cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Auctions of Homogeneous Goods with Increasing Returns: Experimental Comparison of Alternative Dutch Auctions

Most business-to-business (B2B) auctions are used to transact large quantities of homogeneous goods, and therefore use multiunit mechanisms. In the B2B context, bidders often have increasing returns to scale, or synergies. We compare two commonly used auction formats for selling multiple homogeneous objects, both sometimes called "Dutch" auctions, in a set of value environments that include synergies and potentially subject bidders to the "exposure" and "free-riding" problems. We find that the descending-price auction, best known for its use in the Dutch flower auctions, is robust and performs well in a variety of environments, although there are some situations in which the ascending uniform-price auction similar to the one used by eBay better avoids the free-riding problem. We discuss the factors that influence each mechanism's performance in terms of the overall efficiency, the informational requirements, the seller's revenue, and the buyer's profit.
Toward a theory of prisoners' rights

This paper explores the issue of prisoners' rights. The conditions of incarcerated people in jails and prisons include psychological and physical deterioration brought on by their condition of confinement. The one sanction that has been debated extensively in the United States is the death penalty. Yet there are numerous losses or deprivations short of death that we might impose on legal offenders. In addition to broader issues such as the nature of rights and the basic moral rights possessed by individuals, issues specific to the rights of serious legal offenders are distinguished and discussed. The latter issues include whether offenders forfeit all or some of their moral rights, whether their retained rights are less stringent, whether the state has any obligation to facilitate exercise of their retained rights, and what specific rights prisoners retain or acquire.
Understanding the Rise of Twitter-based cyberbullying due to COVID-19 through comprehensive statistical evaluation

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a challenging situation for everyone, sparking digital evolution due to stay-at-home restrictions to stop the spread. This has led to an uprise of digital presence, which many hypothesize has lead to a rise of cybersecurity attacks, including cyberbullying. To evaluate the significance of COVID-19 on cyberbullying reports, we collected 454, 046 of publicly available tweets from Twitter by using MongoDB and Python libraries from January 1st, 2020–June 7th, 2020. We performed statistical analyses on the collected sample set to understand the situation from a quantitative perspective. We extracted tweets related to 27 unique keywords specific to cyberbullying, including online bullying, cyberbullying, Twitter bullying, and others. Due to the time-series’ count nature, we propose a Bayesian estimation of this count data trends utilizing an autoregressive Poisson model. A simple change-point model fails to explain the subtle changes adequately. On the other hand, our Bayesian method clearly shows the upward trend beginning in mid-March, which is reportedly the time from which the stay-at-home orders were widespread globally. The pattern remains similar if we focus on one or more such keywords instead of the total count. We also provide a fine-grained lag based analysis of our model and contrast our methods with an alternative semi-Bayesian AR-ARCH model. Overall, such analysis shows somewhat conclusive evidence of the rise around the same time as COVID.
The Hesitant Hai Gui: Return-Migration Preferences of U.S.-Educated Chinese Scientists and Engineers

Managers, research administrators, and policy makers need a greater understanding of the factors that drive employment preferences of foreign science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) doctoral graduates of U.S. universities. To address this need, the authors report the results of a large multischool conjoint survey of return-migration preferences among U.S. STEM doctoral students from China. The survey presents the respondents with potential job offers and yields individual-level estimates of each respondent's indirect utility of a job as a function of location, job status, and salary. The authors use a delayed follow-up choice task to demonstrate stability of the preference estimates both over time and across response modalities. The estimated preferences imply that Chinese doctoral graduates tend to remain in the United States because of a large salary disparity between the two countries rather than because of an inherent preference for locating in the United States. Given these estimated...
E-Service Brand Extensions: The Role Of Perceived Fit And Category Usage Level On Adoption

This research examines how differences in consumer traits of self-efficacy and need for service employee interaction impacts perceived fit between core service brand and its e-service extension and adoption by current and prospective customers. Category usage level moderates the impact of self-efficacy on perceived fit and adoption of e-services among current and potential customers. We use data from a store—based service provider that introduced online services. The results of multiple regression analysis show that users with high level of efficacy have higher perceptions of fit and are more likely to adopt e-services and category usage level moderates this effect more for current users than prospective users.
More Than Fit: Brand Extension Authenticity

Abstract This article introduces a new determinant of brand extension success, brand extension authenticity (BEA), as a complement to fit. The authors develop the BEA construct and a scale to measure it and then demonstrate that BEA captures consumer perceptions of brand extension legitimacy and cultural contiguity along four interrelated but distinct dimensions: maintaining brand standards and style, honoring brand heritage, preserving brand essence, and avoiding brand exploitation. They demonstrate the power of BEA in predicting consumer reactions to brand extensions, particularly among consumers with strong self–brand connections. Not only is BEA distinct from two conceptualizations of fit in brand extension literature—fit as similarity and fit as relevance—but it also moderates the effects of both fit dimensions on brand extension responses. By capturing a cultural and consumer relational perspective that shapes reactions to brand extensions, BEA provides an important, complementary construct for pred...
Home Country Tax System Characteristics and Corporate Tax Avoidance: International Evidence

ABSTRACT: We examine whether three tax system characteristics—required book-tax conformity, worldwide versus territorial approach, and perceived strength of enforcement—impact corporate tax avoidance across countries after controlling for firm-specific factors previously shown to be associated with tax avoidance (i.e., performance, size, operating costs, leverage, growth, the presence of multinational operations, and industry) and for other cross-country factors (i.e., statutory corporate tax rates, earnings volatility, and institutional factors). We find that, on average, firms avoid taxes less when required book-tax conformity is higher, a worldwide approach is used, and tax enforcement is perceived to be stronger. However, the relations between tax avoidance and all three tax systems characteristics are contextual and depend on the extent to which management compensation comes from variable pay, including bonuses, stock awards, and stock options. Data Availability: Data are available from sources ident...
Standard Oil as Lochner's Trojan Horse

This essay explains how one of the most maligned decisions in Constitutional Law, Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905) lives on in one of the Sherman Act’s most celebrated decisions: Standard Oil v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911). Standard Oil, it is shown, was simply an application of Lochnerian principles to antitrust policy. In particular, Standard Oil’s “Rule of Reason,” universally-embraced by modern jurists and scholars, functioned as a device for narrowing the Sherman Act to avoid abridging contracts and other conduct protected by the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. By banning only that conduct producing higher prices, reduced output or inferior quality, the Court left unscathed so-called “normal” or “ordinary” conduct necessary to “fructify” trade and create wealth, conduct beyond the scope of the “police power” as understood by Lochner and its progeny. In so doing, the Court simply reiterated the principles articulated by previous decisions, which had banned as “direct” those restraints that resulted in prices above the competitive level, leaving firms and individuals free to adopt “indirect” restraints sheltered by liberty of contract. Thus, Lochner lives on in Sherman Act case law, with no sign of mortality.The essay also explores how a Lochnerized Rule of Reason would address two current antitrust controversies: first, the appropriate definition of “consumer welfare,” and second, whether courts should condemn “normal” conduct when a balancing test reveals that the harms produced by such conduct outweigh its benefits. Implementation of Lochnerian principles would, it is shown, require courts to equate the “consumer welfare” relevant for antitrust doctrine with “total welfare” instead of the welfare of purchasers in the relevant market. After all, the “police power” invoked by Lochner and its progeny entailed the power to ban externalities and other market failures, while decisions such as Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1 (1915) rejected, as outside the police power, interference with liberty and property that simply redistributed wealth from one party to another. Lochnerian principles would also require antitrust courts to reject the sort of balancing that supposedly characterizes modern Rule of Reason analysis.
Tax Britannica: Nineteenth Century Tariffs and British National Income

The literature on British economic history presumes thatBritain was a free trader after the repeal of the Corn Lawsand that her tariff levels were thus below those which wereoptimal for maximizing utility. Presumably, if the optimalBritish tariffs had been positive and greater than the levelsestablished by mid-century, a reduction to zero of all tariffsthat remained would have lowered British welfare even further.In this paper, we use a simple computable general equilibriummodel to simulate a drop in all British tariffs to zero. Theresulting substantial net increase in British welfaresuggests that British tariffs were much higher than would beconsistent with an optimum tariff policy. More important, thesize of British losses from her high tariff levels suggeststhat British policy was not consistent with the stance of anideological free trader.
The impact of gun laws: A model of crime and self-defense

Abstract We develop a model of crime and self-defense that provides a rationale both for the right to bear arms and for regulating this right. It also suggests that a severe punishment for gun crime might best guarantee both the security and freedom of potential victims.
Art Sales as Cultural Intelligence: Analysis of the Auction Market for African Tribal Art

ABSTRACT The market value of tribal art has implications for the risk of looting in Africa. Consequent trafficking in tribal art compromises security on the continent by eroding cultural identity, fostering public-sector corruption, and providing a source of revenue for insurgents. This paper examines auction sales of African tribal art for the continent as a whole and by individual nations of origin. Graphical analysis of sales data from the past nine years identifies distinct market trends for temporal comparison with security in nations from which the artworks originate. The analysis suggests that collecting trends in “market nations” may reflect perceptions of security in “source nations.”
Demutualization and customer protection at self‐regulatory financial exchanges

In the past decade, many of the world's largest financial exchanges have demutualized, i.e., converted from mutual, not-for-profit organizations to publicly-traded, for-profit firms. In most cases, these exchanges have substantial responsibilities with respect to enforcing various “trade practice” regulations that protect investors from dishonest agents. We examine how the incentives to enforce such rules change as an exchange demutualizes. In contrast to oft-stated concerns, we find that, in many circumstances, an exchange that maximizes shareholder (rather than member) income has a greater incentive to aggressively enforce these types of regulations. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 31:126–164, 2011
NATURAL SELECTION AND MARKET EFFICIENCY IN A FUTURES MARKET WITH RANDOM SHOCKS

Even when participants know very little about their environment, the market itself, by serving as a selection process of information, promotes an efficient aggregate outcome. To emphasize the role of the market and the importance of natural selection rather than the strategic actions of participants, an evolutionary model of a commodity futures market is presented, in which there is a continual inflow of unsophisticated traders with predetermined distributions of prediction errors with respect to the fundamental value of the spot price. The market acts as a selection process by constantly shifting wealth from traders with less accurate information to those with more accurate information. Consequently, with probability 1, if the volatility of the underlying spot market is sufficiently small, the proportion of time that the futures price is sufficiently close to the fundamental value converges to one. Furthermore, the width of the interval containing the fundamental value, where the futures price eventually lies, increases as the volatility of the underlying spot market increases. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21:489–516, 2001
Hard Look Review, Policy Change, And Fox Television

In FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., the Supreme Court declared that when an agency alters preexisting policy in an adjudication, it does not necessarily need to make a case that its new policy is better than the old one. The Court acknowledged some exceptions to this proposition, but the overall effect was to relax prior understandings of the scope of judicial review of agency discretion. This short article examines the majority and dissenting opinions in Fox and concludes that the majority had the better of this argument. A relatively lenient judicial attitude toward changes in agency policy facilitates the ability of an incoming administration to alter policies with which it disagrees and also counteracts inherent tendencies toward inertia in the administrative process. This article does not defend all aspects of the Fox decision, nor does it offer any overall critique of hard look review of agency actions. It does, however, contend that stare decisis principles apply with less force to agencies than to courts.The article concludes with a brief response to commentators who argue that small variations in standards for judicial review of agency actions (e.g., Chevron versus Skidmore) have little impact on the outcomes of cases. The suggestion here is that these claims, even if correct, do not necessarily discredit studies like the present one, which are less concerned with the intensity of review than with the question of what issues an agency needs to address in reaching a decision.
Cartel overcharges: An empirical analysis

Abstract Using 406 overcharge estimates, the study analyzes the impact of cartel characteristics and the market environment on the magnitude of overcharges attained by cartels in different geographic markets and during six antitrust law regimes starting from the 18th century. The median overcharge achieved by cartels is 20 percent of selling price. As predicted by cartel theory, market structure is an important determinant of the overcharge level. Markets where cartels have high market shares tend to have higher overcharges. The number of cartel participants and the size inequality among them are inversely related to the overcharge level. International cartels impose higher overcharges than domestic cartels. Overcharges attained in the US and European markets tend to be lower than overcharges achieved in the Asian markets and the rest of the world. Results on the impact of changes in the antitrust law environment over time on the size of cartel overcharges are mixed. However, there is some evidence indicating that the lowest overcharges are associated with the latest antitrust law period.
Do option traders on value and growth stocks react differently to new information

This study compares the changes in implied volatilities of options on Nasdaq 100 and Russell 2000 value and growth portfolios, for the time period of 2004 and 2005. Following the methodologies in Stein (J Finance 44:1011–1024, 1989) and Heynen et al. (J Financ Quant Anal 29:31–56, 1994), we attempt to infer whether there are systematic differences in the degree of overreactions between value and growth options. The empirical evidence indicates that the reactions to information by investors in growth options, as proxied by options on Nasdaq 100 and Russell 2000 growth, are stronger than those of Russell 2000 value. Whether these reactions can be considered as overreacting, however, is not entirely conclusive. Nevertheless, the results imply that difference in investors’ behavior and styles is one potential explanation for the value stock effect.
The wages and employment of female day-labourers in English agriculture, 1740–1850

Using a new sample of farm accounts from 84 farms throughout England, this article provides measures of regional variation and changes over time in female wages and employment in agriculture. Female wages were not fixed, but changed over time and responded to high demand for female labour. The female-male wage ratio fell between 1750 and 1850, except in the industrial north west. In 1851 approximately 19 per cent of agricultural day-labourers were female. In the industrial north west, opportunities for factory employment reduced the supply of females to agriculture, but elsewhere the relative demand for female labour in agriculture declined.
Platform ecosystems: how developers invert the firm

For a period starting in 2015, Apple, Google, and Microsoft became the most valuable companies in the world. Each was marked by an external developer ecosystem. Anecdotally, at least, developers matter. Using a formal model of code spillovers, we show how a rising number of developers can invert the firm. That is, firms will choose to innovate using open external contracts in preference to closed vertical integration. The locus of value creation moves from inside the firm to outside. Distinct from physical goods, digital goods afford firms the chance to optimize spillovers. Further, firms that pursue high risk innovations with more developers can be more profitable than firms that pursue low risk innovations with fewer developers. More developers give platform firms more chances at success. Our contribution is to show why developers might cause a shift in organizational form and to provide a theory of how platform firms optimize their own intellectual property regimes in order to maximize growth. We use stylized facts from multiple platform firms to illustrate our theory and results.
Developing a Global Soil Regime

From the 1960s onwards, the global community became more aware of the phenomena of air and water pollution. More recently, the issues of climate change, loss of biodiversity, desertification, drought, and land degradation have become more prominent. While biodiversity loss and climate change have garnered close attention, issues of land degradation and sustainability of soils has attracted less focus in international fora and by national governments. We argue here that soil, as a vital biological and cultural resource, demands attention on the same level as biological diversity and climate change, and that this should be reflected in both international law and in legislation at national level. This article explores the elements that could form the basis of a global instrument for the conservation and sustainable use of soil, and sets out the premise for the community of nations to support the negotiation and drafting of such an instrument. It does so in light of the recent discussion on the introduction of a provision in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals on the achievement of zero net land degradation, the revision of the World Soil Charter as well as the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. It also briefly explores other complementary mechanisms that can be used for promoting the sustainable use of soils.
Research Dissemination and Impact: Evidence from Web Site Downloads

The Journal of Finance Web site disseminates research expediently to a broad audience. Papers were downloaded 284,170 times from November 1997 to November 1999. The average paper receives 85 downloads per month and is available 10 months before publication. Articles are downloaded more than shorter papers. Lead articles are downloaded more than other articles because they are of greater interest, and they receive an endorsement as the lead. Downloads are positively correlated with citations and may be a useful measure of research impact. Finally, placing forthcoming articles online does not adversely affect subscriptions and may increase the SSCI impact factor.
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC RIGHTS: A BRIEF GUIDE TO THE CONSTITUTION OF WORK AND LIVELIHOODS

Work and livelihoods; poverty and dependency; economic security and insecurity: for most of our history, their constitutional importance was self-evident. The framers of 1789 had no doubt that personal liberty and political equality demanded a measure of economic independence and material security. In the wake of industrialization and urbanization, generations of reformers declared that America needed a “new economic constitutional order” and a “second Bill of Rights,” securing the old promises of individual freedom, opportunity, and well-being via new government duties and new social and economic rights. Yet today, with the important exception of employment discrimination, work, livelihoods, and the material bases of membership in the community have vanished from the constitutional landscape. That is a scandal; for the U.S. is no different from other nations: constitutional democracy is impossible here, just as it is elsewhere, without some limits on social and economic deprivation. Nonetheless, “welfare rights,” as most Americans understand them, have been tried and rejected; “redistribution” is more likely to seem constitutionally suspect than constitutionally commanded. Using history and contemporary experience, this short essay tries to answer that question how, if at all, should the Constitution be interpreted to safeguard social rights or a social minimum in the twenty-first century?
Overconfidence and Speculative Bubbles

Motivated by the behavior of asset prices, trading volume, and price volatility during episodes of asset price bubbles, we present a continuous‐time equilibrium model in which overconfidence generates disagreements among agents regarding asset fundamentals. With short‐sale constraints, an asset buyer acquires an option to sell the asset to other agents when those agents have more optimistic beliefs. As in a paper by Harrison and Kreps, agents pay prices that exceed their own valuation of future dividends because they believe that in the future they will find a buyer willing to pay even more. This causes a significant bubble component in asset prices even when small differences of beliefs are sufficient to generate a trade. In equilibrium, bubbles are accompanied by large trading volume and high price volatility. Our analysis shows that while Tobin’s tax can substantially reduce speculative trading when transaction costs are small, it has only a limited impact on the size of the bubble or on price volatility.
The core and hedonic core: reply to Wooders (2001), with counterexamples

Abstract In response to Wooders [Journal of Mathematical Economics 36 (2001) 295], I review the contributions of Engl and Scotchmer regarding the hedonic core and monotonicity [Journal of Mathematical Economics 26 (1996) 209], show how our contributions diverge from those previously in the literature, and highlight the importance of our assumptions by giving counterexamples, particularly to related results of Wooders.
Product Market Competition, Returns to Skill, and Wage Inequality

This article examines the effect of product market competition on firms’ willingness to pay for workers of different skills. Using a panel of UK workers and two different quasi‐natural experiments, I show that returns to skill within an industry increase with competition. I also investigate the mechanisms behind this relationship: in addition to the indirect effects that operate through union bargaining and skill‐biased technical change, there is evidence for a direct effect of competition beyond those channels. I provide an explanation for this finding based on the relationship between competition and the sensitivity of profits to cost reductions.
Three Grotian Theories of Humanitarian Intervention

This Article explores three theories of humanitarian intervention that appear in, or are inspired by, the writings of Hugo Grotius. One theory asserts that natural law authorizes all states to punish violations of the law of nations, irrespective of where or against whom the violations occur, to preserve the integrity of international law. A second theory, which also appears in Grotius’s writings, proposes that states may intervene as temporary legal guardians for peoples who have suffered intolerable cruelties at the hands of their own state. Each of these theories has fallen out of fashion today based on skepticism about their natural law underpinnings and concerns about how they have facilitated Western colonialism. As an alternative, this Article outlines a third theory that builds upon Grotius’s account of humanitarian intervention as a fiduciary relationship, while updating Grotius’s account for the twenty-first century. According to this new fiduciary theory, when states intervene to protect human rights abroad they exercise an oppressed people’s right of self-defense on their behalf and may use force solely for the people’s benefit. As fiduciaries, intervening states bear obligations to consult with and honor the preferences of the people they seek to protect, and they must respect international human rights governing the use of force within the affected state. By clarifying the respective responsibilities of the Security Council and individual states for humanitarian intervention, the fiduciary theory also lends greater coherency to the international community’s “responsibility to protect” human rights.
In the Eye of the Beholder: Gaze and Actions in First Person Video.

We address the task of jointly determining what a person is doing and where they are looking based on the analysis of video captured by a headworn camera. To facilitate our research, we first introduce the EGTEA Gaze+ dataset. Our dataset comes with videos, gaze tracking data, hand masks and action annotations, thereby providing the most comprehensive benchmark for First Person Vision (FPV). Moving beyond the dataset, we propose a novel deep model for joint gaze estimation and action recognition in FPV. Our method describes the participant's gaze as a probabilistic variable and models its distribution using stochastic units in a deep network. We further sample from these stochastic units, generating an attention map to guide the aggregation of visual features for action recognition. Our method is evaluated on our EGTEA Gaze+ dataset and achieves a performance level that exceeds the state-of-the-art by a significant margin. More importantly, we demonstrate that our model can be applied to larger scale FPV dataset---EPIC-Kitchens even without using gaze, offering new state-of-the-art results on FPV action recognition.
Collaborative Public Space in a National Innovation System: A Case Study of the Israeli Military's Impact on the Software Industry

Both systems of innovation and cluster theories emphasize the importance of institutions that facilitate learning and information diffusion as well as community building for the continuous success of industrial systems. Nevertheless, they fail to combine their insights into a general system‐level understanding. In order to fill this gap the concept of collaborative public space (CPS) is defined. It is then used to analyze the Israeli military's role within the Israeli IT industry, employing the case study method to analyze a specific section of the military—MAMRAM—the main programming, software engineering, and computer users training unit. The paper's main findings are that, contrary to the commonly argued view, which sees the military mainly as a supplier of factors of production such as high skilled labor, or technological spin‐offs, the military has been playing a critical role in the continuing success of the high‐tech industry by providing it with a CPS. The military acts as an important center of i...
Intergovernmental (Dis)incentives, Free-Riding, Teacher Salaries and Teacher Pensions

In this paper, I document evidence that intergovernmental incentives inherent in public sector defined benefit pension systems distort the amount and timing of income for public school teachers. This intergovernmental incentive stems from the fact that, in many states, local school districts are responsible for setting the compensation that determines the size of pensions, but are not required to make contributions to cover the resulting pension fund liabilities. I use the introduction of a policy that required experience-rating on compensation increases above a certain limit in a differences-in-differences framework to identify whether districts are willing to pay the full costs of their compensation promises. In response to the policy, the size and distribution of compensation changed significantly. On average, public school employees received lower wages largely through the removal of retirement bonuses. However, the design of the policy led some districts to increase compensation, rendering the policy less effective that it might have otherwise been.
Insider trading in takeover targets

Abstract We examine open market stock trades by registered insiders in about 3700 targets of takeovers announced during 1988–2006 and in a control sample of non-targets, both during an ‘informed’ and a control period. Using difference-in-differences regressions of several insider trading measures, we find no evidence that insiders increase their purchases before takeover announcements; instead, they decrease them. But while insiders reduce their purchases below normal levels, they reduce their sales even more, thus increasing their net purchases. This ‘passive’ insider trading holds for each of the five insider groups we examine, for all three measures of net purchases, and is more pronounced in certain sub-samples with less uncertainty about takeover completion, such as friendly deals, and deals with a single bidder, domestic acquirer, or less regulated target. The magnitude of the increase in the dollar value of net purchases is quite substantial, about 50% relative to their usual levels, for targets' officers and directors in the six-month pre-announcement period. Our finding of widespread profitable passive trading by target insiders during takeover negotiations points to the limits of insider trading regulation. Finally, our finding that registered insiders of target firms largely refrain from profitable active trading before takeover announcements contrasts with prior findings that insiders engage in such trading before announcements of other important corporate events, and points to the effectiveness of private over public enforcement of insider trading regulations.
Algebraic conditions for generating accurate adjacency arrays

Data processing systems impose multiple views on data as it is processed by the system. These views include spreadsheets, databases, matrices, and graphs. Associative arrays unify and simplify these different approaches into a common twodimensional view of data. Graph construction, a fundamental operation in the data processing pipeline, is typically done by multiplying the incidence array representations of a graph, Ein and Eout, to produce an adjacency matrix of the graph that can be processed with a variety of machine learning clustering techniques. This work focuses on establishing the mathematical criteria to ensure that the matrix product E out Ein is the adjacency array of the graph. It will then be shown that these criteria are also necessary and sufficient for the remaining nonzero product of incidence arrays, E in Eout to be the adjacency matrices of the reversed graph. Algebraic structures that comply with the criteria will be identified and discussed.
What do Snowmobiles, Mercury Emissions, Greenhouse Gases and Runoff Have in Common?: The Controversy over “Junk Science"

Professor Linda A. Malone explores the issues of political influence in science in this article. Scientists are not immune to pressure due to funding demands and celebrity status. Specific examples of scientists falling to the pressure can be shown by standards for mercury emissions, standards for greenhouse gases, and snowmobile use in Yellowstone.
The “Biometric Revolution”: An Erosion of the Fifth Amendment Privilege to Be Free from Self-Incrimination

When Apple announced that its latest version of the iPhone would utilize a fingerprint scan instead of a passcode to unlock the phone, the media, consumers, and competitors went crazy. Of course, a fingerprint reader on your iPhone certainly seems exciting, simpler, and safer. But, does the fact that this removes the need to memorize and enter a passcode to access the phone have any legal implications? Consider the following hypothetical: A person is arrested. Officers locate the suspect’s smartphone on or near him and want to search the phone for text messages and emails relating to the illegal activity he was arrested for. However, the suspect owns a smartphone that utilizes a fingerprint reader to access the phone, and the phone is locked unless the suspect unlocks the phone with his fingerprint. The officers either force the suspect to place his finger on the phone to unlock it, or they obtain a subpoena ordering the suspect to unlock the phone. On the phone, officers find incriminating text messages and emails that are used against the suspect at trial. Would this “compelled authentication” violate the suspect’s Fifth Amendment privilege to be free from self-incrimination? Biometric authentication provides a user access based on an analysis of physical characteristics; arguably, it is the future of identification and security. Biometric authentication is popping up everywhere; airports, amusement parks, and even school districts are jumping on board. Surprisingly however, there has been little conversation regarding biometric authentication’s implication on the Fifth Amendment. This article analyzes whether biometric authentication implicates the Fifth Amendment privilege to be free from self-incrimination. First, Part II reviews the history of the Fifth Amendment privilege, including the “Foregone Conclusion Doctrine,” and discusses the interplay between the “Search Incident to Arrest Doctrine,” and the Fifth Amendment. Next, Part III provides an overview of encryption and the current circuit split regarding whether the Fifth Amendment prohibits compelled production of passwords and encrypted data. Part IV then presents an overview of biometric authentication and discusses how the “Biometric Revolution” impacts our everyday lives. Finally, Part V analyzes biometric authentication’s impact on the Fifth Amendment, suggesting that biometric authentication will not implicate the privilege to be free from self-incrimination, and discusses the consequences that this might have on constitutional rights.
Emergent Exoplanet Flux: Review of the Spitzer Results

Observations using the Spitzer Space Telescope provided the first detections of photons from extrasolar planets. Spitzer observations are allowing us to infer the temperature structure, composition, and dynamics of exoplanet atmospheres. The Spitzer studies extend from many hot Jupiters, to the hot Neptune orbiting GJ436. Here I review the current status of Spitzer secondary eclipse observations, and summarize the results from the viewpoint of what is robust, what needs more work, and what the observations are telling us about the physical nature of exoplanet atmospheres.
Multilateral Reforms of Trade and Environmental Policy

The paper analyzes environmental tax policy reform using a competitive model of world trade that includes production-generated environmental damage (pollution) and trade tariffs. The authors examine the feasibility of Pareto-improving multilateral reforms of environmental taxes, and show that any environmental tax reform that is mutually welfare-improving when compensating lump-sum transfers are assumed is also welfare-improving when a suitable tariff reform (but no transfers) is combined with the tax changes. Several specific reform proposals are developed. These results expand the feasible set of mutually improving policy proposals for international policy initiatives.
Winters in the East: Tribal Reserved Rights to Water in Riparian States

In the eastern United States, the riparian system of state water rights developed on the predicate of sufficient water to go around. Whatever the truth of that predicate in the past, an adequate supply of water fo all uses may not be more myth than reality. In their attempts to address the issue of riparian water rights in an era of limited water, however, eastern states have so far ignored one of the most important issues in fashioning an integrated system of water allocation: the rights of the Indian tribes to water as a matter of federal law. This article begins by dissecting the existing law of the Winters doctrine - of Indian tribal rights to water - into fundamental principles that transcend the specifics of the state law system with which tribal rights must be coordinated, and implementing principles that are necessary to assure a workable water allocation system involving both federal and state-law water rights. The article concludes that the fundamental principles of reserved water rights - sufficient water to fulfill the purposes for which lands are set aside for Indian tribes - are as viable in the eastern United States as in the western. The implementing principles that have developed in western prior appropriation jurisdictions, however - quantification and priority dates - may be less useful in the east. The differences between the state-law systems of riparian rights and prior appropriation may require different approaches to the implementation of Indian tribal water rights into an integrated workable whole. Some possible approaches to implementation in eastern states are discussed.
India's Inflation Process Before and after Flexible Inflation Targeting

We study the inflation process in India, focusing on the periods before and after the adoption of flexible inflation-forecast targeting (FIT) in India. Our analysis uses several approaches including standard Phillips curve estimation for headline and core inflation, an examination of the sensitivity of medium-term inflation expectations to inflation surprises, and the properties of convergence between headline and core inflation. Results indicate an important role for domestic factors in driving the inflation process, and there is evidence that expectations have become more anchored since 2015. This result could be attributable to FIT adoption, or to persistently low food prices which dominate the post-FIT-adoption period. The policy implications of these structural changes in the inflation process are investigated using a semi-structural model calibrated to the Indian economy.
Market Timing, Investment, and Risk Management

The 2008 financial crisis exemplifies significant uncertainties in corporate financing conditions. We develop a unified dynamic q-theoretic framework where firms have both a precautionary-savings motive and a market-timing motive for external financing and payout decisions, induced by stochastic financing conditions. The model predicts (1) cuts in investment and payouts in bad times and equity issues in good times even without immediate financing needs; (2) a positive correlation between equity issuance and stock repurchase waves. We show quantitatively that real effects of financing shocks may be substantially smoothed out as a result of firms’ adjustments in anticipation of future financial crises.
Neutral freedom and freedom as control

I present a model of freedom as control. Control is measured by the preferences of a decision-maker, or judge, who values flexibility and is neutral towards outcomes ex ante. Formally, I explore the consequences of adding a neutrality axiom to the Dekel et al. (Econometrica 69(4):891–934, 2001) axioms for preference for flexibility. I characterize the consensus of all neutral judges about which choice situations embody more freedom. The theory extends the freedom ranking literature to situations where agents have imperfect control, as modeled by choices among lotteries. In a voting context, the consensus of neutral judges coincides with Banzhaf power.
Inside the Black Box: Comment on Diamond and Vidmar

It is an honor to be invited to comment on the first publication of the Arizona Jury Project, a study of Arizona juries that includes videotaping and analysis of jury room discussions and deliberations. It is a remarkable and unique project, made possible by an unusual confluence of people, places, and events. In an insightful opinion some years ago, United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis observed that "[i]t is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." The state of Arizona has taken just such a bold path in experimenting with its jury system. Guided by the leadership of its judiciary and enabled by the openness of its legal practitioners, Arizona has been at the fore-front of jury reform. An Arizona Supreme Court committee headed by Judge B. Michael Dann published an influential report in 1994, Jurors: The Power of 12, proposing a host of changes to the state's jury system. Most of these recommended changes were adopted. What is more, the judiciary and state bar have welcomed social scientific research on how these changes affect the jury system, providing the country with a living laboratory for jury reform. The scientific merit of the Arizona Jury Project was enhanced by the readiness of two of the nation's top sociolegal scholars, Professors Shari Seidman Diamond and Neil Vidmar, to serve as research directors. These two scholars have long inspired me with their zest for social science study of the law. This enthusiasm, coupled with the high quality of their research and writing, has led to many impressive research contributions. The Arizona Jury Project promises to be another major achievement for both of these scholars and a significant milestone in the study of the American jury. Many benefits are sure to come from looking inside the black box of jury decisionmaking. By examining what goes on in the jury room in a systematic way, Diamond and Vidmar will help us to assess whether current theories and empirical conclusions about juror and jury decisionmaking, based on indirect research methods, apply to actual jury decisions. They can help us determine whether legal rules, such as the evidence rules they examine in their paper in this symposium, adequately guide the jury process. They can assess how jury reform works in Arizona and thus provide significant information to policymakers contemplating change. In this article, I will explore the potential contributions of the Arizona Jury Project. After a discussion of the project's design and the unique methodological challenges faced by the researchers, I will assess their observations about how jurors deal with the forbidden topic of insurance. I will then consider their suggested reform, and the collaborative instructional approach they advocate.
Solar limb brightening in submillimeter wavelengths.

Differential two-beam scans of the Sun in submillimeter wavelengths (350 $mu$-1 millimeter), made with the UCSD-University of Minnesota 1.5 m telescope at Mount Lemmon, indicate limb brightening approaching 1 percent at $mu$=0.6. The observations also show considerable chromospheric structure, both in active and quiet regions, but with less relative amplitude than at millimeter and centimeter wavelengths. The limited angular resolution of our system (about 2' FWHM), together with photometric errors due to fluctuating atmospheric transparency, make the brightness profile of the extreme limb uncertain. The observed degree of limb brightening is considerably less than that consistent with spherically symmetric model atmospheres based on continuum brightness-temperature measurements. The suppression of limb brightening suggests the existence of irregular granular structure with both horizontal and vertical characteristic sizes of order 1500 km. High-resolution images in the wings of the K-line show granular structure of about this horizontal scale. (AIP)
Endogenous Obfuscation in Injury Investigations

Eligibility for public benefits may require an injury investigation. The thoroughness of the investigation is a policy decision of the government. An investigative authority chooses the optimal effort to infer from a noisy signal (business plan) the quality of management and market conditions when a firm petitions for benefits. Under plausible conditions, firms will underperform to raise the probability of an affirmative verdict, and the authority will expend low investigative effort. Good and bad managers will obtain relief under adverse market conditions. This is preferred by good managers, as they do not have to separate by sending a costly signal.
Self‐interest, Social Beliefs, and Attitudes to Redistribution. Re‐addressing the Issue of Cross‐national Variation

Stefan Svallfors' 1997 conclusion that patterns of attitudes towards redistribution are essentially the same across welfare-state regimes rests on a questionable treatment of missing data and on. poor operationalization of the theoretical determinants of public opinion. Using demographic variables to improve the model specification, we identify cross-country differences in the social bases of support for redistribution that confirm predictions of welfare-state scholarship. The gap between married and unmarried people is unimportant in universalist regimes; the insider/outsider cleavage is more important in conservative and specific skills systems; class matters more in liberal regimes. We find additional cross-national variation when we examine whether popular support for redistribution is related to beliefs about social mobility. Specifically, beliefs about why people get ahead in society are key determinants of attitudes towards redistribution in the United States and Australia, but play a more limited role in Norway and Germany