cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Human Right to Water and Common Ownership of the Earth

While we need other nutrients as well we can survive without any one of them for quite some time. Without water we die within days. Water is life-giving and non-substitutable. A second crucial point about water is that it is part of nature. Its existence is not owed to human accomplishments. My goal here is to argue in support of a human right to water and a global water compact to regulate its distribution. I do so in a way that develops the aforementioned two points about water within a theory of global justice I recently presented (Risse (2012)), which is especially suitable to capture the significance of water for human life and to show that there is a genuinely global responsibility for the distribution of water. A human right to water is discussed And right he was. Only oxygen is needed more urgently than water at most times. But a key difference that makes water a more immediate subject for theorists of justice is that, for now, oxygen is normally amply available where humans live. Historically, the same was true of water since humans would not settle in places without clean water. Nowadays, however, water treatment plants and delivery infrastructure have vastly extended the regions where humans can live permanently. Population increases have prompted people to settle in locations where access to clean water is precarious.
Expected consumer’s surplus as an approximate welfare measure

Except for a knife-edge case of preferences, the percentage error from using the change in expected consumer’s surplus (ECS) to approximate the willingness to pay for a change in the distribution of a random price is unbounded, in contrast to Willig’s (Am Econ Rev 66:589–597; 1976) famous approximation result for nonrandom prices. If the change is smooth on the space of random variables, and either the initial price is nonrandom or state-contingent payments are possible, then the change in ECS locally approximates the willingness to pay well. Unfortunately, this smoothness fails in some important applications.
COUPLED SEARCH PROCESSES: WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO FIND THAT ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN MATTERS?

This article discusses the interactions of coupled search processes. These processes entail the combination of long term choices regarding systems that monitor inventories, sales and other general ...
INFLATION RISK AND OPTIMAL MONETARY POLICY

This paper shows that the optimal monetary policies recommended by New Keynesian models still imply a large amount of inflation risk. We calculate the term structure of inflation uncertainty in New Keynesian models when the monetary authority adopts the optimal policy. When the monetary policy rules are modified to include some weight on a price path, the economy achieves equilibria with substantially lower long-run inflation risk. With either sticky prices or sticky wages, a price path target reduces the variance of inflation by an order of magnitude more than it increases the variability of the output gap.
Reducing Incarceration For Youthful Offenders With a Developmental Approach To Sentencing

Current sentencing practices have proven to be an ineffective method of rehabilitating criminal defendants. Such practices are unresponsive to developmental science breakthroughs, fail to promote rehabilitation, and drain society’s limited resources. These deficiencies are most acute when dealing with youthful offenders. Incarcerating youthful offenders, who are amenable to rehabilitative efforts, under current sentencing practices only serves to ensure such individuals will never become productive members of society. Drawing on the author’s experiences as a federal public defender, studies in developmental psychology and neuroscience, and the Supreme Court’s recent line of cases that acknowledge youthful offenders’ biological differences from adult offenders, the author proposes a restorative-justice approach to replace current sentencing practices. This solution includes tailoring a
The term structure of equity risk premia

Abstract We estimate a regime-switching model for the equity term structure with Bayesian methods. Our approach accounts for the data sample being unrepresentative of the population distribution of regimes. We find that ( i ) the term structure of expected equity dividend strip returns is downward sloping in recessions and upward sloping in expansions, and ( i i ) the unconditional term structure of expected equity returns is positively sloped. Our estimation shows that the sample unrepresentativeness induces a downward bias in the estimate of the equity term structure slope. We present a regime-switching consumption-based asset-pricing model that matches the empirical findings.
Market Timing and Capital Structure

It is well known that firms are more likely to issue equity when their market values are high, relative to book and past market values, and to repurchase equity when their market values are low. We document that the resulting effects on capital structure are very persistent. As a consequence, current capital structure is strongly related to historical market values. The results suggest the theory that capital structure is the cumulative outcome of past attempts to time the equity market. IN CORPORATE F INANCE, “equity market timing” refers to the practice of issuing shares at high prices and repurchasing at low prices. The intention is to exploit temporary f luctuations in the cost of equity relative to the cost of other forms of capital. In the efficient and integrated capital markets studied by Modigliani and Miller ~1958!, the costs of different forms of capital do not vary independently, so there is no gain from opportunistically switching between equity and debt. In capital markets that are inefficient or segmented, by contrast, market timing benefits ongoing shareholders at the expense of entering and exiting ones. Managers thus have incentives to time the market if they think it is possible and if they care more about ongoing shareholders. In practice, equity market timing appears to be an important aspect of real corporate financial policy. There is evidence for market timing in four different kinds of studies. First, analyses of actual financing decisions show that firms tend to issue equity instead of debt when market value is high, relative to book value and past market values, and tend to repurchase equity when market value is low. 1 Second, analyses of long-run stock returns fol
Passive Discrimination: When Does It Make Sense to Pay Too Little?

Economists have long recognized employers’ ability to construct benefits packages to induce workers to sort themselves into and out of jobs. For instance, to encourage applications from individuals with a highly valued but largely unobservable characteristic, such as patience, employers might offer benefits that patient individuals are likely to value more than other individuals. By offering a compensation package with highly valued benefits but a relatively low wage, employers will attract workers with the favored characteristic and discourage other individuals from applying for or accepting the job. While economic theory generally views this kind of self-selection in value neutral terms, prejudiced employers could exploit this mechanism to systematically discourage individuals on the basis of observable characteristics that the law prohibits employers from considering in their hiring decisions. As long as groups systematically differ in their preferences for various employment terms and conditions, employers can generate sorting in the application and employment acceptance stages, leading to the desired segregated outcome in a way that regulators will find difficult to prevent without dictating uniformity in benefits packages. We develop a formal model as well as an intuitive discussion of this phenomenon. We provide a number of representative illustrations of how a prejudiced employer could exploit preference heterogeneity for discriminatory ends. These mechanisms include wage and benefit packages such as (1) high pension, low wages; (2) commission-based salaries; (3) Sundays-off policies; and (4) free school tuition. We also note that some employers might end up with a segregated workforce even when they have no intention to sort workers or when they intend to sort for a nondiscriminatory characteristic. Finally, we conclude that current federal antidiscrimination law inadequately addresses either intentional or unintentional passive discrimination. Neither disparate treatment nor disparate impact frameworks are well suited to grappling with this form of structural discrimination. Passive discrimination facilitates rather than impedes employee choice and thus might not be viewed as discrimination per se, even if it results in workplace segregation or means that individuals with protected characteristics who fail to self sort are least likely to value the form of compensation and fringe benefits they receive. We finish with a discussion of some judicial and legislative approaches that may ameliorate passive discrimination.
Foreign Aid and Regime Change: A Role for Donor Intent

Summary This paper uses data from the AidData project to analyze the association between foreign aid and the likelihood of democratization in aid recipients. Previous studies have argued that aid can entrench dictatorships, making a transition less likely. I find evidence that the relationship between aid and democratization depends on characteristics of the aid donor. During the period from 1992 to 2007, aid from democratic donors is often found to be associated with an increase in the likelihood of a democratic transition. This is consistent with a scenario in which aid promotes democratization and/or a situation in which democratic donors reward countries that take steps in a democratic direction. In either case, it suggests that democratic donors use scarce aid resources to encourage democracy. During the same period, aid from authoritarian donors exhibits a negative relationship with democratization. This suggests that the source of funding matters, with donor preferences regarding democracy helping to determine the link between aid and democratization.
How Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Fare in Federal Court

This article presents the full range of information that the Administrative Office's data convey on federal employment discrimination litigation. From that information, the authors tell three stories about (1) bringing these claims, (2) their outcome in the district court, and (3) the effect of appeal. Each of these stories is a sad one for employment discrimination plaintiffs: relatively often, the numerous plaintiffs must pursue their claims all the way through trial, which is usually a jury trial; at both pretrial and trial these plaintiffs lose disproportionately often, in all the various types of employment discrimination cases; and employment discrimination litigants appeal more often than other litigants, with the defendants doing far better on those appeals than the plaintiffs.
Slow Growth, Destructive Competition, and Low Road Labor Relations: A Keynes-Marx-Schumpeter Analysis of Neoliberal Globalization

This paper argues that institutions and policies deeply embedded in neoliberal structures have created conditions that make it difficult for large nonfinancial corporations to operate effectively. Important globally-contested industries are understood to be "natural oligopolies" that require what Schumpeter called "corespective competition" to function efficiently. However, neoliberal globalization has slowed global aggregate demand growth and lowered cross-border barriers to competition, unleashing destructive competitive practices. In response to declining profit rates, nonfinancial firms have adopted short-term "survivalist" strategies such as downsizing, outsourcing, wage cuts, anti-union policies and so forth that weaken aggregate demand, creating a vicious circle. Firms also undertake "coerced" investment that makes excess capacity chronic.
Competing with the “Patent Court”: A Newly Robust Ecosystem

In her elegant and lively address, Chief Judge Wood suggests exposing the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, created in 1982 to hear all appeals from patent cases, to competition from other appellate courts. Under Judge Wood’s proposal, parties would have the choice of seeking review either in the regional circuit in which the district court was located or in the Federal Circuit. Judge Wood indicates that the Federal Circuit would likely “still play a leading role in shaping patent law,” with regional courts simply allowing room for new ideas and allowing for fuller development of issues before they reach the Supreme Court. Judge Wood would also institute consolidation procedures to address concerns about parties filing different appeals in different circuits over the same patent. In some respects, therefore, Judge Wood’s proposal could be seen as relatively modest. In patent circles, by contrast, proposals to give regional courts any role in the development of patent law have generally been viewed as modest only in the Swiftian sense. Where Judge Wood sees beneficial competition and experimentation, many patent lawyers see unsustainable levels of uncertainty. Patent lawyers won the debate in the early 1980s. Congress was convinced of the need to promote greater uniformity and certainty through centralization. In general, proponents of uniformity and predictability have on their side elements of historical tradition that equate patents not simply with property, but with a very specific vision of inviolable tangible property.
The consequences of an unknown debt target

Abstract Several proposals to reduce U.S. debt reveal large differences in their targets. We examine how an unknown debt target affects economic activity using a real business cycle model in which Bayesian households learn about a state-dependent debt target in an endogenous tax rule. Recent papers use stochastic volatility shocks to study fiscal uncertainty. In our setup, the fiscal rule is time-varying due to unknown changes in the debt target. Households infer the current debt target from a noisy tax rule and jointly estimate the transition probabilities. Three key findings emerge from our analysis: (1) limited information about the debt target amplifies the effect of tax shocks through changes in expected tax rates; (2) the welfare losses are an order of magnitude larger when both the debt target state and transition matrix are unknown than when only the debt target state is unknown to households; (3) an unknown debt target likely reduced the stimulative effect of the ARRA and uncertainty about the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts may have slowed the recovery and led to welfare losses.
Determinacy of competitive equilibria in economies with many commodities

This paper provides a framework for establishing the determinacy of equilibria in general equilibrium models with infinitely many commodities and a finite number of consumers and producers. This paper defines a notion of regular economy for such models and gives sufficient conditions on the excess savings equations characterizing equilibria under which regular economies have a finite number of equilibria, each of which is locally stable with respect to perturbations in exogenous parameters, and under which regular economies are generic. This paper also defines two notions of concavity, called uniform concavity and weighted uniform concavity, which generalize standard finite-dimensional notions of differential concavity to an infinite-dimensional setting by prohibiting goods from becoming perfect substitutes asymptotically. For the case of economies in which there are countably many commodities, such as discrete time models or markets with countably many assets, results in this paper show that equilibria are generically determinate as long as utility functions and production sets are uniformly concave or weighted uniformly concave.
Touristifying Tanzania: Local Guides, Global Discourse

Abstract Applying a combination of ethnographic and discourse-centered approaches to an exploratory case study in Arusha, Tanzania, this paper examines how global discourses are locally (re)produced. By acquiring specialized knowledge that is circulating through handbooks, magazines, websites, and videos, Tanzanian students learn how to become professional “local” guides. During their training they are instructed, both implicitly and explicitly, how to use global discourses to represent and sell their natural and cultural heritage as authentically local. However, in the personal interaction with tourists, guides do not merely reproduce the narratives and practices they were taught at school; instead they themselves become creative storytellers, often subtly questioning or contesting the normative templates.
Pricing Damaged Goods

Companies with market power occasionally engage in intentional quality reduction of a portion of their output as a means of offering two qualities of goods for the purpose of price discrimination, even absent a cost saving. This paper provides an exact characterization in terms of marginal revenues of when such a strategy is profitable, which, remarkably, does not depend on the distribution of customer valuations, but only on the value of the damaged product relative to the undamaged product. In particular, when the damaged product provides a constant proportion of the value of the full product, selling a damaged good is unprofitable. One quality reduction produces higher profits than another if the former has higher marginal revenue than the latter.
Privacy versus Antidiscrimination

This essay argues that there is often an essential conflict between information privacy protections and antidiscrimination principles. Where information privacy law or practical obscurity deprives an employer of pertinent information about a job applicant, the employer often will rely more heavily on distasteful statistical discrimination strategies. For example, the existing empirical evidence suggests that criminal background checks may benefit African American male job applicants as a whole, by permitting employers to sort among ex-cons and those lacking criminal records. In the absence of accurate criminal history information, employers concerned about keeping ex-offenders out of their workplace appear to hire too few African American males – penalizing African American males without criminal records and hiring ex-cons who are members of groups with low offending rates. The essay therefore argues that in the employment context, the government should use information policy as a supplement to traditional antidiscrimination law. More precisely, the government can publish previously private information about individuals so as to discourage decisionmakers’ reliance on problematic proxies. An important implication of this insight is that there may be strong antidiscrimination rationales for Megan’s Laws, more recent efforts by a handful of jurisdictions to make general criminal history information freely available on the Internet, and government subsidies for programs that make employee’s prior work evaluations easily available to prospective employers. The essay further explains why in those settings where the reintegration of ex-cons into the workplace creates societal benefits, information privacy protections for criminal history status will rarely, if ever, be the most appropriate tool for achieving those benefits. The essay concludes by identifying situations in which publishing previously private information about individuals would be a poor strategy for decreasing the prevalence of discrimination. * Professor of Law and Walter Mander Teaching Scholar, University of Chicago. The author thanks Ronen Avraham, Howard Beale, Nevin Gewertz, Bernard Harcourt, Uri Itkin, Ronald Lee, Doug Lichtman, Tom Miles, Beth Milnikel, Jide Nzelibe, Adam Samaha, Max Schanzenbach, Paul Schwartz, and David Weisbach for their comments and suggestions, Levi Giovanetto for research assistance, and the Morton C. Seeley Fund and Visa, U.S.A., Inc. for generous research support. The author particularly thanks participants in the University of Chicago Law School’s Surveillance Symposium for their suggestions, as well as workshop participants at Northwestern and the University of Chicago.
Redefining Net Neutrality after Comcast v. FCC

Critics sometimes describe James Joyce’s modernist epic Ulysses as the most discussed, least read novel in the world. Net neutrality may be the most discussed, least understood concept in the world of internet policy. Consequently, the term has so many definitions advancing so many different goals that the net neutrality debate seems at times only about what net neutrality is, not why it should (or should not) be. The debate was reopened this past year with the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Comcast Corporation v. Federal Communications Commission, which invalidated the FCC’s jurisdiction over broadband internet service providers (ISPs), including its jurisdiction to enforce a policy statement of net neutrality principles. Although the court focused exclusively on Comcast’s procedural challenge to the FCC’s jurisdiction, the FCC and the policy community subsequently have engaged in a process of redrafting not only the jurisdictional basis but also the net neutrality principles themselves. In late December 2010, the FCC adopted a set of net neutrality rules for the first time through a formal rulemaking process – going beyond the general policy statement of net neutrality principles invalidated in Comcast by requiring transparency and forbidding most blocking and discrimination. This Note analyzes and affirms the importance of mandating full ISP transparency, as the FCC has done in this recent regulation. Given that ISPs will now be required to disclose whether they discriminate among content, services, and applications, this Note also proposes a two-step analysis to determine whether a given practice should be considered reasonable or unreasonable network management.
Through Another's Eyes: Getting the Benefit of outside Perspectives in Environmental Review

THROUGH ANOTHER'S EYES: GETTING THE BENEFIT OF OUTSIDE PERSPECTIVES IN ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW HOLLY DoREMius* Abstract: The Deepwater Horizon blowout has important lessons to teach about environmental review. It is easy to scapegoat the former Minerals Management Service (MMS) for shoddy environmental analysis. But cap- tive agencies are a common phenomenon. Oversight by environmental mission agencies is supposed to provide a check on their myopia. Several external reviews of MMS's environmental analysis were conducted, but none uncovered MMS's wildly incorrect estimates of the probability, magnitude, and consequences of a blowout. This article details the exter- nal reviews, explains why they proved ineffective, and offers suggestions for improvement. Outside review cannot be effective unless reviewers un- derstand the importance of their task, are able to focus on the key aspects of analyses they are reviewing, and can bring the appropriate expertise to bear. All of these elements were missing in reviews of the analysis that preceded drilling in the Macondo prospect. Their availability for future reviews would be improved if the executive branch took some relatively easy unilateral steps. INTRODUCTION On the night of April 20, 2010, a series of explosions ripped through the Deepwater Horizon, a mobile oil drilling rig operating fifty miles off the coast of Louisiana on a site leased by BP from the federal government, known as the Macondo prospect.' Eleven people died in the explosions and ensuing fire. 2 The rig sank, shearing off the pipe which connected the well to the platform. A device called a blowout * @ 2011, Holly Doremus, Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley. Thanks to Gregg Macey and David Uhlmann for comments on an earlier draft, and especially to Rena Steinzor for providing not only good advice, but a home away from home. I See PETER LEHNER wrrH BOB DEANS, IN DEEP WATER: THE ANATOMY OF A DISASTER, THE FATE OF THE GULF, AND ENDING OUR OIL ADDICTION, at viii (2010); Rick Jervis, Re- scarch Teams Find Oil on Bottom of Gulf USA TODAY, Oct. 25, 2010, at 3A (noting that the well was fifty miles off the coast). 2 See LEHNER wiTH DEANS, supra note 1, at 43 (providing a vivid account of the explo- sion and the chaotic evacuation of the rig).
Honoring International Obligations in U.S. Trademark Law: How the Lanham Act Protects Well-Known Foreign Marks (and why the Second Circuit was Wrong)

Although the United States has obligated itself to protect foreign “well-known” marks under the terms of Article 6bis of the Paris Convention and elsewhere, the extent to which that obligation is practically available to foreign mark owners in U.S. courts has yet to be clearly established under domestic law. In particular, two federal appellate courts have diverged sharply on whether the Lanham Act provides a remedy for an owner of a mark that has not been used in commerce in the United States, even if that mark is well known to U.S. consumers (or a subset thereof). This article explores the international obligation to protect well-known marks and then demonstrates how the Lanham Act does, in fact, provide for protection of marks well known to U.S. consumers, even if the mark has not been used in commerce here. The article addresses in detail the issue of standing to bring a claim under section 43(a) of the Lanham Act and its connection to section 44. It also thoroughly considers a number of concerns related to the territorial nature of trademark law and trademark goodwill and explains the consistency of protecting well-known foreign marks with the principles of territoriality.
Too Many Clients, Too Little Time: How States Are Forcing Public Defenders to Violate Their Ethical Obligations

Budget cuts have had a devastating effect on public defenders and their ability to effectively represent indigent clients, mostly in the form of increasing caseloads. Much has been written about the effect these excessive caseloads have had on indigent defendants’ right to counsel. This article, instead, focuses on how excessive caseloads are placing public defenders in ethical dilemmas. Public defenders are bound by the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, but these high caseloads are making it increasingly difficult for them to meet these required ethical standards. Specifically, it is more challenging for an attorney to represent indigent clients diligently and competently when dealing with caseload numbers well beyond the recommended levels. The author discusses why the solutions being offered by the American Bar Association‘s Formal Opinion 06-441 are not tenable and concludes that true reform in indigent defense is the only way to alleviate the excessive caseloads.
The impact of grading standards on student achievement, educational attainment, and entry-level earnings

Despite recent theoretical work, there is little empirical work on the effects of higher grading standards. In this paper we use data from the High School and Beyond survey to estimate the effects of grading standards on student achievement, educational attainment, and entry level earnings. We consider not only how grading standards affect average outcomes but also how they affect the distribution of educational gains by skill level and race/ethnicity. We find that higher standards raise test scores throughout the distribution of achievement, but that the increase is greatest toward the top of the test score distribution. Higher standards have no positive effect on educational attainment, however, and indeed have negative effects on high school graduation among blacks and Hispanics. We suggest a relative performance hypothesis to explain how higher standards may reduce educational attainment even as they increase educational achievement.
Is urban decay bad? Is urban revitalization bad too?

Abstract Neighborhood revitalization could, in theory, harm some existing residents if it leads to price increases that exceed their willingness-to-pay. I use data from the American Housing Survey to estimate a discrete choice model identifying households’ willingness-to-pay for neighborhood quality. These willingness-to-pay estimates are then compared to the actual price changes that accompany observed changes in neighborhood quality. The results suggest that price increases associated with revitalization are smaller than most households’ willingness to pay for neighborhood improvements. Conversely, declines in neighborhood quality are generally not accompanied by rent declines sufficient to compensate the typical resident. For the majority of the population, then, neighborhood revitalization is beneficial and decline detrimental.
Symbolic-Cognitive Proceduralism: A Model of Deliberative Legitimacy

Burkhalter et al.’s (2002) self-reinforcing model of democratic deliberation is well established, but lacks an account of legitimacy, which is a key element of most democratic-deliberative theories. We extend Burkhalter et al.’s model by proposing a new model called “symbolic-cognitive proceduralism,” which explains how democratic-deliberative processes generate legitimacy, and how such legitimacy contributes to the social reproduction of deliberation. Our proposed model accounts for perceived and normative legitimacy, at interpersonal and macro-social levels of analysis, over short and long time-spans, and accords with substantial empirical evidence.
Dysregulation of excitatory neural firing replicates physiological and functional changes in aging visual cortex

The mammalian visual system has been the focus of countless experimental and theoretical studies designed to elucidate principles of neural computation and sensory coding. Most theoretical work has focused on networks intended to reflect developing or mature neural circuitry, in both health and disease. Few computational studies have attempted to model changes that occur in neural circuitry as an organism ages non-pathologically. In this work we contribute to closing this gap, studying how physiological changes correlated with advanced age impact the computational performance of a spiking network model of primary visual cortex (V1). Our results demonstrate that deterioration of homeostatic regulation of excitatory firing, coupled with long-term synaptic plasticity, is a sufficient mechanism to reproduce features of observed physiological and functional changes in neural activity data, specifically declines in inhibition and in selectivity to oriented stimuli. This suggests a potential causality between dysregulation of neuron firing and age-induced changes in brain physiology and functional performance. While this does not rule out deeper underlying causes or other mechanisms that could give rise to these changes, our approach opens new avenues for exploring these underlying mechanisms in greater depth and making predictions for future experiments.
Gauging exchange rate targeting

Abstract In this paper, we examine whether a monetary authority targets the exchange rate, per se, or instead simply appears to do so as it responds to the exchange rate and other variables in service to inflation and output targets. We combine data-rich estimation with a system of forward-looking equations in order to disentangle the possibilities. The combined approach reveals the potentially misleading nature of standard estimates of the extent of exchange rate and inflation targeting. We illustrate the approach by applying it to two de jure inflation targetters, Canada and Korea. In contrast to standard methods and much past work, we find that neither country targets its exchange rate; and, both are bona fide inflation targetters.
The Convergence of International Trade and Investment Arbitration

International trade and investment arbitration are distinct disciplines within the field of international economic law. Practitioners and scholars in one field rarely labor in the vineyards of the other. Yet the trade and investment arbitration regimes routinely overlap and are increasingly converging. They promote similar objectives—globalization, economic integration, trade promotion, and investment protection. They are often embedded in the same treaties, such as part of preferential trade agreements. They incorporate similar substantive protections—particularly rules against discrimination and protectionism. They both use international tribunals as the vehicle for dispute settlement, allowing for judicial review of sovereign state violations of international law. As of late they both use the economic leverage of tariff benefits to secure compliance with adverse judicial decisions. They both are on the ascendance, with countries clamoring to reap the rewards of membership in each club.
In Good Times and in Debt: The Evolution of Marital Agency and the Meaning of Marriage

A married person sometimes acts solely for herself and at other times on behalf of her spouse. If she incurs debt solely for herself, then only she is liable to the creditor. If, however, she incurs debt both for herself and on behalf of her spouse, both are liable - the debtor directly and the spouse indirectly by imputed liability. Before married women's property reform, imputed marital liability followed from marital status. As marriage changed to recognize the legal individuality of both spouses, so too did the scope of a spouse's imputed liability for the debts of the other spouse. Today, the scope of a spouse's imputed liability for the debts of an insolvent spouse defines an important and largely unexamined aspect of what it means to be married. Despite change in the terms of marriage between the parties, courts continue to view imputed marital liability with sensitivity to the historical privilege of marital investment and the unique social value of trust and dependency within marriage.
From Property to Contract: The Eleventh Amendment and University-Private Sector Intellectual Property Relationships

This article explores the likely impact of Florida Prepaid, College Savings Bank, and other recent Supreme Court Eleventh Amendment decisions on IP transactions between state universities and private industry. Since the Bayh-Dole Act was adopted in 1980, federal policy has actively encouraged IP collaborations between major research universities and the private sector. After Florida Prepaid and College Savings Bank, however, private firms face new obstacles to enforcement of IP rights. The question addressed in this article is whether and how these obstacles will affect the risk of IP appropriation and the future viability of cooperative ventures between private firms and state universities. The answer to this question depends in large part on the incentives of state universities to appropriate IP and the likely firm responses. Critics of the Supreme Court's Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence fear widespread appropriation, while defenders anticipate voluntary state restraint. Both of these predictions are too simplistic. The effects are likely to be more subtle and indirect, yet still quite troubling. This article first reviews the range of legal remedies against state universities still available to private firms after the recent Supreme Court decisions. While these remedies are rather limited, two stand out as most promising: state contract law and state trade secret law. The article then examines the effect of this new legal environment on university and private firm incentives. Informal mechanisms, such as nonlegal sanctions and reputation effects, will deter state appropriation to some extent, but only under limited conditions. Because of these limits, firms are likely to face a heightened risk of appropriation. But the risk will not necessarily materialize into widespread appropriation in fact. The article predicts that firms will respond to the new risk by relying more on contract and trade secret law to protect their IP assets. While this strategy will help guard against appropriation, it will do so only at a substantial cost to society by requiring firms to keep their IP assets secret for longer periods of time. Secrecy can generate high costs by impeding cooperation and future innovation. As a result, it is possible that a broad Eleventh Amendment will produce substantial social costs without a marked increase in state appropriation or infringement. The article concludes by discussing some of the implications of these predictions for Congress's ability to deal with the problem.
Legislative Enforcement of Equal Protection

This Article explores the legislative role in enforcing the constitutional guarantee to equal protection. Part I describes the underenforcement principle that explains the restrictive judicial exercise of authority in constitutional matters. The Article then focuses on Congress' role in examining issues relating to the constitutional guarantee of equal protection that the courts have chosen to underenforce. Part II analyzes relevant constitutional provisions that may empower or limit congressional actions. Part III considers ways in which Congress can address state violations of equal protection through directives to the judiciary and through the legislative process. Part IV details how both federal and state legislatures can implement equal protection guarantees in everyday legislation. Finally, Part V distinguishes between constitutionally motivated decision-making and conscientious decision-making within the legislature and discusses the political implications of a legislative process that directly addresses the constitutionality of equal protection issues.
Designing Response Supply Chain Against Bioattacks

To protect civilians in the event of a bioattack, that is, the intentional release of pathogens against them to cause harm, public authorities maintain stockpiles of antibiotics. Unfortunately, a m...
The Individual and Customary International Law Formation

Introduction 121 I. Building Blocks: Terminology and Doctrine 125 A. Preliminary Terminology: Usage, Custom, Customary Law, International Custom 125 B. Customary International Law 129 1. A Brief History 129 2. The Modern Doctrine 130 3. Critiques of CIL Formation Doctrine 132 II. Foundational Literature: Skepticism, Allusion, and Possibility 135 A. Skepticism 136 B. Allusion 136 C. Possibility 140 1. Realism: Participation in International Legal Process 140 2. Individuals Front and Center 142 3. CIL Has Long Recognized Non-State Actors ...... 145
Fairness Ideals in Distribution Channels

AbstractThe authors analytically and experimentally evaluate how firms make decisions in a two-stage dyadic channel, in which firms decide on investments in the first stage and then on prices in the second stage. They find that firms’ behavior differs significantly from the predictions of the standard economic model and is consistent with the existence of fairness concerns. Using a quantal response equilibrium model, in which both manufacturer and retailer make noisy best responses, the authors show that fairness significantly affects channel pricing decisions. In addition, they investigate what affects the perceptions of fairness. More specifically, they analyze whether the notion of fairness is influenced by social norms of strict equality, by endogenous investments and contributions that are affected by players’ decisions, or by the exogenous game structure. To do so, the authors compare four principles of distributive fairness: strict egalitarianism; liberal egalitarianism; libertarianism; and a seque...
Economists as experts: Overconfidence in theory and practice

Drawing on research in the psychology of judgment and decision making, I argue that individual economists acting as experts in matters of public policy are likely to be victims of significant overconfidence. The case is based on the pervasiveness of the phenomenon, the nature of the task facing economists‐as‐experts, and the character of the institutional constraints under which they operate. Moreover, I argue that economist overconfidence can have dramatic consequences. Finally, I explore how the negative consequences of overconfidence can be mitigated, and how the phenomenon can be reduced or eliminated. As a case study, I discuss the involvement of Western experts in post‐communist Russian economic reforms.
Undocumented Immigration and Host-Country Welfare: Competition Across Segmented Labor Markets*

Abstract. In this paper's model, undocumented workers are endogenously sorted into secondary labor markets. When further illegal immigration occurs, some new migrants follow their fellows into already migrant-dominated jobs, lowering migrant wages and raising real incomes of host-country labor and capital. Some submarkets switch from employing legal workers to employing migrants, lowering demand for and wages of legal workers. Undocumented immigration is Pareto-improving when enforcement reserves primary-sector jobs for legal workers. Pareto-dominant policies target the number of migrant-dominated submarkets, not the number of migrants. This appears consistent with U.S. enforcement practices. The effects of deportations, employer sanctions, and amnesties are explored.
The information content of disaggregated accounting profitability: operating activities versus financing activities

This paper reports three empirical findings on the differential information content of the components of accounting profitability. First, the paper finds that the shareholder profitability driven by operating activities has a stronger association with annual stock returns than the shareholder profitability driven by financing activities. The finding provides empirical support for the FASB Financial Statement Presentation project, and the project suggests disaggregating accounting profitability into operating and financing activities. Second, the paper finds that the sustainable portion of operating profitability has a stronger association with annual stock returns than the unsustainable portion. This finding contributes to the literature by extending the two popular methods of breaking down operating profitability (DuPont analysis and operating liability leverage) into sustainable versus unsustainable operating income. Penman (Financial statement analysis and security valuation. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, 2010) suggests disaggregating operating income into sustainable versus unsustainable operating income. Finally, the paper identifies the conditional persistence in Amir et al. (Rev Acc Stud 16:302–327, 2011) as one of the empirical attributes that affects the valuation usefulness of disaggregated accounting profitability. The conditional persistence measures the marginal contribution of disaggregated profitability to the persistence of aggregate profitability. This paper reports that the disaggregation is more useful in firms with significant differences in the conditional persistence of disaggregated components than in other firms. Test results are robust to controls for cross-sectional and time-series dependence in error terms.
Political Campaign Advertising Dynamics

We investigate the effectiveness of political campaign advertisements. From findings in communications, political science, and psychology, we know that the relation between voters and campaign strategists is dynamic and evolves until voters’ views on a candidate crystallize. After that point, political campaign advertisements are ineffective. To capture this “dynamic” we develop an adaptive learning model that relates voters’ impression formation to expectations about candidate behavior, one form of which (rational expectations), renders political advertising ineffective. We treat rational expectations as a limiting result that supports the concept of crystallization. Our model assumes that voters misspecify their forecasts about a particular candidate’s attributes and campaign strategy. Over time voters can reach a rational expectations equilibrium about a candidate’s qualities and discount political advertising. We illustrate the learning dynamics using simulations. As one application of this approach we focus on the influence campaign message (strategy) volatility has on crystallization (i.e., reaching the rational expectations equilibrium). Our simulation results show that campaign message volatility has an important effect on crystallization. One implication is that crystallization is a fragile, special case result that can be altered by informational shocks during the campaign.
The duty to disclose geologic hazards in real estate transactions

Caveat emptor historically limited the rights of purchasers of real property. The increasing trend in the law is to limit caveat emptor, especially with environmental issues, such as asbestos and toxic mold. The duty to disclose may ber imposed by statute or case law. Another duty to disclose requirement is developing with exposure to geologic risks, such as seismic zones or floodplains.The thesis of this article is that caveat emptor has been superseded by the Tort doctrine duty to disclose such that caveat emptor is increasingly quasi caveat vendor.
Tell Me How It Ends: The Path to Nationalizing the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry

The U.S. medicines system is broken. Millions of Americans suffer and some even die because they cannot afford medicines discovered by government-funded research. At the same time, corporations holding monopoly patent rights to those medicines collect some of the largest profits in modern capitalist history. It doesn’t have to be this way. The global legacy of treating essential medicines as a public good and the robust U.S. history of government seizure of private property when necessary for the public interest reveals a better path: the U.S. should nationalize its pharmaceutical industry. U.S. statutory law provides broad powers for the executive branch to immediately order patent-free medicines manufacturing and distribution. And U.S. constitutional law, interpreted in light of the pharmaceutical industry’s substantial reliance on government funding and licensing, along with the industry’s widespread malfeasance that harms the public welfare, justifies full seizure of all industry assets with limited compensation.
Congress's International Legal Discourse

Lancando mao de um acervo de dados original que compreende 30 anos de historicos legislativos de estatutos federais estadunidenses, o autor demonstra que, em debates sobre leis cuja aprovacao poderia levar a violacoes de direito internacional, membros do Congresso invocam observância a este com relativa frequencia. Os argumentos sao amplamente favoraveis ao direito internacional e frequentemente fraseados em termos legalistas. Essas conclusoes demonstram que membros do Congresso sao incentivados a tomar posicoes publicas pro-direito internacional por oficiais executivos com tendencias internacionalistas. O executivo parece utilizar do discurso congressista de direito internacional para reforcar a credibilidade internacional do pais e fortalecer a posicao do presidente para realizar e implementar obrigacoes futuras.
Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence From New York City †

In this paper, we collect data on the inner-workings of 39 charter schools and correlate these data with school effectiveness. We find that traditionally collected input measures—class size, per-pupil expenditure, teacher certification, and teacher training—are not correlated with school effectiveness. In stark contrast, we show that an index of five policies suggested by qualitative research—frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations— explains approximately 45 percent of the variation in school effectiveness. The same index provides similar results in a separate sample of charter schools. (JEL H75, I21, I28)