cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Joseph in Lawyerland

As Alice wanders through Wonderland in an unreal space in real time-a dream-learning backward truths from illogical creatures who speak in paradoxes, so Joseph figuratively wanders through lawyerland in an unreal time, but in a very real space-Manhattan-conversing with his thinly fictionalized friends, all of whom happen to be lawyers, about their lives and practices in law. As Joseph's lawyers talk with him about the law they practice, they uncover, through White Rabbit and Cheshire Cat-like illogical precision, a chaotic, unkempt, unconscionably reckless, often cruel, and sometimes pathological legal wilderness. The legal terrain these lawyers occupy is not an inviting one: Lawyerland, according to Joseph and his friends, is an inhumane place. Even more striking, though, than the cruelty of their world, is what Joseph's lawyers in Lawyer-land tell Joseph about the nature of lawyers' knowledge. What lawyers know of law, and of people, Joseph's lawyers tell him, and he tells us, are the limits of our knowledge, both ours and theirs, regarding both law and the human condition. In this regard, Joseph's lawyers are virtually ironic templates (or as one of his conversationalists would put it, ironic "phenotypes"): Like all ironists, what Joseph's lawyers know, they know from and of experience; and what they know, is that lawyers know the boundaries of what we know. They know, for example, that nonlawyers don't know the nature of the legal beast; they know that lawyers keep secrets; they know lawyers "secrete"; and they know that lawyers defraud others. They know that lawyers lie, even if only by necessity and if only by virtue of knowing too much; they know that lawyers "invented spin," and, when they have to, "change the story"; they know that lawyers use knowledge to game the system; and they know that there is much that lawyers don't know precisely because lawyers don't want to know it.
Constitutionalism and the Foundations of the Security State

Scholars often argue that the culture of American constitutionalism provides an important constraint on aggressive national security practices. This article challenges the conventional account by highlighting instead how modern constitutional reverence emerged in tandem with the national security state, functioning critically to reinforce and legitimate government power rather than simply to place limits on it. This unacknowledged security origin of today’s constitutional climate speaks to a profound ambiguity in the type of public culture ultimately promoted by the Constitution. Scholars are clearly right to note that constitutional loyalty has created political space for arguments more respectful of civil rights and civil liberties, making the very worst excesses of the past less likely. But at the same time, public discussion around protecting the Constitution – and with it a distinctively American way of life – has also served as a key justification for strengthening the government’s security infrastructure over the long run. I argue that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, significant popular skepticism actually existed concerning the basic legitimacy of the Constitution. But against the backdrop of World War I and the Russian Revolution, a combination of corporate, legal, and military elites initiated a concerted campaign to establish constitutional support as the paramount prerequisite of loyal citizenship. Crucially, such elites viewed the entrenchment of constitutional commitment as fundamentally a national security imperative; they called for dramatically and permanently extending the reach of the federal government’s coercive apparatus. In the process, defenders of the Constitution reproduced many of the practices we most associate with extremism and wartime xenophobia: imposed deference and ideological uniformity, appeals to exceptionalism and cultural particularity, militarism, and political repression. Moreover, the problem with such World War I origins for today’s constitutional climate is not simply that of a troubling but distant past. Rather, the foundations developed nearly a century ago continue to intertwine constitutional attachment with the prerogatives of the national security state in ways that often go unnoticed – emphasizing the real difficulties of separating the liberal and illiberal dimensions of American constitutional culture. Constitutionalism and the Foundations of the Security State
An Analysis of the Effect of Culture and Religion on Perceived Corruption in a Global Context

This study examines the role of both religion and culture [as measured by the cultural clusters of countries in the GLOBE study of House et al. (Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, 2004)] on the levels of perceived corruption. Covering the period from 2000 to 2010, the study uses three different measures of perceived corruption: (1) the World Bank’s Control of Corruption measure, (2) Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, and (3) Heritage Foundation’s Freedom from Corruption Index. A system of three simultaneous equations is used, with the jointly endogenous variables being (a) perceived corruption, (b) perceived government legitimacy, and (c) perceived government effectiveness. The results show that both cultural and religious differences are incrementally related to perceived corruption, even after controlling for other economic and political factors. Specifically, relative to the Protestant Christian religion, the non-Protestant Christian religion, the Islamic religion, and Other Religion/No Religion are positively associated with higher corruption (or negatively with anti-corruption), but the Buddhist and Hindu religions appear to be not significantly different from the Protestant Christian religion. On the cultural side, compared to the Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition, the other European clusters are incrementally positively associated with higher corruption, but this tendency is offset by more effective political governance, thus leading in the case of the German and Nordic cultures to levels of corruption not statistically different from the Anglo cluster. All the non-European cultural clusters are associated with significantly higher corruption tendencies, but the overall effect is mitigated partially by either greater perceived political legitimacy (Latin-American, Middle-Eastern, Caribbean, and Pacific Islander), or greater political effectiveness (Confucian and South-East Asian).
Challenges of Poverty and Islam Facing American Trade Law

[...] This article is all about questioning the conventional wisdom on a recent and seminal event in international trade law. The event was the Fourth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization ("WTO") held at Doha, Qatar from 9-13 November 2001. The conventional wisdom is that the Doha Conference was a "success." Because of two unmet challenges that concern the Third World and the Muslim World, the conventional wisdom may be wrong – or, at least, giddy. [...]
RED LEAVES AND THE DIRTY GROUND: THE CANNIBALISM OF LAW AND ECONOMICS

Less than a year after the stock market crash of 1929, William Faulkner moved into a dilapidated house in Mississippi. He purchased his home by putting himself deep into debt, began to fix the place up, and wrote a short story called "Red Leaves," his first story involving Indian people as characters3. He knew the land upon which the house rested was once owned by an Indian, and he knew the region was once controlled by an Indian tribe, either the Choctaws or the Chickasaws4. He marketed the short story to magazine publishers by noting that the editors probably did not know that
Online Resource Allocation Under Partially Predictable Demand

For online resource allocation problems, we propose a new demand arrival model where the sequence of arrivals contains both an adversarial component and a stochastic one. Our model requires no demand forecasting; however, due to the presence of the stochastic component, we can partially predict future demand as the sequence of arrivals unfolds. Under the proposed model, we study the problem of the online allocation of a single resource to two types of customers, and design online algorithms that outperform existing ones. Our algorithms are adjustable to the relative size of the stochastic component, and our analysis reveals that as the portion of the stochastic component grows, the loss due to making online decisions decreases. This highlights the value of (even partial) predictability in online resource allocation. We impose no conditions on how the resource capacity scales with the maximum number of customers. However, we show that using an adaptive algorithm — which makes online decisions based on observed data — is particularly beneficial when capacity scales linearly with the number of customers. Our work serves as a first step in bridging the long-standing gap between the two well-studied approaches to the design and analysis of online algorithms based on (1) adversarial models and (2) stochastic ones. Using novel algorithm design, we demonstrate that even if the arrival sequence contains an adversarial component, we can take advantage of the limited information that the data reveals to improve allocation decisions. We also study the classical secretary problem under our proposed arrival model, and we show that randomizing over multiple stopping rules may increase the probability of success.
The Team Boat Exercise: Enhancing Team Communication Midsemester

In his classic piece “Hello, Bird, I’m Learning Ornithology,” Rotfeld (1998) characterizes the use of classroom teams as follows: In reality, the way most faculty run (group) projects teaches ... the ability to work in groups the way talking with an exotic bird teaches ornithology. ... Group projects are many but few faculty assigning them give attention to improving student speaking, writing, or group interactions. The classes do not teach these things except by contagion and therein lies the real problem.
The Promises and Pitfalls of Robo-Advising

We study the introduction of a wealth-management robo-adviser that constructs portfolios tailored to investors’ holdings and preferences. Adopters are similar to non-adopters in terms of demographics and prior interactions with human advisers but tend to be more active and have greater assets under management. Investors adopting robo-advising experience diversification benefits. Ex ante undiversified investors increase stock holdings and hold portfolios with less volatility and better returns. Already well-diversified investors hold fewer stocks, yet see some reduction in volatility, and trade more after adoption. All investors increase attention based on online account logins. We find that adopters exhibit declines in prominent behavioral biases, including the disposition, trend chasing, and rank effect. Our results emphasize the promises and pitfalls of robo-advising tools, which are becoming ubiquitous all over the world.Received May 31, 2017; editorial decision August 21, 2018 by Editor Wei Jiang.
The catastrophic effects of natural disasters on insurance markets

Article published in a journal of theoretical and empirical papers that analyze risk-bearing behavior and decision-making under uncertainty.
Securitizing Audit Failure Risk: An Alternative to Caps on Damages

INTRODUCTION I. AUDIT FAILURE: RISK AND CONTROL A. Audit Constituents and Stakes B. Public Policy 1. Audit Effectiveness 2. Deterrence 3. The Insurance Argument C. The Role of Insurance 1. Optimality 2. Statistical Independence 3. Limiting Probability 4. Limiting Magnitude 5. Distributing Residual Risk II. EXISTING INSURANCE FOR AUDIT FAILURE A. Errors & Omissions (EO and (2) catastrophe bond securitization, which has not been mentioned in the literature and is introduced here as a way to pool and distribute risks of catastrophic audit failure through capital markets. The former bundles risk monitoring and distribution within insurers, while the latter re-bundles them outward to capital markets. This Article thus tentatively concludes that the insurance-based argument favoring damages caps warrants analytical skepticism. Analytical skepticism is the most the conclusion can reach, however, because the evidence available for a definitive determination is limited. Auditing firms, which are privately owned, provide virtually none of the public information necessary to evaluate these issues. (1) Auditing firms do not publicly disclose any meaningful information about their financial condition or results, disclosing instead summary data on assets and total worldwide revenues broken down by geographic region and business line. (2) They provide no disclosure concerning internal or external insurance models or capacity and only cursory information about internal organizational structures, controls, or governance. In the course of some of the following analysis, therefore, an inferential picture of practices will be developed. Subject to those limits, after reviewing the terms of the debate and introducing basic principles concerning the role of insurance in public policy governing auditing, this Article explores two alternative models that exist and two that could be created to address auditor liability for audit failure. The first of the two existing models is, of course, traditional professional liability insurance. …
Civilization in Color: The Multicultural City in Three Millennia

How should democratic societies and the cities that propel them respond to increased social diversity? Surprisingly few studies compare cities on their capacity to manage social diversity or offer historical views of the bases for co-existence among identity groups. Studies of this crucial theme that do offer comparative reach are limited to higher-level analyses (e.g., of race and nation making in the modern global order) or partial views (e.g., of economic inequality by race or ethnic politics in contemporary cities). This study, an exercise in theory building, examines three large, history-making, and famously diverse cities that relied on distinct designs for society to accommodate diversity: ancient Rome, medieval Cordoba, and contemporary Los Angeles. Comparisons across such huge spans of time and major culture shifts yield lessons obscured in current debates over inequality, multiculturalism, or the need for tolerance. Three of the most important lessons relate to the power of integrative societal projects much larger than cities; the co-existence throughout history of separatism or cultural mosaic patterns alongside active cross-cultural exchange and hybridization; and the need to bound pluralistic ideals within a strong, locally viable public order. In earlier periods of history, autocracy provided such order for standout pluralist cities and the civilizations they led.
Managing Opportunistic Consumer Returns in Retail Operations

Retailers use lenient return policies to stimulate demand and increase revenues, as such policies help customers assess uncertain product valuations at low (or no) return cost and yield higher equi...
Competition Between Private and Public Schools: Testing Stratification and Pricing Predictions

Abstract When there are peer effects in education, private schools have an incentive to vary tuition to attract relatively able students. Epple and Romano [American Economic Review 88(1) (1998) 33] develop a general equilibrium model characterizing equilibrium pricing and student selection into schools when peer effects are present. The model predicts that competition will lead private schools to give tuition discounts to more able students, and that this will give rise to an equilibrium exhibiting stratification by income and ability between the public and private sectors and to a hierarchy of schools within the private sector. The model also yields a variety of comparative-static predictions. The predictions of the model are tested in this paper using a unique data set assembled by Figlio and Stone [Research in Labor Economics (1999) 115]. Tests of equilibrium predictions of the model reveal that: The propensity to attend private school increases with both income and ability, and, among private schools, the propensity to attend the highest-tuition schools rises with both income and ability. Within private schools, tuition declines with student ability, with a substantial number of even high-income households paying little or no tuition. The correlation between income and ability is greater in public than private schools. Tests of comparative static predictions of the model reveal that: Both income and ability become stronger predictors of private school attendance as public school expenditure falls. Income becomes increasingly important in determining placement in the private school hierarchy as public school expenditure falls. Discounts to ability in the lowest-quality private school decline as public school expenditure rises while discounts to ability in the highest-quality private school are little affected by changes in public school expenditure. Expenditure in private schools rises as expenditure in public schools increases. These empirical results are consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model.
Robust incentives and the design of a climate change governance regime

In building a governance regime to address climate change, should we prioritize the development of global institutions or national ones? This paper focuses on two neglected characteristics to inform the governance problem: the incentives for investment in low-carbon energy technology and the influence of historical policy volatility. Examining a case study of an important low-carbon energy technology, wind power, this study finds: (1) policy volatility has been substantial, (2) policy changes were uncorrelated across jurisdictions, suggesting that (3) investors could have substantially reduced their exposure to the risk of policy volatility by operating globally. While it also has downsides, a poorly coordinated international policy regime has the advantage of reducing the risk associated with a global policy failure. Beyond this case study, the importance of this positive effect depends on: the probability of policy failures in each country, the correlations among them, and the probability of a global policy failure.
The Original Meaning of "God": Using the Language of the Framing Generation to Create a Coherent Establishment Clause Jurisprudence

The Supreme Court’s attempt to create a standard for evaluating whether the Establishment Clause is violated by religious governmental speech, such as the public display of the Ten Commandments or the Pledge of Allegiance, is a total failure. The Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence has been termed “convoluted,” “a muddled mess,” and “a polite lie.” Unwilling to either allow all governmental religious speech or ban it entirely, the Court is in need of a coherent standard for distinguishing the permissible from the unconstitutional. Thus far, no Justice has offered such a standard.A careful reading of the history of the framing period reveals that those responsible for the initial implementation of the First Amendment were able to create a compromise that permitted the use of governmental religious speech in a way that was inclusive of all citizens, regardless of faith. Committed to creating an “American” vision of religious freedom, one that was distinct from the restrictive practices of the individual states, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison created a new template for public religious vocabulary. Through the use of non-sectarian, theologically equivocal language, they found a way to talk simultaneously to the most orthodox segment of the population and atheists, deists, and other members of religious minorities.My Article proposes building on the lessons of the framing period to create a workable Establishment Clause jurisprudence. If we accept that non-sectarian phrases such as “endowed by their Creator” need not divide our nation, we can modify the traditional “endorsement test.” A workable test reflecting the Framers’ wisdom would only judge governmental speech as unconstitutional if it endorsed religion in such a way “that it sends a message to non-adherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.” Simple non-sectarian utterances, such as the Supreme Court’s invocation “God save the United States and this honorable court,” would be permitted, while the courthouse display of the Ten Commandments would be prohibited, and judges and lawyers would finally be able to rely on a usable, understandable Establishment Clause jurisprudence.
Obtaining Assurance for Financial Statement Audits and Control Audits When Aspects of the Financial Reporting Process Are Outsourced

SUMMARY: Businesses increasingly outsource organizational functions that have financial reporting implications, which requires auditors to adjust their risk assessment and audit procedures for this practice. However, PCAOB inspection reports cite deficiencies indicating that external auditors frequently do not perform proper procedures before relying on controls maintained by service organizations. In this paper, we examine the audit implications of clients' use of service organizations. Using the audit risk and control risk models and drawing on the extant research on using the work of others and internal audit outsourcing, we develop a framework that describes how clients' use of service organizations affects financial statement and internal control audits. We propose that three characteristics of outsourcing: the client, the service organization, and the auditor of the service organization affect inherent risk, control risk, and control detection risk for clients who outsource these functions. Based on...
A forward-looking macroeconomic simulation model for a developing country

Abstract The article develops a small dynamic macroeconomic simulation model for a representative developing country that relies on familiar macroeconomic theory and in which expectations are formed rationally. The model is useful for the analysis and simulation of important policy questions in a general equilibrium setting. Several policy experiments are conducted that illustrate the workings of the model and yield fresh insights into the effects of standard macroeconomic policies in developing countries.
Human rights, sovereignty, and the final status of Kosovo

INTRODUCTION I. BASIC BACKGROUND ON KOSOVA/KOSOVO II. THE PRINCIPLE OF SELF-DETERMINATION: ISSUES AND APPLICABILITY A. Historical Development of Self-Determination 1. The Wilsonian National Model of Self-Determination 2. The Post-WW II Decolonization Model of Self-Determination 3. The Post-Cold War Model B. Ambiguities Inherent in the Concept of Self-Determination 1. Defining a People 2. Does a "People" Really Have a Right to External Self-Determination? C. Possible Forms of Self-Determination for Kosovo 1. Independence and Sovereignty 2. Reintegration of Kosovo into Serbia 3. Intermediate Possibilities, Including Autonomy and the Status Quo III. CAN ANYONE SOLVE THE PROBLEM? PATHS TO THE REALIZATION OF SELF-DETERMINATION FOR KOSOVO A. The Possibility of a Negotiated Solution B. Does the Security Council Have the Legal Authority to Award Sovereignty to Kosovo? C. Political Aspect: The Reluctance of UN Members to Impose External Decisions on Issues of Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity 1. Historical Perspectives 2. Politics of the Current Security Council 3. The Evolving Practice of New State Recognition and Its Relevance to Kosovo's Final Political Status IV. A HUMAN RIGHTS BASED PERSPECTIVE ON SELF- DETERM INATION FOR Kosovo A. Sovereign Rights in Context: The Transformation and Dismemberment of a State B. When Sovereign Rights Must Yield: A Failure of Just and Effective Guarantees for Minority Rights C. Compromise May Be Necessary to Preserve Minority Rights V. OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS RELEVANT TO FINAL STATUS ISSUES
New Rules for a New Decade: Improving the Copyright Office's Anti-Circumvention Rulemakings

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act tasked the Copyright Office with conducting a triennial rulemaking to grant exemptions to a ban on circumventing access controls on copyrighted works, and five rulemakings have been conducted since the 1998 passage of the Act. Drawing on a decade of experience with the rulemaking process, this Note explores lessons learned from the most recent round and suggests practices the Copyright Office could adopt to make the rulemaking more efficient and more closely aligned with Congress’s intent.
When Two Become One: Views on Fletcher's Two Patterns of Criminality

This essay reflects on particular themes in George Fletcher's Rethinking Criminal Law as part of a symposium celebrating the book's twenty-five years of contributions. The discussion focuses on the book's well-known patterns of criminality: (1) manifest criminality, which proposes that crimes are acts that any objective observer would clearly recognize as illegal without knowing anything about the mental state of the person committing those acts and, in stark contrast, (2) subjective criminality, which suggest that crimes are consciously intended and experienced only by those who are committing them and that this sense of intention and experience is highly individual. The essay contends that the two patterns of criminality are so interdependent that pragmatically it is difficult and often deceptive to analyze a crime through distinctly manifest or subjective lenses. Recent empirical research on conscious and unconscious thought processes shows that people's interpretations of their own or others' acts are highly subjective in ways that the criminal law has not recognized. A separate concept of manifest criminality resting on objective observations now seems a bit of a myth. The two patterns of manifest and subjective criminality have become one - subjective criminality characterized (or bolstered) more or less by what Fletcher designates as manifest criminality. Within the confines of this essay, there are no set recommendations for how the criminal law should operate with its subjective + manifest approach; consciousness research demonstrates the factual and conceptual fragility of both the manifest and subjective patterns of criminality. Yet, there is an underlying theme: it's time for the criminal justice system to confront the mens rea mystery by going back to school to keep up with advances in the cognitive sciences. Fletcher's two patterns were once at the forefront; now they merely need some modernizing in light of new science.
Does Unusual News Forecast Market Stress

An increase in “unusual” news with negative sentiment predicts an increase in stock market volatility. Unusual positive news forecasts lower volatility. Our analysis is based on over 360,000 articles on 50 large financial companies, published during the period of 1996–2014. Unusualness interacted with sentiment forecasts company-specific and aggregate volatility several months ahead. Furthermore, unusual news is reflected more slowly in aggregate volatility than company-specific volatility. News measures from articles explicitly about the “market,” which are more easily accessible to investors, do not forecast volatility. The observed responses of volatility to news may be explained by attention constraints on investors.
WHAT DOES POLITICAL ECONOMY TELL US ABOUT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT—AND VICE VERSA?*

▪ Abstract This essay reviews how three pillars of political economy—collective action, institutions, and political market imperfections—help us answer the following question: Why do some countries develop and not others? Each advances our understanding of who wins and who loses in government decision making, generally, but only a subset of this literature helps us answer the question. The study of political market imperfections strongly suggests that the lack of credibility of pre-electoral political promises and incomplete voter information are especially robust in explaining development outcomes. From the institutional literature, the most powerful explanation of contrasting development outcomes links political checks and balances to the credibility of government commitments.
Electoral Authoritarianism and Human Development

Do autocratic institutions matter for the welfare of average citizens? Despite the large literature comparing democracies and autocracies, we know little about how human development outcomes differ among autocratic types. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this article argues that contested autocratic elections promote human development by improving state accountability and capacity. Using an instrumental variables setup, I show that the presence and history of multiparty autocratic elections predict significantly better outcomes on health, education, gender equality, and basic freedoms relative to non-electoral autocracy. In fact, the effects on health and education are as strong as the effects of democracy. In contrast, legislatures and parties without multiparty elections produce slightly negative outcomes because these institutions chiefly concern elite cooptation. The results have major implications for the study of autocracy, the political economy of development, and the welfare effects of internation...
Beyond the Liability Wall: Strengthening Tort Remedies in International Environmental Law

Despite decades of effort, the international community has stumbled in attempts to craft tort remedies for victims of transboundary environmental damage. More than a dozen civil liability treaties have been negotiated that create causes of action and prescribe liability rules, but few have entered into force, and most remain unadopted orphans in international environmental law. In this Article, I explain the problematic record of tort liability regimes by developing a theoretical model of liability negotiations, grounded in regime theory from political science. Based on the model, I conclude that negotiated liability regimes have foundered because of three main roadblocks: 1) interest conflicts between developed and developing states; 2) high transaction costs and low expected payoffs; and 3) incorporation of treaty provisions that are too onerous for states to accept. I conclude that strengthening tort remedies will require changing the substantive content of liability treaties and the process of negotiating them. I also show how liability principles can be strengthened outside the treaty-making process through diffusion of norms against transboundary environmental damage.
The Paradox of the Fresh Complaint Rule

The Paradox of the Fresh Complaint Rule closely examines a rule of evidence known as the fresh complaint or prompt complaint rule. The rule is controversial because it is applicable only in sexual assault trials and therefore singles out sexual assault victims for special treatment. Reminiscent of the equal treatment/special treatment dilemma, scholars have disagreed over whether this unique evidentiary rule for sexual assault victims should continue to exist.There is little disagreement that the rule can help individual rape complainants. By permitting admission of out-of-court statements made by a sexual assault complainant alleging that a rape occurred, the rule helps sexual assault complainants recover from the often unfair credibility damage they suffer because of widely embraced stereotypes about how sexual assault victims ýshouldý behave. There is no question that evidence of a prompt complaint of rape helps to boost the often unfairly maligned credibility of sexual assault complainants. However, in the rule's effectiveness lies the paradox. Because it boosts the credibility of complainants by showing that they did in fact complain, the rule has the unfortunate effect of perpetuating the very stereotype that it exists to disprove. In this way, the fresh complaint rule is a paradigmatic example of the feminist ýdouble bind.ý Mindful of the practical advantages of the rule for individual sexual assault complainants, this paper suggests a way out of the double bind by keeping the rule, but modifying both the rule and its rationale to alleviate its role in perpetuating stereotypes about sexual assault complainants. The paper acknowledges that at some point, the fresh complaint rule should be phased out of the rules of evidence, but warns against the harms of doing so prematurely. The compromise suggested in the paper, which was cited favorably by courts of last resort in Massachusetts and New Jersey, maintains the practical advantages of admitting the evidence yet alleviates some of the more troublesome theoretical problems.
CEO optimism and forced turnover

Abstract We show theoretically that optimism can lead a risk-averse Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to choose the first-best investment level that maximizes shareholder value. Optimism below (above) the interior optimum leads the CEO to underinvest (overinvest). Hence, if boards of directors act in the interests of shareholders, CEOs with relatively low or high optimism face a higher probability of forced turnover than moderately optimistic CEOs face. Using a large sample of turnovers, we find strong empirical support for this prediction. The results are consistent with the view that there is an interior optimum level of managerial optimism that maximizes firm value.
The Role of Speculation in Real Estate Cycles

This paper develops and simulates a model to examine whether land speculation is primarily a cause of, or a symptom of, property cycles. The model suggests that the volatility of prices—the biggest...
Identifying the Virtues of the Common Law

This article explores the claims that a nation’s reliance on common law processes produces better economic results. This position has seen considerable empirical support, but it remains underspecified. There is no single explanation for why the common law should be superior, and the article begins by considering the competing theories, which I call the bottomup efficiency theory, the interest group theory, the liberty theory, and the stability theory. Then I test each theory in crossnational regressions using intermediate variables such as contract-intensive money and corruption. These analyses demonstrate a statistically significant effect for the common law on two variables—legal corruption and legal predictability. Further analysis demonstrates, however, that some of this effect may be explained by differences in judicial independence. Common law systems are associated with a higher level of judicial independence, and this greater independence is associated with the benefits associated with common law....
Competitive Third-Party Regulation: How Private Certification Can Overcome Constraints That Frustrate Government Regulation

Private certification as a means of risk regulation and quality assurance can offer advantages over government regulation, including superior technical expertise, better inspection and monitoring of regulated entities, increased responsiveness to consumers, and greater efficiency. This Article examines two examples of reliable private certification in regulatory arenas — fire safety and kosher food — where political opposition and resource constraints have frustrated government regulatory efforts. The Article identifies key features of reliable private certification and analyzes its comparative institutional advantages over government regulation. Critics of private certification question its legitimacy, asserting that private regulation is less participatory, transparent, and accountable than government regulation. The Article responds to these claims, arguing that the two examples of private certification presented here compare favorably with government regulation based on these criteria of legitimacy.
The Role of Trust in Costly Network Formation

We consider game theoretic models of social network formation.In this paper we limit our investigation to game theoretic models of network formation that are based on individual actions only.Our approach is based on three simple and realistic principles: (1) Link formation is a binary process of consent.(2) Link formation is costly.(3) The class of network payo functions should be as general as possible.We provide characterizations of stable networks under the hypothesis of mutual consent in the cases of two-sided and one-sided link formation costs. Furthermore, we introduce a new equilibrium concept based on a limited, realistic form of farsightedness or "trust" in network formation.
The Right to Withdraw in Contract Law

European law gives consumers the right to withdraw from a range of contracts for goods and services; American law, with narrow exceptions, does not. Yet merchants in the United States frequently provide by contract that consumers have the right to return goods. We analyze the right to withdraw in a model that incorporates a trade-off between allowing consumers to learn about goods that they purchase and protecting sellers from the depreciation of those goods. The right to withdraw—at least, as a default rule—has a plausible economic basis. We identify a nascent version of it in the well-known, controversial case of ProCD v. Zeidenberg.
Search Personalization using Machine Learning

Firms typically use query-based search to help consumers find information/products on their websites. We consider the problem of optimally ranking a set of results shown in response to a query. We ...
Law and Religion in Colonial Connecticut

Montesquieu famously concluded in The Spirit of the Laws that each form of government has an animating principle — a set of “human passions that set it in motion” — and that each form can be corrupted if its animating principle is undermined. For the colony of Connecticut the animating principle was Puritan Congregationalism.Part I of my paper chronicles how central Puritan Congregationalism was in the organic law, statutory law, and common law of the so-called River Colony at which Connecticut was originally planted. Part II explores the law of the New Haven Colony, a separate community settled in 1638 that joined with the River Colony in 1665 to create a unified Connecticut Colony. Part III examines the law of the Connecticut Colony and endeavors to discern when Connecticut’s laws began to deviate from Puritan Congregationalism. Part IV concludes the paper by assessing the events that led to the official demise in the Connecticut Constitution of 1818 of Puritan Congregationalism as the animating principle of Connecticut.
Dissecting Policy Designs: An Application of the Institutional Grammar Tool

An enduring challenge for the policy and political sciences is valid and reliable depiction of policy designs. One emerging approach for dissecting policy designs is the application of Sue Crawford and Elinor Ostrom’s institutional grammar tool. The grammar tool offers a method to identify, systematically, the core elements that comprise policies, including target audiences, expected patterns of behavior, and formal modes of sanctioning for noncompliance. This article provides three contributions to the study of policy designs by developing and applying the institutional grammar tool. First, we provide revised guidelines for applying the institutional grammar tool to the study of policy design. Second, an additional component to the grammar, called the oBject, is introduced. Third, we apply the modified grammar tool to four policies that shape Colorado State Aquaculture to demonstrate its effectiveness and utility in illuminating institutional linkages across levels of analysis. The conclusion summarizes the contributions of the article as well as points to future research and applications of the institutional grammar tool.
Separation of Powers and the Criminal Law

Scholars have written volumes about the separation of powers, but they have focused on the administrative state and have wholly ignored the criminal state. Judges, too, have failed to distinguish criminal from administrative matters. So, the conventional wisdom has been that whatever theory works for the administrative state should work for anything else, including crime. And because most scholars and judges have supported a flexible or functional approach to separation of powers in the regulatory sphere, they have failed to see a problem with the functional approach when it comes to criminal matters. Indeed, the Supreme Court has been even more permissive of blending of powers in the criminal context than it has in cases involving non-penal laws. This Article shows why the existing functional approach to separation of powers in criminal matters cannot be squared with constitutional theory or sound institutional design. It explains that there are crucial differences between administrative and criminal matters when it comes to the separation of powers. Maintaining the separation of powers in criminal matters has strong roots in the Constitution's text and structure. Moreover, unlike the administrative law context, where agencies must adhere to the structural and procedural protections of the Administrative Procedure Act and their decisions are subject to judicial review and political oversight, the government faces almost no institutional checks when it proceeds criminally. The only safeguards come from the individual rights provisions of the Constitution, but those act as poor safeguards against structural abuses and inequities. The current arrangement therefore takes the worst possible approach to separation of powers in the criminal context. The protection provided by the separation of powers is weakened, but nothing takes its place. As a result, the potential for government abuse is, perversely, greater in criminal proceedings than in regulatory matters. This Article therefore advocates more stringent enforcement of the separation of powers in criminal cases, where it is most needed. This approach would lead to different outcomes in the Court's major separation of powers cases in criminal law and to a rethinking of its acceptance of plea-bargaining.
The Rhetoric of Motive and Intent

Introduction 1 I. Is There an “Evil Motive Tradition” in Criminal Law? 7 II. The Problem of Offense Definition and the Terminology of Intention 15 III. The Disutility of Punishing Motives 27 IV. The Doctrine of the Irrelevance of Motive 34 V. Criticisms of the Irrelevance of Motive Maxim.........45 A. Descriptive and Logical Objections 46 B. Normative Objections 50 C. The Expressive Argument for Punishing Motives 56 D. An Application to Hate Crimes 60 VI. Contemporary Applications of the Irrelevance of Motive Maxim 65 A. Constructing the Mental Elements of Offenses 65 B. Hate Crimes in the Courts 70 C. Confining Motive to Defenses or Sentencing ......79 Conclusion 94
New spaces of disruption? The failures of Bitcoin and the rhetorical power of algorithmic governance

Abstract In less than a decade Bitcoin and the technology of blockchain – a cryptographically-secured, algorithmically-regulated, distributed-ledger – emerged as the enfant terrible of the global economy. Ironically, as cryptocurrencies reached collective valuations of hundreds of billions of dollars the Bitcoin project failed in its original purpose as an alternative currency governed by code rather than trust. Not only has Bitcoin not become a popular means of global peer-to-peer transactions but the much vaulted purity of algorithmic governance is heavily entangled in social relations. This article reviews blockchain’s computer architectures, its connections to materiality and space and the complexity of its established practices. This analysis shows that rather than occupying an algorithmic place apart, blockchain contains multiple and conflicting agencies and is messily embedded in the code/space of materiality. Nevertheless the faith in the superiority of algorithmic governance has injected a powerful discourse in economies that has proven more important and disruptive than the actual practices of Bitcoin or blockchain.
Government investment and the stock market

Abstract High rates of government investment in public sector capital forecast high risk premiums both at the aggregate and firm-level. This result is in sharp contrast with the well-documented negative relationship between the private sector investment rate and risk premiums. To explain the empirical findings, we extend the neoclassical q-theory model of investment and specify public sector capital as an additional input in the firm's technology. We show that the model can quantitatively replicate the empirical facts with reasonable parameter values if public sector capital increases the marginal productivity of private inputs.
An Integrative Model to Explain the Ability to Commercialize Innovations: Linking Networks, Absorptive Capacity, Ambidexterity and Environmental Factors

The ability to commercialize innovations is central to firm survival and success and, despite research on parts of the process, it remains somewhat obscure. We explore the literature to build an integrative model of the antecedents, mediators, and moderators of commercialization. We identify intra- and inter-organizational networks and the resources they embody as key drivers of the ability to commercialize. Absorptive capacity and ambidexterity act as mediators on that relationship. Further, environmental turbulence, munificence, and complexity moderate the relationship between networks and absorptive capacity and ambidexterity. We generate propositions on these relationships for empirical testing and further theoretical insight.
Revolving Doors on Wall Street

Credit analysts often leave rating agencies to work at firms they rate. We use benchmark rating agencies as counterfactuals to measure rating inflation in a difference-in-differences framework and find that transitioning analysts award inflated ratings to their future employers before switching jobs. We find no evidence that analysts inflate ratings of other firms they rate. Market based measures of hiring firms' credit quality further indicate that transitioning analysts' inflated ratings become less informative. We conclude that conflicts of interest at the analyst level distort credit ratings. More broadly, our results shed light on the economic consequences of revolving doors.
Global warming and environmental production efficiency ranking of the Kyoto Protocol nations

This paper analyzes the United Nations Organization's Kyoto Protocol nations to address two questions. First, what are the environmental production efficiency rankings of these nations? Second, is there a relationship between a nation's ratification status and its environmental production efficiency ranking? Our findings suggest that the nations that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol are more likely to be environmentally production efficient as compared to the nations that have not ratified the Protocol.
Entrepreneurial Boldness and Excessive Investment

We analyze investment by a population of hyperbolic discounting entrepreneurs. In order to avoid inefficient procrastination, agents with good prospects about their chances of success may choose to forego free information and to invest boldly. This explains an excessive level of investment in the economy. Building on this observation, we show that low risk-free interest rates favor bold entrepreneurship and entry mistakes. Furthermore, public intervention can be socially desirable: Forcing agents to acquire information before deciding whether to invest may reduce competitive interest rates and may be beneficial for all individuals in the economy. And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. Hamlet, Act 3: Scene 1.