cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The "Existing Indian Family" Exception to the Indian Child Welfare Act: The States' Attempt to Slaughter Tribal Interests in Indian Children

In order to rectify past practices of assimilating children into non-American Indian culture by removing them from their homes and tribes, the federal government passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The ICWA provided special rules for the adoption and removal of American Indian children and gave tribes interests and rights regarding their children, under the false assumption that state courts would observe the ICWA. However, state courts quickly created the “existing Indian family” exception to the ICWA, allowing the state court to choose whether a child is an American Indian and subject to the ICWA. This article first discusses the historical background of the ICWA, including the assimilation policy practiced by the United States between the 1800s and the 1970s and Congress’s intent and findings in passing the ICWA. Next, this article sets forth the ICWA (25 USC § 1901 et seq.) and defines who is an American Indian, who is an American Indian child, and what is an American Indian tribe. Further this article discusses when the ICWA applies and who has jurisdiction over child custody proceedings.This article next focuses on the “existing Indian family” exception, laying out the creation of the exception and its application, including which courts have applied and refused to apply the exception.The article then proceeds to explain why the “existing Indian family” exception is flawed. The “existing Indian family” exception’s main flaws are that it ignores tribal interests, ignores the plain language of the ICWA, perpetuates stereotypes of American Indians, does nothing to the constitutionality of the ICWA, and creates problems with uniform application of the ICWA.The author then proposes that the solution to “existing Indian family” exception problem is for Congress to enact legislative similar to California’s Legislative Bill 678, providing that the ICWA applies regardless whether the child was in the custody of an American Indian parent at the commencement of the custody proceeding and that a tribe’s determination of tribal membership status is conclusive.
Giving Shelter from the Storm: Colombians Fleeing Persecution Based on Sexual Orientation

Colombia's LGBT citizens face such severe persecution in their homeland that many are forced to seek asylum abroad. But proving a case for asylum in the United States has been a significant challenge for homosexuals because many immigration judges continue to make decisions based on personal biases that are difficult to overcome or because judges do not understand the conditions in Colombia and elsewhere that compel LGBTs to flee. This article sheds light on the very real dangers LGBTs face in Colombia and is intended to help US immigration judges become better informed.
Recovery of Low-Rank Plus Compressed Sparse Matrices With Application to Unveiling Traffic Anomalies

Given the noiseless superposition of a low-rank matrix plus the product of a known fat compression matrix times a sparse matrix, the goal of this paper is to establish deterministic conditions under which exact recovery of the low-rank and sparse components becomes possible. This fundamental identifiability issue arises with traffic anomaly detection in backbone networks, and subsumes compressed sensing as well as the timely low-rank plus sparse matrix recovery tasks encountered in matrix decomposition problems. Leveraging the ability of l1 and nuclear norms to recover sparse and low-rank matrices, a convex program is formulated to estimate the unknowns. Analysis and simulations confirm that the said convex program can recover the unknowns for sufficiently low-rank and sparse enough components, along with a compression matrix possessing an isometry property when restricted to operate on sparse vectors. When the low-rank, sparse, and compression matrices are drawn from certain random ensembles, it is established that exact recovery is possible with high probability. First-order algorithms are developed to solve the nonsmooth convex optimization problem with provable iteration complexity guarantees. Insightful tests with synthetic and real network data corroborate the effectiveness of the novel approach in unveiling traffic anomalies across flows and time, and its ability to outperform existing alternatives.
Risk-based capital standards and the riskiness of bank portfolios: Credit and factor risks

Abstract Bank risk-based capital (RBC) standards require banks to hold differing amounts of capital for different classes of assets, based almost entirely on a credit risk criterion. This paper provides both a theoretical and empirical framework for evaluating such standards. A model outlining a pricing methodology for loans subject to default risk is presented. The model shows that the returns on such loans are affected by the complicated interaction of the likelihood of default, the consequences of default, term structure variables, and the pricing of factor risks in the economy. When we examine whether the risk weights accurately reflect bank asset risk, we find that the weights fail even in their limited goal of correctly quantifying credit risk. For example, our findings indicate that the RBC weights over-penalize home mortgages, which have an average credit loss of 13 basis points, relative to commercial and consumer loans. The RBC rules also contain a significant bias against direct mortgages relative to mortgage-backed securities. In addition, we find large differences in the credit riskiness of loans within the 100% weight class and potentially large benefits to loan diversification, neither of which are considered in the RBC regulations. We also examine other types of bank risk by estimating a simple factor model that decomposes loan risk into term structure, default, and market risk. One implication of our findings is that although banks have reallocated their portfolios in ways intended by the RBC standards, they may have merely substituted one type of risk (term structure risk) for others (default and market risk), of which the net effect is unknown.
Power, National Security and Transparency: Judicial Decision Making and Social Architecture in the Federal Courts

Even in a democratic society, the need for transparency must be balanced with an important countervailing interest: the occasional, legitimate need for government secrecy. This article, based on an examination of opinions in federal cases dealing with national security and transparency, explores how judges identified the main legal issues presented by a case and the legal factors or mode of legal interpretation used to reach or justify their conclusions. The article concludes that many of these opinions are as much about judges’ attempts to balance the judicial branch's power with the powers of the executive and legislative branches as they are about national security and transparency. Furthermore, the article contends these opinions have created an “architecture of power” that determines how national security information is controlled. The final section also suggests that judges should be mindful of the original architecture of power established by the Constitution and the First Amendment when writing th...
Residential Mortgage Credit Derivatives

losses of a reference mortgage pool. We argue that these derivatives would enable banks to retain whole loans while also enjoying the capital benefits of hedging the credit risk in their mortgage portfolios. In comparisons of hedging effectiveness, the analysis shows that instruments based on credit losses outperform contracts based on house price appreciation. The residential finance system has experienced a systemic failure. Mortgage securitization markets—the major source of mortgage finance—no longer function, except for those with implicit or explicit government credit guarantees. While the form that the future mortgage finance system will take is an open question, it is possible that private mortgage securitization will not recover and that portfolio lenders will have to provide a greater proportion of housing finance, and hence carry a greater proportion of the credit risk of residential mortgages. This article proposes the creation of derivatives based on the credit losses of a reference pool, arguing that such derivatives will help depositories hedge the credit risk of their portfolios without the same drawbacks that may have contributed to the failure of nonagency securitization. The creation of derivatives with cash flows similar to the loss experience of mortgage portfolios is likely to enhance the efficiency of the mortgage finance system. To demonstrate how, take the case of adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs). Small depositories often retain this important class of mortgages as whole loans. 1 As a result, they have overexposure to regional economic fluctuations. Residential mortgage credit derivatives could help depositories diversify their credit exposure while also
Credit Booms and Lending Standards: Evidence from the Subprime Mortgage Market

This paper links the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis to demand-side factors that contributed to the rapid expansion of the U.S. mortgage market. We show that denial rates were relatively lower in areas that experienced faster credit demand growth and that lenders in these high-growth areas attached less weight to applicants’ loan-to-income ratios. The results are robust to controlling for supply-side factors, including house price appreciation, mortgage securitization, and other economic fundamentals, and to several robustness tests controlling for endogeneity. The results are consistent with the notion that a relaxation of lending standards, triggered by an increased demand for loans, contributed to the boom and the ensuing crisis, together with other supply-side explanations. These findings shed new light on the relationship between credit booms and financial instability.
Anomalies in the Values for Consumer Goods With Environmental Attributes

Many consumer products today present information regarding an environmental attribute (e.g., recycled content). This information can be expected to augment the other attributes, resulting in an overall increased interest in the product. However, previous research on preferences for environmental policies (e.g., an increase in air quality) suggests that environmental values are prone to anomalies. For example, respondents may refuse to provide a value or they may exhibit embedding effects, which means they may value two or more environmental goods less highly together than separately. Anomalies such as embedding violate commonsense assumptions regarding an attribute's contribution to the overall attractiveness of a product. These studies examined whether such anomalies obtain in the valuation of consumer goods with environmental attributes in different elicitation conditions. Study 1 established this anomaly for environmental attributes, in which the values were measured using pricing responses (i.e., “how much would you be willing to pay?”) for trades among consumer goods. Study 2 provided a controlled measurement (via a conjoint method) of the trade-offs between the environmental and nonenvironmental attributes and established the effect under this elicitation method. Study 3 extended the findings to conjoint tasks with pricing responses and explored the psychological mediators of embedding, including the role of moral involvement. Study 4 concentrated on possible inferential underpinnings of the effect and further established that the emotional and moral content of environmental attributes contributes to their susceptibility to anomalous valuation.
Don't Fence Me In: Fragmented Markets for Technology and the Patent Acquisition Strategies of Firms

How do firms avoid being "fenced in" by owners of patented technologies used, perhaps unknowingly, in the design or manufacture of their products? This paper examines the conditions under which firms expand their own portfolios of patents in response to potential hold-up problems in markets for technology. Combining insights from transactions cost theory with recent scholarship on intellectual property and its exchange, I predict firms will patent more aggressively than otherwise expected when markets for technology are highly fragmented (i.e., ownership rights to external technologies are widely distributed); this effect should be more pronounced for firms with large investments in technology-specific assets and under a strong legal appropriability regime. Although these characteristics of firms and their external environments have been highlighted in the theoretical literature, prior research has not explored the extent to which such factorsinteract to shape the patenting behavior of firms. To empirically test these hypotheses, I develop a citations-based "fragmentation index" and estimate the determinants of patenting for 67 U.S. semiconductor firms between 1980 and 1994. Accumulating exclusionary rights of their own may enable firms to safeguard their investments in new technologies while foregoing some of the costs and delays associated with ex ante contracting.
The partisan policy cycle and firm valuation

Abstract Our research probes the firm valuation impact of partisan-motivated policy cycles. We first identify the micro-channels of policy transmission that link partisan policy disturbances to firm value. Then, we draw on firm-level data from 21 industrial democracies for the period extending from 1989 to 2008 to examine whether government partisanship has any distinct impact on firm value. We identify a surprisingly large and consistent positive relationship of left-oriented governments with firm value. Additionally, our research finds that the partisan impact on firm value is appreciably conditioned by factors like economic openness.
Optimal climate policy when damages are unknown

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are economists' primary tool for analyzing the optimal carbon tax. Damage functions, which link temperature to economic impacts, have come under fire because of their assumptions that may be incorrect in significant but a priori unknowable ways. Here I develop recursive IAM frameworks to model uncertainty, learning, and concern for misspecification about damages. I decompose the carbon tax into channels capturing state uncertainty, insurance motives, and precautionary saving. Damage learning improves ex ante welfare by 750 billion USD. If damage functions are misspecified and omit the potential for catastrophic damages, robust control may be beneficial ex post.
Development and application of a new methodology of evaluating industrial R&D projects

This paper proposes a new methodology of evaluating industrial R&D projects to assess the effectiveness of future R&D in terms of financial credibility, to prioritize them efficiently by clear criteria to reduce the time and burden consumed by both project leaders and management staffs. A new methodology has been developed and applied to all Sumitomo Electric Industries (SEI) R&D projects, and is recognized as a useful system for evaluating many R&D projects in a short period, such as 150 projects per month.
An Overview of Equity Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs): 1993-2009

This study documents the publicly traded equity real estate investment trust (REIT) universe during the modern REIT era (early 1990s through the present). The growth and consolidation of the indust...
The Global Food Crisis: Law, Policy and the Elusive Quest for Justice

The right to food is recognized as a fundamental human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.1 Notwithstanding the obligation of states to respect, protect, and fulfill this right, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reports that 1.02 billion people are chronically undernourished worldwide—a figure that represents onesixth of humanity.2 While fifteen million of the world’s food insecure people are located in the Global North, the remaining billion reside in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Pacific, and the Caribbean.3 The food crisis of 2008 propelled the issue of food security from the margins to the center of public debate, and focused the world’s attention on the need for sustainable and equitable food production and distribution systems. From 2006 through 2008, skyrocketing food prices plunged an additional 115 million people into the ranks of the malnourished and provoked food riots across the globe.4 The immediate causes of the food
Institutional trading and the turn-of-the-year effect

Abstract This study provides evidence that links institutional trading behavior directly to anomalous turn-of-the-year return patterns of small stocks. We find that turn-of-the-year trading patterns of institutions reflect strategies generally consistent with window-dressing and risk-shifting behaviors. Institutions sell more loser small stocks in the last quarter of the year, but buy more small stocks, winners and losers, in the first quarter. Institutional buying (selling) of loser stocks at year-end weakens (strengthens) the turn-of-the-year effect. Buying of winner stocks after year-end causes a statistically significant, though weaker, effect.
Activation of a modern industry

This paper constructs an integrated framework to disentangle the underlying economic mechanism of industrial transformation. We consider three essential elements for the analysis: skill requirements, industry-wide spillovers and degrees of consumption subsistence. We find that human and nonhuman resources, production factor matching and industrial coordination are all important for activating a modern industry. In the process of industrial transformation, job destruction may exceed job creation, and income distribution may get worse immediately following the activation of a modern industry. An array of policy prescriptions for advancing a poor country is provided.
Questioning the UN's immunity in the Dutch Courts; unresolved issues in the Mothers of Srebrenica litigation

Providing victims with a judicial forum where they can air their grievances and obtain redress for violations of their rights is regarded as the cornerstone of an international culture of accountability. Restrictions on the right of access to a court must not run afoul of international law’s prohibition on the denial of justice. The operation of international organizations, on the other hand, is predicated on the notion that shielding such organizations from the normal processes of foreign law, by providing for their immunity before foreign national courts, is the only way to ensure their effectiveness.When an international organization tasked with promoting human rights is itself accused of human rights violations, these two international norms run afoul of one another, and any resulting incompatibility must be resolved. The tension between the immunity and the accountability of international organizations was recently dealt with by the Dutch Court of Appeals in the case of Mothers of Srebrenica v. the Netherlands & the United Nations. This case was not the first before Dutch courts in which plaintiffs have sought to hold the Netherlands responsible for the failure of Dutch troops operating under a UN mandate to prevent the 1995 attacks against Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica,but it is the first suit to claim the UN was jointly and severally liable. This Article examines the judgment of the Dutch Court of Appeals, which affirmed the decision of the lower court to dismiss the suit against the UN for lack of jurisdiction.
The Importance of "The Law of Conservation of Securities": A Reply to John P. Anderson's "What's the Harm in Issuer-Licensed Insider Trading?"

Professor John P. Anderson’s article, What’s the Harm in Issuer-Licensed Insider Trading?, argues that my “Law of Conservation of Securities” has no moral relevance to the question whether to allow such trading.The Law of Conservation of Securities demonstrates that each stock market insider trade has specific victims and is “advantage-taking.” Some “advantage-taking” stock transactions are moral; others are not. To determine whether stock market insider trading is immoral, applying a principle such as utilitarianism or Professor Anthony Kronman’s “paretianism” requires consideration of the harm stemming from the conduct. The Law of Conservation of Securities identifies the victims of each insider trade and enables analysis of the indirect consequences of that injury, such as wider bid-ask spreads by market makers and impaired investor confidence -- both of which, in turn, increase firms’ cost of equity capital.Specifying the actual victims also helps to determine whether the market would know how much to adjust share prices for the possibility of insider trading and whether such adjustments (even if accurate) would compensate all investors for the risk of injury. With corporation-approved insider trading, the issue also arises whether the decisionmakers adequately consider the interests of non-shareholder victims.
Corporate Disclosure, Analyst Forecast Dispersion, and Stock Returns

This article examines whether a corporate disclosure practice is one of the reasons for the forecast dispersion anomaly—the negative relation between analyst forecast dispersion and future stock returns. Prior studies have shown that firms tend to delay the disclosure of bad news and that withholding of news leads to greater dispersion in analysts’ forecasts. Accordingly, we predict that firms with higher dispersion in analysts’ earnings forecasts are more likely to experience poor earnings in the subsequent quarter, and find evidence consistent with this prediction. After controlling for the relation between forecast dispersion and future earnings, we find that forecast dispersion is no longer significantly negatively related to future stock returns. These results suggest that temporary withholding of bad news by firms increases forecast dispersion among analysts and leads to low subsequent stock returns.
A characterization of the coskewness–cokurtosis pricing model

The coskewness–cokurtosis pricing model is equivalent to absence of any positive-alpha return for which the residual risk has positive coskewness and negative cokurtosis with the market. This parallels the CAPM and also the fundamental theorem of asset pricing.
Valuation of loss firms in a knowledge-based economy

Recent research in accounting has documented a substantial increase in the number of loss firms. Existing theories on the valuation of loss firms are based on adaptation/abandonment options or limited liability, assuming that these firms are operationally distressed. In this paper, we show that many loss firms do not fit this stereotype and identify the primary value drivers of this new type of loss firms. Our analysis helps resolve the puzzling negative relation between earnings and market value documented in prior research. Overall, our findings underscore the importance of “hidden assets” or intangibles in the study of loss firms.
DotCom Mania: The Rise and Fall of Internet Stock Prices

This paper explores a model based on agents with heterogenous beliefs facing short sales restrictions, and its explanation for the rise, persistence, and eventual fall of Internet stock prices. First, we document substantial short sale restrictions for Internet stocks. Second, using data on Internet holdings and block trades, we show a link between heterogeneity and price eiects for Internet stocks.Third, arguing that lockup expirations are a loosening of the short sale constraint, we document average, long-run excess returns as low as 33 percent for Internet stocks postlockup.We link the Internet bubble burst to the unprecedented level of lockup expirations and insider selling.
Volatility Clustering in U.S. Home Prices

Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) effects imply the probability of large losses is greater than standard mean-variance analysis suggests. Accurately capturing GARCH ...
A NEW MEASURE OF HORIZONTAL EQUITY

In this paper, we propose a new measure of horizontal equity that overcomes many of the shortcomings of previous proposed measures. Our starting point is the observation that a well-behaved social welfare function need not evaluate global' (vertical equity) differences in after-tax income using the same weights it applies to local' (horizontal equity) differences, even though this constraint has been applied in the past. Following work on the structure of individual preferences, we show that a social welfare function can imply different preferences toward horizontal and vertical equity. Adopting the general approach to the measurement of inequality developed by Atkinson (1970), we use such a social welfare function to derive measures of inequality that are decomposable into components naturally interpreted as indices of horizontal and vertical equity. In particular, the former index measures deviations from the fundamental principle that equals be treated equally. Finally, we apply our new measure to two tax-return data sets, evaluating the degree to which the horizontal equity of the US personal income tax has changed over time, and how horizontal equity would be altered by one version of recent proposals to do away with the so-called marriage penalty.'
Hazardous Facility Siting When Cost Information Is Private: An Application of Multidimensional Mechanism Design

The siting of hazardous facilities often involves externalities that extend beyond the border of the community selected as a site. Thus, the private information of each community is potentially a vector of costs comprising a cost for each of the possible sites. I characterize the conditions for the existence of a direct mechanism that is incentive compatible, individually rational, and budget balancing. Incentive compatibility implies a pattern of compensation payments that often conflicts with compensation policy goals. When nonparticipating communities cannot block the siting of the facility, it will often be possible to implement siting policies with a balanced budget.
An African Growth Miracle

Africa's recent growth performance has raised expectations of a bright economic future for the continent after decades of decline. Yet there is a genuine question about whether Africa's growth can be sustained, and if so, at what level. The balance of the evidence suggests caution on the prospects for high growth. While the region's fundamentals have improved, the payoffs to macroeconomic stability and improved governance are mainly to foster resilience and lay the groundwork for growth, rather than to generate productivity growth on their own. The traditional engines behind rapid growth, structural change and industrialization, seem to be operating at less than full power. If African countries do achieve growth rates substantially higher, they will have to do so pursuing a growth model that is different from earlier miracles based on industrialization. This might be agriculture-led or services-led growth, but it will look quite different than what we have seen before.
Delegation and Accountability

Critics of legislative delegation to the bureaucracy worry that delegation undermines the accountability of politicians to voters. This article provides microfoundations for such concerns by examining a model of electoral agency in which legislators can either determine policy directly or delegate policymaking authority to an expert bureaucrat. In our model, when deciding whether to delegate, a politician must consider not only the policy consequences of his delegation decision but also the electoral consequences. We identify conditions under which delegation can provide politicians with an element of plausible deniability which they lack when they determine policy directly. In some circumstances, therefore, voters can be better off when legislators’ ability to delegate is restricted.
Culture as Justification, Not Excuse

The wide discussion of cultural defenses over the last twenty years has produced very little actual change in the criminal law. This Article urges a reorientation of our approach thus far to cultural defenses and aspires to move the languishing discussion to a more productive place. The new perspective it proposes is justification. The Article asks the criminal law to make doctrinal room for defendants to argue that their allegedly criminal acts are justified acts, and not excused acts, based on the values and norms of their minority cultures. Currently, the criminal law deals with such acts of minority defendants through the excuse approach. It begins by relying excessively on the individual discretion ofjudges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials to achieve just results in such cases. When discretion fails, the status quo then employs the legal fiction of ill-fitting excuse defenses like temporary insanity and extreme emotional disturbance. The troubling message of the current approach is that minority defendants commit wrongful acts but are not blameworthy because they suffer from the defect or disability of their culture. The proposal of the Article is to replace this current excuse approach with a justification approach. In Part II, it explains the theoretical distinctions that separate excuse from justification and offers some elements and limits to a justification defense. It even describes some available doctrinal vehicles through which the criminal law can adopt the justification approach. In Part III, the Article applies the justification approach to three famous cultural defense cases. It uses the cases to make a powerful comparison of the relative weaknesses and strengths of the excuse approach and the justification approach. Adopting justification will eliminate the use of legalfictions, willforce the criminal law to directly confront the difficult moral questions posed by such cases and will advance the cause of cultural pluralism in the criminal law. * Associate Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law. This article was the winner of the Inaugural Scholarly Paper Competition held as part of the 12th Annual Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty held in April 2006. I want to thank Dean Frank Wu and the rest of the judging committee for this recognition. I want to thank the following colleagues for their sage advice: Leonard Baynes, Charles Bobis, Christopher Borgen, Rashmi Goel, Nancy Kim, Cynthia Lee, Kay Levine, Rosemary Salomone, Michael A. Simons, Susan Stabile, Brian Tamanaha, Robert Vischer, Cheryl Wade, and Timothy Zick. Finally, I want to thank the following students for their research: Shannon Black, Christopher Hemrick, Diana Neyman, and Yakov Pyetranker. All errors are solely mine.
Avoiding Constitutional Questions as a Three-Branch Problem

This article criticizes the "cardinal rule" of statutory construction known as the avoidance canon - that statutes must be interpreted to avoid raising serious constitutional questions - as failing to respect the proper constitutional roles of both Congress and the Executive. It argues that the avoidance canon in practice cannot be grounded in legislative supremacy, which is the common justification for it offered by the Supreme Court, because it assumes without foundation that Congress would always prefer not to come close to the constitutional line in enacting statutes. Instead, the avoidance canon creates pressure for courts to adopt statutory meanings that do not fairly reflect the legislative bargains struck in Congress. The article continues by arguing that the avoidance canon also impinges on the role of the Executive by disregarding its best judgment as to statutory meaning, arrived in the course of discharging the constitutional function of executing the law, because that judgment might be unconstitutional. Of course, if a statute passed by Congress, or a statutory interpretation proffered by the Executive, is actually - as opposed to possibly - unconstitutional, a court should not hesitate to say so in the course of deciding a case. On the whole, however, the article concludes that the separation of powers would be better served by the Supreme Court's recognizing that there is as much danger of judicial usurpation from avoiding constitutional questions as deciding them.
Impact of Rare Decays $t \to \ell' \nu b \ell\ell$ and $t \to q q' b \ell\ell$ on Searches for Top-Associated Physics

Searches for top quark-associated physics such as $$ t\overline{t}W $$ or $$ t\overline{t}H $$ in final states with multiple leptons require a careful accounting of expected backgrounds due to the lack of reconstructible resonances. We demonstrate that the rare top quark decays t → l′νbll and t → qq′bll, when a soft lepton is not detected, can contribute a non-negligible background to such searches. Simulations in the LHC experiments typically do not account for such decays and as such backgrounds to such searches may be underestimated.
Mission Possible: Reciprocal Deference Between Domestic Regulatory Structures and the WTO

One of the goals of Article III of GATT is to invalidate domestic regulatory measures, including taxes and non-fiscal policies that amount to non-tariff barriers to trade (NTB) and therefore violate the principles of national treatment. While internal policies that directly discriminate between products based on nationality or origin are clearly in violation of national treatment principles, it is the facially neutral regulatory measures with protectionist and discriminatory effects that are more difficult to assess, even within transparent regulatory processes. However, with their emphasis on the likeness of the products in question, WTO panels run the risk of alienating member states from the GATT multilateral regime in favor of regionalism. In dealing with domestic regulatory policies, the WTO panels can use Article III as a means toward building bridges with its member states as well as the regional agreements that also form part of the WTO multilateral trade regime. This paper asserts that a better approach for the WTO in adjudicating internal regulatory policy should be one that incorporates a procedural mechanism for assessing questions of legitimacy regarding regulatory measures. Unlike the regulatory approach, this mechanism would allow WTO panels to deal with questionable measures by deferring to domestic internal structures that implement legitimate regulatory policy. In such deference, WTO would place the burden on the domestic institutions closest to the implementation of those measures to prove no alternative means more aligned with commitments under GATT for furthering legitimate domestic policy. This mechanism recognizes that regional tribunals also look to WTO adjudication in deciding similar issues at the domestic level. In addition, domestic regulatory institutions of member states are bound by their commitments under the GATT agreements. In proposing a reciprocal deference approach, I will draw from parallel debates in U.S. constitutional law as well as decisions from the NAFTA tribunals.
Who Is a Worker? Partisanship, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Social Content of Employment

In opinions addressing whether graduate students, medical residents, and disabled workers in nonstandard work arrangements are employees under the National Labor Relations Act, I analyze partisan differences in how National Labor Relations Board members, under the previous two US presidents, confronted the contradictory permeation of wage-labor into relatively noncommodified relationships. I argue that Republicans mediated the contradictions by interpreting indicia of employer property rights as status authority. They constructed employment as a contractual relationship consummated through exchange relations and demarcated a nonmarket social sphere in which to locate the relationships before them. This construction suppressed the class dimension of employment and the connection between relations of production and relations in production (Burawoy 1979). Democrats mediated the contradictions by recognizing them in part and arguing that the workers were engaged in commodity production. They proposed the Act as a means for workers to negotiate “differentiated ties” (Zelizer 2005) in nonstandard employment.
The Luminosity Function for L > L* Galaxies at z > 3

Through the use of multiband (U,B -->J,R -->F,I -->N) photometry we have isolated high-redshift (3.0 F=21.25 and 0.02 deg2 to R -->F=23.5. Our pool of candidates constrains the nature of the 3.0 *L100L -->* if we grant a similar level of completeness to these data as for very faint samples (to R=25.5) selected in a similar fashion. Our constraints agree with the high-redshift sky density at R -->F=20.5 estimated from Yee et al.'s serendipitous discovery of a bright, z=2.7 galaxy, as well as the density at R -->F ≈ 23 by Steidel et al. We strongly rule out—by more than 2 orders of magnitude at M -->RF=-25—the L>L -->* luminosity function for z = 3-5 galaxies obtained by a photometric redshift analysis of the Hubble deep field (HDF) by Gwyn & Hartwick. Our results at R -->F ≈ 23 are more consistent with the photometric redshift analysis of the faint HDF galaxies by Sawicki, Lin, & Yee, but our present upper limits at the brightest magnitudes (R -->F RF<-24) allow more generous volume densities of these super-L* galaxies.
Entrepreneurial Finance and Moral Hazard: Evidence from Token Offerings

Abstract This paper provides the first evidence of a moral hazard in signaling in an entrepreneurial finance context, by examining token offerings or Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Entrepreneurs' ability to signal quality is crucial to succeeding in the competition for growth capital. However, the absence of institutions that verify endogenous signals may induce a moral hazard in signaling. Consistent with this hypothesis, artificial linguistic intelligence indicates that token issuers systematically exaggerate information disclosed in whitepapers. Exaggerating entrepreneurs raise more funds in less time, suggesting that investors do not see through this practice initially. Eventually, the crowd learns about the exaggeration bias through trading with other investors. The resulting investor disappointment causes the cryptocurrency to depreciate and the probability of platform failure to increase.
Where Kafka Reigns: A Call for Metamorphosis in Unlawful Detainer Law

In some states, foreclosures occur with no judicial involvement. Typically, after this "nonjudicial foreclosure," the new buyer of the home will file an unlawful detainer in court to remove the former homeowner. But, what if, in that action, the homeowner (now defendant) produces evidence the foreclosure was illegal - even void? Can the homeowner avoid eviction? The answer to this question depends on what state a homeowner is in. In 8 states, even if a homeowner proves that the foreclosure was void and the new buyer could not have taken title, the homeowner will still be evicted from the home. This is because in those states, the court is prohibited from considering any evidence relating to who has legal title to the property. As a result, homeowners can be removed from a home before any court determines - despite having the chance to do so - who has a superior claim to possession. This article highlights this split between states that consider evidence in unlawful detainers (challenge states) and those who do not (no-challenge states). I argue that no-challenge states unnecessarily cause, augment, and concretize the harm of wrongful foreclosures. I assert that these harms run to homeowners, the legitimacy of courts, and society as a whole. Ultimately, I assert that challenge states have found a more prudent path that obtains the expediency of nonjudicial foreclosure while still allowing for just results.
The zero lower bound: frequency, duration, and numerical convergence

When monetary policy faces a zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint on the nominal interest rate, a minimum state variable (MSV) solution may not exist even if the Taylor principle holds when the ZLB does not bind. This paper shows there is a clear tradeoff between the expected frequency and average duration of ZLB events along the boundary of the convergence region – the region of the parameter space where our policy function iteration algorithm converges to an MSV solution. We show this tradeoff with two alternative stochastic processes: one where monetary policy follows a 2-state Markov chain, which exogenously governs whether the ZLB binds, and the other where ZLB events are endogenous due to discount factor or technology shocks. We also show that small changes in the parameters of the stochastic processes cause meaningful differences in the decision rules and where the ZLB binds in the state space.
Beyond Tax Credits: Smarter Tax Policy for a Cleaner, More Democratic Energy Future

Solar, wind, and other renewable energy technologies have the potential to mitigate climate change, secure America’s energy independence, and create millions of green jobs. In the absence of a price on carbon emissions, however, these long-term benefits will not be realized without near-term policy support for renewables. This Article assesses the efficiency of federal tax incentives for renewables and proposes policy reform to more cost-effectively promote renewable energy through capital markets and crowdfunding.Federal support for renewable energy projects today comes primarily in the form of tax incentives such as accelerated depreciation and, critically, tax credits. Empirical evidence reveals that only a fraction of the subsidy value of tax credits may actually go to fund new renewable power projects. Why are tax credits for renewables so inefficient? And where do the remaining tax dollars go?Qualitative analysis suggests that the answer to both questions hinges on the mismatch between the profitability requirements of tax credits and the revenue profile of renewable energy projects. The value of tax credits lies in their capacity to reduce tax liability and lower tax bills. Most renewable power projects, however, require ten years or more to recover their up-front capital expenditures before they begin to generate taxable profits and, hence, tax liability to reduce. Bringing in investors with tax liability from other sources to monetize a project’s tax credits provides only partial relief. Such tax equity investment drives up a project’s financing charges and transaction costs, limits investment liquidity, and restricts growth in the renewable energy marketplace.Federal policymakers should give renewable energy access to master limited partnerships (MLPs) and real estate investment trusts (REITs) – two tax-privileged investment structures with a proven track record of promoting oil, gas, and other conventional energy. Merging the tax benefits of a partnership with the fundraising advantages of a corporation, MLPs and REITs could significantly reduce the cost of capital for renewable energy projects, broaden their investor appeal, and move renewables closer to subsidy independence. Most importantly, MLPs and REITs have the potential to deliver these and more benefits to renewable energy at considerably lower cost to taxpayers than the current regime of tax credits.
An Empirical Study of Class Action Settlements and Their Fee Awards

This article is a comprehensive empirical study of class action settlements in federal court. Although there have been prior empirical studies of federal class action settlements, these studies have either been confined to securities cases or have been based on samples of cases that were not intended to be representative of the whole (such as those settlements approved in published opinions). By contrast, in this article, I attempt to study every federal class action settlement from the years 2006 and 2007. As far as I am aware, this study is the first attempt to collect a complete set of federal class action settlements for any given year. I find that district court judges approved 688 class action settlements over this two-year period, involving nearly $33 billion. Of this $33 billion, roughly $5 billion was awarded to class action lawyers, or about 15 percent of the total. Most judges chose to award fees by using the highly discretionary percentage-of-the-settlement method, and the fees awarded according to this method varied over a broad range, with a mean and median around 25 percent. Fee percentages were strongly and inversely associated with the size of the settlement. The age of the case at settlement was positively associated with fee percentages. There was some variation in fee percentages depending on the subject matter of the litigation and the geographic circuit in which the district court was located, with lower percentages in securities cases and in settlements from the Second and Ninth Circuits. There was no evidence that fee percentages were associated with whether the class action was certified as a settlement class or with the political affiliation of the judge who made the award.
Determinants of Customers' Responses to Customized Offers: Conceptual Framework and Research Propositions

Abstract Marketers have been challenged by proponents of individual (one-to-one) marketing to shift from focusing on market segments to making individually customized offers. Building on current knowledge regarding the construction of customers’ preferences, the author examines the basic assumptions underlying individual marketing and presents a process model of customers’ responses to customized offers. The model addresses (1) preference development, (2) evaluation of customized offers, (3) likelihood of purchasing the customized offers, and (4) maintenance of relationships with one-to-one marketers. The analysis leads to specific propositions regarding determinants of customers’ responses to customized offers. The author discusses future research directions and managerial implications.
Corporate liquidity and the contingent nature of bank credit lines: Evidence on the costs and consequences of bank default

Abstract I study the impact of Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy and resultant inability to honor its obligations as a lender under committed credit lines. Firms that lost access to a credit line committed by Lehman Brothers experienced abnormal stock returns of − 3%, on average, on the day of and day after Lehman's bankruptcy filing, amounting to roughly $5.7 billion in aggregate, risk-adjusted losses. These losses were significantly larger for firms that were more financially constrained, firms with less cash, firms for whom Lehman was a lead-bank, and firms that lost access to larger amounts of committed credit. During the four quarters immediately following Lehman's collapse, firms that lost access to a credit line cut their investment spending significantly while simultaneously hoarding more cash than comparable firms. Overall, these findings indicate that firms that lost access to a credit line incurred economically significant costs and real-side consequences as a result of Lehman's default on its loan commitments.
Mandates, Geography, and Networks: Diffusion of Criminal Procedure Reform in Mexico

Why have some Mexican states proceeded faster than others in the revolutionary transformation of overhauling criminal procedure? Contributing an original index of criminal procedure reform across Mexico's 32 states from 2002 to 2011 and building on existing research on policy diffusion, this article seeks to answer this question. It finds that the 2008 constitutional reform at the federal level exerts a strong positive effect (federal mandate); being situated in a neighborhood of states that have reformed has a counterintuitive negative effect (spatial proximity); and having a governor from the same party as governors of other states that have reformed has a positive influence (network affinity). These findings yield a better understanding of the vertical, cross-level and horizontal, cross-unit diffusion of reform, with implications for understanding how to overcome challenges to criminal justice reform in Mexico, Latin America, and elsewhere.