cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Adversarial deconfounding autoencoder for learning robust gene expression embeddings.

MOTIVATION Increasing number of gene expression profiles has enabled the use of complex models, such as deep unsupervised neural networks, to extract a latent space from these profiles. However, expression profiles, especially when collected in large numbers, inherently contain variations introduced by technical artifacts (e.g. batch effects) and uninteresting biological variables (e.g. age) in addition to the true signals of interest. These sources of variations, called confounders, produce embeddings that fail to transfer to different domains, i.e. an embedding learned from one dataset with a specific confounder distribution does not generalize to different distributions. To remedy this problem, we attempt to disentangle confounders from true signals to generate biologically informative embeddings. RESULTS In this article, we introduce the Adversarial Deconfounding AutoEncoder (AD-AE) approach to deconfounding gene expression latent spaces. The AD-AE model consists of two neural networks: (i) an autoencoder to generate an embedding that can reconstruct original measurements, and (ii) an adversary trained to predict the confounder from that embedding. We jointly train the networks to generate embeddings that can encode as much information as possible without encoding any confounding signal. By applying AD-AE to two distinct gene expression datasets, we show that our model can (i) generate embeddings that do not encode confounder information, (ii) conserve the biological signals present in the original space and (iii) generalize successfully across different confounder domains. We demonstrate that AD-AE outperforms standard autoencoder and other deconfounding approaches. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION Our code and data are available at https://gitlab.cs.washington.edu/abdincer/ad-ae. CONTACT SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Calibration and Evaluation of a Force Measurement Glove for Field-Based Monitoring of Manual Wheelchair Users

Manual wheelchair users exhibit pain related to repetitive and demanding shoulder activities of daily living. Wearable sensing systems like force measurement gloves can provide insights about upper extremity loading in the community and home environments. We calibrated and evaluated the accuracy of a novel force measurement glove with a body-worn data logger. The device was calibrated with loads of 0-800N applied to the palmar surface of the glove. Calibration conditions were tested that varied the stiffness of the material in the glove, the temperature, and the curvature of the force applicator. Calibration equations from each condition were evaluated by comparing the glove’s force prediction with the output of an instrumented wheelchair rim during propulsion and weight relief exercises. The force measurement glove detected 72.7% of 355 propulsion peaks and had a strong linear correlation with the instrumented rim force measurements (r=0.80). The most accurate calibration equation was constructed using data from all conditions, with an RMS force measurement error of 64.7 N and 31.7 N for weight relief exercise and propulsion, respectively. The force measurement glove design described here may serve as a useful tool for detection of loading events and relative magnitude changes.
Wasserstein Distance, Fourier Series and Applications

We study the Wasserstein metric $$W_p$$ , a notion of distance between two probability distributions, from the perspective of Fourier Analysis and discuss applications. In particular, we bound the Earth Mover Distance $$W_1$$ between the distribution of quadratic residues in a finite field $${\mathbb {F}}_p$$ and uniform distribution by $$\lesssim p^{-1/2}$$ (the Polya–Vinogradov inequality implies $$\lesssim p^{-1/2} \log {p}$$ ). We also show that for continuous $$f:{\mathbb {T}} \rightarrow {\mathbb {R}}_{}$$ with mean value 0 $$\begin{aligned} (\text{ number } \text{ of } \text{ roots } \text{ of }~f) \cdot \left( \sum _{k=1}^{\infty }{ \frac{ |{\widehat{f}}(k)|^2}{k^2}}\right) ^{\frac{1}{2}} > rsim \frac{\Vert f\Vert ^{2}_{L^1({\mathbb {T}})}}{\Vert f\Vert _{L^{\infty }({\mathbb {T}})}}. \end{aligned}$$ Moreover, we show that for a Laplacian eigenfunction $$-\Delta _g \phi _{\lambda } = \lambda \phi _{\lambda }$$ on a compact Riemannian manifold $$W_p\left( \max \left\{ \phi _{\lambda }, 0\right\} dx, \max \left\{ -\phi _{\lambda }, 0\right\} dx\right) \lesssim _p \sqrt{\log {\lambda }/\lambda } \Vert \phi _{\lambda }\Vert _{L^1}^{1/p}$$ , which is at most a factor $$\sqrt{\log {\lambda }}$$ away from sharp. Several other problems are discussed.
Effect of positive pulse charge waveforms on cycle life of nickel-zinc cells

Five amp-hour nickel-zinc cells were life cycled to evaluate four different charge methods. Three of the four waveforms investigated were 120 Hz full wave rectified sinusoidal (FWRS), 120 Hz silicon controlled rectified (SCR), and 1 kHz square wave (SW). The fourth, a constant current method, was used as a baseline of comparison. Three sealed Ni-Zn cells connected in series were cycled. Each series string was charged at an average c/20 rate, and discharged at a c/2.5 rate to a 75% rated depth. Results indicate that the relatively inexpensive 120 Hz FWRS charger appears feasible for charging 5 amp-hour nickel-zinc cells with no significant loss in average cycle life when compared to constant current charging. The 1-kHz SW charger could also be used with no significant loss in average cycle life, and suggests the possibility of utilizing the existing electric vehicle chopper controller circuitry for an on-board charger. There was an apparent difference using the 120 Hz SCR charger compared to the others, however, this difference could be due to an inadvertent severe overcharge, which occurred prior to cell failure. The remaining two positive pulse charging waveforms, FWRS and 1 kHz, did not improve the cycle life of 5 amp-hour nickel-zinc cells over that of constant current charging.
An analysis of adverse selection, entrepreneurial activity, and the decision to go public

We study a regional economy with a large number of entrepreneurs who own firms and who want to go public. Specifically, our analysis focuses on the contractual interaction between a representative risk averse entrepreneur who owns a firm and a risk neutral monopolistic investment bank that proposes the terms of the initial public offering (IPO) that is placed in the market. First, we determine the terms of the IPO when there is full information. Second, we describe the attributes of the entrepreneur/bank contractual interaction when this interaction is framed as a screening problem with adverse selection. Third, we solve this screening problem fully and then we discuss the properties of the optimal solution. Finally, we point out how the preceding optimal solution is impacted when there is competition between investment banks.
Fully revealing equilibria with suboptimal investment

Abstract Myers and Majluf [Myers, S.C., Majluf, N.S., 1984. Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have information that investors do not have. Journal of Financial Economics 13, 187–221.] showed that mispriced securities can lead managers with private information to invest inefficiently. It seems plausible that this problem would disappear in a fully revealing equilibrium, since information asymmetries are resolved and securities are priced correctly. In fact, Constantinides and Grundy [Constantinides, G.M., Grundy, B.D., 1989. Optimal investment with stock repurchase and financing as signals. Review of Financial Studies 2, 445–465.] claim that, in their model, any fully revealing equilibrium has efficient investment. This claim is incorrect, as infinitely many inefficient equilibria exist for the very example they work out. The inefficient outcomes survive the standard signaling-game equilibrium refinements. There are also examples that have fully revealing equilibria with inefficient investment but none with efficient investment.
Ages, Life Stages, and Generational Cohorts: Decomposing the Immigrant First and Second Generations in the United States

This article focuses on problems with the definition and empirical identification of immigrant “first” and “second” generations in the United States. These loosely conceived aggregates are decomposed into a typology of distinct generational cohorts defined by age and life stage at migration for the foreign born and by parental nativity for the U.S. born. Differences in educational and occupational attainment and in language and other aspects of acculturation are then examined to consider whether the practice of “lumping” these generational cohorts together, or “splitting” them into distinctive units of analysis, is empirically supported by available evidence. The paper concludes with some thoughts on data needs and methodological considerations in the study of immigrant generations. “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages …” — William Shakespeare, “As You Like It,”Act II, Scene 7.
Stability, Assurance, and the Concept of Legal Guidance

Legal theorists standardly hold that stability is one of eight necessary conditions for legal guidance. We lack an adequate explanation, however, of why, exactly, stability is necessary in order that law possess the capacity to guide behavior. Standard explanations, which rely on a claim about reasonable expectations, fail to connect the concepts of stability and legal guidance. In this paper, I argue that, according to the leading conception of legal guidance, stability is, in fact, not necessary in order for law to possess the capacity to guide. In response, I provide an alternative conception of legal guidance, and argue that stability is a necessary attribute if we assume this conception of guidance. More generally, the paper sets out an abstract framework in which claims that this or that property is necessary for legal guidance can be assessed.
Use of forward versus backward reasoning during audit analytical procedures: evidence from a computerised-process-tracing field study

Audit judgement research has widely assumed that auditors rely primarily on backward reasoning during analytical procedures but the relative use of forward reasoning has not been directly examined. The present study explains how auditors use backward and forward reasoning during analytical procedures, discusses evidence from other research suggesting that forward reasoning could be more prevalent, and examines the relative use of forward reasoning during analytical procedures with data from a computerised process-tracing field study. Results suggest that auditors rely extensively on forward reasoning when using analytical procedures. Findings motivate future research that examines when forward and backward reasoning are most effective.
The Faint Young Sun and Faint Young Stars Paradox

The purpose of this paper is to explore a resolution for the Faint Young Sun Paradox that has been mostly rejected by the community, namely the possibility of a somewhat more massive young Sun with a large mass loss rate sustained for two to three billion years. This would make the young Sun bright enough to keep both the terrestrial and Martian oceans from freezing, and thus resolve the paradox. It is found that a large and sustained mass loss is consistent with the well observed spin-down rate of Sun-like stars, and indeed may be required for it. It is concluded that a more massive young Sun must be considered a plausible hypothesis.
Universal banking: A shareholder value perspective

In their historical development, organizational structure, and strategic direction, universal banks constitute multi-product firms within the financial services sector. Certainly within their home environments, universal banks effectively target most or all client-segments, and make an effort to provide each with a full range of the appropriate financial services. Outside the home market, they usually adopt a narrower competitive profile, in the majority of cases focusing on wholesale banking and securities activities as well as international private banking—occasionally building a retail presence in foreign environments as well.
Core convergence with asymmetric information

We analyze the ex ante incentive compatible core for replicated private information economies. We show that any allocation in the core when the economy is replicated sufficiently often is approximately Walrasian for the associated Arrow–Debreu economy.
A new measure of accounting quality

This study develops a measure of accounting quality based on audit fees. Adopting a neoclassical view of the audit market, we argue that unexplained audit fees should contain information about accounting quality. We find that our measure of unexplained audit fees correlates positively with other empirical measures of quality. We further show that our measure of accounting quality is incrementally predictive of fraud, restatements, and SEC comment letters, controlling for other measures of quality. Overall, we believe that the information in audit fees can be used to provide an alternative measure of a firm’s accounting quality.
Meissner Levitation of a Millimeter-Size Neodymium Magnet Within a Superconducting Radio Frequency Cavity

We report on the magnetic levitation of a millimeter-sized neodymium permanent magnet within the interior of a superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental work on levitating a magnet within an SRF cavity. The cavity is a coaxial quarter-wave microwave resonator made from 6061 aluminum, having a resonance frequency of 10 GHz and a loaded Q of 1400. The cylindrical magnet (N50) has a height of 1 mm, a diameter of 0.75 mm, a mass of 4 mg, and a remanence of 1.44 T. This produces a peak magnetic field 140 times greater than the critical field of aluminum. The magnet is placed either on the top of the coaxial portion of the cavity or on the cavity floor before cooling it below the superconducting transition temperature of aluminum. The coaxial mode's resonance frequency shifts as a function of the levitation height of the magnet and gives an idea of the magnet's position and mechanical motion. We observe a transition at a temperature of 650 mK where the Meissner effect levitates the magnet as the material beneath the magnet becomes superconducting. The magnet is levitated to a height of 2.5 mm above the surface of the cavity stub, which is a sufficient separation for the field strength of the magnet at the surface of the stub to be less than the critical field strength of the superconducting aluminum. We measure a 120 MHz upshift in the cavity resonance as the magnet is levitated from the top of the stub and 15 MHz downshift as it levitates from the floor of the cavity. Our measurements are consistent over several heating and cooling cycles. Our work provides a path towards a novel optomechanical system.
The Taking of Human Biological Products

Despite the Supreme Court invalidating human gene patents in the recent past, thousands of patents on other human biological products can still arguably be enforced. Although such patents do not cover these products inside our body, the moment one isolates them from our body and extracts them, the patent holder has an exclusionary right to them. This raises complicated legal and ethical questions. Who owns the excised body parts? The person whose body they come from, or a third person who owns a patent on these materials? If a human being owns her excised body parts, does the State commit a taking by transferring property rights of these bodily materials to a third party through patents? While a number of scholars and courts have discussed whether patents are protected as “private property” under the Takings Clause, this paper argues that in some circumstances, patents themselves may constitute a taking. Patent law has traditionally considered patents on human biological products under a unitary doctrine covering all natural products. But this paper shows that patents on natural products isolated from the human body raise additional questions implicating the Takings Clause.
Consolidation, scale economies and technological change in Japanese banking

Abstract The paper examines the technological structure of the Japanese banking sector before the onset of the banking crisis and structural reforms of the 1990s in order to shade light on the logic of the recent trend to consolidation in the industry. While diseconomies of scale are shown to be pervasive in the large banks, defying the rationale for consolidation, the paper presents evidence of an underlying technological progress that operates to significantly increase the industry's efficient minimum size, generating economies at larger banks, thus justifying the ongoing trend in consolidation. The results suggest that, to the extent that consumers can benefit from lower costs of bank production, policies that promote a more concentrated banking structure might be consistent with public interest.
Dealing with Debt

Abstract This paper explores the menu of options for renormalizing public debt levels relative to nominal activity in the long run, should governments eventually decide to do so. Although debt ratios may need to rise further in some cases, a vision of longer-term options is key to weighing alternative medium-term stabilization strategies. Orthodox ones, the standard fare of officialdom, include enhancing growth, running primary budget surpluses, and privatizing government assets. Heterodox polices include restructuring debt contracts, generating unexpected inflation, taxing wealth, and repressing private finance. Advanced countries have relied far more on heterodox approaches than many observers choose to remember.
The implications of unverifiable fair-value accounting : evidence from the political economy of goodwill accounting

Abstract I study the evolution of SFAS 142, which uses unverifiable fair-value estimates to account for acquired goodwill. I find evidence consistent with the FASB issuing SFAS 142 in response to political pressure over its proposal to abolish pooling accounting. The result is interesting given this proposal was due in part to SEC concerns over pooling misuse. I also find evidence consistent with lobbying support for SFAS 142 increasing in firms’ discretion under the standard. Agency theory predicts such unverifiable discretion can be used opportunistically.
MIGRATION, GLOBALISATION AND THE SPIRIT OF PETER BAUER

Lord Bauer understood that the human freedom of movement plays a vital role in development. Today, internal and cross-border migration generates hard-currency remittances that raise living standards and capital investment in the country of origin, promotes greater trade and investment ties between destination and origin countries, and raises a country's stock of human and physical capital when migrants return with new skills and investment funds. Immigration can also stimulate political and social reform when migrants return or foreign-born immigrants arrive with new ideas and experiences. Relaxing the pervasive controls on the international movement of people remains a huge piece of unfinished business on the market-driven development agenda.
Dignity and the Politics of Protection: Abortion Restrictions Under Casey/Carhart

This essay on the law and politics of abortion analyzes the constitutional principles governing new challenges to Roe. The essay situates the Court’s recent decision in Gonzales v. Carhart in debates of the antiabortion movement over the reach and rationale of statutes designed to overturn Roe—exploring strategic considerations that lead advocates to favor incremental restrictions over bans, and to supplement fetal-protective justifications with womanprotective justifications for regulating abortion. The essay argues that a multi-faceted commitment to dignity links Carhart and the Casey decision on which it centrally relies. Dignity is a value that bridges communities divided in the abortion debate, as well as diverse bodies of constitutional and human rights law. Carhart invokes dignity as a reason for regulating abortion, while Casey invokes dignity as a reason for protecting women’s abortion decisions from government regulation. This dignity-based analysis of Casey/Carhart offers principles for determining the constitutionality of woman-protective abortion restrictions that are grounded in a large body of substantive due process and equal protection case law. Protecting women can violate women’s dignity if protection is based on stereotypical assumptions about women’s capacities and women’s roles, as many of the new woman-protective abortion restrictions are. Like old forms of gender paternalism, the new forms of gender paternalism remedy harm to women through the control of women. The new woman-protective abortion restrictions do not provide women in need what they need: they do not alleviate the social conditions that contribute to unwanted pregnancies, nor do they provide social resources to help women who choose to end pregnancies they otherwise might bring to term. The essay concludes by reflecting on alternative—and constitutional—modes of protecting women who are making decisions
Interrelation Among Events of Default

. This paper contrasts technical default, debt service default and bankruptcy, and establishes that the valuation effects of their announcements are significant and increasingly severe. We show the events are interrelated. Specifically, we show that technical default is a timely warning of further distress insofar as adverse stock price effects of debt service default are mitigated if preceded by technical default. We find this arises in part because technical default increases the likelihood of further distress. The extent of the mitigation suggests reduced costs of future distress, likely because technical default triggers the early exercise of contractual rights that allow lenders to increase control over the firm. We also evaluate explanations of why debt service default and bankruptcy occur without firms first reporting technical default. Our analysis is based on the small sample of firms for which we can ascertain the terms of debt covenant constraints. Given this limitation, we find that it is not because debt agreements are written with too much covenant slack, nor do we observe material cases of nonreporting of covenant defaults. We conclude that covenants do not always provide warnings of future difficulties. Resume. Les auteurs etablissent la difference entre le manquement technique, le manquement au service de la dette et la faillite et font la preuve que les consequences de ces indicateurs sur l'evaluation des entreprises sont appreciables et de plus en plus serieuses. Ils demontrent que ces evenements sont relies entre eux et, plus precisement, que le manquement technique est un avertissement hâtif d'autres difficultes, dans la mesure ou les consequences nefastes du manquement au service de la dette sur le cours des actions sont attenuees si ledit manquement est precede par un manquement technique. Les auteurs en viennent a la conclusion que cette situation se produit en partie parce que le manquement technique augmente la probabilite d'autres difficultes. L'ampleur de cette attenuation permet de supposer une reduction des couts associes aux autres difficultes, sans doute parce que le manquement technique declenche l'exercice anticipe des droits contractuels qui permettent aux bailleurs de fonds de resserrer le controle qu'ils exercent sur l'entreprise. Les auteurs evaluent egalement les facteurs qui expliquent pourquoi une entreprise peut manquer au service de la dette et faire faillite sans faire d'abord etat d'un manquement technique. Leur analyse se fonde sur un petit echantillon d'entreprises a l'egard desquelles il est possible de s'assurer des conditions relatives aux contraintes imposees par les clauses restrictives des contrats de pret. Compte tenu de cette limitation, les auteurs concluent que ce genre de situation n'est pas attribuable au fait que les contrats de pret comportent des clauses trop permissives et n'observent pas non plus de cas probants de non-divulgation d'information relative au manquement aux clauses restrictives. Ils en deduisent que les clauses restrictives ne previennent pas toujours les difficultes futures.
Do Euro exchange rates follow a martingale? Some out-of-sample evidence.

Abstract Traditional autocorrelation and variance ratio tests are based on serial uncorrelatedness rather than martingale difference. As such, they do not capture potential nonlinearity-in-mean, which could lead to misleading inferences in favor of the martingale hypothesis. This paper employs various parametric and nonparametric nonlinear models as well as several model comparison criteria to examine the potential martingale behavior of Euro exchange rates in the context of out-of-sample forecasts. The overall evidence indicates that, while martingale behavior cannot be rejected for Euro exchange rates with major currencies such as the Japanese yen, British pound, and US dollar, there is nonlinear predictability in terms of economic criteria with respect to several smaller currencies.
The Dog That Did Not Bark: A Defense of Return Predictability

If returns are not predictable, dividend growth must be predictable, to generate the observed variation in divided yields. I find that the absence of dividend growth predictability gives stronger evidence than does the presence of return predictability. Long-horizon return forecasts give the same strong evidence. These tests exploit the negative correlation of return forecasts with dividend-yield autocorrelation across samples, together with sensible upper bounds on dividend-yield autocorrelation, to deliver more powerful statistics. I reconcile my findings with the literature that finds poor power in long-horizon return forecasts, and with the literature that notes the poor out-of-sample R 2 of return-forecasting regressions. (JEL G12, G14, C22) Are stock returns predictable? Table 1 presents regressions of the real and excess value-weighted stock return on its dividend-price ratio, in annual data. In contrast to the simple random walk view, stock returns do seem predictable. Similar or stronger forecasts result from many variations of the variables and data sets.
Efficiency in Marriage

Economists usually assume that bargaining in marriage leads to efficient outcomes. The most convincing rationale for this assumption is the belief that efficient allocations are likely to emerge from repeated interactions in stationary environments, and that marriage provides such an environment. This paper argues that when a current decision affects future bargaining power, inefficient outcomes are plausible. If the spouses could make binding commitments–in effect, commitments to refrain from exploiting the future bargaining advantage–then the inefficiency would disappear. But spouses seldom can make binding commitments regarding allocation within marriage.
Value-added exports and U.S. local labor markets: Does China really matter?

Abstract In this paper, our main focus is the direct contribution of the Chinese economy to changes in U.S. labor market outcomes. Our results indicate that the effects of continuously rising value-added exports from China to the U.S. depend on the position of the Chinese exporting industry in the global value chain. In particular, we find that an increase in U.S. exposure to value-added exports from China in industries with high degree of downstreamness leads to negative effects on the share of manufacturing employment, while the same is not present in the case of industries with low degree of downstreamness. Moreover, our results also suggest that the effects of an increase in U.S. exposure to value-added exports from China on average wages and on unemployment levels depends on the position of the Chinese industry in the global value chain.
Managed Care and Managed Sentencing—A Tale of Two Systems

The daily injustices mount. The front line professionals who administer the system cry out for more discretion to depart from the rigid rules that bind them, Congress finally hears their call, and is poised to enact sweeping reforms.Are improvements in federal sentencing law on the way? Probably not in the near future. But the new Congress will surely take up proposals to regulate the managed health care industry, and the impending debate over a proposed "Patients' Bill of Rights" law offers important lessons for federal sentencing policy.At first blush, sentencing reform and health care reform have about as much to do with each other as Justice Breyer and Dr. Spock. But take a closer look and some interesting if imperfect parallels become apparent.
Cross-Subsidization, Cost Allocation, and Tacit Coordination

This paper considers the prospect that multiproduct firms facing each other in separate markets might tacitly coordinate their production through strategic common service cost allocations and mutually benefit from such action as a consequence. Our analysis suggests that decentralization cum tacit coordination may be possible in equilibrium, with or without public disclosure of allocation choices. In turn, tacit coordination may contribute to explanations for multiproduct firms' decisions to decentralize. The implications for trade oversight bodies are ambiguous. While tacit coordination results in an anti-competitive distortion toward monopolies, it also induces greater specialization which reduces the diseconomies of scope.
Cross-reactivity of SARS-CoV structural protein antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.

In the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there remain unanswered questions regarding the nature and significance of the humoral immune response toward other coronavirus infections. Here, we investigate the cross-reactivity of antibodies raised against the first severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) for their reactivity toward SARS-CoV-2. We extensively characterize a selection of 10 antibodies covering all of the SARS-CoV structural proteins: spike, membrane, nucleocapsid, and envelope. Although nearly all of the examined SARS-CoV antibodies display some level of reactivity to SARS-CoV-2, we find only partial cross-neutralization for the spike antibodies. The implications of our work are two-fold. First, we establish a set of antibodies with known reactivity to both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, which will allow further study of both viruses. Second, we provide empirical evidence of the high propensity for antibody cross-reactivity between distinct strains of human coronaviruses, which is critical information for designing diagnostic and vaccine strategies for COVID-19.
In Quest of the Arbitration Trifecta, or Closed Door Litigation?: The Delaware Arbitration Program

The Delaware Arbitration Program established a procedure by which businesses can agree to have their disputes heard in an arbitration proceeding before a sitting judge of the state’s highly regarded Chancery Court. The Program arguably offers a veritable trifecta of procedural advantages for commercial parties, including expert adjudication, efficient case management and short cycle time and, above all, a proceeding cloaked in secrecy. It also may enhance the reputation of Delaware as the forum of choice for businesses. But the Program’s ambitious intermingling of public and private forums brings into play the longstanding tug-of-war between the traditional view of court litigation as a public venue for private dispute resolution and the and perception of courts as institutions that represent and are accountable to the public. A constitutional challenge based on third parties’ right of access to court proceedings resulted in a district court ruling that arbitration proceedings heard before sitting judges of the Delaware Chancery Court were “essentially” non-jury civil trials and thus were subject to public access. The case raises legitimate questions about the appropriateness of structuring a program in which sitting judges serve as arbitrators and preside over a procedure that is effectively shielded from public view. It also implicates issues regarding the use of public resources in ostensibly private disputes, and even the way our justice system is funded. This article explores the factors that provided the impetus for the Delaware Arbitration Program and analyzes the arguments and policy considerations for and against the district court’s decision.
Street Legal: The Court Affords Police Constitutional Carte Blanche

This article discusses the Supreme Court's landmark 2001 decision Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, upholding the authority of police to execute warrantless arrests for menial offenses (there, failure to wear a seatbelt) so long as police have probable cause to support such arrests.
Stakeholder influence capacity and the variability of financial returns to corporate social responsibility

I argue that research on the business case for corporate social responsibility must account for the path-dependent nature of firm-stakeholder relations, and I develop the construct of stakeholder influence capacity to fill this void. This construct helps explain why the effects of corporate social responsibility on corporate financial performance vary across firms and time. I develop a set of propositions to aid future research on the contingencies that produce variable financial returns to investment in corporate social responsibility.
Federalism and Mass Tort Litigation

There is no justification for displacing state tort law by adopting a new federal law of torts in order to facilitate mass tort class actions in federal court. Tort law law has traditionally and properly been the province of state law. The principal problem of mass tort litigation for the federal government is the congestion in the federal district courts caused by the avalanche of state tort claims that have found their way there. This has occurred for reasons not attributable to the federal government. Specifically, state legislatures and state supreme court justices have expanded available claims and remedies under state tort law to include, for example, medical monitoring claims, fear of cancer claims, and emotional distress claims. While some of these new state tort claims may be controversial and add to the burden on the docket of federal courts, this is not a sufficient reason for federal tort law to be enacted to displace these state claims. Any change in the federal rules of procedure by itself will not assure the fair and orderly adjudication of mass tort claims, given the reality that the federal courts are not the only forum where mass tort claims are litigated. A more viable proposal would be to expand the role of federal courts in coordinating pretrial activities in mass tort cases while remanding cases to their original state or federal court for trial. In short, the proper response is to facilitate the consolidation of factually related claims for pretrial discovery in an appropriate venue, but then try those tort claims in state and federal court in the traditional manner.
Reputation Effects and Equilibrium Degeneracy in Continuous-Time Games ∗

We study a continuous-time reputation game between a large player and a population of small players in which the actions of the large player are imperfectly observable. We explore two versions of the game. In the complete information game, in which it is common knowledge that the large player is a strategic normal type, we show that intertemporal incentives collapse: irrespective of players’ patience and signal informativeness, the set of equilibrium payoffs of the large player coincides with the convex hull of the set of static Nash equilibrium payoffs. In the incomplete information game, the small players believe that the large player could be a strategic normal type or a commitment type, who plays the same action at all times. With this perturbation, nontrivial intertemporal incentives arise. In this two-type setting, we characterize the set of sequential equilibrium payoffs of the large player using an ordinary differential equation. Unlike in discrete time, in a large class of games in continuous time the sequential equilibrium is unique and Markov in the small players’ belief for any prior.
The design of “the first experimental study exploring DNA interpretation”

This letter explains why a recent study purporting to show that exposure to domain-irrelevant information caused DNA analysts to misinterpret a complex mixture does not warrant this conclusion on the basis of the data from the study.
Geographic Diversification, Bank Holding Company Value, and Risk

We assess the association between geographic diversification and bank holding company (BHC) value and risk, controlling for the distance between the headquarters and branches. The distance-adjusted deposit dispersion index used as a measure of geographic diversification accounts for the number of locations where a BHC operates, the level of activity in each location, and the distance between a BHC and its branches. We find that geographic diversification is associated with BHC value enhancement and risk reduction, increased distance between a BHC and its branches is associated with firm value reduction and risk increase, and geographic diversification across more remote areas is associated with greater value enhancement but smaller risk reduction.
On the Durability of King and Council: The Continuum Between Dictatorship and Democracy

In practice one rarely observes pure forms of dictatorship that lack a council, or pure forms of parliament that lack an executive. Generally government policies emerge from organizations that combine an executive branch of government, “the king,” with a cabinet or parliamentary branch, “the council.” This paper provides an explanation for this regularity, and also provides an evolutionary model of the emergence of democracy that does not require a revolution. The analysis demonstrates that the bipolar “king and council” constitutional template has a number of properties that gives it great practical efficiency as a method of information processing and as a very flexible institutional arrangement for making collective decisions.
The New Normativity: The Abuse Excuse and the Resurgence of Judgment in the Criminal Law

There is growing interest within the academy in reviving the "normative" in criminal law scholarship. Enter a recent book, Moral Judgment, by the distinguished criminologist James Q. Wilson. Professor Wilson's work prompts the question: What is meant by the term 'judgment"? Considering three different models-judgment as community, judgment as character, and judgment as critique-this review argues that Professor Wilson's idea of judgment both departs from the "new normativity" in existing scholarship and shows how easily 'judgment" may stand in for partial aims. Professor Wilson argues that the "abuse excuse" is the product of modern social movements that make some defendants, like battered women, more attractive "victims" than others. For these defendants, Wilson argues, the law seeks to explain rather than judge their behavior. Unfortunately, when one comes to look at the particular defenses that Wilson embraces as proper 'judgments" and rejects as poor "explanations," Wilson's theory begins to raise serious questions. For example, although Wilson is particularly critical of battered women's claims, he leaves out important parallels to excuses typically raised by men under the rubric of a well-known and long-standing defense-provocation. This selectivity, the review argues, not only betrays Wilson's judgment as the embrace of tradition for tradition's sake, but also tells us something important about the "abuse excuse. " It tells us that the danger to our criminal justice system does not lie in a particular set of modern excuses, nor modern social movements like feminism, but in a failed theory of excuse.
Commercial Free and Open Source Software: Knowledge Production, Hybrid Appropriability, and Patents

Robert Jacobsen might seem like a party with the equities and the law in his favor. After all, he provided his software to the world under a royalty-free license allowing broad public use.1 The license even allowed companies to use the software in proprietary products with minimal nonpecuniary conditions.2 He led a group of hobbyists who used the software to enjoy creating model railroads.3 A company4 competed with these volunteers who freely shared their work. The company used some of Jacobsen’s software in its commercial, royalty-bearing product, but it did not follow the articulated license conditions. Under dominant notions of copyright licensing, the company faced a risk of infringement of the
How the Dissent Becomes the Majority: Using Federalism to Transform Coalitions in the U.S. Supreme Court

This Article proposes that dissenting Supreme Court Justices provide cues in their written opinions about how future litigants can reframe case facts and legal arguments in similar future cases to garner majority support. Questions of federalstate power cut across most other substantive legal issues, and this can provide a mechanism of splitting existing majorities in future cases. Dissenting Justices can ‘signal’ to future litigants when this potential exists, to transform a dissent into a majority in similar future cases. We undertake an empirical investigation of dissenting opinions where the dissenting Justice suggests that future cases ought to be framed in terms of federal-state powers. We show that when dissenting opinions signal a preference for transforming an issue into an argument about federal-state power, more subsequent cases in that area are decided on that basis. Moreover, the previous minority coalition is in the majority significantly more often, showing that these signals are systematically successful. Not only can federalism-based dissents transform the rhetoric of cases, it can systematically and significantly shift the outcome of cases in the direction of the dissenting Justices’ views. ∗ Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Colorado-Boulder, vanessa.baird@colorado.edu; Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law, t-jacobi@law.northwestern.edu. Baird & Jacobi How the Dissent Becomes the Majority 2
War and the Growth of Government

This paper empirically examines how wars impact the size and scope of government using a panel of all wars from 1965 to 2010. Higgs (1987) gives us reason to believe that wars may permanently increase government size and scope while Olson (1982) describes how wars can dislodge interest groups and allow for market liberalizing reforms. We find that wars permanently expand the scope of government regulation but do not impact government size systematically across the countries we study.
Venture Capital and Preferred Stock

Preferred stock has always posed something of a puzzle. Straddling the line between debt and equity, preferred stock has long existed in a shadowland between the realms of contract law on the one hand, and corporate law on the other. Depending on the situation, preferred stockholders have sometimes been entitled to the protection of corporate law fiduciary duties, and sometimes been left to lie in the contractual bed they have made. Historically, what little scholarship exists on preferred stock has consisted largely of calls for greater fiduciary protections for preferred stockholders. Preferred stock has taken on increased importance in recent years, as the favored mode of investment for venture capitalists. Moreover, in a recent trio of cases, the Delaware Chancery Court has restated – some have claimed re-made – the doctrinal treatment of preferred stock in venture capital deals, generating substantial confusion in the process. This Article takes a fresh look at the role of fiduciary duties in venture capital deals, examining the traditional rationales for fiduciary duties in corporate law and analyzing the extent to which they apply in the context of venture capital-financed startups. I conclude that the traditional rationales do not apply, and that venture capitalists, as preferred stockholders, should never be afforded fiduciary protections. Where preferred stockholders control the board, however, they should owe fiduciary duties to the common stockholders. Taken together, these conclusions provide what has long been lacking in this area of the law: a firm theoretical foundation and clear criteria for resolving disputes involving preferred stock.
The Rise of Kenyan Supermarkets and the Evolution of Their Horticulture Product Procurement Systems

Supermarkets are rapidly penetrating urban food retail in Kenya and spreading well beyond their initially tiny market niche among the urban middle class into the food markets of lower-income groups. Having penetrated processed and staple food markets much earlier and faster than fresh foods, they have recently begun to make inroads into the fresh fruits and vegetables category. Supermarkets in Kenya already buy about half the volume of produce exported, and thus represent a significant new ‘dynamic market’ opportunity for farmers. The important changes in their procurement systems bring significant opportunities and challenges for small farmers, and have implications for agricultural diversification and rural development programmes and policies.
Transitional Dynamics and Economic Growth in the Neoclassical Model

Neoclassical transitional dynamics are a central element of standard macroeconomic theory. Quantitative experiments with the fixed-savings-rate models of the 1960s showed lengthy transitions, thus potentially rationalizing sustained differences in growth rates across countries. The authors investigate quantitative transitional dynamics in various neoclassical models with intertemporally optimizing households. Lengthy transitions occur only with very low intertemporal substitution. Generally, when one tries to explain sustained economic growth with transitional dynamics, there are extremely counterfactual implications. These result from the fact that implied marginal products are extraordinarily high in the early stages of development. Copyright 1993 by American Economic Association.
The Transatlantic Flow of Data and the National Security Exception in the European Data Privacy Regulation: In Search for Legal Protection Against Surveillance

Europe regulates data privacy against violations coming from the private sector more strictly than the U.S. The EU Directive 95/46/EC has led to the implementation of a sophisticated system of data privacy regulation having strong enforcement mechanisms. The European Commission has submitted a proposal for a new regulation, which updates data privacy law protection strengthening individual rights and foreseeing important penalties. Both the existing Directive and the Proposed Regulation do not apply to activities concerning “national security.” The EU has succeeded through negotiations to level up the standards of data privacy protection in the private sector in the U.S. through the Safe Harbor Agreement. This agreement also foresees an exemption of its application in case of national security, public interest, or law enforcement requirements. The European Regulation of privacy is indirectly affecting the access of public authorities to private data by limiting the possibility of private actors to collect and store this data, which they will be required to transmit to surveillance authorities. This paper analyzes the existing protection through the Safe Harbor Agreement and the Proposed Regulation, which strengthens the legal framework of privacy against collection of data by the private sector.