cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Giving mathematical psychology away: challenges and promises

The four articles in this Special Issue on Practical Implications of Basic Research on Uncertainty and Utility were solicited in an attempt to meet two goals. The first goal was to get active researches in this field to think about the lessons that recent theoretical and empirical advances in basic research on utility theory might hold for practitioners, i.e., for those who use utility theory to facilitate better decision making in a broad range of applications. Many recent results in behavioral decision theory are not widely known to potential users of such information, because they are reported in a language and manner not readily accessible to practitioners and published in journals that are neither directed and nor read by them. A recent article (Cohen, 1996) on the normative status of expected utility (EU) theory in Medical Decision Making, for example, discussed the defensibility of violations of EU's independence axiom without any reference to the crucial distinction between violations of independence (or monotonicity) per se and violations of common probability accounting equivalences (see Luce, 1990). Some results may seem unimportant from a theoretical perspective to basic researchers, but may have important methodological implications and may raise the level of applications of utility theory significantly, if they were more widely known. The hope was that basic researchers would discuss their work from a fruitfully different perspective if challenged to consider its implications for decision making under uncertainty in areas such as risk analysis, strategic planning, and policy making, or its contributions to address problems in fields such as medicine or finance. They were asked to consider how recent research could improve or change the tools currently used to aid judgments or decisions in applied settings. The second goals was to make decision researchers more aware of unsolved problems that are important to practitioners. Practitioners researchers with content-specific interests were asked to describe pressing assessment or implementation problems in their field and to suggest basic research questions to which they would most like to see answers. In short, the Special Issue was conceived as a step toward narrowing the gap between the producers and potential users of new insights about decision making under risk and uncertainty. Article ID jmps.1999.1255, available online at http: www.idealibrary.com on
Human cloning: category, dignity, and the role of bioethics.

Human cloning has been simultaneously a running joke for massive worldwide publicity of fringe groups like the Raelians, and the core issue of an international movement at the United Nations in support of a treaty to ban the use of cloning techniques to produce a child (so called reproductive cloning). Yet, even though debates on human cloning have greatly increased since the birth of Dolly, the clone sheep, in 1997, we continue to wonder whether cloning is after all any different from other methods of medically assisted reproduction, and what exactly makes cloning an ‘affront to the dignity of humans.’ Categories we adopt matter mightily as they inform but can also misinform and lead to mistaken and unproductive decisions. And thus bioethicists have a responsibility to ensure that the proper categories are used in the cloning debates and denounce those who try to win the ethical debate through well-crafted labels rather than well-reasoned argumentations. But it is as important for bioethicists to take a position on broad issues such as human cloning and species altering interventions. One ‘natural question’ would be, for example, should there be an international treaty to ban human reproductive cloning?
Endogenous network dynamics

We model the structure and strategy of social interactions prevailing at any point in time as a directed network and we address the following open question in the theory of social and economic network formation: given the rules of network and coalition formation, preferences of individuals over networks, strategic behavior of coalitions in forming networks, and the trembles of nature, what network and coalitional dynamics are likely to emergence and persist. Our main contributions are to formulate the problem of network and coalition formation as a dynamic, stochastic game and to show that: (i) the game possesses a pure stationary equilibrium (in network and coalition formation strategies), (ii) together with the trembles of nature, this stationary equilibrium determines an equilibrium Markov process of network and coalition formation, and (iii) this endogenous Markov process possesses a finite set of ergodic measures, and generates a finite, disjoint collection of nonempty subsets of networks and coalitions, each constituting a basin of attraction. Moreover, we extend to the setting of endogenous Markov dynamics the notions of path dominance core (Page-Wooders, 2009) and pairwise stability (Jackson-Wolinsky, 1996). We show that in order for any network-coalition pair to emerge and persist, it is necessary that the pair reside in one of finitely many basins of attraction. As an example, we consider a dynamic noncooperative game of club network formation and we demonstrate conditions ensuring that, even if multiple club memberships are allowed, there exists an pure stationary equilibrium where the only club networks which emerge and persist are those where players are members of a single club. The results we obtain here for endogenous network dynamics and stochastic basins of attraction are the dynamic analogs of our earlier results on endogenous network formation and strategic basins of attraction in static, abstract games of network formation (Page and Wooders, 2009), and build on the seminal contributions of Jackson and Watts (2002), Konishi and Ray (2003), and Dutta, Ghosal, and Ray (2005).
Draining the Morass: Ending the Jurisprudentially Unsound Unpublication System

Unpublished opinions have become a fact of life in the federal circuit courts. Over eighty percent of all opinions issued by the federal circuits in the last few years have been designated "unpublished." The meaning of that designation has changed, however, since the birth of the limited publication plans. In the mid-1970s, the federal circuits adopted plans that sought to make some of their decisions unpublished, uncitable, and even non-precedent. That system has unraveled. Unpublished decisions are now routinely published in both commercial and public databases. Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1 now makes these decisions citeable. What remains is the most critical issue - whether denying these decisions' precedential weight is Constitutional. This issue was never addressed directly when the circuits' limited citation plans were put into place; it was viewed as a "morass of jurisprudence" that was better off avoided. Yet, several potential Constitutional infirmities with the practice of declaring some opinions non-precedential have been identified. This is ultimately an issue to be determined by the Supreme Court. This article, Draining the Morass: Ending the Jurisprudentially Unsound Unpublication System, examines the Supreme Court jurisprudence on this issue. It examines what the Court has ruled, what petitioners have argued, and what individual Justices have stated in scholarly writings and separately written opinions. The Court has never accepted the circuits' assertion that these cases lack precedential value, but neither have they granted certiorari and addressed the issue directly. The Constitutionality of denying unpublished decisions precedential value is ripe for Supreme Court review. Given the fundamental nature of the issue, litigants ought to vigorously seek certiorari and the Court should grant it.
The Apparent Consistency of Religion Clause Doctrine

Religion clause doctrine under the Rehnquist Court achieved a kind of consistency. The Court permitted government to benefit religion - so long as the benefit was part of a larger package that included secular recipients. And the Court permitted government to burden religion - so long as the burden was a neutral law of general applicability. On the other side of the ledger, the Court invalidated laws that benefited or harmed religion specially. But there were some outlier cases - Amos, Cutter, and Davey - which reveal that the apparently consistent doctrine cannot fully or properly explain how the religion clauses relate to each other. Under the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence, the purpose and endorsement tests properly prohibit dominant majorities from using the power of government to advance, expressly, preferred doctrinal positions. The Court should, in turn, read the Free Exercise Clause to compensate religious citizens, through exemptions, for the partial inability to advance through legislation what they believe to be true.
Circumventing Rights Controls: The Token Crack in the Fair Use Window Left Open by Congress in Section 1201 May Be Open Wider Than Expected --Technically Speaking

This Article discusses why Congress prohibited the circumvention of access controls in section 1201 of the U.S. Copyright Act, but did not prohibit the circumvention of rights controls. This Article shows that the lack of a prohibition against rights control circumvention may have been a token attempt by Congress to allow fair use of copyrighted works to which users had lawful access. In other words, if one has legal access to a work, one can circumvent the rights control measures on that work without violating section 1201. One can then make fair use of the work. In addition, the prevailing thought on section 1201 is that only the person who has legal access to a work may circumvent rights control measures on that work. This Article will discuss some ways that individuals who cannot circumvent rights controls may still be able to obtain rights circumvention technology from those who can, without either violating section 1201.
Microfinance meets the market

Microfinance institutions have proved the possibility of providing reliable banking services to poor customers. Their second aim is to do so in a commercially-viable way. This paper analyzes the tensions and opportunities of microfinance as it embraces the market, drawing on a data set that includes 346 of the world's leading microfinance institutions and covers nearly 18 million active borrowers. The data show remarkable successes in maintaining high rates of loan repayment, but the data also suggest that profit-maximizing investors would have limited interest in most of the institutions that are focusing on the poorest customers and women. Those institutions, as a group, charge their customers the highest fees in the sample but also face particularly high transaction costs, in part due to small transaction sizes. Innovations to overcome the well-known problems of asymmetric information in financial markets were a triumph, but further innovation is needed to overcome the challenges of high costs.
Examiner Characteristics and Patent Office Outcomes

Abstract In this paper, we show that there are important differences across patent examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We show that more experienced examiners cite less prior art, are more likely to grant patents, and are more likely to grant patents without any rejections. These results suggest that the most important decisions made by the patent office are significantly affected by the happenstance of which examiner gets an application. They also point to human resource policies as potentially important levers, hitherto neglected, in patent system reform.
Real Property, Mortgages, and the Economy: A Call for Ethics and Reforms

The Symposium, Real Property, Mortgages, and the Economy: A Call for Ethics and Reforms, presented jointly by the Pace Law Review and the Pace University School of Law, L.L.M. Program in Real Estate Law on March 20, 2009, offered a dialogue on the existing philosophies underlying the regulation of the economy in general and the mortgage financing industry in particular, and discussed the need for a new ethic to govern and motivate participants in the lending industry. We considered ways that the economy might escape the ruthless vortex that was created by hope, fear, and cupidity.
Time to Get It Right: An Examination of Post-Acquisition Fair Value Adjustments

I examine the role of preparer information gathering and processing constraints in fair value measurement. Using two business combination samples, I investigate whether acquirers adjust the initial fair value measurements of identifiable assets and liabilities during the one-year measurement period permitted by FASB Statement 141(R). Empirical proxies for preparers' information gathering and processing costs explain variation in the incidence and magnitude of measurement period adjustments (MPAs). I classify abnormally large MPAs that allow firms to exceed the consensus analyst forecast as suspect adjustments. Suspect adjustments exhibit little association with earnings management incentives and no association with future goodwill impairment. Overall, the results suggest that acquirers use the measurement period when there are concerns about the quality or availability of information, consistent with the FASB's intentions.
Antarctic Whaling: Australia's Attempt to Protect Whales in the Southern Ocean

This Article examines Australia's attempt to protect whales in the Antarctic Southern Ocean, in an area that almost all states consider beyond national jurisdiction. Such an examination is important because of the apparently intractable divide on the issue in the International Whaling Commission. The Article begins by outlining the evolution of the Australian cultural and legal posture toward whaling. It also sets out current Australian whaling law, including the establishment of the Australian Whale Sanctuary in the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Australian mainland and external territories (including the purported Australian Antarctic Territory in the Southern Ocean). The Article then analyzes how municipal litigation has been deployed as a protection strategy in Australian courts by NGOs in an attempt to protect whales in the Antarctic Southern Ocean. The Article then turns attention to significant legal limits and problems connected to this strategy. Finally, the Article concludes by highlighting the benefits and costs associated with the unilateral Australian legal approach in the Southern Ocean.
Globalization and workplace hazards in developing nations

Multinational corporations are rapidly introducing hazardous technological activities into less-developed nations. There is considerable evidence that this feature of global commerce poses risks to health, safety and natural resources, and most immediately endangers the workers involved. The less-developed nations hosting these activities are vulnerable to exploitation of their human resources because they lack the safeguards, expertise, and public pressures that prevent harms to workers in developed nations. This paper presents an evaluation of approaches taken by international and industrial organizations to address workplace hazards by soft law, hard law, codes of conduct, and voluntary self-regulation. Finding that these approaches have repeatedly failed, a new approach is presented for the purpose of assuring that the transfer of technology will be accompanied by the transference of practices for using it safely. The key features of this approach are then considered: defining a standard of care which aims to provide equivalent treatment of worker health and safety across all nations, irrespective of their level of development, and establishing contractual relationships between multinational companies and host countries as a feasible means of implementing the standard and achieving equivalent treatment.
Informed or speculative: Short selling analyst recommendations

Abstract Christophe et al. (2010) find evidence of abnormal short activity prior to analyst downgrades and argue that short sellers may be violating SEC insider-trading laws by trading on information obtained from analysts about upcoming downgrades. However, observing abnormal shorting prior to downgrades is not tantamount to determining that short sellers are trading on tips from analysts unless shorting is abnormally low prior to upgrades. This paper revisits this issue. While we observe abnormal shorting prior to downgrades, we also find markedly higher shorting prior to upgrades. In fact, the short-selling patterns surrounding both downgrades and upgrades are remarkably symmetric indicating that short sellers during the pre-recommendation period are not unusually informed about the direction of upcoming recommendation changes. If anything, our findings indicate that short selling prior to analyst recommendations is more likely speculative than informed.
Stock Valuation and Learning about Profitability

We develop a simple approach to valuing stocks in the presence of learning about average pro¢tability.The market-to-book ratio (M/B) increases with uncertainty about average pro¢tability, especially for ¢rms that pay no dividends. M/B is predicted to decline over a ¢rm’s lifetime due to learning, with steeper decline when the ¢rm is young. These predictions are con¢rmed empirically. Data also support the predictions that younger stocks and stocks that pay no dividends have more volatile returns. Firm pro¢tability has become more volatile recently, helping explain the puzzling increase in average idiosyncratic return volatility observed over the past few decades. THE PAST TWO DECADES HAVE WITNESSED an unprecedented surge in the number of newly listed ¢rms on the major U.S. stock exchanges. According to Fama and French (2001b), over 550 new ¢rms per year appeared between the years 1980 and 2000, on average, compared to less than 150 ¢rms in the previous two decades. Some of these new ¢rms command valuations that might seem too high to be justi¢ed by reasonable assumptions about expected future pro¢tability. For example, more than 1 in 10 of all ¢rms listed between the years 1962 and 2000 are worth more than seven times their book value at the end of their year of listing, and almost 1 in 50 ¢rms is worth more than 20 times its book value. Naturally, investors attempting to value the newly listed ¢rms are confronted with substantial uncertainty about their future pro¢tability.We argue that this uncertainty contributes to the high valuations of young ¢rms, and that the resolution of this uncertainty over time tends to be accompanied by a decline in the valuation ratios. The basic idea is simple. Let B denote a ¢rm’s book equity today (at time 0) and g its constant growth rate, so the value of book equity at time T is B exp(gT ). Assuming that competition eliminates the ¢rm’s expected abnormal earnings by T, the ¢rm’s market value at T equals its book value, and the market value today is the expected book value at T discounted at some known rate r .I fg is unknown
Thematic exploration of YouTube data: A methodology for discovering latent topics.

An automated research method that uses the topic modeling algorithm called Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to discover latent topics and explore potential themes in YouTube transcript data. In a study published in 2015 by Ganesan, Brantley, Pan, and Chen (Ganesan, Brantley, Pan, & Chen, 2015) researchers recognized that there is a problem with the search process when trying to visualize the correlation between a large collections of documents and a given set of topics. Chaney and Blei emphasize in a 2012 study the importance of science, industry, and culture to have the ability to explore the hidden structures found within large collections of unorganized documents (Chaney & Blei, 2012). Wang and Blei published an article in 2011 citing the difficulty of finding and recommending relevant scientific research papers to communities of researchers (Wang & Blei, 2011). Finally, an article written by Roberts, Stewart, and Airoldi in 2016 discusses the popularity of statistical models and how they are used for exploring large collections of documents to measure latent linguistic, political, and psychological variables in the social sciences (Roberts, Stewart, & Airoldi, 2016). All of these studies can be aggregated together to describe the problem that continues to challenge researchers and information management practitioners whom are attempting to explore a latent set of topics which form a common theme within a large collection of documents. Documents are being collected from a growing number of sources that continue to offer the problem of complexity and lack of intuitive correlation. Novel research methods that include a mixture of technologies working together as a framework are needed to address these challenges found within a large collection of documents. This research method is proposing proposes a framework that can be used by researchers and practitioners to discover latent topics found within a target set of YouTube video transcript documents.
'False But Highly Persuasive:' How Wrong Were the Probability Estimates in McDaniel v. Brown?

In McDaniel v. Brown, the Supreme Court will review the use of DNA evidence in a 1994 trial for sexual assault and attempted murder. The Court granted certiorari to consider two procedural issues - the standard of federal postconviction review of a state jury verdict for sufficiency of the evidence, and the district court's decision to allow the prisoner to supplement the record of trials, appeals, and state postconviction proceedings with a geneticist's letter twelve years after the trial. This essay clarifies the nature and extent of the errors in the presentation of the DNA evidence in Brown. It questions (1) whether the transposition of a conditional probability (of the DNA match given the defense hypothesis that a man unrelated to the defendant was the source of the semen on the victim's panties) amounted to a deprivation of due process and (2) whether the position of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the defendant, and various amici curiae that the probability of a match to any of four brothers should have presented rather than the probability of a match to a single brother.
Is Law? Constitutional Crisis and Existential Anxiety

Part of Symposium: Is American Constitutional Law in Crisis?: Association of American Law Schools Section on Constitutional Law (January 2009)
Designing Sales Contests: Does the Prize Structure Matter?

Abstract Sales contests are short-term incentives that managers use to raise sales effort. The extant marketing theory predicts that the optimal prize structure should have two characteristics: (1) The number of prizewinners should be greater than one, and (2) prize values should be unique and rank ordered. However, this theory has not been empirically examined. This article presents two empirical studies that examine whether the prize structure of a sales contest affects sales performance. In each study, the authors investigate the incremental effects of introducing multiple prizewinners and unique rank-ordered prizes into a sales contest. The first study consists of two laboratory experiments in which participants make decisions that closely reflect the decision trade-offs in the theoretical model of sales contests. The second study consists of two field economic experiments in which trained salespeople sell fundraising sponsorships to companies. The results across the experiments are remarkably consist...
Teaching Patriotism: Love and Critical Freedom

Teaching patriotism involves many dangers: the danger that inappropriate values will thereby be taught; the danger that students will be dragooned into patriotic performances in violation of their conscience; and the danger that such teaching will emphasize solidarity and blunt the critical faculties. On the other hand, there are reasons to think that we need patriotic emotion to motivate projects that require transcending self-interest.After discussing and illustrating the dangers and making a case for patriotism's value, I shall give examples from both U. S. and Indian history of politicians who were able to construct a form of patriotism that steered successfully through the narrow strait: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, and Jawaharlal Nehru. After examining key examples of their achievements, I shall ask how a patriotism of their type might be taught in schools, and how considerations of both content and pedagogy are relevant to its success.
Tax Avoidance by Multinational Companies: Methods, Policies, and Ethics

Taxes vary significantly across nations. Multinationals consequently try to show less taxable income in high-tax jurisdictions and vice versa. The article gives examples of several techniques used to avoid taxes: (i) deferral of double-tax liability, (ii) manipulating invoices in inter-affiliate trade transactions or supply chains, (iii) shifting IP to affiliates or shell companies in low-tax nations or tax-havens which then charge royalties to other international affiliates, (iv) intra-corporate loans, (v) allocation of central overheads to foreign affiliates, and (vi) relocating the entire company to another country. Ethics are discussed from the perspectives of shareholder interests and local governments.
Mental Money Laundering: A Motivated Violation of Fungibility

People exploit flexibility in mental accounting to relax psychological constraints on spending. Four studies demonstrate this in the context of moral behavior. The first study replicates prior findings that people donate more money to charity when they earned it through unethical versus ethical means. However, when the unethically-earned money is first “laundered”––the cash is physically exchanged for the same amount but from a different arbitrary source—people spent it as if it was earned ethically. This mental money laundering represents an extreme fungibility violation: exchanging “dirty” money for the same sum coming from a “clean” source significantly changed people’s propensity to spend it prosocially. The second study demonstrates that mental money laundering generalizes to cases in which ethically and unethically earned money is mixed. When gains from ethical and unethical sources were pooled, people spent the entire pooled sum as if it was ethically earned. The last two studies provide mixed support for the prediction that people actively seek out laundering opportunities for unethically earned money, suggesting partial sophistication about these effects. These findings provide new evidence for the ease with which people can rationalize misbehavior, and have implications for consumer choice, corporate behavior and public policy.
Can The Obama Administration Renew American Regulatory Policy

Stephen Skowronek’s The Politics Presidents Make argues that presidential administrations can be organized into sequences defined by distinctive paradigms of governance: one president defines or “reconstructs” a new approach to government (e.g. Jefferson, Jackson, Roosevelt) one or more successor presidents extend or “articulate” that approach (Monroe, Polk, Lyndon Johnson), and then one or more presidents continue the approach past its period of effectiveness, which constitutes a “disjunction.” (Quincy Adams, Pierce, Carter). Within this framework, Ronald Reagan’s Administration could be regarded as a reconstruction, with the Clinton Administration being an articulation and the second Bush Administration a disjunction. Regulatory policy was one of the defining features of Reagan’s reconstruction, with its principal pillars being deregulation, cost-benefit analysis and privatization. These remained the organizing principles of regulatory policy through the two Bush Administrations and the Clinton Administration as well. It’s too early to tell whether the Obama Administration will represent a new reconstruction, in Skowronek’s sense, but some reevaluation of the prior paradigm seems to be underway. New Public Governance provides a possible model for a true reconstruction. This approach to public law and regulation has already defined itself as moving beyond deregulation and can readily be interpreted as moving beyond privatization as well. It envisions complex, cooperative relationships between government and private actors that are in some sense orthogonal to the public-private dichotomy that underlies the concepts of regulation and privatization. The article uses the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to explain how the Obama Administration could reconstruct regulatory policy. While the Act itself does not seem to move very far beyond traditional command and control regulation, its provisions are capacious enough to allow the regulatory agencies to do so. By drawing on the insights of New Public Governance, these agencies might well be able to craft regulations that would be more effective in the complex, demanding world of modern finance.
An Analysis of Quasi-Decentralized Budgeting in Vietnam

This article provides an analysis of the quasi-decentralized budgeting process used in Vietnam as defined in the 2002 Law on the State Budget. Although the Government is controlled by a single political party and relies on a single state budget, the Law grants provinces considerable decentralized power over allocation of tax revenues and expenditure responsibilities within their own jurisdictions. The article documents the effects of various aspects of the Law on the revenues and spending of sub-national governments in the country and illustrates how various provinces have responded to the decentralized powers granted under the Law.
A Model of Time-Inconsistent Misconduct: The Case of Lawyer Misconduct

This article develops a model of time-inconsistent misconduct to explain incremental misconduct by lawyers - i.e., repeated, marginal misconduct that over time can lead to a moral unraveling or disintegration. A person engages in time-inconsistent misconduct when: (1) she has determined that a particular type of misconduct has negative expected returns and made a long-term decision to abstain from such misconduct; (2) nonetheless, when provided with the opportunity, she reverses her long-term preference to abstain and engages in misconduct; and (3) the reversal is due to a preference for immediate gratification (and not to the acquisition of new information). A person will engage in such misconduct in each period in which the incremental gain from misconduct (i.e., the added incremental utility due to the immediacy of a reward or from avoiding an immediate cost) exceeds the incremental loss (i.e., the actual net expected loss from that one act of misconduct). For example, the prospect of receiving an immediate reward can lead a lawyer to repeatedly take prohibited or unethical actions, a phenomenon that I refer to as nibbling opportunism. At the same time, the prospect of incurring an immediate cost can lead a lawyer to repeatedly procrastinate following through with a required action. Time-inconsistent misconduct harms both the third-party victims and the lawyer - i.e., each time that the lawyer engages in misconduct she incurs an incremental loss that from a long-term perspective she wanted to avoid, and which in the aggregate can be very large. Accounting for time-inconsistent misconduct is important, among other reasons, because the rules needed to deter such misconduct are different from those needed to deter the time-consistent misconduct assumed in standard models. The time-inconsistent misconduct model also generalizes to other types of misconduct, such as criminal misconduct and group misconduct.
Family and Community Influences on Health and Socioeconomic Status: Sibling Correlations Over the Life Course.

This paper presents new estimates of sibling correlations in health and socioeconomic outcomes over the life course in the U.S. Sibling correlations provide an omnibus measure of the importance of all family and community influences. I find that sibling correlations in a range of health and socioeconomic outcomes start quite high at birth and remain high over the life course. The sibling correlation in birth weight is estimated to be 0.5. Sibling correlations in test scores during childhood are as high as 0.6. Sibling correlations in adult men’s wages are also around 0.5. Decompositions provide suggestive evidence on which pathways may account for the gradients in health and SES by family background. For example, sibling correlations in cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills during childhood are lower controlling for family income. Similarly, parent education levels can account for a sizable portion of the correlation in adult health status among brothers.
When to Open Infrastructure Access

This Essay comments on and develops Professor Brett Frischmann's concept of infrastructure commons, a theory which suggests that a variety of public and social resources (including information, transportation, environmental, and intellectual property resources) should be managed through open access regimes. Infrastructure theory remains underdeveloped, as it does not identify under which circumstances public and social infrastructure should be managed as commons or how the commons should operate for such resources. Differentiating the developmental stage of an infrastructure resource-whether it is yet to be conceived, yet to be produced, or needs to be managed-can help to fill this gap. Infrastructure at different stages of development poses different challenges for optimizing social value, and the nature and strength of rationales supporting open access vary significantly across the different infrastructure stages. This Essay is based on a presentation at a panel on infrastructure commons at the Law & Society Annual Conference in Berlin, Germany.
Are You Still My Mother? Interstate Recognition of Adoptions by Gays and Lesbians

Parents and their biological children routinely cross state borders safe in the assumption that the parent-child relationship will be recognized wherever they go. The central issue raised in this Article is whether the law guarantees parents and their adopted children the same security if the parents are gay. This question is part of a broader debate about the obligation of states to recognize changes in family status effected under the laws of other states, such as same-sex marriages and migratory divorces. The debate is divisive because it pits the family against the state; one state against another; and the needs of the federal union against the interests of individual states. This rancorous debate is moderated by the Full Faith and Credit Clause. The Article explains why the Clause imposes a more rigorous obligation on states to recognize judgments, such as adoption decrees and divorces, than marriages and laws. The Article also unpacks and refutes the rationales submitted by the state of Oklahoma, which enacted a statute barring recognition of adoptions by same-sex couples, and Professor Lynn Wardle, who argued that “nonrecognition of lesbigay adoption decrees would be proper and permissible.” The Article concludes that the Full Faith and Credit Clause commands interstate recognition of sister state adoption decrees regardless of the sexual orientation of the adoptive parents.
Second Thoughts on Damages for Wrongful Convictions

After the DNA-inspired wave of exonerations of recent years, there has been widespread support for expanding the damages remedies available to those who have been wrongfully accused or convicted. This article argues that the case for providing such compensation is deeply problematic under the justificatory theories usually advanced in support of either no-fault or fault-based liability. Although a regime of strict liability is sometimes thought justifiable to as a means of creating an economic incentive to scale back conduct thought highly likely to produce social losses, it is far from clear that the risk of error is so high in the criminal justice system as to render this rationale applicable. Moreover, because police and prosecutors respond to political and not economic incentives, the eonomic rationale for strict liability is unsatisfactory. Even viewed as a form of social insurance, mandatory compensation is problematic. Because compenation is funded by the taxpayers, it represents a highly anomalous wealth transfer from those most in need of government assistance to the wrongfully convicted. Given the many competing demands for scarce public resources, it is far from clear that public funding of wrongful conviction insurance represents a socially optimal use of public funds. Moreover, because damages awards are funded by the taxpayers rather than the wrongdoers, the case for compensation as a form of compensatory justice is equally problematic. As for a regime of fault-based liability, both tort law and constitutional law have long wrestled with the problem of wrongful convictions, and have erected many doctrinal obstacles to a regime of fault-based liability. These doctrinal obstacles reflect considerable skepticism about the wisdom of damages for wrongful convictions — skepticism that is amply warranted. A regime of fault-based liability for wrongful prosecutions and convictions could not be confidently expected to induce police and prosecutors to take all cost-justified precautions to reduce the risk of wrongful prosecution or conviction given that police and prosecutors respond to political and not economic incentives, and the political benefits of aggressive prosecutorial tactics are substantial. If individual public officials were required to pay judgments, in turn, many judgments would go unsatisfied, and the risk of overdetrrence would be great. Ultimately, our current regime of political accountability for wrongful convictions is likely to be about the best than we can expect for identifying and reducing the risk of wrongful prosecutions and convictions.
Copyright and Free Speech: Constitutional Limitations on the Protection of Expression

A legal system that simultaneously recognizes both a right of free speech and proprietary interests in forms of expression should be prepared to resolve the inevitable conflicts. Direct appeals to the first amendment are appearing more frequently in copyright litigation. This Article attempts to structure a workable accommodation between the first amendment and the property rights in "original works of authorship" granted by federal copyright law. Copyright law, by taking care to distinguish between ideas and expression, has long respected basic first amendment values. Many of the remaining conflicts can be resolved by means of traditional fair use analysis. But if the fair use doctrine is left to carry the constitutional burden unaided, it may eventually cease to perform effectively its traditional functions. The ultimate response to the confrontation between free speech and copyright should be the recognition of an independent first amendment privilege. The necessity for the appropriation should be examined to identify those situations in which the user cannot adequately exercise the right of free speech without at least limited access to copyrighted expression. When traditional copyright doctrines do not provide such access, a first amendment privilege should be recognized to the extent necessary to enable users to contribute their ideas to the public dialogue. The recognition of this narrow yet significant first amendment privilege will safeguard not only freedom of speech, but the integrity of the copyright system as well.
Mechanisms for combinatorial auctions with budget constraints

This paper studies combinatorial auctions with budget-constrained bidders from a mechanism design perspective. I search for mechanisms that are incentive compatible, individually rational, symmetric, non-wasteful and non-bossy. First focusing on the greedy domain, in which any increase in a bidder’s valuation always exceeds his budget, I derive the unique mechanism, called the Iterative Second Price Auction. For the general domain, however, no such mechanism exists.
Compatible beliefs and equilibrium

Abstract In this paper I investigate the nature of the beliefs which agents must hold (at least implicitly) in order to justify their considering various alternatives, in two distinct settings: the Walrasian model without production (with competitive equilibrium), and the sell-all version of the Shapley–Shubik market game (with Nash equilibrium). For this purpose I introduce a weak consistency requirement on behavior, one which I refer to as (having) compatible beliefs. My main conclusion is that, in this respect, these two versions of market allocation are essentially identical. For both, contemplating different choices requires varying the associated set of values of the variables defining compatible beliefs. And – though prima facie very different – it turns out that both equilibrium concepts can be recast entirely in terms of having compatible beliefs. My analysis also leads unequivocally to the interesting conclusion that, in the Walrasian model (even elaborated to encompass production, financial markets, and so on), budget constraints must hold, ab initio, with equality. This has one very important consequence: the First Basic Welfare Theorem, as usually stated, is false, as I demonstrate with two distinct counterexamples, the second of which is (in classical terms) unexceptional.
International Migration, Remittances and Household Investment: Evidence from Philippine Migrants’ Exchange Rate Shocks*

How do households respond to overseas members’ economic shocks? Overseas Filipinos in dozens of countries experienced sudden, heterogeneous changes in exchange rates during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Appreciation of a migrant's currency against the Philippine peso leads to increases in household remittances from overseas. The estimated elasticity of Philippine-peso remittances with respect to the exchange rate is 0.60. Positive migrant shocks lead to enhanced human capital accumulation and entrepreneurship in origin households. Child schooling and educational expenditure rise, while child labour falls. Households also work more hours in self-employment, and become more likely to start relatively capital-intensive household enterprises.
Exchange Rates and Monetary Fundamentals: What Do We Learn From Long-Horizon Regressions?

The use of a new bootstrap method for small-sample inference in long-horizon regressions is illustrated by analysing the long-horizon predictability of four major exchange rates, and the findings are reconciled with those of an earlier study by Mark (1995). While there is some evidence of exchange rate predictability, contrary to earlier studies, no evidence is found of higher predictability at longer horizons. Additional evidence is presented that the linear VEC model framework underlying the empirical study is likely to be misspecified, and that the methodology for constructing bootstrap p-values for long-horizon regression tests may be fundamentally flawed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Firm reputation with hidden information

An adverse selection model of firm reputation is developed in which short-lived clients purchase services from firms operated by overlapping generations of agents. A firm’s only asset is its name, or reputation, and trade of names is not observed by clients. As a result, names are traded in all equilibria regardless of the economy’s horizon The general equilibrium analysis links the value of a name to the market for services. This causes a non-monotonicity that precludes higher types from sorting themselves through the market for names, and leads to “sensible” dynamics: reputations, and name prices, increase after success and decrease after failure.
Incentives on the Starting Grid in Formula One Racing

Starting a race in first place, pole position, is the goal of every race driver. This is even more pronounced in Formula One (F1) racing as the road courses they race are more difficult to pass on, providing an additional advantage to starting on the pole. However, their unique standing starts also create a bottleneck at the first turn, which often leads to contact between cars. Because F1 cars are not designed to make contact, this contact can greatly impact a driver’s position on the track. We find that there are certain positions on the starting grid that are more likely to make contact with other drivers than other positions. Specifically the starting position with the highest odds to make contact at the first turn is position 10. This creates the incentive for drivers to avoid this position, which means if they are unable to qualify higher than this position, the incentive exists for drivers to intentionally adjust their behavior to avoid these high-risk (of making contact) positions.
Do Conference Calls Affect Analysts' Forecasts?

In 1998, the SEC expressed concern that conference calls encourage selective disclosure by revealing new information to financial analysts privy to the call. This study investigates whether the regular use of earnings‐related conference calls increases the amount of information available to financial analysts by examining the effect of conference calls on analysts' forecast error and dispersion. Results indicate that conference calls increase analysts' ability to forecast earnings accurately, suggesting that these calls increase the total information available about a firm. We also find some evidence that conference calls decrease dispersion among analysts. Given conference calls were generally restricted during our sample period, our evidence suggests that conference calls may have contributed to an information gap between analysts privy to the call and the remainder of the investment community. We also investigate whether conference calls differentially affect analysts' forecast errors depending on anal...
When Does Might Make Right? Using Force for Regime Change

Should states use force to bring about regime change? International law recognizes no such grounds. This paper seeks to provide guidance from moral theory. The aim of this paper is to identify the moral grounds for the use of armed force by one state or a group of states, against another state, when the intention of the intervening states is to achieve a fundamental change in the character of the political and legal institutions of the other state. Lawyers tend to place the argument for regime change intervention within putative humanitarian intervention doctrines. The moral justification for humanitarian intervention is in a moral principle I call the Human Rights Principle, which provides that states may intervene militarily to stop egregious violations of basic human rights or prevent such violations when they are imminent. The Human Rights Principle does not support regime change intervention. I argue that an alternative moral principle, the Self Governance Principle, provides the moral justification for regime change intervention. Under the Self Governance Principle, legitimate states (and legitimate states only) have a collective obligation to intervene to assist citizens in an illegitimate state to bring about regime change only if a substantial likelihood exists that the citizens of the illegitimate state will form a new government in a manner meeting the conditions for national self determination, which includes the conversion of the state into a legitimate state, and post-conflict reform will a bring about a legal system meeting the conditions for the law to have practical authority to the state's population. States may comply with their collective obligation by providing just and efficacious institutions to support regime change. If the conditions in the Self Governance Principle are not met, then states must refrain from using force for regime change purposes. The conditions in the Self Governance Principle are strict and rarely met. The Iraq invasion, for example, does not meet them. Though this paper is not directly about international law, it elucidates moral principles that can inform international law. More broadly, the paper is in the tradition of conceptualizing legal and moral principles around normative reasoning and the claims to obedience these principles make on states and persons. It does not deal with causal questions whether states actually obey these principles, which, at least in the way I do philosophy here, are questions for the social sciences. This is a first draft of the paper and comments are welcome.