cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
DESIGNING CONTRACTS FOR COMPLEX SERVICES

In this article, we employ transaction cost economics and the contingency stream of organization theory to answer two related questions. First, when contracting for complex services, do governments design contracts for flexibility? Second, is the contingency perspective relevant to understanding contract design? Examining 130 professional service contracts awarded by state government agencies in the USA, we find that task complexity and task unpredictability, two dimensions of task uncertainty, increase the probability of flexible governance. This research highlights for managers the important fact that the potential for opportunism and task complexity are different sources of uncertainty that pose different challenges and call for different governance solutions. The study enriches our understanding of transaction costs by probing the conditions under which task uncertainty matters most (and least), and further shows the utility of integrating transaction cost economics with contingency theory to better understand contract governance.
Estimating simultaneous games with incomplete information under median restrictions

Abstract I estimate simultaneous games with incomplete information where players' private information are median-independent of states. I show index coefficients in utility functions are point-identified under exclusion restrictions and weak conditions on the support of states, and propose a consistent estimator.
How Good a Deal Was the Tobacco Settlement?: Assessing Payments to Massachusetts

We estimate the increment in Massachusetts Medicaid program costs attributable to smoking from December 20, 1991 to 1998. We describe how our methods improve upon earlier estimates of analogous costs at the national level. Current costs to the Massachusetts Medicaid program approximate the payments to Massachusetts under the tobacco settlement of November 1998. Whether these payments are viewed as appropriate compensation for Medicaid costs over time depends upon the rate of increase in future health care costs, the rate of decline in smoking, the proportion of smoking that should be attributed to the actions of the tobacco companies and the likelihood the state would have prevailed at trial. The costs to the Medicaid program are dwarfed by the internal costs to smokers themselves.
Mead as (Mostly) Moot: Predictive Interpretation in Administrative Law

In National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, the Supreme Court explained that, within the domain of unclear agency-administered statutes, a federal court is subordinate to an administering agency. When an administering agency speaks authoritatively, federal court practice reflects this. When an agency speaks only informally, however, federal court practice does not. Specifically, when construing an agency-administered statute absent an authoritative agency interpretation, a federal court errs, given its subordinate status, when it exercises independent judgment concerning what interpretation is best. Instead, that subordinate status requires a court to predict what authoritative interpretation the administering agency would adopt — just as a federal court would predict how a state’s highest court would answer some unsettled question of state law. Adhering to this predictive approach requires in turn that a court assign significant — in most cases dispositive — evidentiary weight to agency interpretations contained within certain legally nonbinding instruments, in particular legal briefs. This is because the non-authoritative interpretations contained in such instruments will most often constitute the best available evidence concerning what an administering agency would say if it were to speak authoritatively. This conclusion is surprising given the central holding of United States v. Mead Corp. that interpretations contained in nonbinding instruments are not entitled to controlling deference under Chevron USA Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. What this article will suggest is that the central holding of Mead ought to be mostly moot since, even where controlling deference is not owed de jure, it is most often owed de facto.
Social Learning in Social Networks

This paper analyzes a model of social learning in a social network. Agents decide whether or not to adopt a new technology with unknown payoffs based on their prior beliefs and the experiences of their neighbors in the network. Using a mean-field approximation, we prove that the diffusion process always has at least one stable equilibrium, and we examine the dependence of the set of equilibria on the model parameters and the structure of the network. In particular, we show how first and second order stochastic dominance shifts in the degree distribution of the network impact diffusion. We find that the relationship between equilibrium diffusion levels and network structure depends on the distribution of payoffs to adoption and the distribution of agents' prior beliefs regarding those payoffs, and we derive the precise conditions characterizing those relationships. For example, in contrast to contagion models of diffusion, we find that a first order stochastic dominance shift in the degree distribution can either increase or decrease equilibrium diffusion levels depending on the relationship between agents' prior beliefs and the payoffs to adoption. Surprisingly, adding more links can decrease diffusion even when payoffs from the new technology exceed those of the status quo in expectation.
Understanding the welfare implications of preferential trade agreements

This paper examines various implications of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs), namely Customs Unions (CUs) and Free Trade Areas (FTAs), in the context of a multi-country general equilibrium model based on comparative advantage considerations. We calibrate the model to represent countries with symmetric endowments, and compare the impact of those agreements with free trade and a non-cooperative Nash equilibria. Utilizing aggregate and disaggregate welfare change measures, we quantify the welfare effects of trade arrangements. In particular, we develop a numerical approximation procedure to decompose the welfare changes into two components associated with the variations in terms of trade and volume of trade. The results of our analysis indicate that FTAs are better than CUs on welfare grounds for the world as a whole since both member and nonmember economies enjoy welfare benefits in an FTA. Further, we show that, for certain endowment distributions, upon formation of an FTA, nonmember economies get larger welfare benefits than member economies do. Nonetheless, member economies have larger welfare gains in CUs than in FTAS. Our welfare decompositions suggest that a significant fraction of the welfare changes in both member and nonmember countries is explained by the volume of trade effect for both types of PTAS. This implies that, having free access to larger markets, along with greater market power are both important aspects of PTAS. Comparison across endowment distributions indicates that as countries become more divergent in their endowments, the volume of trade effect gets more pronounced for CUs as well as for FTAS. The absence of policy coordination between the members of FTAs decreases the market power of the member economies and induces welfare losses that are associated with the terms of trade effect. However, the ten-ns of trade effect results in significant welfare gains for the members of CUs since they jointly determine their tariff rates.
Political Uncertainty and Investment: Causal Evidence from U.S. Gubernatorial Elections

Abstract I examine the link between political uncertainty and firm investment using U.S. gubernatorial elections as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in uncertainty. Investment declines 5% before all elections and up to 15% for subsamples of firms particularly susceptible to political uncertainty. I use term limits as an instrumental variable (IV) for election closeness. Because close elections are related to economic downturns, I find that the effect of close elections on investment is understated by more than half by ordinary least squares (OLS). Post-election rebounds in investment depend on whether an incumbent is re-elected. Finally, I provide evidence that firms delay equity and debt issuances tied to investments before elections.
Resource Allocation with Spatial Externalities: Experiments on Land Consolidation

This paper compares the performance of a two-sided combinatorial call market, direct negotiation, and double auction for consolidating fragmented land. Experimental results suggest direct negotiation produces higher efficiencies than other mechanisms. The combinatorial call market tends to alleviate the exposure problem, and performs well when 1) swapping is easily agreeable, and 2) the number of subjects and commodities are increased and the initial endowments are unchallenging. The two-sided combinatorial call market, however, suffers from the holdout problem when the number of subjects and commodities is small.
Synthesis of Large-Area WS2 monolayers with Exceptional Photoluminescence.

Monolayer WS2 offers great promise for use in optical devices due to its direct bandgap and high photoluminescence intensity. While fundamental investigations can be performed on exfoliated material, large-area and high quality materials are essential for implementation of technological applications. In this work, we synthesize monolayer WS2 under various controlled conditions and characterize the films using photoluminescence, Raman and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopies. We demonstrate that the introduction of hydrogen to the argon carrier gas dramatically improves the optical quality and increases the growth area of WS2, resulting in films exhibiting mm2 coverage. The addition of hydrogen more effectively reduces the WO3 precursor and protects against oxidative etching of the synthesized monolayers. The stoichiometric WS2 monolayers synthesized using Ar + H2 carrier gas exhibit superior optical characteristics, with photoluminescence emission full width half maximum (FWHM) values below 40 meV and emission intensities nearly an order of magnitude higher than films synthesized in a pure Ar environment.
Telecommunications in Jericho

This essay, written three years before the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, is a reminder of how little has been accomplished in deregulating telecommunications. In 1993, I erroneously predicted that American telecommunications regulation was about to collapse like the walls of Jericho. The industries that we are accustomed to calling telephony, broadcasting, cable television, and mobile communications have acquired, and for the time being retain, their distinct identities principally because regulatory walls have segmented the market and limited the ability of firms to expand beyond their industry's designated territory. This regulatory segmentation cannot endure. It has become cliche to say that disparate technologies are converging in the sense that they permit us to transmit a particular message, whether it is a voice or a stream of data or a video image, by any one of several different means. Whatever the original purposes of federal telecommunications regulation in 1934, 1927, and earlier, we must now ask some searching questions: Does federal telecommunications regulation impede competition; indeed, has that become its principal (if unstated) function? Does regulation impair the access of American consumers to new communications technologies? Does it inhibit the dissemination of ideas and information through the electronic media? Does the current licensing regime for electromagnetic spectrum fail to allocate that resource to its most productive uses? If telecommunications regulation is producing any of these deleterious effects, what are the costs and what can and should be done? These questions have such large implications for American economic performance and social welfare that their scope is routinely measured in tens of billions of dollars.
Two Ways to Rule Out the Overconsumption Paths in the Ramsey Model with Irreversible Investment

In this note I develop two approaches to rule out the overconsumption paths in the Ramsey model with irreversible capital. The orst focuses on the multiplier of the irreversible constraint and is applied to the situation where preferences are CES and the production function is Cobb-Douglas. The second, relies on a revealed preference argument and is used to rule out overconsumption paths when the preferences are strictly concave and the initial level of per effective capital is below its steady state level.
My Team Will Go On: Differentiating High and Low Viability Teams through Team Interaction

Understanding team viability --- a team's capacity for sustained and future success --- is essential for building effective teams. In this study, we aggregate features drawn from the organizational behavior literature to train a viability classification model over a dataset of 669 10-minute text conversations of online teams. We train classifiers to identify teams at the top decile (most viable teams), 50th percentile (above a median split), and bottom decile (least viable teams), then characterize the attributes of teams at each of these viability levels. We find that a lasso regression model achieves an accuracy of .74--.92 AUC ROC under different thresholds of classifying viability scores. From these models, we identify the use of exclusive language such as 'but' and 'except', and the use of second person pronouns, as the most predictive features for detecting the most viable teams, suggesting that active engagement with others' ideas is a crucial signal of a viable team. Only a small fraction of the 10-minute discussion, as little as 70 seconds, is required for predicting the viability of team interaction. This work suggests opportunities for teams to assess, track, and visualize their own viability in real time as they collaborate.
Dampening Financial Regulatory Cycles

Financial regulation should be countercyclical, strengthening during speculative booms to contain excessive leverage and loosening following crises so as to not limit credit extension in hard times. And yet, financial regulation in fact tends to be procyclical, strengthening following crises and loosening during booms. This Article considers competing descriptive and normative analyses of that procyclical tendency. All of the models and arguments considered are rooted in a public choice perspective on financial regulation, i.e., rational choice ideas drawn from economics and applied to politics, but with that perspective modified to take account of behavioralist biases in rationality, particularly the availability bias. That bias helps explain the procyclical tendency in financial regulation, as both the public and regulators ignore the threat of financial crises during boom times and become very focused on that threat when crises actually occur. The normal dominance of concentrated interest groups temporarily shifts as public attention turns to financial regulation following a crisis. The models considered here differ greatly in their normative conclusions; some mainly criticize the deregulation that occurs during booms, some mainly criticize the regulation that occurs following crises, and some criticize the timing of both. The models differ in how they understand the balance of interest groups outside of crises and how likely that balance is to lead to outcomes that reflect the public interest; in how well they think the crisis-related public attention can be channeled to reflect the public interest; and in how they analyze the underlying vulnerability of financial institutions and markets and the intellectual difficulty of regulation. After analyzing these differing models, this Article considers historical evidence to determine the best approach, and then considers various administrative mechanisms that might help dampen the procyclical tendencies of financial regulation. This Article considers procedures such as bicameralism and the committee system in Congress, notice-and-comment rulemaking, hardlook judicial review, independent agencies, sunset clauses, mandated agency studies, regulatory “contrarians,” and automatic triggers for * For helpful comments, I thank Victor Fleischer, Jose Gabilondo, Erik Gerding, Harvey Goldschmid, Zachary Gubler, Claire Hill, Howell Jackson, Daniel Pi, Paul Rubin, Andrew Shwartz, Dan Schwarcz, Danny Sokol, and participants in the Canadian Law and Economics Association and Midwestern Law and Economics Association annual conferences, the conference on the Political Economy of Financial Regulation at George Washington University Law School, and seminars at the University of Colorado, Florida State, and University of Minnesota Law Schools. 1 McDonnell: Dampening Financial Regulatory Cycles Published by UF Law Scholarship Repository, 2013 1598 FLORIDA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 65
Territorial Control and Recruitment in the Cambodian Civil War, 1970–75: Case Studies in Battambang Province

Abstract During the Cambodian Civil War (1970–75), the Khmer Rouge, whose ideological appeal had a significant effect on its recruitment of combatants, flourished and was able to maintain influence over the Cambodian population. The Lon Nol government, to a certain extent, also succeeded in recruiting combatants, and many civilians joined the government army. Focusing on the structural contexts of three districts in Battambang province during the war, this article seeks to explain these contradicting facts by taking into greater account the role of territorial control in the recruitment of combatants. Although both sides relied not only on the noncoercive mobilization of combatants but on coercive measures within their designated zones of control, they were forced to search for highly motivated volunteers within their opponent's zones.
Auditor Resignation and Risk Factors

SYNOPSIS: Although auditor litigation risk is considered as a leading explanation for auditor resignations, audit risk and business risk might also trigger resignations. Auditor litigation risk is defined as the risk of the auditor being involved in a lawsuit, audit risk is defined as the risk that the auditor expresses an inappropriate audit opinion when the financial statements are materially misstated and, finally, business risk is defined as the risk associated with the client's survival and profitability. Because the three risk factors are not mutually exclusive, we examine their relevance and incremental importance using measures from the pre- and post-resignation periods. Using summary indices from the pre-resignation period, we find that all of the three ex ante risk indices are incrementally important for resignations, especially when the predecessor auditor is a Big 4 firm. Because the ex ante risk factors are prone to measurement errors and are less likely to capture the auditor's proprietary ...
Disabling Attitudes: U.S. Disability Law and the ADA Amendments Act

This is a crucial juncture for U.S. disability law. In 2008, Congress passed the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA), which aims to reverse the courts’ narrowing interpretations of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. This legislative intervention provides an important lens through which to consider attitudes toward disability, both because the success of the ADAAA will depend on judicial attitudes, and because the changes rendered by the ADAAA shed light on pervasive societal attitudes. This Essay makes three main points. First, the ADAAA intervenes in the developing doctrine on disability discrimination in important ways; in so doing, however, the ADAAA carves up the definition of disability, for the first time distinguishing “actual disability” from “regarded as disability,” and expressly reserving the right to accommodation for “actual disability.” This move repudiates a strong form of the social model of disability and accedes to a hierarchy of discrimination that treats the failure to accommodate as a different and lesser form of bias than direct discrimination. Second, and less prominently, the ADAAA introduces an express ban on reverse discrimination claims. Though the provision is arguably positive on a practical level, the fact that this provision could pass without protest — at a time when reverse discrimination claims on the basis of sex and race have become increasingly prominent and legitimate — sets into relief the low status of disability in the popular imagination. Finally, the expanded definition of “disability” under the ADAAA, though useful for many potential plaintiffs, may have unanticipated attitudinal consequences. As the class of those who count as disabled grows, a legal buffer is removed between “nondisabled” and “disabled,” in ways that may increase the existential anxiety of the nondisabled and result in empathy failures. A key question is how to turn existential anxiety about becoming disabled into an appreciation of disability law as a social insurance policy for everyone. Efforts to improve attitudes toward disability will be critical in the coming years, as anticipated by the awareness-raising Article 8 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The Impact of Agent Experience on the Real Estate Transaction

This research examines the productivity of real estate agents who acquire and maintain their real estate salesperson's license for two years or less (rookie) relative to those who have been license...
Jungian Analytical Method as a Process for Transformative Catechesis

This paper elaborates a theory of catechesis that is concerned with the psychological transformation of adult Christians. It offers a definition of this new type of catechesis as well as a comparison with experiential catechesis. It then presents a process for transformative catechesis based on the analytical method of Jungian depth psychology. This process includes anamnesis, interpretation, discernment, and ritual commitment, with the ultimate aim of helping adults identify and experience the paschal mystery in their own lives. It begins by examining the suitability of Jungian psychology for a catechetical process, presents the actual process, and then explores the theological implications of Jungian-based catechesis for those working in ministry.
Intertemporal substitution and the business cycle

This paper summarizes the theoretical role of intertemporal substitution variables in the "new classical macroeconomics." An important implication is that positive monetary shocks tend to raise expected real returns that are calculated from the usual partial information set, but tend to lower realized real returns. After reviewing previous empirical findings in the area, the study reports new results on the behavior of returns on the New York Stock Exchange and on Treasury Bills. The analysis isolates realized real rate of return effects that are significantly positive for a temporary government purchases variable and significantly negative for monetary movements. However, the results do not support the theoretical distinction between money shocks and anticipated changes in money. Since the study focuses on realized real returns, which can be measured in a straightforward manner, there is no evidence on the hypothesis that expected real returns, which are calculated on the basis of incomplete in-formation, rise with monetary disturbances. Because this proposition is sensitive to the specification of information sets, It may be infeasible to test it directly.
War for the Wrong Reasons: Lessons from Law

In Ethics for Enemies, Frances Kamm argues that, under certain conditions, it is morally permissible for a state to launch a war for opportunistic reasons. We consider how law might shed light on Kamm’s argument. Part I addresses the application of criminal and tort law to individual acts of violence analogous to the acts of war analyzed by Kamm. It primarily argues that these bodies of law rely on a framework for determining legal permissibility that runs counter to, and perhaps demonstrates weaknesses in, Kamm’s framework for assessing moral permissibility. Part II considers the law of war. It maintains that, although modern law permits certain opportunistic acts of war, the law does so on terms that cut against Kamm’s claim as to their moral permissibility.
Title IX at Forty: An Introduction and Historical Review of Forty Legal Developments that Shaped Gender Equity Law

Perhaps no law has received more attention in the sports industry, specifically within high school and collegiate sports, than Title IX. Forty years after its enactment, this educational statute has truly reshaped the landscape of American sport. The purpose of this Article is to provide an introduction to forty important legal developments related to Title IX over the past forty years. All of the United States Supreme Court decisions reviewing Title IX, many other important federal and state cases, the regulations, and other important agency guidance, are included, as they must be understood together in order to truly understand the impact of Title IX. The Article follows a chronological progression through these developments to demonstrate how they have built upon each other over the past forty years. Although many lawyers, law students, and sports personnel have a general idea of what Title IX is, most do not understand or attempt to understand the details. This Article focuses on those details. It often includes the exact language of the cases, law, regulations, and other documents—language that is often ignored by practitioners and scholars—as this language provides the best guidance on how the law really works. Of particular note, because Congress did not clarify Title IX’s impact on an educational institution until the late 1980s, much of the focus (twenty-eight of the forty developments presented
Soft Law as Foreign Relations Law

The United States increasingly relies on “soft law” and, in particular, on cooperation with foreign regulators to make domestic policy. The implementation of soft law at home is typically understood to depend on administrative law, as it is American agencies that implement the deals they conclude with their foreign counterparts. But that understanding has led courts and scholars to raise questions about whether soft law made abroad can possibly meet the doctrinal requirements of the domestic discipline. This Article proposes a new doctrinal understanding of soft law implementation. It argues that, properly understood, soft law implementation lies at the intersection of foreign relations law and administrative law. In light of the strong powers accorded to the executive under foreign relations law, this new understanding will strengthen the legitimacy and legality of soft law implementation and make it less subject to judicial challenge. Understanding that soft law is foreign relations law will further the domestic implementation of informal international agreements in areas as different as conflict diamonds, international financial regulation, and climate change.
The implications of formulating a human right to water

This Comment explores the content, legal forms, and implications of recognizing an international human right to water. The concept of water as a human right developed from the recognition that treating the right to water as an economic good may result in an affordability problem for some communities, depriving them of access to water. To counter these effects, a human right to water is being developed. This human right to water, though not fully defined by existing international law or practice, has been protected as necessary to secure other human rights, such as those to health, well being, and life. Given the structure of international law, State obligations depend upon which human right a right to water is found to support or whether such a human right to water is ultimately found to be a separate and independent human right from other recognized human rights. Whether a human right to water is ultimately established as a right subordinate to other human rights or as an independent human right, recognition of a human right to water will have far-reaching effects. This Comment analyzes legal developments in South Africa, India, and
Marriage and Morality: Examining the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act

This Article examines the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA) through the lenses of race, gender, and the institution of marriage. Legal scholarship about IMBRA has been sparse since its enactment in 2006, however the Act merits further investigation. Created to protect noncitizen women intending to marry U.S. citizen men met through international marriage brokers (IMB), the Act aims to give these women access to information about the U.S. citizens and to educate them about their rights and resources in the event of domestic violence. To do so, the Act regulates the IMB industry and the male clients of IMBs. Looking beyond the purported purposes of IMBRA, this Article explores the historical schemas that inform the "unconscious" of the Act to better situate it as rooted in a discourse of moral judgments concerning race, gender, and marriage. Since the mid-nineteenth century, laws have been enacted to regulate the entry of immigrants into the United States. Notions about race, gender, and moral values were used as benchmarks to exclude immigrants and deny citizenship. To this day, these notions continue to influence laws regulating immigration and citizenship. Specifically, the ideological roots underlying IMBRA can be linked to earlier precedents, which were based on Western notions about race, gender, and marriage. By identifying and analyzing these precedents, we can better understand IMBRA's regulations, and use that knowledge to develop future immigration policy further.
Automating Contract Law

The study of contract law is undergoing a difficult transition as it moves from the theoretical to the empirical. Over the past few decades scholars have focused largely on developing economic theories that offer a normative approach to setting the legal rules governing voluntary exchange. The time has now come to test whether these theories provide a meaningful basis for choosing our laws - in other words, to ask whether empirical data supports the theoretical models that contracts scholars have posited. Unfortunately, this type of empirical analysis has proven exceptionally difficult to conduct, and some commentators are beginning to question whether it will ever be possible to test and revise our economic theories of contract in a meaningful manner. Yet the problem of harnessing information to support complex decisions is not unique to contract law. This Essay explores the possibility that recent technological developments from the field of organizational knowledge management - including advances in meaning-based computing algorithms - will soon make it easier to conduct empirical work in contract law on a much larger scale.
Regulatory Pricing Rules to Neutralize Network Dominance

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of several pricing rules intended to promote entry into a network industry dominated by an incumbent carrier. Drawing on the work of Cournot an d Hotelling, we develop a model of competition between two inter connected networks. In a symmetric equilibrium, the price of cross-network calls exceeds the price of internal calls. This “calling circle discount” tends to “tip” the industry to a monopoly equilibrium as would a network externality. By equalizing charges for terminating calls, reciprocity eliminates differences between internal and crossnetwork prices and makes monopoly less likely. Imputation counteracts an incentive by the dominant network to “price squeeze” a rival by eliminating differences in the wholesale price of termination and the implicit price for internal use. By increasing profits of rival networks and increasing thei r subscribers’ surplus, imputation supports additional entry. Finally, an unbundling rule reduces termination fees charged by a dominant network that was engaging in pure bundling. Again, entry will be facilitated as rival networks offer potential subscribers a more attractive rate schedule.
Metaphysical Quietism and Functional Explanation in the Law

Recently some philosophers have argued, under the name of “metaphysical quietism,” that philosophers should give up asking metaphysical questions about whether and how the terms of a given discourse “hook up” with the world and that they should instead ask what function particular terms or whole vocabularies serve in human social life. A similar hostility to metaphysical inquiry is latent in much legal scholarship, though rarely under the quietist label. This paper criticizes metaphysical quietism by casting doubt on the possibility and desirability of dissolving the traditional philosophical questions and replacing them with anthropological ones. Drawing on the example of the concept of “negligence” in Anglo-American law, I show how the functional accounts envisioned by quietists generate the same kinds of metaphysical questions that quietists seek to avoid. I further argue that such questions are not only natural and perhaps inevitable but are also ones worth asking.
Detecting discrimination: a dynamic perspective

Summary The statistical analysis of observational data for fair lending purposes relies on the assumption that, at the firm level, racial discrimination (or the lack thereof) is stable across time. Using data from a mortgage lender during the period 1998–2006, we examine this crucial assumption for the case of pricing differentials for black applicants in household mortgage lending, effectively evaluating possible dynamics in aggregate discrimination patterns. We offer evidence that these estimated pricing differentials may vary substantially across time.
Colorblind Segregation: Equal Protection as a Bar to Neighborhood Integration

For ten years in the 1960s and 70s, not one dollar was spent on maintenance or modernization of a sprawling public housing project of 3,500 units known as West Dallas. The Dallas Housing Authority had lost all federal revenue for refusing to comply with federal fair housing laws - public housing in the city was segregated by race, and nearly every occupant in West Dallas was black. By the end of that period, West Dallas residents were five times more likely to be murdered than elsewhere in the city.Intervening in this human tragedy and political controversy in 1989, a federal district judge ordered local officials to take affirmative steps to remedy their pattern of housing segregation. Among those steps, the court ordered construction of small-scale housing in white, low-poverty neighborhoods. In 1999, in Walker v. City of Mesquite, Texas (“Walker V”), a case challenging the constitutionality of the district court’s race-conscious remedial order, the Fifth Circuit upheld the Fourteenth Amendment reverse discrimination claim of white homeowners near a Dallas site proposed for a forty-unit public housing development. Walker V was not alone in bringing reverse discrimination claims into the realm of residential desegregation - a challenge to race-conscious court orders had also arisen in the Yonkers litigation battle in the Second Circuit. Notwithstanding the fact that a majority of the Supreme Court refused to follow the Fifth Circuit’s equal protection jurisprudence in Grutter v. Bollinger, and in spite of a 1976 Court decision upholding race-conscious remedies to housing segregation in Chicago, Walker V cast a long shadow in equal protection jurisprudence. The decision charted a new direction in colorblindness doctrine: restraint of courts’ remedial power to redress constitutional violations involving race. That doctrinal development interacts with current housing policies to prevent meaningful ways for public housing authorities to use race-neutral means to overcome their past role in enforcing racial segregation. Together, this confluence of doctrine and policy might be called colorblind segregation jurisprudence: a framework in which court ordered remedies for unconstitutional segregation and housing discrimination must be race-neutral, thereby preserving existing patterns of neighborhood advantage polarized by race. This Comment uses Walker V as a case study to explore the meaning and potential consequences of a colorblind segregation regime. Underlying this inquiry into colorblind segregation jurisprudence lurks a question at the heart of the Second Reconstruction: When a state actor is found liable for implementing an explicit program of unconstitutional racial segregation, how far must a court go towards dismantling the entrenched edifice of urban scale racial divisions? How far can they go?
Collective Goods, Common Agency, and Third‐Party Intervention

Voluntary contributions to multiple public goods may involve many contributors (principals) who condition their payments to a single provider (agent) based on realized provision. If the agent’s efforts on these goods are unobservable, then a common agency problem results with a third-best outcome owing to agency costs, free riding, and competitive interests. The latter manifests itself in the principals punishing the agent for providing an alternative public good (for which they have no interest) to a different set of principals. Remedies may require multiple policy instruments unlike the standard prescription for the public good or common agency problem in isolation. Moreover, the sequence of actions is essential for addressing the combined problems.
Motivating migrants: A field experiment on financial decision-making in transnational households☆

Abstract We randomly assigned male migrant workers in Qatar invitations to a motivational workshop aimed at improving financial habits and encouraging joint decision-making with spouses back home in India. 13–17 months later, we surveyed migrants and wives to estimate intent-to-treat impacts in their transnational households. Wives of treated migrants changed their financial practices and became more likely to seek out financial education themselves. Treated migrants and their wives became more likely to make joint decisions on money matters. Treatment effects on financial outcomes show potential heterogeneity, with those with lower prior savings saving differentially more than those with higher prior savings.
ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION, POPULATION GROWTH AND THE LONG-RUN WORLD INCOME DISTRIBUTION

Abstract We present and calibrate a model where trade with advanced economies spurs development, and trade opportunities depend on the relative population in advanced and developing countries. As developing countries become advanced, prospects improve for the remaining developing countries. If population growth differentials between developing and advanced economies are small, economic development accelerates over time. Otherwise, long-run global prosperity requires a sufficiently large initial population in advanced countries. More open countries develop faster, but more openness by all developing countries may only modestly increase their aggregate growth. China's development may hurt developing countries in the short-run, but improves their long-run prospects.
Evidence and Extrapolation Mechanisms for Regulating Off-Label Uses of Drugs and Devices

A recurring, foundational issue for evidence-based regulation is deciding whether to extend governmental approval from an existing use with sufficient current evidence of safety and efficacy to a novel use for which such evidence is currently lacking. This "extrapolation" issue arises in the medicines context when an approved drug or device that is already being marketed is being considered (1) for new conditions (such as off-label diagnostic categories), (2) for new patients (such as new subpopulations), (3) for new dosages or durations, or (4) as the basis for approving a related drug or device (such as a generic or biosimilar drug). Although the logic of preapproval testing and the precautionary principle-first, do no harm-would counsel in favor of prohibiting extrapolation approvals until after traditional safety and efficacy evidence exists, such delays would unreasonably sacrifice beneficial uses. The harm of accessing unsafe products must be balanced against the harm of restricting access to effective products. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) current regulations in many ways reject the precautionary principle because they largely permit individual physicians to prescribe medications for off-label uses before any testing tailored to those uses has been done. The FDA's approach empowers physicians, but overshoots the mark by allowing enduring use of drugs and devices with insubstantial support of safety and efficacy. This Article instead proposes a more dynamic and evolving evidence-based regime that charts a course between the Scylla and Charybdis of the overly conservative precautionary principle on one hand, and the overly liberal FDA regime on the other. Our approach calls for improvements in reporting, testing, and enforcement regulations to provide a more layered and nuanced system of regulatory incentives. First, we propose a more thoroughgoing reporting of off-label use (via the disclosure of diagnostic codes and "detailing" data) in manufacturers' annual reports to the FDA, in the adverse event reports to the FDA, in Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement requests, and, for a subset of FDA-designated drugs, in prescriptions themselves. Second, we would substantially expand the agency's utilization of postmarket testing, and we provide a novel framework for evaluating the need for postmarket testing. Finally, our approach calls for a tiered labeling system that would allow regulators and courts to draw finer reimbursement and liability distinctions among various drug uses, and would provide the agency both the regulatory teeth and the flexibility it presently lacks. Together, these reforms would improve the role of the FDA in the informational marketplace underlying physicians' prescribing decisions. This evolutionary extrapolation framework could also be applied to other contexts. © 2014 Ryan Abbott and Ian Ayres.
War’s Legacy in International Investment Law

This article discusses the role war has played in shaping the rules of international investment law from the late nineteenth century. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the move towards institutions, such as arbitration forums, and rules as an alternative to the use of force gave new impetus to the growth of international commercial law and related institutions. These rules and institutions represented the hope that the use of force would be eclipsed as States moved forward towards more cooperative, consensual and non-coercive mechanisms of dispute settlement. Capital-importing states in Latin America however became acutely aware that these institutions and rules did not completely erase the coercive and uneven relations they had with capital-exporting states. In era after era of reformism from the Calvo era, to the NIEO and to the era in opposition to neo-liberal economic governance, capital-importing States have continued to resist and sometimes adapt to the coercive realities of the rules of international investment law. The article begins by tracing the origin of the Drago doctrine as a response to the practice of European states that engaged in aggression and conquest against militarily and economically weaker Latin American states as a means of collecting debts owed to their citizens. It then shows that while the denouement of forcible measures to resolve contract debt was overstated by early twentieth century international lawyers, international law nevertheless provided avenues for dispute settlement outside the use of force in international commercial relations. Thus while protecting commerce from the scourge of war was a primary inspiration for the post-Second World War international economic order, the author shows how war has nevertheless continued to be an animating factor for former colonies particularly with regard to their State responsibility for war damage in the context of foreign investment.
INCREASING RETURNS TO SCALE, PRICE DISPERSION, AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF RETURNS TO INNOVATION

Models of endogenous growth have not been able to account for the variety of empirically observed distributional properties of the returns to innovation, in part, because of the limitations necessarily imposed on competition to cope with increasing returns to scale. Exponential growth, fat tails, Pareto–Levy distributed upper tails, and upper value outliers, are associated with increasing returns to scale and innovation. At the same time, properties such as bifurcated research investment strategies, bimodal returns to innovation, and Laplace distributed firm growth rates are products of competition. We build an agent-based model of endogenous technical change in which heterogeneous investments in patented knowledge and increasing returns to scale emerge these distributional properties within a competitive market. The combination of heterogeneous agents, costly information, and patents allow for a competitive landscape to persist amidst increasing returns. The ability of model to foster a coexistence of competition and increasing returns underlies the observed distributional properties.
Estimating production functions using inputs to control for unobservables

Economists began relating output to inputs in the early 1800's. A large literature on estimating production functions has followed, in part because much of economic theory yields testable implications that are related to the technology and optimizing behaviour.1 Since at least as early as Marschak and Andrews (1944), applied researchers have worried about the potential correlation between input levels and the unobserved firm-specific productivity shocks in the estimation of production function parameters. The economics underlying this concern are intuitive. Firms that have a large positive productivity shock may respond by using more inputs. To the extent that this is true, ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates of production functions will yield biased parameter estimates, and, by implication, biased estimates of productivity. Many alternatives to OLS have been proposed, and we add to this set by extending Olley and Pakes (1996). They show the conditions under which an investment proxy controls for correlation between input levels and the unobserved productivity shock. Their approach has the advantage that, for many questions, it is no more difficult to implement than OLS. We show when intermediate inputs (those inputs which are typically subtracted out in a value-added production function) can also solve this simultaneity problem. We discuss some potential benefits of expanding the choice set of proxies to include these inputs.
FROM INSTITUTIONS TO FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH: WHAT ARE THE LINKS?

This paper presents an integrated overview of the literature linking institutions, financial development and economic growth. From the large body of research on institutional development, the paper first selects those contributions that make it possible to study the role of institutional arrangements in ameliorating/worsening the information frictions and transaction costs that characterize the development of financial markets. The paper then investigates the theoretical mechanisms by which these specific frictions affect economic growth and presents the stock of empirical evidence quantifying the impact of institutions on growth through financial development.
A note on cheap talk and burned money

Abstract Austen-Smith and Banks [Cheap talk and burned money, J. Econ. Theory 91(1) (2000) 1–16] study how money burning can expand the set of pure cheap talk equilibria of Crawford and Sobel [Strategic information transmission, Econometrica 50(6) (1982) 1431–1451]. I identify an error in the main Theorem of Austen-Smith and Banks, and provide a variant that preserves some of the important implications. I also prove that cheap talk can be influential with money burning if and only if it can be influential without money burning. This strengthens a result of Austen-Smith and Banks, but uncovers other errors in their analysis. Finally, an open conjecture of theirs is proved correct.