cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Exploring Voter Alignments in Africa: Core and Swing Voters in Ghana

This article describes and analyses voter alignments in the new democracy of Ghana in two recent elections, 1996 and 2000. These elections are a part of the Fourth Republic that began with a ‘ founding ’ election in 1992, ushering Ghana into Africa’s new wave of democratisation. First the size of the core voting population is established to be about 82 % of the voting population, refuting the assumption that voting volatility in new and transitional democracies is always extremely high. A second conclusion is that core and swing voters cannot be distinguished by structural factors, whereas thirdly, the factors behind the party alignment of core voters are similar to Western patterns ; primarily level of education, the rural-urban divide, income, and occupation. Finally, swing voters seem to be characterised by a conscious evaluation of government and candidate performance in a sign of relatively ‘ mature ’ democratic voting behaviour.
Understanding the Mechanisms of Economic Development

In this paper, I advocate the investigation, testing, and modification of mechanisms as a progressive empirical research strategy for the field of economic development (and other areas of applied economics). I discuss three lines of work that have elucidated mechanisms that are relevant for development: 1) connections between saving and growth; 2) the determinants of commodity prices, which are a key source of income for many developing countries; and 3) some unexpected puzzles that arise in considering the linkages between income and food consumption. In each case, my discussion illustrates the positivist approach to the hypotheticodeductive method. In this approach, mechanisms are proposed, key predictions derived and tested, and if falsified, the mechanisms are rejected or modified. If the predictions of a mechanism are confirmed, if they are sufficiently specific, and if they are hard to explain in other ways, we attach additional credence to the mechanism, albeit provisionally since later evidence may undermine it. Sometimes the falsifications can be repaired by changing supplementary assumptions, and sometimes they involve long steps backwards where the model is abandoned; and often there is disagreement about which is the correct response. But the end result is an accumulation of useful knowledge and understanding.
Defensive Force Against Non-State Actors: The State of Play

Law and justice/Legislation; Law and justice/International law; Terrorism and threats/Agricultural terrorism
Heterogeneity and Common Pool Resources: Collective Management of Forests in Himachal Pradesh, India

This paper explores the role of group heterogeneity in collective action among forest communities in northwestern Himalayas. Based on data from 54 forest communities in Himachal Pradesh, India, this paper finds that heterogeneity has at least three dimensions: wealth, social identity and interest in the resource, and each may significantly affect collective actions related to natural resource management. However, their effects are far from simple and linear. The empirical results suggest that cooperation need not depend on caste parochialism, that very high levels of wealth heterogeneity can reduce cooperation, and that there can be a divergence between ability and incentive to cooperate which reduces the level of cooperation in the community.
User involvement in system design: An empirical test of alternative approaches

Abstract User involvement in the development of information systems is often assumed to be key to successful implementation. However, few empirical studies have clearly demonstrated a relationship between user involvement and two key indicators of system success: system usage and user information satisfaction. The authors test the general hypothesis that user involvement is a more complex concept than previous research would indicate; there are different types of involvement and different stages in the system development life cycle in which users may become involved. In a study of 83 users in 23 companies, they found that only the activity of user sign-offs on project phases had a significant correlation with both user information satisfaction and satisfaction with the information systems group. The authors conclude that there is a complex relationship between the type and degree of user involvement and other organizational and individual factors; this relationship affects both user satisfaction with and usage of the resulting systems. Some suggestions for further research taking this complexity into account are given.
What Development Regulatory Variables Say-or Don't Say-About A Municipality

Little is known about how regulatory development variables reflect and define a community. This paper explores the correlation of development regulatory variables with broader community measures in 68 municipalities in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. Coefficients of determination, correlation coefficients, principal component analysis, and factor analysis were used to compare development regulatory data with broader municipal measures. The hypothesis tested is overarching: that a municipality's development regulations and processes correlate to general measures of community composition. The strongest and only significant correlations found were in the municipal use of tax increment financing and commercial/industrial property values, non-residential construction activity, population, and multi-family building permit activity.
Subgroups of $SL_2(\mathbb{Z})$ characterized by certain continued fraction representations

For positive integers $u$ and $v$, let $L_u=\begin{bmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ u & 1 \end{bmatrix}$ and $R_v=\begin{bmatrix} 1 & v \\ 0 & 1 \end{bmatrix}$. Let $S_{u,v}$ be the monoid generated by $L_u$ and $R_v$, and $G_{u,v}$ be the group generated by $L_u$ and $R_v$. In this paper we expand on a characterization of matrices $M=\begin{bmatrix}a & b \\c & d\end{bmatrix}$ in $S_{k,k}$ and $G_{k,k}$ when $k\geq 2$ given by Esbelin and Gutan to $S_{u,v}$ when $u,v\geq 2$ and $G_{u,v}$ when $u,v\geq 3$. We give a simple algorithmic way of determining if $M$ is in $G_{u,v}$ using a recursive function and the short continued fraction representation of $b/d$.
Microbial community shifts reflect losses of native soil carbon with pyrogenic and fresh organic matter additions and are greatest in low-carbon soils

Soil organic carbon (SOC) plays an important role in regulating global climate change, carbon and nutrient cycling in soils, and soil moisture. Organic matter (OM) additions to soils can affect the rate at which SOC is mineralized by microbes, with potentially important effects on SOC stocks. Understanding how pyrogenic organic matter (PyOM) affects the cycling of native SOC (nSOC) and the soil microbes responsible for these effects is important for fire-affected ecosystems as well as for biochar-amended systems. We used an incubation trial with five different soils from National Ecological Observatory Network sites across the US and 13C-labelled 350°C corn stover PyOM and fresh corn stover OM to trace nSOC-derived CO2 emissions with and without PyOM and OM amendments. We used high-throughput sequencing of rRNA genes to characterize bacterial, archaeal, and fungal communities and their response to PyOM and OM in soils that were previously stored at -80°C. We found that the effects of amendments on nSOC-derived CO2 reflected the unamended soil C status, where relative increases in C mineralization were greatest in low-C soils. OM additions produced much greater effects on nSOC-CO2 emissions than PyOM additions. Furthermore, the magnitude of microbial community composition change mirrored the magnitude of increases in nSOC-CO2, indicating a specific subset of microbes were likely responsible for the observed changes in nSOC mineralization. However, PyOM responders differed across soils and did not necessarily reflect a common "charosphere". Overall, this study suggests that soils that already have low SOC may be particularly vulnerable to short-term increases in SOC loss with OM or PyOM additions.Importance Soil organic matter (SOM) has an important role in global climate change, carbon and nutrient cycling in soils, and soil moisture dynamics. Understanding the processes that affect SOM stocks is important for managing these functions. Recently, understanding how fire-affected organic matter (or "pyrogenic" organic matter (PyOM)) affects existing SOM stocks has become increasingly important, both due to changing fire regimes, and to interest in "biochar" - pyrogenic organic matter that is produced intentionally for carbon management or as an agricultural soil amendment. We found that soils with less SOM were more prone to increased losses with PyOM (and fresh organic matter) additions, and that soil microbial communities changed more in soils that also had greater SOM losses with PyOM additions. This suggests that soils that already have low SOM content may be particularly vulnerable to short-term increases in SOM loss, and that a subset of the soil microbial community is likely responsible for these effects.
The readability of company responses to SEC comment letters and SEC 10-K filing review outcomes

An emerging literature shows that shareholders benefit from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) filing reviews in terms of improved disclosures and reduced information asymmetry. However, these reviews also impose significant costs on companies because comment letter remediation diverts time and resources away from normal operations and may result in restated or amended filings. Applying processing fluency theory, we examine whether the readability of the company’s initial response to an SEC comment letter is associated with the likelihood of unfavorable outcomes from the review. We find that less readable company responses are associated with longer SEC response times and a greater likelihood that the company restates or amends a reviewed filing. Because the company response is preceded by a specific request for information from the SEC (i.e., a prompt), our setting allows for an improved ability to disentangle the effects of disclosure readability from the effects of disclosure content.
Bargaining and News

We study a bargaining model in which a buyer makes frequent offers to a privately informed seller, while gradually learning about the seller's type from "news." We show that the buyer's ability to leverage this information to extract more surplus from the seller is remarkably limited. In fact, the buyer gains nothing from the ability to negotiate a better price despite the fact that a negotiation must take place in equilibrium. During the negotiation, the buyer engages in a form of costly "experimentation" by making offers that are sure to earn her negative payoffs if accepted, but speed up learning and improve her continuation payoff if rejected. We investigate the effects of market power by comparing our results to a setting with competitive buyers. Both efficiency and the seller's payoff can decrease by introducing competition among buyers.
FROM MINOR TO MAJOR PLAYER: THE GEOGRAPHY OF FHA LENDING DURING THE U.S. MORTGAGE CRISIS

ABSTRACT:At various points in its history, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has had particularly large impacts on mortgage and housing markets in the United States. During the early to middle 2000s, FHA lending dwindled to historically low shares of the mortgage market as subprime lending boomed, with some questioning the need for the agency’s continued existence. After the subprime crisis in 2007 and pullbacks by conventional lenders, however, the FHA played one of its historic roles—the mortgage lender of last resort—and its lending surged, reaching approximately 40% of home purchase lending by the end of 2008, a level not seen since World War II. This article examines the differences in FHA activity across and, especially, within U.S. metropolitan areas in late 2008, a peak period of the crisis. The focus is on loans with moderate loan-to-value ratios, among which FHA status varies the most. Factors that affect the likelihood of such loans being FHA-insured include credit score, regional housin...
Pick Your Poison: The Choices and Consequences of Policy Responses to Crises

Countries choose different strategies when responding to crises. An important challenge in assessing the impact of these policies is selection bias with respect to relatively time-invariant country characteristics, as well as time-varying values of outcome variables and other policy choices. This paper addresses this challenge by using propensity-score matching to estimate how major reserve sales, large currency depreciations, substantial changes in policy interest rates, and increased controls on capital outflows affect real GDP growth, unemployment, and inflation during two periods marked by crises, 1997–2001 and 2007–11. We find that none of these policies yield significant improvements in growth, unemployment, and inflation. Instead, a large increase in interest rates and new capital controls are estimated to cause a significant decline in GDP growth. Sharp currency depreciations may raise GDP growth over time, but only with a lagged effect and after an initial contraction.
Dynamic Consistency and Regret

Abstract Individuals often report that they regret not having saved more for retirement. This fact raises concerns about the financial security of retirees and about the adequacy of traditional economic models in making predictions that are consistent with regret about having saved too little for retirement. We provide an overview of four discounted utility models and examine their implications for the optimal level of retirement savings. All of these models exhibit dynamically consistent decision making, and some also feature backward discounting in order to generate regret about past saving decisions. In our preferred parameterization with both forward and backward discounting, a 66 year old at retirement will consider the optimal level of retirement savings to be almost twice as large as what was actually saved, even though actual saving decisions are dynamically consistent across the entire life-cycle. Compared to a model setting with fixed retirement, adding choice over retirement timing compounds the regret that individuals experience about past saving decisions.
PREDATORY PRICING AND RECOUPMENT

Predatory pricing is a two-step strategy for securing monopoly profits. During the first step -- the predation stage -- a firm charges a price below its costs in the hope of driving its competitors out of the market by forcing them to sell at a loss as well. If it succeeds, the firm can proceed to the second step -- the recoupment stage. After it has the market to itself, the now-dominant firm charges a monopoly price in an effort to recoup the losses it sustained in the predation stage and to earn a steady stream of monopoly profits into the future.Predatory pricing violates section 2 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits the use of anticompetitive conduct to acquire or maintain monopoly power. Predatory pricing is one form of anticompetitive conduct. Many judges and scholars, however, believe that predatory pricing does not occur because the two-step strategy combines significant up-front costs with a low probability of success. This skepticism has led courts to impose a recoupment element for section 2 predatory pricing claims. The recoupment element requires an antitrust plaintiff bringing a predatory pricing claim to prove that the defendant will be able to acquire monopoly power and to charge a monopoly price for long enough to make the whole scheme profitable. Antitrust liability becomes a function of the defendant's profitability.This Article discusses the evolution of and rationale for the recoupment requirement. It shows how recoupment analysis by courts is often flawed, largely because judges incorrectly assume that market entry, which can prevent recoupment, is easy. This Article then illustrates the many ways in which recoupment can occur, including recoupment in other markets and recoupment through cartel or oligopoly pricing. Despite these various modes of recoupment, federal courts have sometimes structured the recoupment requirement in a way that is literally impossible to satisfy. This Article advocates more fine-tuned recoupment analysis.After exploring the judicial misapplication of the recoupment requirement, this Article challenges the underlying premises of the element by showing how predatory pricing can hurt consumers and competition even if a firm engaged in predatory pricing is unable to eventually recoup its losses. Ultimately, the recoupment requirement does not distinguish between anticompetitive and benign (or beneficial) conduct. This Article concludes by explaining how eliminating the recoupment requirement in predatory pricing litigation would better serve the purposes of antitrust law.
Risk and CEO turnover

Abstract This paper investigates how performance risk impacts a board's ability to learn about the unknown talent of a chief executive officer (CEO). We theorize that the information content of performance is increasing in idiosyncratic risk and decreasing in systematic risk. We provide robust empirical evidence that the likelihood of CEO turnover is increasing in idiosyncratic risk and decreasing in systematic risk and that turnover-performance-sensitivity is also increasing in idiosyncratic risk and decreasing in systematic risk. We further investigate relations between the threat of termination and CEO compensation, showing that for retained CEOs, both subsequent pay-performance-sensitivity and pay levels decrease in the probability of turnover.
Heightening Tension in Relations between Trade Unions and the Labour Government in 2002

During 2002 tension between trade unions and the Labour government reached a level not seen before in their relationship. This review examines the source of the tension and its manifestations. It shows that during the year a range of issues emerged that divided the government and unions. New Labour ‘modernizers’ cited these differences as reasons to further distance the Party from trade unions. The article argues that relations between trade unionism and the government are at low ebb, and that the extent of disagreement between the two is now more pronounced than at any other time since 1997.
Tax Expenditure Salience

We investigate taxpayer perceptions of two tax expenditures: the charitable deduction (CD) and the home mortgage interest deduction (HMID). Our survey evidence suggests widespread misperceptions regarding both programs' incentives. Almost half of eligible taxpayers are unaware of the CD's availability. Regarding the HMID, taxpayers err in both directions: many eligible taxpayers falsely believe themselves to be ineligible while even more ineligible taxpayers falsely believe themselves to be eligible. Eligible taxpayers tend to underestimate the magnitude of both tax subsidies. Our results provide important context for evaluating the effectiveness of the CD and HMID and shed light on potential reforms.
The Second Death of Substantive Due Process

This article addresses the theoretical integrity of the Supreme Court's decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, upholding criminal restrictions on homosexual conduct. It discusses several possible theories of nonoriginalist constitutional decisionmaking, including theories based on political process considerations, theories based on the enforcement of national societal values, and theories based on principles of political-moral philosophy. The article concludes that under any plausible theory of decisionmaking, the Court's ruling in Bowers is fundamentally inconsistent with its earlier "privacy" decisions, including especially its decisions protecting the right to abortion.
Learning, Career Paths, and the Distribution of Wages

We develop a theory of career paths and earnings where agents organize in production hierarchies. Agents climb these hierarchies as they learn stochastically from others. Earnings grow as agents acquire knowledge and occupy positions with more subordinates. We contrast these and other implications with US census data for the period 1990 to 2010, matching the Lorenz curve of earnings and the observed mean experience-earnings profiles. We show the increase in wage inequality over this period can be rationalized with a shift in the level of the complexity and profitability of technologies relative to the distribution of knowledge in the population.
Regulating direct-to-consumer genetic testing: protecting the consumer without quashing a medical revolution.

This Note examines the existing gaps in regulating genetic tests that are sold directly to consumers and the arguments for and against greater regulation. It advocates adopting an approach that shores up existing regulation of the accuracy of genetic tests under the Food and Drug Administration and Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment, while continuing to promote an open market for selling tests directly to consumers. The Note looks to a variety of additional mechanisms for providing further consumer protections such as incentives for voluntary participation in the Food and Drug Administration approval process, an expanded watchdog role for professional organizations, and education programs for consumers and physicians.
Statistical modelling of one-mode and two-mode networks : simultaneous analysis of graphs and bipartite graphs

A bipartite graph, in which the nodes (or actors in a social network) are partitioned into two sets, can be studied using recent statistical models for dyadic interactions. These models, which are loglinear for the probabilities of dyadic choices or interactions, allow not only arcs or relationships to exist between the sets but also within the sets. Thus, the methods described here are applicable not only to bipartite graphs, consisting of arcs existing between nodes in different sets, but also to directed graphs that are defined within the two sets of nodes. Data on both types of graphs can be analysed simultaneously. A bipartite graph has an adjacency matrix (or sociomatrix) with two ‘modes’. The set of nodes in the row mode differs from the set of nodes in the column mode. For example, in marketing, one could study the dyadic relations in a ‘buyers-by-sellers’ network. Generally, the relations observed in a one-mode network, which has a square sociomatrix (row mode = column mode) are bidirectional—the actors indexing the columns may also ‘relate to’ the actors indexing the rows. The relations observed in a two-mode network are generally unidirectional—the row actors relate to or choose the column actors, but the column actors do not relate to the row actors. Referring to our example, a buyer might pay a seller for some item, but a seller would not pay a buyer. Statistical models for the separate analysis of these one-mode and two-mode matrices are extended in this paper to the simultaneous analysis of both types of networks. A superordinate one-mode sociomatrix is created in which the rows and columns consist of all actors (that is, all buyers and sellers). This larger matrix contains both the one-mode matrices and the two-mode matrices. Multivariate analysis of unidirectional and bidirectional relations in social networks and complex directed graphs becomes possible with this simultaneous consideration of both types of matrices.
Valid Inference in Single-Firm, Single-Event Studies

We first discuss the role of single-firm event studies in law and finance scholarship and in securities litigation. We discuss the (previously known) invalidity of the standard, t-statistic-based approach to inference in single-firm event studies. We then use a broad cross-section of CRSP data for the 2000-2007 period to investigate the standard approach's performance using real-world data. Our results show that the standard approach is plagued by systematic, downward bias in asymptotic Type I error rates relative to desired significance levels. We then offer a very simple but statistically sound alternative, called the SQ test. We show analytically that the SQ test's asymptotic Type I error rate always equals the desired significance level. Using our CRSP data, we offer Monte Carlo evidence that in event studies with 99 pre-event observations, the SQ test performs very well at conventional significance levels. We then analyze the asymptotic power of the SQ test and the standard approach. The SQ test and the standard approach have the same size-corrected asymptotic power, which means that even when the standard approach is appropriate, there is no loss to using the SQ test. More relevant as an empirical matter, we show that the standard approach's downward bias in asymptotic Type I error rates brings along severe power loss. As an empirical matter, then, use of the standard approach can be expected to lead to substantial anti-plaintiff bias in securities litigation, though either pro- or anti-plaintiff bias is possible as an analytical matter. By contrast, the SQ test has considerable asymptotic power, even against moderately sized fixed alternatives. We also show how to extend our methods to cases with multiple firms, and multiple events. Finally, we show that our SQ test is asymptotically equivalent to bootstrap procedures, including those evaluated in recent finance scholarship.
Narcissism and Counterproductive Work Behavior: Do Bigger Egos Mean Bigger Problems?

In accordance with the theory of threatened egotism and aggression, the relationships among narcissism, trait anger, job constraints and counterproductive work behavior (CWB) were explored in a questionnaire study. The results were supportive of the hypotheses that narcissism would relate to trait anger, job constraints, and CWB and that the relationship between narcissism and CWB would be mediated by anger. In addition, narcissism was found to moderate the relationship between job constraints and CWB, such that individuals high in narcissism reported more CWB when constraints were high, than individuals low in narcissism.
Executive Stock Options, Missed Earnings Targets, and Earnings Management

This paper examines whether stock‐option grants explain missed earnings targets, including reported losses, earnings declines, and missed analysts' forecasts. Anecdotal evidence and surveys suggest that managers believe that missing an earnings target can cause stock‐price drops (Graham et al. 2006). Empirical studies corroborate this notion (Skinner and Sloan 2002; Lopez and Rees 2002). Thus, a missed target could benefit an executive via lower strike price on subsequent option grants. Prior option grant studies explore only general downward earnings management (Balsam et al. 2003; Baker et al. 2003), but our study is the first to explore whether option grants encourage missed earnings targets. Indeed, if missed targets drive the prior results, then the literature has failed to document an important negative outcome of stock‐option incentives. We use quarterly and annual data for fixed‐date options granted after firms announce they have missed earnings targets. We find that firms that miss earnings targe...
Asymmetric Cost Behavior

ABSTRACT: We synthesize the growing literature on asymmetric cost behavior—a new way of thinking about costs and, by extension, earnings. While the traditional cost behavior model describes a mechanistic relation between activity and costs, this alternative view recognizes the primitives of cost behavior—resource adjustment costs and managerial decisions. These primitives give rise to “sticky” and “anti-sticky” costs, along with traditional “fixed” and “variable” costs as extreme cases. We formulate an integrated framework of asymmetric cost behavior and review the empirical evidence in support of this framework and its implications for both cost and financial accounting research. We clarify empirical issues and show that recent contrary claims about the validity of findings in the literature are unwarranted because of econometric errors. We present new comprehensive evidence from Global Compustat, which demonstrates that asymmetric cost behavior is a pervasive global phenomenon. We also discuss research ...
Violations of monotonicity in evolutionary models with sample-based beliefs

This paper considers a class of evolutionary game-theoretic models, namely those in which agents form beliefs about the behavior of others on the basis of random samples from the population. It shows that the dynamics of these models violate the property of monotonicity, which many authors have argued any well-specified evolutionary model should possess.
Kantian Autonomy and Divine Commands

On a certain conception (often thought to be Kantian) of moral autonomy, it is difficult to see how morally autonomous persons could accept any morally significant concept of authority—i.e. , any concept of authority that goes beyond a mere description of a power relation in order to provide at least prima facie moral justifications for acts that would have been without justification in the absence of the authority. A few years ago Robert Paul Wolff used a supposed Kantian conception of moral autonomy to defend what he called philosophical anarchism—the claim that the concept of moral autonomy and the concept of legitimate political authority are inconsistent1; and, more recently, James Rachels has argued that a morally autonomous person could not accept divine commands as an authoritative source of moral obligation—and thus that the worship of God is impossible for an autonomous person.2
European Integration and the Governance of Migration

This article traces the development of EU governance of migration, with an emphasis upon key moments of institutional reform such as the creation of the pillar of Justice and Home Affairs within 1992’s Treaty on European Union. The article identifies three periods with different governance patterns since the Maastricht Treaty, with increasing involvement of institutions such as the Court of Justice and the European Parliament. Together with the increased relevance of EU agencies such as Frontex, this has produced a style of governance that is neither predominantly intergovernmental nor supranational, though multilevel and experimental governance are not prominent either. The article also examines what modes of governance are present within the primary migration policy domains. Member states still enjoy considerable discretion in labour migration and family reunion, and the EU institutions have respected this. However, there has been greater supranational involvement in the areas of irregular migration and specifically asylum, whether through the involvement of EU agencies, or through legislation and court rulings that genuinely oblige countries to change their domestic rules. Institutional changes have continued to empower the Commission, with the potential for substantially greater participation and authority for the EU institutions.
Economically Benevolent Dictators: Lessons for Developing Democracies

The post-war experience of developing countries leads to two depressing conclusions: only a small number of countries have successfully developed; and development theory has not produced development. In this article we examine one critical fact that might provide insights into the development conundrum: Some autocratic regimes have fundamentally transformed their economies, despite serious deficiencies along a range of other dimensions. Our aim is to understand how growth came about in these regimes, and whether emerging democracies might learn something important from these experiences. Our thesis is that in these economically successful countries, the authoritarian regime managed a critical juncture in the country’s development--entry into global commerce by the transition from small-scale, relational exchange, to exchange where performance is supported by government action, whether based on the potential for formal third party enforcement or by the threat of informal government sanctions. Compared to a weak democracy, a growth-favoring dictator may have an advantage in overcoming political economy obstacles to credibly committing that rent seeking will not dissipate private investment. We explore this hypothesis by examining the successful development experiences of three countries in the late twentieth century: Chile under Augusto Pinochet; South Korea under Park Chung-Hee; and China under Deng Xiaoping and his successors. Although the macroeconomic policies and institutional strategies of the three countries differed significantly, each ruler found ways to credibly commit his regime to growth. Decades of law reform activity by the World Bank, IMF, and other international NGOs, along with a vast academic literature, assume that an impartial judiciary is the key to the transition from relational to market exchange. Our study reveals that a variety of alternatives are possible.
Monetary policy and world commodity markets: 2000-2007

Expansionary monetary policy in key industrial countries and a rapidly depreciating US dollar sent commodity prices soaring at unprecedented rates during 2003–2007. In contrast, consumer price indices in major OECD countries, a leading indicator for monetary policy, showed almost no inflation. This twin development is a puzzle as the evolution of consumer prices were not responsive to record low interest rates, doubledigit commodity inflation, and a sharp depreciation of the dollar. A common trend, identified as a monetary shock, drives commodity prices. Policymakers face a policy dilemma: maintain expansionary monetary policy stance with persistent commodity price inflation, subsequent severe world recession, and financial disorder, or tighten monetary policy with subsequent sustained economic growth and financial and price stability. JEL Codes: C10, C22, E31, E52, Q40 Keywords: Monetary Policy, Asset Inflation, Commodity Prices
The Mystique Surrounding the Central Bank's Balance Sheet, Applied to the European Crisis

Abstract A central bank's resource constraint bounds the dividends it can distribute by the present value of seignorage, which is a modest share of GDP. This is in spite of the mystique behind a central bank's balance sheet. Moreover, the statutes of the Federal Reserve or the ECB make it difficult for it to redistribute resources across regions. In a simple model of sovereign default, where multiple equilibria arise if debt repudiation lowers fiscal surpluses, the central bank may help to select one equilibrium. The central bank's main lever over fundamentals is to raise inflation, but otherwise the balance sheet gives it little leeway.
Labor Market Shocks and Retirement: Do Government Programs Matter?

Abstract This paper argues that labor market conditions are an important and often overlooked determinant of retirement transitions. In our analysis, we examine how the unemployment rate affects retirement and whether the Social Security (SS) system and Unemployment Insurance (UI) system influence how older workers respond to labor market shocks. We use pooled cross-sectional data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) in our analysis. We find that downturns in the labor market increase retirement transitions and that the magnitude of this effect is comparable to that associated with moderate changes in financial incentives to retire and to the threat of a health shock facing older workers. Interestingly, retirements only increase in response to an economic downturn once workers become SS-eligible, suggesting that retirement benefits may help to alleviate the income loss associated with a weak labor market. We also estimate the impact of UI generosity on retirement and find little consistent evidence of an effect. This suggests that in some ways SS may serve as a more effective form of unemployment insurance for older workers than UI.
Using P2P sharing activity to improve business decision making: proof of concept for estimating product life-cycle

Estimating the life-cycle or duration of a product can be an important input into a firm's decision-making related to production and marketing. In the music industry, online Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks have attracted millions of potential music consumers and have had substantial impact on the music business. In this paper, we investigate the possible use of P2P information in estimating product ''shelf-life,'' in particular the duration of a music album on the Billboard 100 chart. We identify and track the music albums that appear on the Top 100 of the Billboard Charts, spanning a period of six months. We show that P2P sharing activity can be used to help predict the subsequent market performance of a music album.
On construction of social welfare orders satisfying Hammond equity and Weak Pareto axioms

Abstract This paper examines the constructive nature of a social welfare order that respects Hammond equity axiom and Weak Pareto axiom. It describes the domains (of the one period utilities) on which an explicit construction is possible. A social welfare order satisfying the Hammond equity and Weak Pareto admits an explicit construction if and only if the domain is a well-ordered set.
The Case for Alternative Social Media

What are “alternative social media”? How can we distinguish alternative social media from mainstream social media? Why are social media alternatives important? How do they work? Why do people make them? What do they tell us about contemporary corporate social media and its related phenomena: surveillance, privacy, power, self-expression, and sociality? This essay answers these questions by theorizing alternative social media. The empirical data for this alternative social media theory are drawn from previous work on alternative sites such as Diaspora, rstat.us, Twister, GNU social, and the Dark Web Social Network. These cases are used to build a generalized conceptual framework. However, this article does not solely theorize from these examples, but rather seeks to contextualize and historicize alternative social media theory within larger bodies of work. In addition to generalization from examples, the theory is informed by two threads. The first thread is the work of alternative media scholars such as N...
Toxics, Toyotas, and Terrorism: The Behavioral Economics of Fear and Stigma

Economists have traditionally viewed the behavioral response to risk as continuous and proportional. In contrast, psychologists have often contended that people have little control over their response to risk that is dichotomous, nonproportional, visceral, and fear based. In extreme cases, this automatic response results in the stigmatization of a product, technology, or choice, which seemingly cannot be eliminated or reduced. In resolving these contrasting perspectives, we review four recent studies that blend behavioral economics and psychology. Together, they provide evidence for a dual-process decision model for risk that incorporates both reason and fear. They show consumers' responses to perceived risk as a mix of proportional and dichotomous (safe/unsafe) responses that are relatively more continuous in situations where deliberation is possible, and more dichotomous in emotional or stressful circumstances. These findings reconcile mixed results in past studies, and, more importantly, the dual-process model allows a clear definition of stigma, and suggests new ways to mitigate stigma and to help manage potentially damaging overreactions to it. Language: en
Lessons from international experience with electricity market monitoring

The author first describes those features of the electricity supply industry that make a prospective market monitoring process essential to a well-functioning wholesale market. Some of these features are shared with the securities industry, although the technology of electricity production and delivery make a reliable transmission network a necessary condition for an efficient wholesale market. These features of the electricity supply industry also make antitrust or competition law alone an inadequate foundation for an electricity market monitoring process. The author provides examples of both the successes and failures of market monitoring from several international markets. More than 10 years of experience with the electricity industry restructuring process has shown that market failures are more likely and substantially more harmful to consumers than other market failures because of how electricity is produced and delivered and the crucial role it plays in the modern economy. Wholesale market meltdowns of varying magnitudes and durations have occurred in electricity markets around the world, and many of them could have been prevented if a prospective market monitoring process backed by the prevailing regulatory authority had been in place at the start of the market.
Board independence and audit-firm type

This paper investigates the role of outside members of the board of directors in the choice of external auditor for property‐liability insurance companies. Consistent with our hypothesis that we de...
Internal Control Opinion Shopping and Audit Market Competition

ABSTRACT This study examines the extent to which audit clients successfully engage in internal control opinion shopping activities and whether audit market competition appears to facilitate those activities. Regulators have long been concerned about the impact of both audit market competition and opinion shopping on audit quality. We adopt the framework developed in Lennox (2000) to construct a proxy to measure the tendency that clients engage in internal control opinion shopping activities. Our empirical results suggest that clients are successful in shopping for clean internal control opinions. In addition, we find evidence that internal control opinion shopping occurs primarily in competitive audit markets. Finally, our results indicate that among auditor dismissal clients, opinion shopping is more likely to occur when dismissals are made relatively late during a reporting period and when audit market competition is high. Our findings have implications for the current policy debate regarding audit qual...
An Equilibrium Analysis of Real Estate Leases

This article provides a unified equilibrium approach to valuing commercial real estate leases. Using a game‐theoretic variant of real options analysis, the underlying real estate asset market is modeled as a continuous‐time Nash equilibrium, where developers make construction decisions under demand uncertainty. Then, using the economic notion that leasing represents the purchase of the use of the asset over a specified time, I use a contingent‐claims approach to value many of the most common leasing arrangements. The model provides equilibrium values for purchase options, forward leases, gross and net leases, cancellation options, ground leases, escalation clauses, lease concessions, and sale‐leasebacks.
Revealing Future Prospects without Forecasts: The Case of Accelerating Material Contract Filings

ABSTRACT: Extant research on voluntary disclosure about future prospects has focused on two forward-looking disclosure mechanisms: management forecasts and conference calls. This study examines the accelerated filing of material contracts as another type of future-related disclosure that involves no forecasting. I find that firms are more likely to accelerate material contract filings when forward-looking disclosures could lack credibility or arouse litigation concerns. However, for proprietary cost considerations, firms delay contract filings when facing high (low) product market competition from incumbents (potential entrants). I also find that accelerated contract filing is incrementally associated with lower information asymmetry. Overall, while presenting a cost-benefit trade-off that is distinctly different from forward-looking disclosures, accelerated contract filing is an important alternative channel through which firms communicate future prospects to investors. Data Availability: The data used i...
Power Distance Belief and Impulsive Buying

Abstract The authors propose that power distance belief (PDB) (i.e., accepting and expecting power disparity) influences impulsive buying beyond other related cultural dimensions, such as individualism–collectivism. This research supports an associative account that links PDB and impulsive buying as a manifestation of self-control, such that those with high PDB display less impulsive buying. Furthermore, this effect manifests for vice products but not for virtue products. The authors also find that restraint from temptations can occur automatically for people who have repeated practice (i.e., chronically high PDBs). Taken together, these results imply that products should be differentially positioned as vice or virtue products in accordance with consumers' PDBs.
Old Fashioned Postmodernism and the Legal Theories of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Whether Holmes was the greatest American jurist is a question for debate. What needs no debate is the fact that Holmes is the most published, the most discussed, the most praised and the most criticized judge in American history. In view of this fact, one might well doubt the need for yet another paper on Holmes. The sheer number of studies, discussions, collections and biographies raises question as to whether we have not already said enough. Is there any point-besides the obvious pleasure of a good symposium-to more discussion of Holmes and his effect on American law? For a number of reasons, I think that the answer to this question is a surprising "yes." No one would dispute that Holmes is an important source of our understanding about the American legal tradition. It is not just that his writings are widely read; it is also that lawyers and scholars have treated him as a particularly important symbol of American law, who-depending on your viewpoint-should be praised for his virtues or condemned for his shortcomings. For example, some scholars think that Holmes deserves high praise for rescuing American law from the rigidity of formalism.' Others disagree: they suggest that Holmes was insufficiently principled; that he was self serving, insensitive and cynical; and that, in view of these shortcomings, he is an unworthy representative of American law.
Fade to black: importation and counterfeit drugs.

Americans rely extensively upon prescription medications to maintain health and quality of life. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2002, at least 1.5 billion drugs were prescribed to patients in physician offices, 196 million in US emergency departments, and 140 million in outpatient settings. Almost two-thirds of visits to physician offices and hospital outpatient departments had at least one drug associated with the visit, and 7% of visits had five or more drugs. In 2004, US pharmacies dispensed over 3.5 billion prescriptions to patients. Estimates indicate that annual expenditures for prescription drugs in the US top $230 billion dollars each year—and there is every indication that these numbers will only increase.
Markov switching and exchange rate predictability

Abstract We first show that the recent success of modern macroeconomic models in forecasting nominal exchange rates, evaluated using the Clark and West (2006) inference procedure, is partly due to the presence of the constant term (drift), in addition to the economic fundamentals. We then model the drift term using the two-state Markov switching stochastic segmented trend model and present evidence of both short-run (one month) and long-run (up to one year) predictability for monthly exchange rates over the post-Bretton Woods period. This is an important result, as the recent literature has typically failed to find evidence of consistent multi-horizon predictability. The model strongly outperforms the random walk for 9 out of 12 exchange rate series at short horizons; for 7 of the 12 exchange rates, we find evidence of a long-run predictability that declines as the forecast horizon increases. Our results remain robust to alternative test statistics and forecast windows.