cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Evolution of a streamer-blowout CME as observed by imagers on Parker Solar Probe and the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory

Context. On 26–27 January 2020, the Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe on Parker Solar Probe (PSP) observed a coronal mass ejection (CME) from a distance of approximately 30 R ⊙ as it passed through the instrument’s 95° field-of-view, providing an unprecedented view of the flux rope morphology of the CME’s internal structure. The same CME was seen by Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory-Ahead (STEREO-A), beginning on 25 January.Aims. Our goal is to understand the origin and determine the trajectory of this CME.Methods. We analyzed data from three well-placed spacecrafts: PSP, STEREO-A, and Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The CME trajectory was determined using a tracking-and-fitting technique and verified using simultaneous images of the CME propagation from STEREO-A. The fortuitous alignment with STEREO-A also provided views of coronal activity leading up to the eruption. Observations from SDO, in conjunction with potential magnetic field models of the corona, were used to analyze the coronal magnetic evolution for the three days leading up to the flux rope ejection from the corona on 25 January.Results. We found that the 25 January CME is likely the end result of a slow magnetic flux rope eruption that began on 23 January and was observed by STEREO-A/Extreme Ultraviolet Imager. The analysis of these observations suggest that the flux rope was apparently constrained in the corona for more than a day before its final ejection on 25 January. STEREO-A/COR2 observations of swelling and brightening of the overlying streamer for several hours prior to eruption on 25 January led us to classify this as a streamer-blowout CME. The analysis of the SDO data suggests that restructuring of the coronal magnetic fields caused by an emerging active region led to the final ejection of the flux rope.
PiChu: Accelerating Block Broadcasting in Blockchain Networks with Pipelining and Chunking

Blockchain technologies have been rapidly enhanced in recent years. However, its scalability still has limitations in terms of throughput and broadcast delay as the network and the amount of transaction data increase. To improve scalability of blockchain networks, we propose a novel approach named PiChu that accelerates block propagation in blockchain networks by pipelining and verifying chunks of a block in parallel. Accelerating block propagation reduces the mining interval and chance of fork occurring, which in turn increases throughput. Our approach can be applied to the blockchain networks either directly or with a minor modification to the consensus. Through an extensive and large scale simulations, we validate that the proposed PiChu scheme significantly enhances the scalability of blockchain networks. For instance, a 64 MB block can be broadcasted in just 80 seconds in a blockchain network with a million nodes. The efficiency of PiChu broadcasting increases with bigger block sizes and a larger number of nodes in the network.
Fully automated 3D segmentation of MR-imaged calf muscle compartments: Neighborhood relationship enhanced fully convolutional network.

Abstract Automated segmentation of individual calf muscle compartments from 3D magnetic resonance (MR) images is essential for developing quantitative biomarkers for muscular disease progression and its prediction. Achieving clinically acceptable results is a challenging task due to large variations in muscle shape and MR appearance. In this paper, we present a novel fully convolutional network (FCN) that utilizes contextual information in a large neighborhood and embeds edge-aware constraints for individual calf muscle compartment segmentations. An encoder–decoder architecture is used to systematically enlarge convolution receptive field and preserve information at all resolutions. Edge positions derived from the FCN output muscle probability maps are explicitly regularized using kernel-based edge detection in an end-to-end optimization framework. Our method was evaluated on 40 T1-weighted MR images of 10 healthy and 30 diseased subjects by fourfold cross-validation. Mean DICE coefficients of 88.00–91.29% and mean absolute surface positioning errors of 1.04–1.66 mm were achieved for the five 3D muscle compartments.
Magnetic Fields and Directional Spectral Emissivity in Sunspots and Faculae: Complimentary Evidence of Metallic Behavior on the Surface of the Sun

Sunspots and faculae are related phenomena and constitute regions of elevated magnetic field intensity on the surface of the Sun. These structures have been extensively studied in the visible range. In this regard, it has been recognized that the intensity contrast of faculae, relative to the photosphere, increases considerably as the line of observation moves from the center to the limb of the Sun. Such center to limb variation (CLV) suggests that the directional spectral emissivity of the faculae increases at the same time that photospheric directional emissivity decreases. Since the directional spectral emissivity of faculae increases towards the limb, these structures, along with sunspots, provide strong evidence for metallic behavior at the level of the solar surface. This further strengthens claims that the body of the Sun is not gaseous, but rather, comprised of condensed matter.
Imaging metasurfaces based on graphene-loaded slot antennas

Spectral imagers, the classic example being the color camera, are ubiquitous in everyday life. However, most such imagers rely on filter arrays that absorb light outside each spectral channel, yielding ∼1/N efficiency for an N-channel imager. This is especially undesirable in thermal infrared (IR) wavelengths, where sensor detectivities are low. We propose an efficient and compact thermal infrared spectral imager comprising a metasurface composed of sub-wavelength-spaced, differently-tuned slot antennas coupled to photosensitive elements. Here, we demonstrate this idea using graphene, which features a photoresponse up to thermal IR wavelengths. The combined antenna resonances yield broadband absorption in the graphene exceeding the 1/N efficiency limit. We establish a circuit model for the antennas’ optical properties and demonstrate consistency with full-wave simulations. We also theoretically demonstrate ∼58% free space-to-graphene photodetector coupling efficiency, averaged over the 1050 cm−1 to 1700 cm−1 wavenumber range, for a four-spectral-channel gold metasurface with a 0.883 µm by 6.0 µm antenna pitch. This research paves the way towards compact CMOS-integrable thermal IR spectral imagers.
Ceramic packaging in neural implants.

The lifetime of neural implants is strongly dependent on packaging due to the aqueous and biochemically aggressive nature of the body. Over the last decade, there has been a drive towards neuromodulatory implants which are wireless and approaching millimeter-scales with increasing electrode count. A so-far unrealized goal for these new types of devices is an in-vivo lifetime comparable to a sizable fraction of a healthy patient's lifetime (>10-20 years). Existing, approved medical implants commonly package components in metal enclosures (e.g. titanium) with brazed ceramic inserts for electrode feedthrough. It is unclear how amenable the traditional approach is to the simultaneous goals of miniaturization, increased channel count, and wireless communication. Ceramic materials have also played a significant role in traditional medical implants due to their dielectric properties, corrosion resistance, biocompatibility, and high strength, but are not as commonly used for housing materials due to their brittleness and the difficulty they present in creating complex housing geometries. However, thin film technology has opened new opportunities for ceramics processing. Thin films derived largely from the semiconductor industry can be deposited and patterned in new ways, have conductivities which can be altered during manufacturing to provide conductors as well as insulators, and can be used to fabricate flexible substrates. In this review, we give an overview of packaging for neural implants, with an emphasis on how ceramic materials have been utilized in medical device packaging, as well as how ceramic thin film micromachining and processing may be further developed to create truly reliable, miniaturized, neural implants.
UMAP-assisted $K$-means clustering of large-scale SARS-CoV-2 mutation datasets

Abstract Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has a worldwide devastating effect. Understanding the evolution and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is of paramount importance for controlling, combating and preventing COVID-19. Due to the rapid growth in both the number of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences and the number of unique mutations, the phylogenetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genome isolates faces an emergent large-data challenge. We introduce a dimension-reduced K-means clustering strategy to tackle this challenge. We examine the performance and effectiveness of three dimension-reduction algorithms: principal component analysis (PCA), t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE), and uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP). By using four benchmark datasets, we found that UMAP is the best-suited technique due to its stable, reliable, and efficient performance, its ability to improve clustering accuracy, especially for large Jaccard distanced-based datasets, and its superior clustering visualization. The UMAP-assisted K-means clustering enables us to shed light on increasingly large datasets from SARS-CoV-2 genome isolates.
THE DUAL COMPLEX OF A SEMI-LOG CANONICAL SURFACE

Semi-log canonical varieties are a higher-dimensional analogue of stable curves. They are the varieties appearing as the boundary $\Delta$ of a log canonical pair $(X,\Delta)$, and also appear as limits of canonically polarized varieties in moduli theory. For certain three-fold pairs $(X,\Delta)$ we show how to compute the PL homeomorphism type of the dual complex of a dlt minimal model directly from the normalization data of $\Delta$.
CRISPR/Cas9 Genome Editing of the Human Topoisomerase IIα Intron 19 5' Splice Site Circumvents Etoposide Resistance in Human Leukemia K562 Cells.

An essential function of DNA topoisomerase IIα (TOP2α; 170 kDa, TOP2α/170) is to resolve DNA topologic entanglements during chromosome disjunction by introducing transient DNA double-stranded breaks. TOP2α/170 is an important target for DNA damage-stabilizing anticancer drugs, whose clinical efficacy is compromised by drug resistance often associated with decreased TOP2α/170 expression. We recently demonstrated that an etoposide-resistant K562 clonal subline, K/VP.5, with reduced levels of TOP2α/170, expresses high levels of a novel C-terminal truncated TOP2α isoform (90 kDa, TOP2α/90). TOP2α/90, the translation product of a TOP2α mRNA that retains a processed intron 19 (I19), heterodimerizes with TOP2α/170 and is a resistance determinant through a dominant-negative effect on drug activity. We hypothesized that genome editing to enhance I19 removal would provide a tractable strategy to circumvent acquired TOP2α-mediated drug resistance. To enhance I19 removal in K/VP.5 cells, CRISPR/Cas9 was used to make changes (GAG//GTAAAC→GAG//GTAAGT) in the TOP2α gene’s suboptimal exon 19/intron 19 5′ splice site (E19/I19 5′ SS). Gene-edited clones were identified by quantitative polymerase chain reaction and verified by sequencing. Characterization of a clone with all TOP2α alleles edited revealed improved I19 removal, decreased TOP2α/90 mRNA/protein, and increased TOP2α/170 mRNA/protein. Sensitivity to etoposide-induced DNA damage (γH2AX, Comet assays) and growth inhibition was restored to levels comparable to those in parental K562 cells. Together, the results indicate that our gene-editing strategy for optimizing the TOP2α E19/I19 5′ SS in K/VP.5 cells circumvents resistance to etoposide and other TOP2α-targeted drugs. Significance Statement Results presented here indicate that CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing of a suboptimal exon 19/intron 19 5′ splice site in the DNA topoisomerase IIα (TOP2α) gene results in circumvention of acquired drug resistance to etoposide and other TOP2α-targeted drugs in a clonal K562 cell line by enhancing removal of intron 19 and thereby decreasing formation of a truncated TOP2α 90 kDa isoform and increasing expression of full-length TOP2α 170 kDa in these resistant cells. Results demonstrate the importance of RNA processing in acquired drug resistance to TOP2α-targeted drugs.
Extremum Seeking Under Persistent Gradient Deception: A Switching Systems Approach

This letter focuses on extremum seeking (ES) controllers with adversarial attacks in the form of deception signals. While a persistent attack in a feedback controller may be difficult to identify or mitigate, for a broad class of algorithms it suffices to achieve mitigation “sufficiently often” in order to preserve the stability properties of the system. In this letter, we explore for the first time the resilience properties of ES controllers with respect to a class of persistent multiplicative attacks that are purposely designed to destabilize optimization-based feedback controllers. By leveraging Lyapunov-based arguments for switching systems and singular-perturbation theory for hybrid dynamical systems, we characterize a family of persistent multiplicative attacks under which gradient-based ES, Newton-Like ES, and Accelerated gradient ES controllers provably preserve their stability properties.
The performance of global brands in the 2008 financial crisis: A test of two brand value measures

Abstract Previous literature has argued that high brand equity helps stabilize financial returns and reduce share price volatility. This research investigates how some of the strongest brands in the U.S. market fared in terms of financial performance during the Fall 2008 stock market downturn. Initial results using a financially based measure of brand value (Interbrand) show that, counter to expectations, these top brands did not outperform the market as a whole. However, the findings are in the hypothesized direction when an alternative, consumer-based brand equity measure (EquiTrend) is used to replicate the analysis. After first employing the three Fama–French factors to evaluate stock performance, we assess the added brand equity effect using both aforementioned measures. The consumer-based measure shows a significant incremental effect on stock performance after controlling for risk and financial fundamentals. Furthermore, this positive effect also applies to share volatility and firm betas. None of these effects hold for the financially based measure.
Is the Constitution Laissez-Faire?: The Framers, Original Meaning, and the Market

Did the Constitution create a laissez-faire government-market system? This question is crucial to constitutional jurisprudence today. Conservatives often assert that originalism is the best (or only) method of legitimate constitutional interpretation. Originalism supposedly requires judges to uphold either the original public meaning of the Constitution or the Framers' intentions. On the Roberts Court, Justices Scalia and Thomas are avowed originalists, though the other conservative Justices are not averse to invoking originalist arguments or joining originalist opinions. Empirical studies show that the Roberts Court, because of its conservatives, is the most pro-business Court since World War II. Both of these judicial characteristics -- originalism and a pro-business orientation -- were on display in Citizens United v. FEC. In a five-to-four decision, the conservative bloc invalidated statutory limits on corporate (and union) spending for political campaign advertisements. The majority opinion concluded with an originalist flourish: "There is simply no support for the view that the First Amendment, as originally understood, would permit the suppression of political speech by media corporations." Citizens United is not unique. In case after case, the conservative Justices act like market fundamentalists, protecting corporations and the marketplace from government regulations even in free-expression cases like Citizen United.
Investment Timing, Agency and Information

Abstract This paper provides a model of investment timing by managers in a decentralized firm in the presence of agency conflicts and information asymmetries. When investment decisions are delegated to managers, contracts must be designed to provide incentives for managers to both extend effort and truthfully reveal private information. Using a real options approach, we show that an underlying option to invest can be decomposed into two components: a manager's option and an owner's option. The implied investment behavior differs significantly from that of the first-best no-agency solution. In particular, greater inertia occurs in investment, as the model predicts that the manager will have a more valuable option to wait than the owner.
The Role of Stock Liquidity in Executive Compensation

ABSTRACT: We explore the role of stock liquidity in influencing the composition of CEO annual pay and the sensitivity of managerial wealth to stock prices. We find that as stock liquidity goes up, the proportion of equity-based compensation in total compensation increases while the proportion of cash-based compensation declines. Further, the CEO's pay-for-performance sensitivity with respect to stock prices is increasing in the liquidity of the stock. Our main findings are supported by additional tests based on shocks to stock liquidity and two-stage least squares specifications that mitigate endogeneity concerns. Our results are consistent with optimal contracting theories and contribute to the ongoing debate about the increasing trend of both equity-based over cash-based compensation and the sensitivity of total CEO wealth to stock prices rather than earnings. Data Availability: Data used for this study are derived from publicly available sources.
Agency Law and Contract Formation

A number of issues in the common law arise when agents make contracts on behalf of principals. Should a principal be bound when his agent makes a contract with some third party on his behalf which the principal would immediately wish to disavow? The tradeoffs resemble those in tort, so the least-cost-avoider principle is useful for deciding when contracts are valid, and may be the underlying logic behind a number of different doctrines in agency law. In particular, an efficiency explanation can be found for the undisclosed principal rule, under which the principal is bound even when the third party is unaware that the agent is acting as an agent.
Nonlocal magnon entanglement generation in coupled hybrid cavity systems

We investigate dynamical generation of macroscopic nonlocal entanglements between two remote massive magnon–superconducting-circuit hybrid systems. Two fiber-coupled microwave cavities are employed to serve as an interaction channel connecting two sets of macroscopic hybrid units, each containing a magnon (hosted by an yttrium–iron–garnet sphere) and a superconducting-circuit qubit. Surprisingly, it is found that stronger coupling does not necessarily mean faster entanglement generation. The proposed hybrid system allows the existence of an optimal fiber coupling strength that requires the shortest amount of time to generate a systematic maximal entanglement. Our theoretical results are shown to be within the scope of specific parameters that can be achieved with current technology. The noise effects on the implementation of systems are also treated in a general environment, suggesting the robustness of entanglement generation. Our discrete-variable qubit-like entanglement theory of magnons may lead to direct applications in various quantum information tasks.
Local Return Factors and Turnover in Emerging Stock Markets

The factors that drive cross-sectional differences in expected stock returns in emerging equity markets are qualitatively similar to those that have been documented for developed markets. Emerging market stocks exhibit momentum, small stocks outperform large stocks, and value stocks outperform growth stocks. There is no evidence that high beta stocks outperform low beta stocks. A Bayesian analysis of the return premiums shows that the combined evidence of developed and emerging markets strongly favors the hypothesis that similar return factors are present in markets around the world. Finally, there exists a strong cross-sectional correlation between the return factors and share turnover. THERE IS GROWING EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that multiple factors are cross-sectionally correlated with average returns in the United States. Measured over long time periods, small stocks earn higher average returns than large stocks ~Banz ~1981!!. Fama and French ~1992, 1996! and Lakonishok, Shleifer, and Vishny ~1994! show that value stocks with high book-to-market ~B0M!, earnings-to-price ~E0P!, or cash f low to price ~C0P! outperform growth stocks with low B0M, E0P, or C0 P. Moreover, stocks with high return over the past three months to one year continue to outperform stocks with poor prior performance ~Jegadeesh and Titman ~1993!!. The evidence that beta is also compensated for in average returns is weaker ~Fama and French ~1992!, Kothari, Shanken, and Sloan ~1995!! The interpretation of the evidence is strongly debated. 1 Some believe that the premiums are a compensation for pervasive risk factors, others attribute them to firm characteristics or an inefficiency in the way markets incorporate information into prices. Yet others argue that the premiums may be biased by survivorship or data snooping. A motivation for examining inter
Tom and Jerry (and Spike): A Metaphor for Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the President, the Court, and Congress in the War on Terrorism

This article is part of a symposium, guest edited by Mark Tushnet, reviewing key decisions from the Supreme Court's October 2005 term. The landmark decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld has been emphasized as one of statutory interpretation, leaving it up to the President to seek from Congress the authority he deems necessary to fight the global war on terrorism. Yet, Hamdan is not merely a decision of statutory interpretation. It furthers a trend begun in the 2004 trio of terrorism cases: Rasul v. Bush, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Those cases were also (primarily) statutory interpretation cases, but with a subtle distinction: the two cases brought by citizens resulted in interpretations of statutes favorable to the government; the one case brought by aliens, like Hamdan, resulted in interpretations of statutes favorable to the individuals. In other words, these cases cannot be explained as instances where the Court has consistently construed ambiguous statutes against the Executive Branch. In this article, I consider why the Court has opted to favor aliens but not citizens. A tempting explanation is that the Court is acting in a "representation-reinforcing role," ensuring that politically powerless aliens detained outside the country are not oppressed by the political branches. However, under that analysis, the Court would be expected to make decisions of constitutional law, not statutory interpretation. Instead, I conclude that the Court's decisions can be understood as taking advantage of congressional inertia. Congress remains free to undo the Supreme Court's statutory interpretations, but it must overcome that inertia to act. In effect, this is a "clear statement of intent to discriminate against aliens" requirement.
Satisfaction, Repurchase Intent, and Repurchase Behavior: Investigating the Moderating Effect of Customer Characteristics

Abstract Despite the claim that satisfaction ratings are linked to repurchase behavior, few attempts can be found that relate satisfaction ratings to actual repurchase behavior. This article fills this void by presenting a conceptual model for relating satisfaction ratings and repurchase behavior. The model is based on the premise that ratings observed in a typical customer satisfaction survey are error-prone measures of the customer’s true satisfaction, and they may vary systematically on the basis of consumer characteristics. The authors apply the model to a large-scale study of 100,040 automotive customers. Results show that consumers with different characteristics have different thresholds such that, at the same level of rated satisfaction, repurchase rates are systematically different among different customer groups. The authors also find that the nature and extent of response bias in satisfaction ratings varies by customer characteristics. In one group, the response bias is so high that rated satisf...
Mismatch and resolution in compressive imaging

Highly coherent sensing matrices arise in discretization of continuum problems such as radar and medical imaging when the grid spacing is below the Rayleigh threshold as well as in using highly coherent, redundant dictionaries as sparsifying operators. Algorithms (BOMP, BLOOMP) based on techniques of band exclusion and local optimization are proposed to enhance Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) and deal with such coherent sensing matrices. BOMP and BLOOMP have provably performance guarantee of reconstructing sparse, widely separated objects independent of the redundancy and have a sparsity constraint and computational cost similar to OMP's. Numerical study demonstrates the effectiveness of BLOOMP for compressed sensing with highly coherent, redundant sensing matrices.
Why Do Migrants Return to Poor Countries? Evidence from Philippine Migrants' Responses to Exchange Rate Shocks

Abstract This paper distinguishes between target-earnings and life cycle motivations for return migration by examining how Philippine migrants' return decisions respond to major, unexpected exchange rate changes in their overseas locations (due to the Asian financial crisis). Overall, the evidence favors the life cycle explanation: more favorable exchange rate shocks lead to fewer migrant returns.A10% improvement in the exchange rate reduces the 12-month return rate by 1.4 percentage points. However, some migrants appear motivated by target-earnings considerations: in households with intermediate foreign earnings, favorable exchange rate shocks have the least effect on return migration, but lead to increases in household investment.
Unpaid Furloughs and Four-Day Work Weeks: Employer Sympathy or a Call for Collective Employee Action

The words from President Obama quoted above suggest the power of collective employee action in tough economic times. With double digit unemployment rates not seen in the United States for more than twenty-five years, many employees may now have to respond to an employer’s offer to “work less—and thus earn less—for the good of the organization in lean times.” American workers are overworked and need more time for their families. Thus, an employee might embrace this offer
Dissipation efficiency of reconfinement shocks in relativistic jets

We calculate the dissipation efficiency of relativistic reconfinement shocks. Building on previous work, we consider different distributions of the external pressure. The average dissipation efficiency ediss is a function of the product of two parameters – the jet Lorentz factor Γj and the reconfinement angle Θr, which is related to the opening angle Θj and the external pressure index η. The spatial distribution of the dissipation rate strongly depends on η. We discuss the significance of these results for the properties of relativistic jets in gamma-ray bursts and active galactic nuclei and propose that reconfinement shocks may explain a very high dissipation efficiency of the former and a moderate dissipation efficiency of the latter. Finally, we estimate the dissipation efficiency of the reconfinement shock associated with the quasi-stationary knot HST-1 in the jet of radio galaxy M87 and show that it is roughly consistent with the observational constraints.
Desalination in northeastern U.S.: Lessons from four case studies

Abstract While much of the desalination activity in the U.S is concentrated in southern and western states, the last decade has seen an unlikely location emerge for desalination — the Northeast. With precipitation often exceeding evapotranspiration, the Northeast generally maintains abundant surface and ground water resources that are readily available for human and ecological use. However, shortfalls in water supplies are leading some communities in the Northeast to consider desalination as an alternative water source. Presently, three desalination projects are in operation, while the fourth one is planned for construction. We review the conditions which led these locations to implement desalination projects including average and peak water demands, status of traditional water supply sources, topographical challenges and demographic changes. We identify financing, regulatory challenges and public support as factors critical to the initiation and success of desalination projects. Using information from the four projects, we propose a set of questions communities should consider to determine the viability of desalination projects vis-a-vis alternatives such as leak detection and infrastructure upgrades, conservation through water-efficient fixtures, and development of new surface and groundwater sources. An informed decision can help communities guarantee long-term supplies at optimal cost and minimal harm to the environment.
A General Equilibrium Model of Portfolio Insurance

This article examines the effects of portfolio insurance on market and asset price dynamics in a general equilibrium continuous-time model. Portfolio insurers are modeled as expected utility maximizing agents. Martingale methods are employed in solving the individual agents' dynamic consumption-portfolio problems. Comparisons are made between the optimal consumption processes, optimally invested wealth and portfolio strategies of the portfolio insurers and "normal agents." At a general equilibrium level, comparisons across economies reveal that the market volatility and risk premium are decreased, and the asset and market price levels increased, by the presence of portfolio insurance. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.
Keep the Kids Inside? Juvenile Curfews and Urban Gun Violence

Gun violence is an important problem across the United States. However, the impact of government policies on gunfire has been difficult to test due to limited and low-quality data. This paper uses ...
Unconventional Monetary Policy in a Small Open Economy

We investigate unconventional monetary policy in a small open economy using shadow interest rates to capture policy at the zero lower bound (ZLB) in a Bayesian structural vector autoregressive model for Canada - a useful case where foreign shocks can be proxied by the U.S. alone. We estimate that during the ZLB period, on average, Canadian unconventional monetary policy increased output by 0.13 percent, while US unconventional monetary policy increased Canadian output by 1.2 percent on average. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of domestic unconventional monetary policy and the strong spillovers from foreign unconventional monetary policy in a small open economy.
Managerial risk-taking incentives and non-GAAP earnings disclosures

Abstract We investigate the association between risk-taking incentives provided by stock-based compensation arrangements and non-GAAP financial disclosures. Controlling for compensation to stock price sensitivity, we find that managers with higher compensation to stock volatility sensitivity (vega) are more likely to be associated with voluntary non-GAAP earnings information disclosures. In addition, higher-vega managers are found to be associated with more frequent and less opportunistic non-GAAP earnings information disclosures. Robust to alternative specifications and estimations, our findings suggest that compensation arrangements can encourage managers to make more, higher-quality voluntary non-GAAP disclosures.
Formal Markets and Informal Insurance

Abstract “Contractual interlinkages” in the rural communities of developing countries may be a key element of informal insurance when information is incomplete, and may influence the evolution of the distribution of resources. The introduction of “modern” credit markets may undermine these interlinkages, and consequently limit the usefulness of informal insurance. Using data which assigns households in a transitional Indian village to either a “modern” or “traditional” regime, we examine differences in financial transactions across these regimes. Traditional hoseholds receive more frequent “in-kind” transfers of food and clothing, While also more frequently making “in-kind” payments of crop output to others in the village.
Interest Rates and Money in the Measurement of Monetary Policy

Over the last 25 years, a set of influential studies has placed interest rates at the heart of analyses that interpret and evaluate monetary policies. In light of this work, the Federal Reserve's recent policy of “quantitative easing,” with its goal of affecting the supply of liquid assets, appears to be a radical break from standard practice. Alternatively, one could posit that the monetary aggregates, when measured properly, never lost their ability to explain aggregate fluctuations and, for this reason, represent an important omission from standard models and policy discussions. In this context, the new policy initiatives can be characterized simply as conventional attempts to increase money growth. This view is supported by evidence that superlative (Divisia) measures of money often help in forecasting movements in key macroeconomic variables. Moreover, the statistical fit of a structural vector autoregression deteriorates significantly if such measures of money are excluded when identifying monetary ...
"The ladder of the law has no top and no bottom": how therapeutic jurisprudence can give life to international human rights.

Abstract In the past two decades, therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) has become one of the most important theoretical approaches to the law. But, there has, as of yet, been puzzlingly little written about the relationship between TJ and international human rights law. To be sure, there has been some preliminary and exploratory work on the relationship between TJ and international law in general, but virtually nothing on its relationship to international human rights law in a mental disability law context. This paper seeks to focus on this lack of consideration, to speculate as to why that might be, and to offer some suggestions as to how to infuse some new vitality and vigor into this important area of law and social policy. In this article, first, I offer a brief explanation of TJ. Next, I discuss, also briefly, the impact (and the potential future greater impact) of the recently-ratified United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on this area. Then, I consider the sparse commentary currently available on the intersection between TJ and international law in general, and will speculate as to why this is so sparse. Then, I offer some thoughts as to the TJ/international human rights law connection, looking specifically at three questions that require far more attention from this perspective (access to counsel, the use of state-sanctioned psychiatry as a tool of political oppression, and the potential redemptive power of the CRPD), and describe a research agenda that scholars might turn to in furtherance of the investigation of the relationships between therapeutic jurisprudence, international human rights law and mental disability law. I conclude by calling on scholars, activists, advocates and practitioners to begin to take this connection seriously in their future work.
Mutual Fund Trading Style and Bond Market Fragility

We explore the link between mutual funds and fragility risk in the corporate bond market. We classify a fund’s trading style based on its responses to signals of large dealer inventories. Trading style is persistent and the majority of funds demand liquidity. Notably, a subset of funds earn positive alpha by intentionally supplying liquidity during periods of sustained customer selling (with transitory price effects). Liquidity-supplying funds maintain their relative trading style when facing large outflows and elevated market stress, thus alleviating fragility risk. Our results add nuance to existing evidence that mutual funds pose a threat to market stability.
The Limit of Rationality in Choice Modeling: Formulation, Computation, and Implications

Customer preferences may not be rational, so we focus on quantifying the limit of rationality (LoR) in choice modeling applications. We define LoR as the cost of approximating the observed choice f...
Teaching Prison Law

To judge from the curriculum at most American law schools, the criminal justice process starts with the investigation of a crime and ends with a determination of guilt. But for many if not most defendants, the period from arrest to verdict (or plea) is only a preamble to an extended period under state control. It is during the administration of punishment that the state’s criminal justice power is at its zenith, and at this point that the laws constraining the exercise of that power become most crucial. Yet it is precisely at this point that the curriculum in most law schools falls silent. This essay argues that that silence is a problem, and that American law schools should expand their curricular offerings to include some class or classes covering the post-conviction period. There are innumerable arguments supporting this reform. These include the sheer number of people in custody, the extreme vulnerability of this population and its enormous unmet legal need, and the fact that any law student who is planning a career in criminal justice—and thus involved in the process by which people are sent to prison—should be exposed to the realities of the American penal system and its governing legal framework. This essay canvasses these and other reasons for the proposed reform, suggests what a course in Prison Law might cover, sketches the possible contents of a broader post-conviction curriculum, and argues that the current gap in the course offerings of most law schools only reinforces the invisibility of vast carceral system currently operating in the United States and the millions of Americans caught up in it.
Exchange rate regime credibility, the agency cost of capital and devaluation

Abstract Hong Kong pegs their currency to the US dollar with a currency board. In the wake of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the US–Hong Kong interest rate differential jumped from 1 2 % to 4–6%. Investors feared Hong Kong would abandon the peg. This paper analyzes the crucial role of credibility in a stochastic dynamic rational expectations regime switch model. I parameterized the model using estimates of the exchange rate process for Hong Kong. The model generated interest rate differentials are consistent with the interest differentials in Hong Kong before the Asian financial crisis in July of 1997 but not after the crisis.
Law's Allure in American Politics and Policy: What It Is, What It Is Not, and What It Might Yet Be

Responding to a set of review essays, the author of Law's Allure: How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves, and Kills Politics (Silverstein 2009) argues that politicians and policy entrepreneurs fail to calculate the risks of juridification—the judicialization of policy combined with the legalization of politics itself—which have expanded and accelerated in the United States in recent decades. Paradigmatic case studies (on subjects including poverty, electoral districting, automated budgeting, war powers, abortion laws, and the regulation of tobacco as well as the environment) illustrate the risks of various patterns of juridification and construct an agenda for future research.
Giving Against the Odds: When Tempting Alternatives Increase Willingness to Donate

The authors examine how a reference to an unrelated product in the choice context affects consumers' likelihood of donating to charity. Building on research on self-signaling, the authors predict that consumers are more likely to give when the donation appeal references a hedonic product than when a utilitarian product is referenced or when no comparison is provided. They posit that this phenomenon occurs because referencing a hedonic product during a charitable appeal changes the self-attributions, or self-signaling utility, associated with the choice to donate. A series of hypothetical and actual choice experiments demonstrate the predicted effect and show that the increase in donation rates occurs because the self-attributions signaled by a choice not to donate are more negative in the context of a hedonic reference product. Finally, consistent with these experimental findings, a field experiment shows that referencing a hedonic product during a charitable appeal increases real donation rates in a nonl...
Electronic limit order book and order submission choice around macroeconomic news

Abstract We investigate the dynamics of the displayed part of the Island ECN limit order book for the equity-index-linked securities market around macroeconomic news releases. Our results indicate that the quality of the electronic market, measured by spread and depth, deteriorates during the releases. Furthermore, they show that traders appear to switch to more aggressive strategies as early as 3 min before an announcement and are most aggressive within the first minute after the announcement. Also, there is a noticeable difference in the response of the limit order book to the macroeconomic news during pre-market hours relative to regular trading hours.
VINCENT VAN GOGH, “SWEAT OF THE BROW,” AND DATABASE PROTECTION

A recent New York Times article 1 described the plight of a former computer programmer who decided to devote himself full time to the creation of the definitive Vincent van Gogh Web site. Over the course of five years, David Brooks collected, scanned and digitally reproduced copies of every known work of van Gogh, including paintings, drawings, watercolors, sketches and letters -to and from van Gogh. The resulting Web site, The Vincent van Gogh Gallery, 2 is very attractive and comprehensive. Brooks was extremely upset to learn that someone in the Netherlands had also created a Web site devoted to van Gogh, and had apparently copied many of the graphical images that Brooks had made. Furthermore, the site contained the translated text of the 864 letters that Brooks had compiled. The resulting Web site, About Van Gogh Art, 3 is also very attractive and comprehensive. Brooks said it took him five years to compile his site, but "the man who stole my site was able to do it in a matter of two hours." 4 Brooks said there were about 15 images that "you simply can't find anywhere else in color, and I found them on this guy's Web site, the same size, pixel for pixel." 5
What Larry Doesn't Get: Code, Law, and Liberty in Cyberspace

Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is Lawrence Lessig's ambitious attempt to make sense of the new kinds of legal and regulatory problems that cyberspace presents to us. It is built upon the foundational premise that codethe hardware and software elements that populate this new place, and the communication protocols that allow these elements to interact with one another-defines the architecture of this new space and is of paramount importance in determining how it will be regulated. As an anthropology of the various new regulatory and quasi-regulatory structures that may arise on the global network, Lessig's book is captivating and often dazzling; he demonstrates, compellingly, that cyberspace is a place in which code dominates, a world in which "code is law." As a normative call to arms, however, the book is somewhat less successful. Lessig argues that because we are the code writers-because cyberspace is a made, not a found, worldcontrol over the code needs to be subject to political, collective decisionmaking. Post suggests several reasons why this conclusion might not follow as smoothly from the premise as Lessig might have us believe.
Asking the right questions: body scanners, is salus populi supreme lex the answer?

In Asking the Right Questions: Body Scanners, is Salus Populi Supreme Lex the Answer?, Professor Victoria Sutton focuses on the Transportation Security Administration’s body scanner policy and the legal questions the policy raises, specifically whether salus populi suprema lex – "the individual right sinks in the necessity to provide for the public good" – is a reasonable rationalization for the burden on individual rights caused by the policy. Part I reviews the challenges to the policy that have been initiated by airline pilots and passengers in the past. Part II poses questions that should be asked; this section addresses competing interests, Fourth Amendment issues, a constitutional right to travel, ultra vires challenges, Fifth Amendment and procedural due process, privacy right differences for civilians and military officers, and lastly, the public health perspective on body scanners and a proposal for using the emergency public health declaration. Part IV analogizes the example of the childhood vaccinations requirement to the body scanner policy.
Negative Swap Spreads and Limited Arbitrage

Since October 2008 fixed rates for interest rate swaps with a thirty year maturity have been mostly below treasury rates with the same maturity. Under standard assumptions this implies the existence of arbitrage opportunities. This paper presents a model for pricing interest rate swaps where frictions for holding bonds limit arbitrage. I show analytically that negative swap spreads should not be surprising. In the calibrated model, swap spreads can reasonably match empirical counterparts without the need for large demand imbalances in the swap market. Empirical evidence is consistent with the relation between term spreads and swap spreads in the model
Direct Advertising of Prescription Drugs: The Duty to Warn and the Learned Intermediary Rule

Until recently, most pharmaceutical companies did not conduct direct-to-consumer advertising of their products. Instead, the product was distributed to physicians in sample form by representative agents in the hope that the physician would begin to prescribe the drug for his or her patients. All warnings of potential side effects had to be disclosed in package inserts, the Physician's Desk Reference or other promotional materials. As long as there was no direct advertising and the side effect warning issues were met, a concept called the "Learned Intermediary Rule" protected the company from any medical malpractice cases involving side effects. One exception for mass innoculations, such as the Salk Polio vaccine, was noted in the case law given the widespread benefit the vaccine provided to the populace at large. However, the landscape has changed. Companies now advertise cosmetic and non-cosmetic pharmaceuticals directly to the consumer in the hope that the patient will request that the doctor write the prescription, with or without an adequate examination. The key question at this point is whether the Learned Intermediary Rule should be kept in place given the aggressiveness of the companies in promoting their products. The first State to answer that question is New Jersey. In the the case, Perez v Wyeth Laboratories, Inc., 161 N.J. 1, 734 A2d 1245 (N.J. 1999), the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the change in pharmaceutical advertising was "dramatic," and although there exists a right to advertise directly to the public, there is no such automatic right of protection from malpractice cases under the Learned Intermediary Rule. The only question that remains is whether other states will follow. The author is inclined to believe that courts and state legislatures will not put physicians at risk while affording protection to the large pharmaceutical companies. Another question is how will the pharmaceutical companies deal with the potential increased risk. In New Jersey alone, the Perez decision opens the door to malpractice cases directly against the company, the preferred defendant in this type of "deep pockets" legal action.