cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Direct vs. Indirect Obligations of Corporations Under International Law

International law today addresses the conduct of private corporations in a variety of areas. With very few exceptions, however, international law regulates corporate conduct indirectly -- that is, by requiring states to enact and enforce regulations applicable to corporations and other non-state actors. Only a small number of international legal norms --- primarily those relating to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and forced labor -- apply directly to non-state actors. Scholars have argued forcefully that international law should move in the direction of directly imposing obligations on corporations. These arguments overlook important aspects of the problem. If international legal norms were extended to corporations and backed by effective enforcement mechanisms, states would lose control over compliance with the norms. If not accompanied by an effective enforcement mechanism, the norms would probably be widely disregarded. The first option is likely to be strongly resisted by states; the second option would do little for the interests sought to be protected and would be bad for international law.
Party, Electoral Vulnerability, and Earmarks in the U.S. House of Representatives

Very little attention has been paid to the relationship between House members’ electoral vulnerability and the amount of federal spending they procure for their districts. I argue that vulnerable members receive more spending than safe members, on average, but only if they are in the majority party. Party leaders, as part of maintaining or pursuing a majority, have an interest in protecting their party's most vulnerable members. However, the majority party has a greater degree of control over spending than the minority party. This implies that the majority leadership is able to “protect” projects which are electorally beneficial to their party's vulnerable members, but the minority leadership is not. As a result, there is a positive relationship between vulnerability and the amount of pork procured among majority members, but not among minority members. Examinations of three different datasets centering on earmark distribution in the U.S. House from the past 15 years confirm these hypotheses.
Justice Stevens and Constitutional Adjudication: The Law Beyond the Rules.

This article, written for a symposium marking the retirement of Justice Stevens, considers his approach to equal protection and free speech cases. It contrasts his longstanding attempts to pierce through mediating doctrinal rules in these areas and apply true constitutional meaning ("the law beyond the rules") with the more rule-bound approach exemplified by Chief Justice Roberts and other members of the Court’s conservative bloc. While appreciating Justice Stevens’ efforts in this regard, the Article also recognizes some of the problems he encountered in his quest. However, it also notes that the more rule-bound approach suffers from flaws of its own, even when judged against the criteria more rule-friendly justices offer to evaluate a given method of constitutional adjudication. Thus, whatever one might think of the ultimate success of Justice Stevens’ project, it is surely the case that the more rule-bound approach has not proven its clear superiority.
The Social Enterprise Law Market

During the last seven years, over thirty states have passed at least one social enterprise statute. These social enterprise statutes allow the formation of a plethora of new entity types, including low-profit limited liability companies, benefit corporations, benefit limited liability companies, public benefit corporations, and social purpose corporations. Social enterprises have attracted increasing academic attention, but virtually nothing has been written on if and how states are competing for these entities. This Article attempts to fill that void, while also providing a history of the social enterprise forms, a comparative analysis, and recommendations for states that wish to engage in jurisdictional competition in the social enterprise law market.
Using principal component analysis to estimate a high dimensional factor model with high-frequency data

This paper constructs an estimator for the number of common factors in a setting where both the sampling frequency and the number of variables increase. Empirically, we document that the covariance matrix of a large portfolio of US equities is well represented by a low rank common structure with sparse residual matrix. When employed for out-of-sample portfolio allocation, the proposed estimator largely outperforms the sample covariance estimator.
Cross-layer Band Selection and Routing Design for Diverse Band-aware DSA Networks

As several new spectrum bands are opening up for shared use, a new paradigm of Diverse Band-aware Dynamic Spectrum Access (d-DSA) has emerged. d-DSA equips a secondary device with software defined radios (SDRs) and utilize whitespaces (or idle channels) in multiple bands, including but not limited to TV, LTE, Citizen Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), unlicensed ISM. In this paper, we propose a decentralized, online multi-agent reinforcement learning based cross-layer BAnd selection and Routing Design (BARD) for such d-DSA networks. BARD not only harnesses whitespaces in multiple spectrum bands, but also accounts for unique electro-magnetic characteristics of those bands to maximize the desired quality of service (QoS) requirements of heterogeneous message packets; while also ensuring no harmful interference to the primary users in the utilized band. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that BARD outperforms the baseline dDSAaR algorithm in terms of message delivery ratio, however, at a relatively higher network latency, for varying number of primary and secondary users. Furthermore, BARD greatly outperforms its single-band DSA variants in terms of both the metrics in all considered scenarios.
Mission matters: The cost of small high schools revisited

Abstract With the financial support of several large foundations and the federal government, creating small schools has become a prominent high school reform strategy in many large American cities. While some research supports this strategy, little research assesses the relative costs of these smaller schools. We use data on over 200 New York City high schools, from 1996 through 2003, to estimate school cost functions relating per pupil expenditures to school size, controlling for school output and quality, student characteristics, and school organization. We find that the structure of costs differs across schools depending upon mission—comprehensive or themed. At their current levels of outputs, themed schools minimize per pupil costs at smaller enrollments than comprehensive schools, but these optimally sized themed schools also cost more per pupil than optimally sized comprehensive schools. We also find that both themed and comprehensive high schools at actual sizes are smaller than their optimal sizes.
Constitutional Amendment by Constitutional Desuetude

Scholars have shown that written constitutions may be informally amended in various ways, for instance by judicial interpretation, statute, or executive action. But scholars have yet to fully appreciate that written constitutions may also be informally amended by desuetude. Informal amendment by constitutional desuetude occurs when a constitutional provision loses its binding force upon political actors as a result of its conscious sustained nonuse and public repudiation by political actors. Though it is a species of informal amendment, constitutional desuetude possesses unique properties. Constitutional desuetude reflects the informal repeal of a constitutional provision as a result of the establishment of a new constitutional convention. Despite its obsolescence, the desuetudinal constitutional provision remains entrenched in the constitutional text. Consequently, although informal amendment generally leaves the constitutional text entrenched, unchanged and politically valid, this particular variation of informal amendment leaves the text entrenched and unchanged but renders it politically invalid. In this paper, I illustrate and theorize the phenomenon of informal amendment by constitutional desuetude with reference to the Canadian Constitution, I construct an analytical framework for identifying constitutional desuetude in other jurisdictions, I distinguish constitutional desuetude from other forms of obsolescence, and I also explore the costs of constitutional desuetude.
Enabling After-Arising Technology

I. INTRODUCTION 1083 II. ENABLEMENT, COMMENSURABILITY AND AAT 1085 A. The Doctrinal Chaos 1085 B. Commensurability and the Incentive to Invent 1089 C. Enablement Does Not Operate in Isolation 1090 III. DISCERNING ORDER IN (OR IMPOSING ORDER ON?) THE CHAOS 1093 A. Predictability as a Threshold Inquiry 1094 B. Rule One: The Foreseeability Rule 1098 C. Rule Two: The Identity Rule 1105 D. Rule Three: The Complementarity Rule 1111 1. The Puzzle: Two Commensurability Hypotheticals 1111 2. The Answer: A Safe Harbor for Complementary AAT 1115 3. Complementary AAT Versus Complementary Patents 1122 IV. A BRIEF SYNTHESIS 1124 A. The Rules as Enablement Safe Harbors 1124 B. The Rules and Commensurability 1125 V. CONCLUSION 1126 I. INTRODUCTION Much has been written on the nonobviousness standard of patent law, which establishes how different a new technology must be from the prior art in order to merit patent protection.1 In comparison, relatively little has been written about the reach of literal claim scope into after-arising technology (AAT): How far beyond the technology disclosed in a patent application and into future technologies should patent rights be permitted to reach?2 Both issues are critical to the creation of a well-tuned patent regime that offers efficient incentives, but work on the latter languishes in the shadow of efforts to address the former. This Article offers a preliminary step in the sorely needed systematic exploration of the reach of patent rights into AAT, focusing exclusively on the role of the enablement doctrine in shaping the reach of literal claim scope into AAT.3 The enablement doctrine restricts the scope of an inventor's claim so that it remains commensurate with the contribution to technological progress that the inventor has disclosed in her specification. When the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals (Federal Circuit) brings enablement to bear on claims that encompass AAT, the resulting doctrine is chaotic. Distinct lines of cases recite different doctrines, and the choice among the doctrines determines whether claims encompassing AAT are enabled.4 This Article searches for order in the chaos. It proposes that there are three rules that, taken together, explain what the Federal Circuit does when it grapples with the enablement of AAT: the foreseeability rule, the identity rule, and the complementarity rule. Courts and commentators have discussed the first two of these rules, but their effects are poorly understood and their policy justifications have not been clearly explained. The third, the complementarity rule, represents an original contribution to scholarly literature on enablement.5 In addition, this Article examines the most plausible normative justification for each of the rules. …
Neutral Citation, Court Web Sites, and Access to Authoritative Case Law

In 1994, the Wisconsin Bar and the Wisconsin Judicial Council together urged the state�fs supreme court to take two dramatic steps with the combined aim of improving access to state case law: adopt a new system of neutral format citation and establish a digital archive of decisions directly available to all publishers and the public. The recommendations set off a firestorm, and the court deferred decision on the package. In the dozen or so years since those events, the background conditions have shifted dramatically. Neutral format citation has been endorsed by AALL and the ABA and formally adopted in a number of states, including Wisconsin. Thomson�fs acquisition of the West Publishing Company in 1996 removed the principal source of opposition. Court Web sites, nonexistent in 1994, are now a standard feature of e.government with the result that the idea of a public case archive, open to all, no longer stretches imaginations. With the environment seemingly so much more hospitable to the 1994 Wisconsin recommendations, one might expect to see them widely implemented. Yet less than a handful of states have effectively put them to work in tandem. Professor Martin explores some of the reasons why they stand today as lonely illustrations of �gbest practice.�h
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: SELECTING SITES FOR CONTROVERSIAL FACILITIES

While a large literature exists on the siting of controversial facilities, few theories about spatial location have been tested on large samples. Using a new dataset from Japan, this paper demonstrates that state agencies choose localities judged weakest in local civil society as host communities for controversial projects. In some cases, powerful politicians deliberately seek to have facilities such as nuclear power plants, dams and airports placed in their home constituency. This paper then explores new territory: how demographic, political and civil society factors impact the outcomes of siting attempts. It finds that the strength of local civil society impacts the probability that a proposed project will come to fruition; the greater the concentration of local civil society, the less likely state-planned projects will be completed.
How Stock Flippers Affect IPO Pricing and Stabilization

Stock flippers pose a problem for underwriters of initial public offerings (IPOs). They subscribe to the issue, but immediately resell their shares, which may depress the aftermarket price. This paper presents a model of how stock flippers affect IPO pricing. The model shows that the underwriter chooses whether to price the issue as a cold, weak, or hot IPO. Stock flippers have the greatest effect on pricing in weak IPOs and provide an explanation for underwriter stabilization. In contrast to existing models of stabilization, the underwriter gains from after-market purchases, particularly if the contract with the issuer includes an over-allotment option. The over-allotment option encourages a lower offer price, which may lead to under-pricing. These results correspond to recent findings on IPO returns and underwriter stabilization activities.
Periods of Iterated Rational Functions over a Finite Field

If f is a polynomial of degree d in &#x1d53d;q[x], let ck(f) be the number of cycles of length k in the directed graph on &#x1d53d;q with edges {(v,f(v))}v∈&#x1d53d;q. For random polynomials, the numbers ck, 1 ≤ k ≤ b, ha...
The reaction of emerging market credit default swap spreads to sovereign credit rating changes

Abstract This paper examines the effect of sovereign credit rating change announcements on the CDS spreads of the event countries, and their spillover effects on other emerging economies’ CDS premiums. We find that positive events have a greater impact on CDS markets in the two-day period surrounding the event, and are more likely to spill over to other emerging countries. Alternatively, CDS markets anticipate negative events, and previous changes in CDS premiums can be used to estimate the probability of a negative credit event. The transmission mechanisms for positive events are the common creditor and competition in trade markets.
Two Zones of Prophylaxis: The Scope of the Fourteenth Amendment Enforcement Power

Few questions of constitutional law are as uncertain as the scope of congressional power to enforce the substantive provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court has provided a mixed bag of answers in the context of congressional attempts to use the Section 5 enforcement power to abrogate state sovereign immunity, but it has given almost no guidance concerning the scope of the enforcement power when such abrogation is not at issue. This is an attempt to explore and, perhaps, remedy that latter lacuna. Although City of Boerne v. Flores1 established that Congress has only a remedial power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment and may not define for itself the substance of the Amendment’s guarantees,2 it left the boundaries of that power ill-defined. The Court acknowledged that “Congress must have wide latitude” to determine the scope of its remedial power,3 and it recognized that Congress may remedy the constitutional wrongs of the states both before and after they occur.4 But the Court insisted that the test for whether remedial measures are authorized by the Fourteenth Amendment is that there must exist “a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end.”5 Since Flores, the Court has addressed the scope of Congress’s prophylactic power almost entirely in connection with congressional
Optimal securitization with moral hazard

Abstract We consider the optimal design of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in a dynamic setting in which a mortgage underwriter with limited liability can engage in costly hidden effort to screen borrowers and can sell loans to investors. We show that (i) the timing of payments to the underwriter is the key incentive mechanism, (ii) the maturity of the optimal contract can be short, and that (iii) bundling mortgages is efficient as it allows investors to learn about underwriter effort more quickly, an information enhancement effect. Finally, we demonstrate that the optimal contract can be closely approximated by the “first loss piece.”
Adapting Laws For A Changing World: A Systemic Approach To Climate Change Adaptation

This Essay suggests that policy responses in climate change adaptation must be addressed and that focusing on adapting laws may be a good way to undertake this work. Following a review of existing scholarship and normative theories concerning law generally, environmental law, climate change, and adaptation, this Essay then proposes a template for approaching the adaptation of laws. This template would (1) examine where climate change puts pressure on the operation of laws; (2) seek to alter the implementation of that law or to alter the law itself to hew closely to the law’s original purposes; and (3) make these alterations in the most efficient manner possible while also correcting any distributive reallocations. Where the law’s original purposes cannot be accommodated or are so broad as to fail to constitute a clear legislative principle, policy changes should be made in the democratic forum, not by an administrative process. The Essay concludes with examples from working groups implementing the template approach. INTRODUCTION 270 I. THE ADAPTATION OF LAW IS A LOGICAL LENS THROUGH WHICH TO VIEW CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION GENERALLY 275 II. CLIMATE CHANGE AND LEGAL ADAPTATION 277 A. Systems 277 B. Scale 279 III. APPROACHES TO LEGAL ADAPTATION IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 281 ∗ Thomas and Elizabeth Taft Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law, and Director, Center for Law, Environment, Adaptation and Resources (CLEAR) at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Law. The author would like to thank Dan Farber, J.B. Ruhl, Holly Doremus, Scott Schang, and Robert Glicksman for their valuable comments on a draft of this paper. Thanks also to Colin Shive and Kate Caflin for their excellent work as research assistants. Last, a thank you to the editors and members of the Florida Law Review for their excellent professional editing and general support of this Essay. 1 Flatt: Adapting Laws For A Changing World: A Systemic Approach To Climat Published by UF Law Scholarship Repository, 2012 270 FLORIDA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 64 A. Do Axes of Climate Change Adaptation Analysis Suggest a Template for Systematically Approaching Climate Change Adaptation? 281 1. Scale 282 2. Systems 282 B. Existing Templates for Adapting Laws in the Face of Climate Change 285 C. Template for Legal Adaptation 287 IV. APPLICATION EXAMPLES 291 CONCLUSION 293 “All climate-sensitive systems of society and the natural environment . . . will need to adapt to a changing climate or possibly face diminished productivity, functioning and health.” –Environmental Protection Agency
Innovations in Integrity‐Based Personnel Selection: Building a Technology‐Friendly Assessment

We are currently observing a paradigm shift in the composition of personnel selection inventories from lengthy paper-and-pencil administration and scoring to innovative applications of information technology. These technological advances have been driven primarily by strong demands from human resource professionals for enhancements in speed, effectiveness, and cost containment. In response, an existing pre-employment selection assessment was modified to make it more concise, economical, and ‘technology-friendly’. The resulting integrity-based assessment system, the Applicant Potential Inventory or API (London House 1997), has been administered and scored using a wide variety of technologies, including telephone, personal computer, fax, and the Internet. This article describes the initial development of the API and reviews nine field studies conducted to examine its reliability, validity, fairness, and financial impact.
Naming Rights: Attribution and Law

This article identifies three basic frameworks that intellectual property theorists have used to support giving authors a right to attribution: authorial high-protectionism, which is concerned with respecting the unique role of authors; copyright low-protectionism, which is concerned with increasing access to copyrighted works and wishes to substitute credit for total control; and trademark-style consumer protectionism, which is concerned with giving consumers truthful and useful information about the works they choose. I examine these rationales, and the tensions between them, and conclude that attribution rights cannot fulfill their apparent promise to unite differing visions of intellectual property. Legitimate claims for credit are simply too varied and contextual, and copyright law already too complex and reticulated, for an attribution right to be a valuable addition to copyright's arsenal. This is so even though voluntary attribution is often a viable substitute for more expansive control of uses of copyrighted works. Fundamentally, American copyright law has enough trouble identifying owners; identifying authors is beyond its grasp. Attribution rights, especially in the absence of comprehensive author-centered reform, would only make the law more complex, not more just. I conclude by examining the role of attribution in more modest proposals to add a new fair use factor and to add protections for uses of orphan works, works whose owners cannot be found after a reasonable search.
TRIPS and Its Discontents

The TRIPs Agreement was established at the ministerial meeting in Marrakesh in April 1994. Since its establishment, many less developed countries have become dissatisfied with the international intellectual property system. From their perspective, the system fails to take into consideration their needs, interests, and local conditions. The strong protection mandated by the Agreement also threatens their much-needed access to information, knowledge, and essential medicines. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the TRIPs Agreement. It provides an excellent opportunity to assess the Agreement's achievements and shortfalls, in particular its impact on the international community as well as on other areas not related to intellectual property, such as agriculture, health, the environment, education, and culture. As we move into the second decade of this Agreement, it is also appropriate to explore how we can preserve the goals and intentions behind the TRIPs negotiations and to look ahead at the future challenges confronting the international intellectual property system. Published as part of the Symposium on The First Ten Years of the TRIPs Agreement, this article begins by describing the four different narratives used to explain the origins of the Agreement. It contends that while none of these narratives is complete, each provides valuable insight into understanding the context in which the Agreement was created. The article then explores why less developed countries have been dissatisfied with the international intellectual property system and discusses the latest developments in the area, such as the recent WTO debacle in Cancun, the proliferation of bilateral and plurilateral free trade agreements, and the increasing use of technological protection measures. The article concludes by offering suggestions on how less developed countries can reform the international intellectual property system. Instead of calling for a complete overhaul or the abandonment of the TRIPs Agreement, the article takes the position that the Agreement is here to stay and explores, from that standpoint, how less developed countries can take advantage of the Agreement and reform the international intellectual property system.
Revealed preferences for portfolio selection – does skewness matter?

ABSTRACTIn this article, we consider the portfolio selection problem as a Bayesian decision problem. We compare the traditional mean–variance and mean–variance–skewness efficient portfolios. We develop bi-level programming problem to investigate the market’s preference for risk by using observed (market) weights. Numerical experiments are conducted on a portfolio formed by the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Numerical results show that the market’s preferences are better explained when skewness is included.
Who Qualifies as an Audit Committee Financial Expert Under SEC Regulations and NYSE Rules

During recent years, heightened standards for board audit committee membership have been imposed by the SEC, NYSE, and others. Sarbanes-Oxley requires that the audit committee will be comprised solely of independent directors and that the company must disclose whether at least one of the members of the audit committee is a "financial expert" and if not, why not. An "audit committee financial expert" is defined as a person who has the following attributes: (1) an understanding of generally accepted accounting principles and financial statements; (2) the ability to assess the general application of such principles in connection with the accounting for estimates, accruals, and reserves; (3) experience preparing, auditing, analyzing or evaluating financial statements that present a breadth and level of complexity of accounting issues that are generally comparable to the breadth and complexity of issues that can reasonably be expected to be raised by the registrant's financial statements, or experience actively supervising one or more persons engaged in such activities; (4) an understanding of internal controls and procedures for financial reporting; and (5) an understanding of audit committee functions. Many seasoned audit committee chairmen hold the view that audit committee financial experts should be experienced in performing financial accounting functions themselves, rather than simply having supervisory experience over the function. Indicative of this view is that if accounting is the language of business, an audit committee financial expert needs to fluently "speak GAAP and GAAS" to understand the nuances of sophisticated and complex accounting, auditing, internal controls, and SEC regulations. Who then qualifies as a financial expert? This is a fact-dependent, practical question that must be answered by every board, governance and nominating committee, and audit committee member. My goal here is to examine the technical requirements imposed by law and regulation and to present thoughts as to best practice. AUDIT COMMIrrEE FINANCIAL EXPERTS
The Economics of the Restatement and of the Common Law

When, finally, it goes out under the name and with the sanction of the Institute, after all this testing and retesting, it will be something less than a code and something more than a treatise. It will be invested with unique authority, not to command, but to persuade. It will embody a composite thought and speak a composite voice. Universities and bench and bar will have had a part in its creation. I have great faith in the power of such a restatement to unify our law.1
Adverse Reactions: Structure, Philosophy, and Outcomes of the Affordable Care Act

On March 24th, 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, declaring, “everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.” This Note provides a comprehensive examination of this complex legislation. Second, it reframes the bill by proposing that its miscellaneous-seeming provisions are designed to protect a single, central provision: the ban on health discrimination. Finally, it argues that underlying economic forces will likely cause PPACA to do more harm than good. While health reform may ultimately prove successful, America has good reason to be concerned.
Aggregation and identification in consumer demand systems

Abstract In this paper we explore the following fundamental question: Are there reasonable conditions under which the parameters of estimated aggregate demand systems will uniquely identify underlying individual demand systems? In the process of examining this question we show that the conditions which have been reported in the literature are incomplete. The exercise is carried out in the framework of individual demand systems which are integrable and exactly aggregable.
The Influence of Auditor State-Level Legal Liability on Conservative Financial Reporting in the Property-Casualty Insurance Industry

SUMMARY: This paper provides the first evidence that state-level liability standards affect auditor behavior. We hypothesize that auditors demand more conservative reporting when their insurance clients are domiciled in states with more stringent standards for third-party claims against the auditor for negligence. To test this hypothesis, we analyze a sample of 3,107 loss reserve observations from 1993 through 2004. Our sample is restricted to private insurers that operate in a single state to control for auditor liability under statutory law and to reduce the possibility of forum shopping by plaintiffs. Consistent with Petroni (1992), we find that financially struggling insurers tend to under-reserve. This behavior is attenuated when the insurer is domiciled in a state that uses either the Restatement of Torts or the reasonable foreseeability standard to determine the auditor's liability to third parties. Compared to the case where the auditor's liability is defined by the legal concept of privity, thes...
Contract and Care

America has a historic and highly romanticized affair with the ideal of the private and the individual as appropriate units of focus in determining social good. If a child is part of that private landscape, it is deemed a private matter. Children are like any other item of consumption, a matter of individual preference and individual responsibility. This stance has even been taken by self-identified feminist legal scholars and scholars otherwise aligning themselves with progressive positions. Of particular relevance to debates about dependency are feminist attempts to show the ways in which the dichotomous concepts of public and private have significant political implications. The idea that the private is generally preferable as a means of responding to need and dependency is more and more firmly enmeshed with our sense of social justice.This article argues the opposite, asserting the necessity of a public responsibility for dependency – a status or condition that historically has been deemed appropriately assigned to the private sphere. The privatization of dependency continues unequal and gendered division of family labor, which burdens women more than men.Dependency warrants a more public, supportive, and collective response to the needs of caretakers. Caretaking labor should not be viewed as socially productive only when directed at improving the situation of others. The arguments made about exploitation in regard to caretaking are applicable to the situation of those who are providing for the needs, growth, and maintenance of society and its institutions but whose labor is undervalued within our version of the ideology free market capitalism. Arguments that began with recognition of caretaking evolve into a claim for universal provision of basic social goods based simply on recognition of un- or undercompensated contributions to society and its institutions and the fact that contributions should be valued in a public, positive, and egalitarian fashion.
Product attributes and consumer acceptance of nutritionally enhanced genetically modified foods

Using data from a national survey, this study analyses US consumers’ acceptance of genetically modified foods that provide additional nutritional benefits. Using an ordered probit model, this study examines the relation between the willingness to consume genetically modified foods and consumers’ economic, demographic and value attributes. Empirical results suggest that despite having some reservations, especially about the use of biotechnology in animals, American consumers are not decidedly opposed to food biotechnology. Consumers’ economic and demographic variables are only weakly related to their acceptance of food biotechnology, especially when technology involves plant-to-plant DNA transfer. However, public trust and confidence in various private and public institutions are significantly related to their acceptance of food biotechnology. Overall, consumer acceptance of bioengineered foods is driven primarily by public perceptions of risks, benefits and safety of these food products.
Do School Cliques Dominate Japanese Bureaucracies?: Evidence from Supreme Court Appointments

Scholars (for example, Chalmers Johnson) routinely argue that university cliques dominate Japanese firms and bureaucracies. The graduates of the most selective schools, they explain, control and manipulate their employers. They cause them to hire from their alma mater. They skew internal career dynamics to favor themselves. For most firms and bureaucracies, we lack the data on employee-level output necessary to test whether cliques do skew career tournaments. Because judges publish opinions, within the courts we may have what we need. In this Article, I use data on published opinions to test whether Japanese judges from the most selective schools are more likely—holding output constant—to reach the Supreme Court. They are not. I find only weak evidence of possible favoritism toward Kyoto University graduates, and no evidence of favoritism toward University of Tokyo graduates. Japanese judges do not find themselves named to the Court because of their school backgrounds. They find themselves named there because they are unusually productive.
Wage contracts, capital mobility, and macroeconomic policy

This paper studies the effects of macroeconomic policy shocks in an optimizing model with imperfect capital mobility and nominal wage contracts with backward- and forward-looking expectations. The long-run effects of a cut in government spending on nontraded goods are shown to be independent of the expectational mechanism embedded in wage contracts. By contrast, a reduction in the nominal devaluation rate lowers (raises) steady-state output in the export sector under backward- (forward-) looking contracts. Impact effects and transitional dynamics associated with both types of wage contracts are also characterized.
Capability satisficing in high frequency trading

Abstract This paper explains the capability theory of how HFT firms make allocation decisions under uncertainty, and shows how capability maximization is precisely consistent with utility theory. The issue, however, is how these firms actually make allocation decisions in practice. Using the Gioia methodology, this paper presents evidence from interviews with HFT professionals and specialist media that suggest that these firms are capability satisficers. Capability theory is also consistent with bounded rationality and the adaptive markets hypothesis, and defines the point at which these firms reach a satisfactory solution. Thus, capability reconciles mainstream theory and the more realistic, behavioral theories based on observation of industry practice. The methodology developed can be applied to any firm that makes algorithmic decisions under uncertainty.
Just Say No to Retribution

The Plan for Revision of the Model Penal Code rejects the original Code’s choice of rehabilitation as the guiding principle for punishment, and proposes to replace it with the principle of retribution. This would be a serious mistake, both for the Code and for the country. It would be a mistake for the Code because it would align the Code with the worst features of contemporary American penal practice. There is no need to recite the absurdities of this practice at great length; it is well known that the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the Western world by a factor of five. What is important to recognize is that this trend has been justified, and sometimes exacerbated, by legislation that abandons the goal of rehabilitation and embraces the principle of retribution. If the Code were to embrace this principle as well, it would inevitably be seen as lending its support to all the irrationalities, immoralities, and inefficiencies of our current addiction to incarceration. Thoughtful American scholars who are urging alternative approaches will reject it. Policymakers and scholars in other democratic nations will regard the revised Code as part of America’s morally unacceptable regime of indiscriminate and draconian punishment. When attitudes finally change—and there is a strong likelihood that they will change, not only because
Income inequality, mobility, and the welfare state: A political economy model

In this paper, we set up a three-period stochastic overlapping-generations model to analyze the implications of income inequality and mobility for demand for redistribution and social insurance. We model the size of two different public programs under the welfare state. We investigate bidimensional voting on the tax rates that determine the allocation of government revenues among transfer payments and old-age pensions. We show that the coalitions formed, the resulting political equilibria, and the demand for redistribution crucially depend on the level of income inequality and mobility.
Deliver the Vote! Micromotives and Macrobehavior in Electoral Fraud

Most electoral fraud is not conducted centrally by incumbents but rather locally by a multitude of political operatives. How does an incumbent ensure that his agents deliver fraud when needed and as much as is needed? We address this and related puzzles in the political organization of electoral fraud by studying the perverse consequences of incentive conflicts between incumbents and their local agents. These incentive conflicts result in a herd dynamic among the agents that tends to either oversupply or undersupply fraud, rarely delivering the amount of fraud that would be optimal from the incumbent’s point of view. Our analysis of the political organization of electoral fraud explains why even popular incumbents often preside over seemingly unnecessary fraud, why fraud sometimes fails to deliver victories, and it predicts that the extent of fraud should be increasing in both the incumbent’s genuine support and reported results across precincts. A statistical analysis of anomalies in precinct-level results from the 2011–2012 Russian legislative and presidential elections provides preliminary support for our key claims.
International Activity and Domestic Law

This invited essay explores the ways States use their domestic laws to regulate activities that cross national borders. Domestic-law enforcement decisions play an underappreciated role in the development of international regulatory policy, particularly in situations where the enforcing State's power to apply its law extraterritorially is not contested. Collective action problems suggest there will be an undersupply of enforcement decisions that promote global welfare and an oversupply of enforcement decisions that promote national welfare. These collective action problems may be mitigated in part by government networks and other forms of regulatory cooperation.
A taxonomy of small firm technology commercialization

This article proposes a taxonomy of business models used by small, highly innovative firms focused on technology commercialization. Such firms disproportionately contribute to technological change in the US economy. The firms operate across industries and use a variety of technology platforms. Exploratory factor analysis of keyword occurrence on firm websites generated a taxonomy comprising: research organization; development stage biosciences; highly specialized component supplier; specialized subcontractor; product solutions providers; and service solutions providers. This framework provides entrepreneurs and policy makers with an overview of new technology commercialization paths tailored to small, innovative firms.
Is Pay for Performance Detrimental to Innovation

Previous research in economics shows that compensation based on the pay-for-performance principle is effective in inducing higher levels of effort and productivity. On the other hand, research in psychology argues that performance-based financial incentives inhibit creativity and innovation. How should managerial compensation be structured if the goal is to induce managers to pursue more innovative business strategies? In a controlled laboratory setting, we provide evidence that the combination of tolerance for early failure and reward for long-term success is effective in motivating innovation. Subjects under such an incentive scheme explore more and are more likely to discover a novel business strategy than subjects under fixed-wage and standard pay-for-performance incentive schemes. We also find evidence that the threat of termination can undermine incentives for innovation, whereas golden parachutes can alleviate these innovation-reducing effects. This paper was accepted by David Hsu, entrepreneurship...
Compensation and Peer Effects in Competing Sales Teams

This paper examines how compensation systems impact peer effects and competition in collocated sales teams. We use department store sales data to show that compensation systems influence worker incentives to help and compete with peers within the same firm, which in turn changes the capability of the firm to compete with rivals. Compensation also affects how salespeople impact peers at collocated competing firms, thereby impacting market competition. Moreover, compensation influences how salespeople strategically discount prices in response to peers. Our results suggest that heterogeneity in worker ability enhances firm performance under team-based compensation while hurting individual-based firms and that peer interactions are critical considerations in designing sales force incentive plans and broader firm strategy. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.
Coordination in disaster: Nonprice learning and the allocation of resources after natural disasters

Most economists agree that the price system offers the best method for allocating scarce resources among competing ends. Yet, churches, nonprofits, governments, and corporations in disaster-stricken communities, often under voluntary or mandated price freezes, must often rely on nonprice responses to meet short-term, localized shifts in demand. Evidence suggests that the private sector outperforms the public sector at this task. This paper explores how private sector organizations, both nonprofit and for-profit, learn about and respond to community needs in the aftermath of disasters. We explain and demonstrate how organizations observe credible signals of shifts in demand without the aid of prices. Our findings expand our understanding of why public sector disaster recovery efforts tend to be less effective than private sector efforts. We also find that price gouging laws have additional negative consequences beyond the standard economic account.
An optimizing prolog front-end to a relational query system

An optimizing translation mechanism for the dynamic interaction between a logic-based expert system written in PROLOG and a relational database accessible through SQL is presented. The mechanism makes use of an intermediate language that decomposes the optimization problem and makes the proposed approach target-language independent. It can either facilitate expert system - database interaction, e.g., when integrating expert systems into business systems, or augment existing databases with (external) deductive capabilities.
Determinants of the Strategic Mortgage Default Cumulative Distribution Function

In this paper, I discuss the many factors and considerations that enter into the strategic mortgage default (SMD) decision-making process. While it is not possible to construct a single cumulative ...
Thin But Not Anorexic: Copyright Protection for Compilations and Other Fact Works

Questions about the copyrightability of compilations and other low authorship fact works, and about the scope of protection, have continued to trouble courts long after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Services Co. in 1991. Justice O'Connor's opinion, explaining why a standard white pages telephone directory did not meet the constitutional and statutory requirements for copyright protection, defined an original work of authorship as one that is independently created by its author and that evidences at least a minimal level of creativity. The latter requirement has been elusive, in part because Justice O'Connor defined creativity by negative example, describing how an author's efforts in preparing a compilation might not satisfy the requirement. This Article, with the help of many post-Feist opinions, elaborates on Justice O'Connor's guidance for determining whether a compilation or other low authorship work is entitled to copyright protection and, if so, whether the work has been infringed. It was observed forty years ago to make the copyright turnstile revolve, the author should have to deposit more than a penny in the box, and some like measure ought to apply to infringement. This Article explains how much more than a penny is needed to get through the turnstile and that courts have been relatively consistent in applying Feist in a variety of contexts, thereby ensuring that copyright does not improperly extend to facts, ideas, systems and concepts. Traditional case-by-case application of the fundamental principles of Feist is working well and the sweat of the brow rationale for protection has not been resurrected.