, excess credit facilitated through dubious origination practices explain much of the regional variation in house prices over a decade.
Passive Investors, Not Passive Owners *

Passive institutional investors are an increasingly important component of U.S. stock ownership. To examine whether and by which mechanisms passive investors influence firms' governance, we exploit variation in ownership by passive mutual funds associated with stock assignments to the Russell 1000 and 2000 indexes. Our findings suggest that passive mutual funds influence firms' governance choices, resulting in more independent directors, removal of takeover defenses, and more equal voting rights. Passive investors appear to exert influence through their large voting blocs, and consistent with the observed governance differences increasing firm value, passive ownership is associated with improvements in firms’ longer-term performance.
What's different about monetary policy transmission in remittance-dependent countries?

Abstract Despite welfare and poverty-reducing benefits for recipient households, remittance inflows have been shown to entail macroeconomic challenges; producing Dutch Disease-type effects, reducing the quality of institutions, delaying fiscal adjustment, and having an indeterminate effect on long-run growth. This paper explores an additional challenge, for monetary policy. Although remittances expand bank balance sheets, providing a stable flow of interest-insensitive funding, they tend to increase banks' holdings of liquid assets. This both reduces the need for an interbank market and severs the link between policy rate and banks’ marginal cost of funds, thus shutting down a major transmission channel. We develop a stylized model based on asymmetric information and a lack of transparent borrowers and undertake econometric analysis providing evidence that increased remittance inflows are associated with weaker transmission. As independent monetary policy becomes impaired, this result is consistent with earlier findings that recipient countries tend to favor fixed exchange rate regimes.
Transport subsidies, system choice, and urban sprawl

Abstract This paper analyzes the effect of transport subsidies on the spatial expansion of cities, asking whether such subsidies are a source of undesirable urban sprawl. Even though the cost-reducing effect of transport subsidies is offset by a higher general tax burden (which reduces the demand for space), the analysis shows that subsidies nevertheless lead to spatial expansion of cities. If the transport system exhibits constant returns to scale, the subsidies are inefficient, making the urban expansion they entail undesirable. The paper also studies transport “system choice,” with the city portrayed as selecting its transport system from along a continuum of money cost/time cost choices. The analysis shows that subsidies inefficiently bias choice in the direction of a high money cost/low time cost option. Lastly, the paper considers system choice in a city with rich and poor groups, showing that the rich favor a system with a high money cost and low time cost, but that their choice, if implemented, leads to a city whose spatial size is smaller than optimal. Thus, rich control of system choice does not lead to urban sprawl.
How accurate are private sector forecasts? Cross-country evidence from consensus forecasts of output growth

Abstract The performance of Consensus Forecasts of real GDP growth is evaluated for a large number of industrialized and developing countries for the time period 1989 to 1998. Two key findings emerge. First, the record of failure to predict recessions is virtually unblemished. Second, there is a high degree of similarity between private sector growth forecasts and those of international organizations (the IMF, OECD and the World Bank). The paper also provides preliminary evidence on the efficiency of, and extent of bias in, these forecasts.
Barron's Red Flags: Do They Actually Work?

Investors are often concerned that managers might hide negative information in filings. With advances in textual analysis and widespread document availability, individuals can now easily search for phrases that might be red flags indicating questionable behavior. We examine the impact of 13 suspicious phrases identified by a Barron's article in a large sample of 10-Ks. There is evidence that phrases like unbilled receivables signal a firm may subsequently be accused of fraud. At the 10-K filing date, phrases like substantial doubt are linked with significantly lower filing date excess stock returns, higher volatility, and greater analyst earnings forecast dispersion.
Reform of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting System, and Management Control in the U.S. Department of Defense: Insights from Budget Theory

Resource decision making for the Department of Defense (DOD) is one of the most challenging tasks in all of public financial management. DOD coordinates national security threat assessment, long- and intermediate-range planning and programming with annual budget formulation and execution. Between 2001 and 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld changed the system significantly, simplifying, and synchronizing it with presidential terms of office. We assess Planning, Programming, Budgeting System (PPBS) reform through application of applied budget theory. We review system evolution, document recent reforms, explain why change was necessary, and assess implementation feasibility. Only preliminary evaluation is possible because change implementation will require five or more years.
Accounting Conservatism and Incentives: Intertemporal Considerations

ABSTRACT We study intertemporal incentive properties of conditional accounting conservatism. Conservatism has detrimental and beneficial properties. In our first model, conservatism introduces downward bias in the first period; any understatement of first-period performance is reversed in the second period. A conservative bias is not costly in the first period but instead is costly in the second period when a new manager may be rewarded for the performance of his predecessor. In an extension on learning, we illustrate a beneficial role of conservatism in fine-tuning incentives. In the second model, conservatism is modeled as recognizing effort-independent bad news early and good news late. Recognizing bad news early can be optimal because of intertemporal rent shifting, which improves incentives via an “incentive spillback.” We also study overlapping projects (a multi-task setting) in which an interior accounting system can be optimal to avoid making one of the overlapping projects an incentive bottleneck...
Extraterritoriality and the Dormant Commerce Clause: A Doctrinal Post-Mortem

Among the various branches of the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine (“DCCD”) — the judge-made rules grounded in the Constitution’s grant of power over interstate commerce to Congress — is that which prohibits so-called “extraterritorial” state legislation. As recently as 1989, the Supreme Court held that the DCCD “precludes the application of a state statute to commerce that takes place wholly outside of the State's borders, whether or not the commerce has effects within the State...” That broad articulation of the principle, however, represented extraterritoriality’s high tide. The Court has since retreated; in 2003 it seemed to limit the extraterritoriality principle dramatically, rejecting arguments that a Maine prescription drug subsidy program actually attempted to fix prices outside the state. At this point, the extraterritoriality principle looks to be quite moribund. This essay, then, is an autopsy of sorts. Assuming, as I do, that extraterritoriality — at least the strong form articulated by the Court in the 1980s — is dead, and unlikely to be revived by the current Court, its passing offers an opportunity to examine the lifecycle of constitutional doctrine, from birth to death. In Part I, I describe extraterritoriality’s early emergence. In its early form, it was not exclusively yoked to the DCCD. The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was also cited as a source, as were less clause-bound structural principles. Beginning in the early twentieth century, however, the doctrine became closely linked with the DCCD; it emerged as a robust branch of that doctrine in the 1980s. This association is described in Part II. Its decline is detailed in Part III; in Part IV, I return to the question of what “killed” extraterritoriality. I conclude that extraterritoriality’s demise was likely overdetermined. Factors contributing to its demise include what Kermit Roosevelt calls a “loss of fit” between the doctrine and the purposes of the DCCD generally, as well as the doctrine’s calcification; the lack of a limiting principle that would prevent it from curtailing legitimate state regulatory power; the Court’s decision to locate limits on punitive damage awards in the Due Process Clause after flirting with the notion that those limits grew out of DCCD extraterritoriality; and shift in attitude on the Court itself from robust enforcement of the DCCD to a desire to limit the doctrine. In Part V, I consider the impact of extraterritoriality’s demise on a related doctrine: the Court’s periodic invalidation of state laws that presented the problem of “inconsistent state regulations.” A brief conclusion follows.
National Juries for National Cases: Preserving Citizen Participation in Large-Scale Litigation

Procedural evolution in complex litigation seems to have left the civil jury behind. Reliance on aggregating devices, such as multidistrict litigation and class actions, as well as settlement pressure created by “bellwether” cases, has resulted in cases of national scope being tried by local juries. Local juries thus have the potential to impose their values on the rest of the country. This trend motivates parties to forum-shop, and some commentators suggest eliminating jury trials in complex cases altogether. Yet the jury is at the heart of our uniquely American understanding of civil justice, and the Seventh Amendment mandates its use in federal cases. This Article makes a bold proposal to align the jury assembly mechanism with the scope of the litigation: In cases of national scope, juries would be assembled from a national pool. This proposal would eliminate incentives for parties to forum-shop, and it would make the decisionmaking body representative of the population that will feel the effects of its decision. The Article argues that we would see greater legitimacy for decisions rendered by a national jury in national cases. Moreover, it argues that geographic diversification of the jury would enhance the quality of decisionmaking. Finally, national juries would preserve the functional and constitutional values of citizen participation in the civil justice system.
PARENTAL ALLOCATIONS TO CHILDREN: NEW EVIDENCE ON BEQUEST DIFFERENCES AMONG SIBLINGS

New survey-based data on siblings are used to assess potential roles of bequests in redistributing income among siblings as implied by prominent models. The data are not focused on the upper tail of the wealth distribution and include both own and sib reports on own and sib's bequests, enabling use of a measurement model. Results indicate that bequests are received by almost two-thirds of children, average bequests are significant fractions of annual earnings, and there are significant differences between sibs' schooling and earnings. However, there are not significant sib differences in bequests once measurement error is incorporated into the analysis.
Holographic software for quantum networks

We introduce a pictorial approach to quantum information, called holographic software. Our software captures both algebraic and topological aspects of quantum networks. It yields a bi-directional dictionary to translate between a topological approach and an algebraic approach. Using our software, we give a topological simulation for quantum networks. The string Fourier transform (SFT) is our basic tool to transform product states into states with maximal entanglement entropy. We obtain a pictorial interpretation of Fourier transformation, of measurements, and of local transformations, including the n-qudit Pauli matrices and their representation by Jordan-Wigner transformations. We use our software to discover interesting new protocols for multipartite communication. In summary, we build a bridge linking the theory of planar para algebras with quantum information.
The Radical Ethics of Legal Rhetoricians

I want to take seriously a claim that legal practitioners frequently made some twenty years ago, but one that fell into disrepute when academic legal ethicists took over the subject of legal ethics. The claim is that good lawyering is good ethics. This claim makes ethics a descriptive task, the description in question being a description of good lawyering. Of course, such a description of lawyering must come from, or at least start within, the practice.
Political Self-Censorship in Authoritarian States: The Spatial-Temporal Dimension of Trouble:

We theorize and measure a situational self-censorship that varies across spatial-temporal political contexts. Schelling’s insight that distinctive times and places function as focal points has gene...
From Paris to London: The Legal History of European Reparation Claims: 1946-1953

One of a series of both published and planned studies of the history of European reparations following World War II. This paper narrates the history of the first period of that era, from 1945 to approximately 1952. This period is marked by the disappointment of the expectations of former Allies, especially those that had been under German occupation, to obtain adequate reparations through multilateral arrangements; a frustration that led to later bilateral reparations treaties with the Federal Republic of Germany. It also marks the beginning of the era in which individual subjects who had suffered persecution struggled to establish their own agency - efforts that contributed to the establishment of international human rights in later decades.
Free will fallibilism and the “two-standpoints” account of freedom

In this paper I propose a form of free will fallibilism. Unlike the free will realist who is fully persuaded that we have sufficient evidence of freedom to justify holding individuals morally responsible for what they do and imposing punishment, and unlike the free will skeptic who is fully persuaded that we do not have enough evidence to believe that we face a future of open alternatives, the free will fallibilist will believe that we have enough evidence to justify a belief in freedom for some purposes but not for others. Along the way I argue that deliberation-compatibilism of the sort recently defended by Pereboom is subject to a very familiar sort of counterexample. The question that concerns me the most is whether punishment—this brutal institution that disposes of the lives of countless of our most vulnerable citizens—can be justified. I think it cannot, precisely because there is not sufficient evidence that human beings are free to choose between branching alternatives and so deserve to be treated like that. At least, if there is such justifying evidence it is more or less completely balanced by evidence that all events including human actions have causes. Moreover, I find compatibilism utterly unpersuasive. At the same time, I believe that I am a free agent; what I do is in large part up to me. I believe that the explanation of action cannot be reduced to causal explanation, and I believe that the logic of action requires a notion of branching time. I have two pictures of the universe; which of the two pictures I may rely upon will depend upon just what it is that I intend to do. Between the problem that preoccupies me, punishment, and my day-to-day choices (whether to have another cup of coffee, for example), there is a wide gap. There are a lot of choices that, on the axis of justification, fall in between the two, many of them choices about how to treat those around us: whether to snub a friend who has insulted me, whether to castigate her, whether to reward a kind act with praise. Where to draw the line is a topic for another paper. The only principle that right now seems to me firm enough to act upon is this: the greater the likelihood of doing harm, the less likely the choice is to be justified.
Bilateral versus Multilateral Free Trade Agreements: A Welfare Analysis

Why do we observe proliferation of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) between certain types of countries instead of having progress in attaining global free trade through a multilateral FTA? We answer this question by exploring the enforceability of diieerent types of FTAs through comparing minimum discount factors that are necessary to sustain them in an in?nitely repeated game framework. We also search for the globally welfare maximizing trade agreements that are sustainable under different conditions. The results depict that transportation costs, differences in country sizes and comparative advantages are all obstacles for having a multilateral FTA. Accordingly, international development policies conducted for the removal of such obstacles should be the main goal toward achieving a multilateral FTA, which we show to be the ?rst-best solution to the maximization problem of global welfare.
Cheap Talk Diplomacy, Voluntary Negotiations, and Variable Bargaining Power

It is well known that during a crisis, unitary rational states have an incentive to misrepresent their true resolve and willingness to go to war. This theoretical result has been taken to imply that diplomacy, interpreted as pre-bargaining communication, can have no effect on the way crises play out. This paper shows an intuitive way that diplomatic cheap talk can matter in a single crisis between countries, especially when the bargaining game has multiple equilibria. In particular, if after “diplomacy” states can choose to either fight a war directly or bargain in hopes of reaching a peaceful settlement, then it is possible to find an equilibrium, where diplomacy influences whether there is war or peace. Importantly, the cheap talk diplomacy does three things the standard model says it cannot: it coordinates actions, it reveals information, and it changes the ex ante probability of war. This result demonstrates an easy way of reconciling the discrepancy between the obvious empirical observation that diplomacy often does influence the path of a crisis with the rationalist model of war.
Mass tort litigation and inquisitorial justice.

This article examines two developments in mass tort litigation: court-appointed experts and settlement class actions. First, it looks at the use of court-appointed technical advisors and scientific experts, such as the national science panel in the breast implant litigation. The article notes concerns over such experts, but generally applauds and encourages their use. Second, the article looks at "settlement class actions," i.e., class actions certified for the purpose of approving a settlement already reached by the parties. Despite recent setbacks, especially the Supreme Court's decision in Amchem Products v. Windsor, settlement class actions remain a promising method for resolving mass torts. Because they present serious risks of collusion and inadequate representation, however, the article urges vigorous independent judicial scrutiny of the merits of the settlement terms. Using a comparative perspective, the article suggests that these two developments represent an evolutionary shift in the direction of inquisitorial justice systems such as those of certain civil law countries. Court-appointed experts and judicial inquiry into settlement class actions resemble inquisitorial tools. Noting differences between the U.S. system and inquisitorial systems, the article explores the barriers that U.S. judges must overcome if they are to wield these tools effectively.
Interest Rates and Information

In a lending relationship, a bank learns information on its borrowers. Adverse selection makes the usefulness and value of this information depend on the interest rates the bank charges in the different periods. The optimal intertemporal screening of borrowers calls for a monopolistic bank to smooth interest rates. In a repeated relationship, interest rates are lower than in a one-period setting; furthermore, they are less volatile and the quality of the loans is higher than under competition (with symmetric information). Information sharing may reduce both the probability that a debt will be paid and the sum of banks’ and borrowers’ profits.
Designated market makers still matter: Evidence from two natural experiments

Abstract Independent technological glitches forced two separate trading halts on different U.S. exchanges during the week of July 6, 2015. During each halt, all other exchanges remained open. We exploit exogenous variation provided by this unprecedented coincidence, in conjunction with a proprietary data set, to identify the causal impact of Designated Market Maker (DMM) participation on liquidity. When the voluntary liquidity providers on one exchange were removed, liquidity remained unchanged; when DMMs were removed, liquidity decreased market-wide. We find evidence consistent with the idea that these DMMs, despite facing only mild formal obligations, significantly improve liquidity in the modern electronic marketplace.
INTRODUCTION TO “MODELS OF MONETARY ECONOMIES II: THE NEXT GENERATION”*

This article is a summary of the papers presented at the Models of Monetary Economies II conference, hosted in May 2004 by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota. It focuses on several themes in the papers, including the microfoundations of monetary theory, optimal monetary policy, and the role of banking, and also overviews how the contributions fit together. Finally, the article comments on monetary theory in general - how it has evolved and where it may be headed.
RE-EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AUDITING STANDARD NO. 2: LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF RESTATEMENTS AND THE OUTCOME OF AUDITOR LITIGATION IN LAWSUITS FILED FROM 1996 TO 2009

We provide evidence of the impact of Auditing Standard No. 2 (“AS 2”), issued pursuant to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (“SarBox”), on the outcome of auditors in financial reporting litigation. Specifically, we focus on the existence of financial restatements and how and why they affected the outcome of the auditor in the financial reporting lawsuits. Our longitudinal method subjected to yearby-year regression analysis 2,059 financial reporting lawsuits filed from 1996 to 2009. Our results indicate that restatements are positively associated with more severe outcomes for the auditor in lawsuits filed in 2002 and in the years after 2004. However, restatements are not significant in lawsuits filed in 2003 and 2004. Pressure from SarBox Section 906 criminal penalties and Section 302 requirements to disclose material weaknesses, coupled with a lack of guidance to distinguish material weaknesses from significant deficiencies, temporarily and indirectly caused the issuance of a large number of restatements that were not material or comprehensible to participants in the legal system. Thus, they were temporarily unable to use the restatements to inform their litigation behavior. However, after the June 17, 2004, release of AS 2, participants in the legal system were again able to use the restatements to inform their behavior. This suggests that AS 2, notwithstanding its inefficiency, necessitating its subsequent superseding by Auditing Standard No. 5 (“AS 5”), increased audit effectiveness and financial reporting quality by facilitating more accurate identification of material weaknesses.
Regulating Mandatory Arbitration

Over the last twenty-five years, the Supreme Court has relied on party autonomy and the national policy favoring arbitration to expand the Federal Arbitration Act’s scope beyond Congress’s original intent. Choosing these loaded premises has allowed the Court to reach the outcomes it desires while denying that it is making any political or moral judgments in its decisions – a type of bureaucratic formalism. One controversial outcome of the Court’s formalism, overall, has been the increased prevalence of mandatory arbitration. Although it reduces judicial caseloads and lowers companies’ dispute-resolution costs, it also restricts or eliminates individual rights and reduces public regulation of the companies that require it. The Court has supported the spread of mandatory arbitration despite these negative effects. Because of the Court’s support, the parties being subjected to mandatory arbitration began asking lower courts for relief through the unconscionability doctrine in the early 1990s. And because the unconscionability doctrine could not provide the wide-scale relief they wanted, they also turned to Congress, convincing its members to introduce 139 anti-arbitration bills since 1995 – the majority of which proposed eliminating mandatory arbitration. A review of these efforts, including an original survey of these bills, reveals that these parties have been disregarding mandatory arbitration’s public benefits in favor of a rights-oriented, liberal approach that rejects regulation as a possible way to improve mandatory arbitration’s overall fairness. This Article shows that both the Supreme Court’s and the reform advocates’ approaches to mandatory arbitration are flawed. It makes more sense, at least for now, to continue mandatory arbitration’s use while improving its overall fairness through legislative or agency regulation. Regulating mandatory arbitration with the goal of improving its fairness is consistent with pragmatic principles and is superior to the Supreme Court’s formalism and the reform advocates’ liberalism in the current mandatory-arbitration context. Taking this approach will allow us to study mandatory arbitration over time before deciding whether to eliminate it – a fair way to proceed given the importance of the rights at stake and the positive effects that mandatory arbitration can (possibly) have on the public good.
The generalized symmetric eigenproblem in multivariate statistical models

The solution of the generalized symmetric eigenproblem Ax = λBx is required in many multivariate statistical models, viz. canonical correlation, discriminant analysis, multivariate linear model, limited information maximum likelihoods. The problem can be solved by two efficient numerical algorithms: Cholesky decomposition or singular value decomposition. Practical considerations for implementation are also discussed.
The Value(s) of Foreclosure Law Reform

This symposium contribution examines the starkly different values reflected in traditional legal literature on foreclosure law reform in the U.S. as compared to some more recent entries in the wake of the rise of subprime lending and high rates of residential mortgage default. I highlight economist Dean Baker’s “right to rent” proposal, which would give former homeowners leasehold rights at market rates, to illustrate a more progressive set of housing policy considerations and to challenge the assumption that ownership is essential or optimal to promoting various housing objectives.
The space of asymptotically conical self-expanders of mean curvature flow

We show that the space of asymptotically conical self-expanders of the mean curvature flow is a smooth Banach manifold. An immediate consequence is that non-degenerate self-expanders—that is, those self-expanders that admit no non-trivial normal Jacobi fields that fix the asymptotic cone—are generic in a certain sense.