cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The future of the nonprofit sector: Its entwining with private enterprise and government

The nonprofit sector—neither private enterprise nor governmental—is growing rapidly, and not only in the United States. This article explores three questions about the sector, which includes large elements of such service industries as universities, hospitals, nursing homes, day-care centers, museums, social services, and organizations promoting medical research, environmental protection, and the arts. These questions are: (a) Why is the nonprofit sector expanding worldwide?; (b) How is the growth of nonprofits affecting other parts of the economy?; and (c) What evidence is there that nonprofits make a difference, that they perform functions which private firms or government cannot perform? A major theme is that the sector's growth necessitates finding ways to increase revenues, and that has brought side effects, particularly as nonprofits have become more and more “commercial.” In the process, borders between the nonprofit and both the for-profit and public sectors are being crossed increasingly, and with consequences that often pose problems.
Click Here for a Data Scientist: Big Data, Predictive Analytics, and Theory Development in the Era of a Maker Movement Supply Chain

Predictive analytics is impacting many diverse areas, ranging from baseball and epidemiology to forecasting and customer relationship management. Manufacturers, retailers, software companies, and consultants are creatively discovering new applications of big data using predictive analytics in supply chain management and logistics. In practice, predictive analytics is generally atheoretical; however, we develop a 2 × 2 model to explain the role of predictive analytics in the theory development process. This 2 × 2 model shows that in our discipline we have traditionally taken one path to theory development, but that predictive analytics can be a salient component of a comprehensive theory development process. The model points to a number of research questions that need to be addressed by our research community. These questions are not just highly relevant to the academic community but also in urgent need of answers to help practitioners execute the right strategies with greater precision and efficiency. We also discuss how one disruptive trend, the maker movement, changes the nature of who the producers are in the supply chain, making big data even more valuable. As we engage in higher levels of dialogue we will be able to make meaningful progress addressing these vital research topics.
WTO Regulation of Subsidies to State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) – A Critical Appraisal of the China Accession Protocol

The existence of a large number of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China and government subsidies to them has caused much concern among its trading partners. The Protocol on China's Accession to the WTO sets out certain provisions directly or indirectly addressing this concern. Among them are the provisions of an SOE-based specificity test and authorization for the importing country to use, on a permanent basis, alternative benchmarks in identifying and calculating Chinese subsidies. In addition, the Protocol excludes China from invoking the privatization exception available to developing country members under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. This article provides a critical analysis of the Protocol approach towards the issue of SOE subsidies and examines its implications for economic reform in China and for the WTO legal system. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.
Changes in the role of lawyers and corporate governance in Japan--How do we measure whether legal reform leads to real change?

This Essay is part of a festschrift in honor of John Owen Haley and appears in a special issue of Washington University Global Studies Law Review. Haley is best known for his work on continuity and change in Japanese law and society. This Essay utilizes a case study on change in Japan in the areas of the legal profession and corporate governance to explore the question of the appropriate criteria for evaluating whether legal reform results in "real" change in practice. Comparative studies tend to either focus narrowly on case studies and emphasize change that has occurred, or, more commonly, look for a complete systemic transformation and, finding none, conclude that legal reform is not effective. In either case, the choice of a standard for measuring change seems largely outcome determinative. This Essay seeks to illustrate the potential "middle ground" of significant change which falls short of a systemic transformation by formulating and applying criteria for measuring change in the areas of the legal profession and corporate governance in Japan. This exercise does, indeed, lead to different results than the most common analysis which focuses on the lack of any systemic transformation. In the case of the legal profession, this Essay's focus on the demand for legal services, the supply of lawyers, and an expansion in the role of lawyers arguably points to significant change in the legal profession over the past decade. In the area of corporate governance, a greater emphasis on the monitoring of management and change in ownership structure, rather than solely on the maximization of shareholder value, may result in a closer question than is generally acknowledged, with important changes in corporate practice indicated in a number of areas.
Hedge Funds: Pricing Controls and the Smoothing of Self-reported Returns

W e investigate the extent to which hedge fund managers smooth self-reported returns. In contrast to prior research on the “anomalous” properties of hedge fund returns, we observe the mechanisms used to price the fund’s investment positions and report the fund’s performance to investors, thereby allowing us to differentiate between asset illiquidity and misreporting-based explanations. We find that funds using less verifiable pricing sources and funds that provide managers with greater discretion in pricing investment positions are more likely to have returns consistent with intentional smoothing. Traditional controls, however, such as removing the manager from the setting and reporting of the fund’s net asset value and the use of reputable auditors and administrators, are not associated with lower levels of smoothing. With respect to asset illiquidity versus misreporting, investment style and portfolio characteristics explain 14.0–24.3% of the variation in our smoothing measures, and pricing controls explain an additional 4.1–8.8%, suggesting that asset illiquidity is the major factor driving the anomalous properties of self-reported hedge fund returns. (JEL G12, G23, M41, M42)
Risk and Revelation: Changing the Value of Information

A different approach is introduced to determine the value of an information-sharing agreement: the measure of risk aversion/loving. This approach reveals the relationship between information-sharing models and the risk literature. It also allows uncertainty regarding the slope of a firm’s own demand function to be examined which previous work eschews. The results suggest that the incentive to reveal information is more prevalent than previously thought: firms prefer to commit to reveal private valued information in both quantity and price competition. This differs from previous work where the incentive to commit depended on the type of competition.
On estimating the expected return on the market: An exploratory investigation

The expected market return is a number frequently required for the solution of many investment and corporate finance problems, but by comparison with other financial variables, there has been little research on estimating this expected return. Current practice for estimating the expected market return adds the historical average realized excess market returns to the current observed interest rate. While this model explicitly reflects the dependence of the market return on the interest rate, it fails to account for the effect of changes in the level of market risk. Three models of equilibrium expected market returns which reflect this dependence are analyzed in this paper. Estimation procedures which incorporate the prior restriction that equilibrium expected excess returns on the market must be positive are derived and applied to return data for the period 1926–1978. The principal conclusions from this exploratory investigation are: (1) in estimating models of the expected market return, the non-negativity restriction of the expected excess return should be explicity included as part of the specification: (2) estimators which use realized returns should be adjusted for heteroscedasticity.
Why Don't We Agree? Evidence from a Social Network of Investors

We study sources of investor disagreement using sentiment of investors from a social media investing platform, combined with information on the users' investment approaches (e.g., technical, fundamental). We examine how much of overall disagreement is driven by different information sets versus differential interpretation of information by studying disagreement within and across investment approaches. Overall disagreement is evenly split between both sources of disagreement, but within‐group disagreement is more tightly related to trading volume than cross‐group disagreement. Although both sources of disagreement are important, our findings suggest that information differences are more important for trading than differences across market approaches.
Knowledge management: an empirical analysis of reuse and productivity

This paper investigates the reuse of knowledge using real-world data gathered by a large information technology firm for internal purposes. Researchers have proposed that one reason that knowledge management system users contribute knowledge is because they are ‘similar’ to others. This data allows analysis of that issue based on geographic and functional organisation units. Other researchers have suggested that organisations ‘probably’ use the number of times a document has been accessed (‘number of accesses’) as a quantitative measure in knowledge management systems. The data substantiates that claim and investigates the relationship between the number of authors and the number of times a document has been accessed. Finally, researchers have suggested that the primary reason for development of knowledge management systems is to improve productivity. This research investigates the extent to which knowledge contributions are related to relevance, leveraging knowledge and gains in productivity.
Can ESP Yield Abnormal Returns

Foreknowledge of earnings surprises is more valuable than trading on known earnings surprises. Earnings surprises are predictable to a considerable extent. I evaluate the performance of an earnings surprise predictor (ESP), which foretells how close analyst expectations of quarterly earnings numbers will be to upcoming earnings numbers. I examine performance over nine years, adjust returns for those of the S&P 500 index, and I adopt an implementable trading strategy. I show that ESP outperforms the S&P 500 index in all nine years. I also show that a weighted portfolio assigning higher weights to stocks expected to have the largest positive earnings surprises has a higher return and a lower variance than a portfolio that assigns equal weights to all rank groups.
Models or Stars: The Role of Asset Pricing Models and Heuristics in Investor Risk Adjustment

We examine the role of factor models and simple performance heuristics in investor decision-making using Morningstar’s 2002 rating methodology change. Before the change, flows strongly correlated with CAPM alphas. After, when funds are ranked by size and book-to-market groups, flows become more sensitive to 3-factor alphas (FF3). Flows to a matched institutional sample (same managers/strategies) follow FF3 before and after the change but are unrelated to the CAPM. Placebo tests with sector funds and other factor loadings show no effects. Our results imply that improvements in simple performance heuristics can result in more sophisticated risk adjustment by retail investors.
The Nonequivalence of Import and Export Quotas in Strategic Equilibrium

The authors use a standard general-equilibrium trade model to show that export and import policies are not symmetric in the equilibrium of a strategic game with quotas. It is assumed that N (identical) large countries, without cooperation, set their import (or export) quotas to maximize domestic welfare. It is shown that the equilibrium in which all countries use import quotas differs from, and is superior to, the equilibrium in which countries use export quotas. The difference arises because the elasticity of the residual foreign export supply schedule differs between the two equilibria. The authors also study the properties of the sequential equilibrium of the game. In a simultaneous-move game, each country is indifferent as to whether it uses an import or export quota, given the policy of the other country. However, in a sequential-move game, the first mover will prefer to use an import quota rather than an export quota.
The effect of effectiveness: Donor response to aid effectiveness in a direct mail fundraising experiment

Abstract We test how donors respond to new information about a charity's effectiveness. Freedom from Hunger implemented a test of its direct marketing solicitations, varying letters by whether they include a discussion of their program's impact as measured by scientific research. The base script, used for both treatment and control, included a standard qualitative story about an individual beneficiary. Adding scientific impact information has no effect on average likelihood of giving or average gift amount. However, we find important heterogeneity: large prior donors both are more likely to give and also give more, whereas small prior donors are less likely to give. This pattern is consistent with two different types of donors: warm glow donors who respond negatively to analytical effectiveness information, and altruism donors who respond positively to such information.
Time inconsistency and retirement planning

While standard models assume households have no trouble planning for retirement, some researchers have argued that households vary in their propensity to plan and that the degree of retirement planning is a key determinant of household saving (Lusardi and Mitchell 2007). As a result, there is signi…cant world-wide eort to measure and improve …nancial literacy and retirement planning. To our knowledge, this paper is the …rst to quantify the welfare gains associated with improved retirement planning. We …nd that a modest increase in a household's planning horizon by just a few years, so that the household begins planning for retirement a few years earlier than otherwise, provides welfare gains that can be as large as the gains traditionally ascribed to the elimination of business cycles and idiosyncratic risks. Given the size of these welfare gains, we believe that eorts to improve …nancial literacy and retirement planning are worth the utmost attention of economists, policymakers, and educators.
Openness and Growth: A Time-Series, Cross-Country Analysis for Developing Countries

This paper compares the association between many popular proxies for openness and the rate of GDP growth, as well as the results from cross-section and panel estimation, controlling for country effects. The results suggest that using period averages versus annual data critically affects the strength of the association between openness and growth. The paper reviews the empirical literature on openness and technological change. It discusses the dataset for this paper and the empirical specification, while also presenting the main results. The sensitivity of the results to the inclusion of both macroeconomic variables and country size are also tested. It concludes with an agenda for future research.
From global to polycentric climate governance

Global governance institutions for climate change, such as those established by the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, have so far failed to make a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Following the lead of Elinor Ostrom, this paper offers an alternative theoretical framework for reconstructing global climate policy in accordance with the polycentric approach to governance pioneered in the early 1960s by Vincent Ostrom, Charles Tiebout, and RobertWarren. Instead of a thoroughly top-down global regime, in which lower levels of government simply carry out the mandates of international negotiators, a polycentric approach provides for greater experimentation, learning, and cross-influence among different levels and units of government, which are both independent and interdependent. After exploring several of the design flaws of the existing set of global institutions and organizations for greenhouse gas mitigation, the paper explores how those global institutions and organizations might be improved by learning from various innovative policies instituted by local, state, and regional governments. The paper argues that any successful governance system for stabilizing the global climate must function as part of a larger, polycentric set of nested institutions and organizations at various governmental levels.
Separations of Wealth: Inequality and the Erosion of Checks and Balances

American government is dysfunctional: Gridlock, filibusters, and expanding presidential power, everyone seems to agree, threaten our basic system of constitutional governance. Who, or what, is to blame? In the standard account, the fault lies with the increasing polarization of our political parties. That standard story, however, ignores an important culprit: Concentrated wealth and its organization to achieve political ends. The only way to understand our current constitutional predicament—and to rectify it—is to pay more attention to the role that organized wealth plays in our system of checks and balances. This Article shows that the increasing concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of the wealthy elite, and the concomitant decline of countervailing organizations, help explain the extent of executive power, the rise of gridlock, and, ultimately, the deterioration of effective checks and balances in the Federal Government. A core goal of constitutional structure—to promote democratic accountability and responsiveness to the broad citizenry—is severely compromised by the power wielded by organized wealth. Moderating partisanship will not alone solve constitutional dysfunction, nor will conventional good governance reforms like campaign finance regulation. Rather, this Article argues, the law should facilitate organizations of ordinary Americans that can serve as a countervailing check and prod in governance.
Voting Costs and Voter Turnout in Competitive Elections

In the United States, competitive elections are often concentrated in particular places. These places attract disproportionate attention from news media and election campaigns. Yet many voting studies only test stimuli in uncompetitive environments, or only test for average effects, and simply assume the results are relevant to competitive contexts. This article questions that assumption by utilizing Election Day inclement weather as an exogenous and random cost imposed on voters. We test how voters in competitive and uncompetitive environments respond to this random cost and find that while rain decreases turnout on average, it does not do so in competitive elections. If voters in different electoral contexts do not react the same way even to rain, then serious doubt should meet claims that voters will react the same way to campaign appeals, economic factors, or other treatments tested in the literature. Careful consideration of effects that are heterogeneous with respect to electoral context can make the difference between a result that calls democracy into question and one that is politically irrelevant.
The Attorney as Advocate and Witness: Does the Prohibition of an Attorney Acting as Advocate and Witness at a Judicial Trial Also Apply in Administrative Adjudications

In every state, the professional rules of conduct contain a prohibition on an attorney acting as both an advocate for their client and a witness in the same trial. The "lawyer as witness" rule has, however, been inconsistently applied in administrative adjudications. This article analyzes the split of authority in the use of this rule and proposes a solution as how the issue should be resolved.Ample support for applying the lawyer as witness rule to administrative adjudications may be found in administrative decisions, judicial opinions and state bar association ethics committee opinions. There is, however, conflicting authority that rejects application of the rule to administrative adjudications, based on the language of the rule and the differences between judicial trials and administrative proceedings.This article finds that the policy reasons supporting the lawyer as witness rule in judicial proceedings also justify its use in administrative adjudications. Accounting for the inherent differences between the two fora, however, this article proposes a slightly varied version of the rule in the administrative field. Rather than contain a "substantial hardship" exception, as states following the ABA formulations currently impose, a more flexible exception to the rule would better suit the administrative process. This article proposes that a showing of "some hardship" would be a more suitable exception, unless the party opposing the testimony can prove prejudice. Furthermore, if the ALJ found disqualification of the attorney necessary, this proposed rule would allow for other members of the disqualified attorney's law firm to represent the client and permit the disqualified attorney to remain counsel of record and participate in pre- and post-hearing matters.Adoption of the proposed rule may be accomplished in one of two ways. Either those responsible for the rules of professional conduct in each state and the ABA may be petitioned, or adjudicating agencies can adopt the proposed rule in their rules of procedure. This article suggests that the latter means of adoption could be more easily done due to each agency's power to adopt procedural regulations. In addition, agency adoption would allow for the rule to be shaped in a way that addresses the differences amongst the agencies.This article supports the use of the lawyer as witness rule in administrative adjudications. The proposed rule set forth, however, contains variations that would better suit the flexibility of administrative proceedings, as well as a proposed plan of adoption.
Seeing Government Purpose Through the Objective Observer's Eyes: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Debates

Debates about teaching intelligent design in public school science classes are inflaming communities across the nation. These controversies present thorny Establishment Clause questions at a time when that doctrine is less clear than ever. The ambiguity is not due to a lack of case law: Just last year, the Supreme Court issued two seemingly contradictory Establishment Clause decisions, driven by what then-Chief Justice Rehnquist characterized as "Januslike" interests. McCreary County v. ACLU, with its focus on government purpose, is more applicable to curricular disputes such as intelligent design than Van Orden v. Perry, with its examination of passive, apparently uncontroversial expression. This Article thus examines McCreary County within the intelligent design context, focusing on McCreary County's decision to import the "objective observer" from the effects-endorsement analysis into the government purpose inquiry. Such analysis makes clear the ways in which a strict reading of McCreary County leads to undesirable results, and the reasons why the Court should retain McCreary County's focus on government purpose, but reject the expanded role of the objective observer.
Catholic Schools and Broken Windows

Our previous work has suggested that the closure of Catholic elementary schools generates disorder and suppresses social cohesion in urban neighborhoods—findings that support the conclusion that Catholic elementary schools create neighborhood social capital. We extend our inquiry here by asking if Catholic school closures might also affect crime rates. Using factors independent from neighborhood indicators, specifically school and parish leadership characteristics, we created an exogenous factor that predicted which Catholic schools might close in urban Chicago, and used that factor, with sociodemographic variables, to predict police-beat-level crime rates. We find that Catholic school closures slow the rate of decline of crime in a police beat compared to beats with no Catholic school closure. We also find that higher perceived disorder predicted higher initial levels of crime. Our findings provide insight into which policing policies are effective and the benefits of involving religious institutions in crime-prevention efforts. They also lend support to “school-choice” mechanisms, such as vouchers or tax credits, that would provide financial resources to students attending urban Catholic schools.
From Antidiscrimination to Equality: Stereotypes and the Life Cycle in the United States and Europe

In the United States, mandatory maternity leave is sex discrimination, and mandatory retirement is age discrimination. By contrast, European antidiscrimination law is compatible with both types of mandatory employment policies. This article compares the jurisprudence and policy debates in the United States and Europe on mandatory maternity leave and retirement to unearth two different understandings of the state’s role in advancing equality. In the United States, employment equality is closely tied to preserving individuals’ choice to work, whereas in Europe, employment equality requires collectively imposed norms about the role of work in a person’s life cycle. The comparison highlights the tradeoffs between protecting individual autonomy and combating the social and economic forces that undermine equality.
Self-Determination and the Wrongfulness of Death

Self-determination has become the central ideal governing medical treatment for patients generally and for terminally ill people specifically. Proponents of physician-assisted suicide set this ideal as their core claim. Opponents assert that the practice, if legally recognized, would inevitably slide into involuntary euthanasia for vulnerable people. This article explores internal tensions within the self-determination ideal as applied to the administration of death that give plausibility to this "slippery slope" concern. Three different aspects of the self-determination ideal illuminate its vulnerability in approaching death. (1) By tracing the historic development in Western culture of the idea of the rational, secular, self-determining self, the article identifies logical contradictions and vulnerabilities that persist in that idea. (2) By tracing contemporary individual psychological development from infancy into the mature adult attainment of the culturally prized conception of the rational, self-determining self, the article identifies the emotional ambivalence and vulnerabilities that persist in the self-perceptions of "normal adults." (3) By tracing the apparently triumphant progression of the self-determination ideal in American cultural history, the article identifies a "dark side" to this progression, the way in which this ideal both masked and gave impetus to the infliction of terrible oppressions on vulnerable people. The article concludes that these persistent contradictions and vulnerabilities in the self-determination ideal are magnified -- for the culture and for individuals -- by the imminent approach of death, and that this magnification provides an impetus in practice for the "slippery slope" toward involuntary euthanasia.
PROMISES MADE, PROMISES BROKEN: A MODEL OF IMF PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION

This paper presents a model of the implementation of IMF programs, which is empirically tested with data from the period 1975–1999. The IMF and the borrowing country are shown to have asymmetric evaluations of a program's discounted benefits, due to differences in the measurement of the benefits, the relevant time frame and appropriate discount rate. The model also distinguishes between a government that seeks to maximize national welfare and an autocracy that seeks only to benefit the ruling group. The results of the empirical analysis demonstrate that program implementation is affected by a country's trade openness, the ideological cohesion of the government, the duration of the political regime, and the degree of political openness.
Benefit-Cost Analysis of Antimicrobial Prophylaxis in Abdominal and Vaginal Hysterectomy

We performed a benefit-cost analysis of antimicrobial prophylaxis for hysterectomy using data from a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial of the efficacy of three doses of cefazolin sodium. The excess cost per patient with either operative site or urinary tract infection, or febrile morbidity diagnosed during hospitalization, was $1,777 for vaginal and $716 for abdominal hysterectomy. In patients undergoing vaginal hysterectomy, prophylactic cefazolin reduced in-hospital infectious morbidity from 52% to 23% (preventive fraction, 56%), resulting in an average net benefit of $492 per patient. In abdominal hysterectomy, cefazolin decreased in-hospital morbidity from 43% to 25% (preventive fraction, 42%), resulting in an average net savings of $102 per patient. These benefits would be eroded by use of newer, more expensive cephalosporins unless they were considerably more effective than cefazolin. The benefits also would be diminished by inappropriate prolongation of the duration of prophylaxis. ( JAMA 1983;249:1290-1294)
Further Investigation of the Uncertain Unit Root in GNP

A more powerful version of the augmented Dickey–Fuller test and a test that has trend stationarity as the null are applied to U.S. gross national product. Simulated critical values generated from plausible trend- and difference-stationary models are used to minimize possible finite-sample biases. The discriminatory power of the two tests is evaluated using alternative-specific rejection frequencies. For postwar quarterly data, these two tests do not provide a definite conclusion. When analyzing annual data over the 1869–1986 period, however, the unit-root null is rejected, but the trend-stationary null is not.
Key Issues in Multichannel Customer Management: Current Knowledge and Future Directions

Abstract Multichannel customer management is “the design, deployment, and evaluation of channels to enhance customer value through effective customer acquisition, retention, and development” (Neslin, Scott A., D. Grewal, R. Leghorn, V. Shankar, M. L. Teerling, J. S. Thomas, P. C. Verhoef (2006), Challenges and Opportunities in Multichannel Management. Journal of Service Research 9(2) 95–113). Channels typically include the store, the Web, catalog, sales force, third party agency, call center and the like. In recent years, multichannel marketing has grown tremendously and is anticipated to grow even further. While we have developed a good understanding of certain issues such as the relative value of a multichannel customer over a single channel customer, several research and managerial questions still remain. We offer an overview of these emerging issues, present our future outlook, and suggest important avenues for future research.
Online stakeholder targeting and the acquisition of social media capital

The diffusion of social media has opened new possibilities for targeted stakeholder communication and, with it, new forms of organizational resources. This article examines the nexus between social media-based stakeholder communication and the acquisition of social media-based resources, referred to here as social media capital. After laying out a conceptual mapping of both targeted stakeholder communication and social media capital, the article turns to an inductive analysis of the relationship between the messages 117 US community foundations are sending to their core stakeholders on Twitter and subsequent levels of social media capital. The article thus contributes to the existing literature by elaborating new forms of targeted stakeholder communication, a new type of organizational resource, and the relationship between the two. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Ethical Issues in Mass Tort Plaintiffs’ Representation: Beyond the Aggregate Settlement Rule

Those who have addressed ethics issues for plaintiffs’ lawyers in mass tort litigation have focused on possible reform of the aggregate settlement rule to facilitate global settlements. This Article addresses a broader range of ethical issues, including (1) application of the general conflicts of interest rule to both client-client and client-lawyer conflicts; (2) unresolved issues concerning the interpretation of the current aggregate settlement rule, including the need to disclose client names and the applicability of the rule to court-approved settlements and formula or matrix allocations; and (3) the ability of lawyers to voluntarily withdraw from representing plaintiffs who reject an offer of settlement.
The Effect of Litigation Risk on Management Earnings Forecasts

We examine the effect of litigation risk on managers' decision to issue earnings forecasts. We use a new ex ante measure of litigation risk, namely, the Directors and Officers liability insurance premium. This choice bypasses significant problems associated with the estimation of ex ante litigation risk in prior studies. By using this measure of litigation risk, our results are more intuitively appealing. We find that when faced with ex ante litigation risk, managers with bad news are more likely to issue an earnings warning. For good news firms, we do not see this effect. We also examine three forecast characteristics: forecast horizon, extent of news revealed and forecast precision. Firms with higher litigation risk tend to issue earnings forecasts earlier if they have bad news but not so when they have good news. They also reveal less news in the forecasts if they have good news. As litigation risk increases, bad news earnings forecasts become more precise. Good news earnings forecasts, however, tend to become less precise relative to bad news forecasts. This differential effect of litigation risk on management earnings forecasts, based on the direction of news, has not been documented by previous studies.
The Complexity of Immigrant Generations: Implications for Assessing the Socioeconomic Integration of Hispanics and Asians

Much of the socioeconomic mobility achieved by U.S. immigrant families takes place across rather than within generations. When assessing the long-term integration of immigrants, it is therefore important to analyze differences not just between the foreign-born and U.S-born, but also across generations of the U.S.-born. Because of data limitations, however, virtually all studies of the later-generation descendants of immigrants rely on subjective measures of ethnic self-identification rather than arguably more objective measures based on the countries of birth of the respondent and his ancestors. In this context, biases can arise from “ethnic attrition” (e.g., U.S.-born individuals who do not self-identify as Hispanic despite having ancestors who were immigrants from a Spanish-speaking country). Analyzing 1994-2010 data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), we present evidence that such ethnic attrition is sizeable and selective for the second- and third-generation populations of key Hispanic and Asian immigrant groups. In addition, our results suggest that ethnic attrition generates measurement biases that vary across national origin groups in direction as well as magnitude, and that correcting for these biases is likely to raise the socioeconomic standing of the U.S.-born descendants of most Hispanic immigrants relative to their Asian counterparts. Finally, although changes to the CPS Hispanic origin and race questions adopted in 2003 have substantially lowered attrition rates for secondand third-generation Hispanics and Asians, ethnic attrition remains a significant issue even with the improved questionnaire.
Dynamics of partisan representation the American south, 1898–2010

This study addresses institutional representation in legislative delegations through the decomposition of the southern U.S. House delegation over time. Linear first-order difference equations are calculated to show the shift from the Solid South and the disintegration of Democratic dominance. These calculations also show that the qualitative behavior of partisan control varies over time given a series of critical events, including the Dixiecrat experience, the Congressional reforms of the 1970s, and the Republican Revolution of 1994. However, I also argue that the Republican Revolution was actually predictable, given the twentieth-century experience of the southern delegation.
RECONSTRUCTING FAULT: THE CASE FOR SPOUSAL TORTS

The advent of no-fault divorce is nearly fifty years in the making, and despite broad intellectual support for the principle of no-fault, fault is persistently a factor in divorce in many jurisdictions and in the arena of public and scholarly opinion. Feminists too have been struggling with this issue for decades, but the controversy persists. In this article, I try to decode and resolve some of the tension between advocates of the relevance of fault and those who simply cannot believe that no-fault divorce has not ended the fault discussion. I argue from a perspective focused on the plight of caregivers and dependents, who I posit should be the focus of any divorce regulation, that fault divorce is not appropriate no matter which side of the sameness/difference debate one focuses upon. Fault in divorce disproportionately punishes dependents and does not work hard enough to protect children from the many potential harms resulting from the dissolution of the marriage. Rather, I argue that spousal torts are the appropriate exclusive domain for contending with wrongdoing during marriage and the role of spousal torts should be solidified and clarified so as to provide a clear outlet for marital wrongdoing. I contend that spousal torts appropriately provide redress for wrongs between spouses that are recoverable as between strangers and thereby protect the vulnerable in the domestic sphere. Moreover, confining litigation of marital wrongs within tort law provides a narrower and more judiciable means of contending with serious marital wrongs that appropriately reflects contemporary norms, protects caregivers and children in need of financial support unless extraordinary conduct is involved, and more fairly compensates the victim. The transfer of fault litigation from divorce to torts, while often criticized as simply transferring the acrimony from one forum to another, has distinct theoretical and practical advantages and can preserve what seems inescapably relevant in fault divorce while benefiting from advantages of no-fault divorce.
Economics and politics of advertising: evidence from the enlarging European Union

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of economic and political factors on advertising industry in the enlarging EU. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employed random effect time series cross-section (TSCS) models and cross sectional regressions to investigate the impacts of these factors on advertising industry in the enlarging EU. Findings – It was found that marketers' advertising spending decisions in these economies are driven by consumers' income level and FDI inflow. Civil liberty related variables, on the other hand, were found to moderate the relationship between income and advertising spending. Practical implications – This paper helps managers and practitioners understand the dynamics of advertising industry in the enlarging EU as well as in other parts of the world. Some fruitful avenues for future research include examination of consumers' perceptions of advertising in the rapidly changing Eastern European countries; use of qualitative methods to deepen the understanding of how consumers make sense of different forms of advertising; and in-depth analysis of advertising industries in selected economies. Originality/value – The value of this paper is two-fold. First, it is one of the most comprehensive cross-country advertising studies examining the drivers of advertising industries in 28 European countries. Second, it employs TSCS models which allow for differences in behavior over cross sectional units as well as the differences in behavior over time for a given cross section and hence are likely to be consistent with the way the data were generated.
Investment with Uncertain Tax Policy: Does Random Tax Policy Discourage Investment

We consider the impact of tax policy uncertainty on firm level and aggregate investment, comparing investment behaviour when uncertainty is due to a shock following Geometric Brownian Motion (GBM) versus when random discrete jumps in tax policy occur. Expectations of the likelihood of a tax policy switch have an important negative impact on the gain to delaying investment in the latter model and time to investment can fall with increasing tax policy uncertainty. Aggregate investment simulations indicate that capital formation is adversely affected by increases in uncertainty in the traditional GBM model but can be enhanced in the jump process model.
Do Career Concerns Affect the Delay of Bad News Disclosure

ABSTRACT: Theory argues that career concerns (i.e., concerns about the impact of current performance on contemporaneous and future compensation) encourage managers to withhold bad news disclosure. ...
Estimation and empirical properties of a firm-year measure of accounting conservatism

We estimate a firm-year measure of accounting conservatism, examine its empirical properties as a metric, and illustrate applications by testing new hypotheses that shed further light on the nature and effects of conservatism. The results are consistent with the measure, C_Score, capturing variation in conservatism and also predicting asymmetric earnings timeliness at horizons of up to 3 years ahead. Cross-sectional hypothesis tests suggest firms with longer investment cycles, higher idiosyncratic uncertainty and higher information asymmetry have higher accounting conservatism. Event studies suggest increased conservatism is a response to increases in information asymmetry and idiosyncratic uncertainty.
Clarion Call or False Alarm: Why Proposed Exemptions to Equal Marriage Statutes Return Us to a Religious Understanding of the Public Marketplace

This Article discusses the problematic issues arising from proposed religious exemptions to equal marriage statutes. In the Author's view these exemptions would create the societal framework in which lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men can be refused service in virtually all aspects of life, whether fundamental or mundane — from healthcare to housing, from employment to flower-buying. This would all be accomplished with the express permission of the state. The Author believes that these proposals could permit widespread discrimination on a multitude of protected bases. The proposals appear to have been crafted to seize on cultural and religious anxiety and fears concerning same-sex marriage. If applied, the likely result would be to effectively eviscerate the hard won sexual orientation protections in place.
Purchasing Power Parity: Doctrinal Perspective and Evidence from the 1920s

Abstract The first part of the paper traces the doctrinal origins of the purchasing power parity (PPP) doctrine and reviews the central issues of controversy. The second part is an empirical study covering the flexible exchange rates period of the 1920s. The empirical work examines the efficiency of foreign exchange markets, the absolute and the relative versions of PPP for alternative price indices, the homogeneity postulate, the relation between the short run and the long run, and the patterns of ‘causality’ between prices and exchange rates. The paper concludes with estimations of price equations and a discussion of the proper specification of PPP.
The Disclose or Abstain Incentive to Issue Management Guidance

Prior research generally argues that managers issue management earnings forecasts (MFs) to secure capital market benefits (that is, to reduce information asymmetry between managers and investors to lower a firmâs cost of capital), to reduce the firmâs litigation costs, or to allow managers to trade opportunistically in their firmâs stock. We discuss and test whether some MFs are issued because managers have an affirmative duty under Rule 10b-5 of the Securities Acts to disclose all material information or to abstain from trading in their firmâs securities. Four sets of tests support our conjecture that managers issue some MFs to comply with their duty under Rule 10b-5. Since prior MF studies have typically ignored the alternative explanation that managers issue some MFs to comply with disclose or abstain obligations, the inferences drawn from such studies about managerial incentives to issue MFs likely overstate the economic significance of the variables used to capture capital market or opportunistic incentives for MF disclosure.
Optimal Contracting, Accounting Standards, and Market Structures*

In this study I use a principal-agent framework to analyze optimal contracting under two accounting standards, referred to as historical cost (HC) and market value (MV), and under differing asset market assumptions. I distinguish HC from MV by the way revenue is recognized and in the reporting discretion allowed. The MV standard recognizes both realized and unrealized holding gains; HC recognizes only realized holding gains. MV allows the manager reporting discretion; the HC standard does not. Also, distinguishing an asset's value-in-use (VIU) from its net realizable value (NRV), I consider markets where the asset's VIU and NRV are always equal as well as markets where VIU and NRV differ. I show the following. If an asset's NRV and VIU are equal and if the manager's available reporting discretion is known, the principal prefers the MV standard because it provides better information about the manager's effort. However, the principal may prefer the HC standard if sufficiently uncertain about the manager's reporting discretion or if the asset's NRV exceeds its VIU, so that expected revenue is sufficiently enhanced by selling the asset earlier. Using an example (normal distribution and mean/variance preferences with linear contracts), I provide a case where the principal prefers the HC standard. Also, I compare the optimal effort and contract under each standard, and provide comparative static results that show how expected revenue, cost, and net income change due to changes in certain model parameters.