cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Matching of Heterogeneous Firms and Politicians

We use a Chinese firm-director level panel dataset to examine the matching of heterogeneous firms and politicians. Based on 36,308 detailed biographies, we identify individuals that previously held bureaucratic positions and classify the rank of each position in the Chinese political hierarchy. Using this direct measure of political capital, we examine how firms with heterogeneous productivity match with politicians with different political strength. Our results indicate a positive assortative matching in the political markets. More productive firms recruit more powerful politicians. Further, the preference for political capital relative to conventional human capital increases in firms' dependence on external financing and decreases in the efficiency of local governments. Conditional on the endogenous matching, new hires with greater political strength receive more compensation than their co-workers in the same cohort. The marginal effect of a one-step rise in the political ladder exceeds the marginal effect of raising education attainment from, for example, high school to college.
Fifty Conflict of Laws "Restatements": Merging Judicial Discretion and Legislative Endorsement

This article examines current choice of law methodologies and critiques proposals for new and improved methodologies. It rejects the call for a national approach and instead proposes that each state adopt its own statutory choice of law code. The author recommends that each state begin this process by conducting empirical research and analysis of its own choice of law jurisprudence to determine how judges have approached the issue since rejection of traditional methods. Such analysis would examine not only substantive results, but also the methodologies employed and the possible existence of various biases in choice of law analysis. A thorough analysis would also likely reveal clear patterns for those issues that reappear from time to time. Drafters of a state choice of law code, rather than creating a choice of law methodology from whole cloth, would base their recommendations on the state's own jurisprudence. Such a result engages the efforts of both the judicial and legislative branches of the state's government, thereby resulting in a credible written product that reflects the state's own policies and jurisprudence: a true "restatement" of the law.
A Note on the Core of a Monetary Economy

This note shows that there are monetary equilibria in the model of overlapping generations that are in the core. Some equilibria have positive stocks of outside money in every generation. These equilibria are thus self-enforcing, and introducing money into an economy need not be tantamount to contriving a new social institution designed to enforce sequential contracts.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: E40, E60, C71.
Attraction without networks: Recruiting strangers to unregistered Protestantism in China

Author(s): Vala, CT; O'Brien, KJ | Abstract: Social movements research points to the role of networks in recruiting intimates and public spaces in recruiting strangers. But for Chinese Protestants, creative outreach strategies can be a substitute for existing relationships and initiate recruitment. In China, public proselytizing is forbidden, religion is rarely mentioned in the media, and direct contact -with potential converts is discouraged. To attract strangers, evangelists in China rely on door-todoor proselytizing in the countryside, cultural performances embedded with religious messages in the cities, and one-on-one conversations when the opportunity arises. By contacting targets in the ordinary flow of life and fashioning appeals using resonant language, Protestant recruiters have become adept at attracting non-networked individuals in "safe-enough" spaces that appear in the creases of a reforming Leninist regime. At a general level, the analysis suggests that networks sometimes play a smaller role in recruitment than is commonly thought, at least at first, and that social bonds may be as much a result of recruitment as a precondition for it. © Mobilization: An International Quarterly.
Creative industries: aligning entrepreneurial orientation and innovation capacity

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, innovation capacity, and firm performance in the creative industries context.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a survey‐based empirical analysis.Findings – Innovation capacity mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and two different measures of firm performance in the creative industries.Research limitations/implications – These results suggest that success in the creative industries requires significant alignment between the entrepreneurial management and creative capabilities of the firm. Firms must identify unique opportunities to exploit that will foster and best leverage their creative competencies.Originality/value – In addition to providing initial insight on the relationship between entrepreneurial action, innovative capacity, and performance with the creative industries, the paper also is one of the first on the creative industries to focus on firm‐level strategy.
Multidimensional poverty with missing attributes

We show how to minimize the probability of misclassifying individuals as being poor or not poor when data on some of their relevant attributes are missing, but an estimate of the population distribution of attributes is available.
The Limits of American Generosity

1. giving or given freely. 2. magnanimous; noble-minded; unprejudiced. 3.a. ample; abundant; copious . . . . b. . . . rich and full. . . . 1. bountiful, charitable, lavish, openhanded, free, liberal, unstinting, ungrudging, munificent, handsome, . . . bounteous. 2. . . . benevolent, charitable, beneficent, . . . bighearted, unselfish, forgiving, humanitarian, philanthropic, humane, kindly, noble, noble-minded, good; disinterested, . . . unbiased, liberal-minded, broad-minded, tolerant, liberal. 3.a. . . . plentiful, . . . lavish, overflowing, bountiful . . . ; large, substantial, sizable, . . . considerable, biggish, big.
Embedded Options in the Mortgage Contract

Loss mitigation is the process by which lenders attempt to minimize losses associated with foreclosure. As competition increases in the mortgage industry, lenders and servicers are under great pressure to adopt loss mitigation tactics rather than simply use foreclosure as the means of dealing with borrowers in default. This study presents a mortgage-pricing model that fully specifies all borrower options with respect to default, including the ability to reinstate the mortgage out of default. We document the impact of various loss mitigation programs, including forbearance and antideficiency judgments, as well as the value of credit on borrower default behavior.
SHORT SELLING AND PRICE DISCOVERY: EVIDENCE FROM AMERICAN DEPOSITARY RECEIPTS

The underlying shares of some American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) can be short sold in their home markets, and others cannot. This institutional feature offers a unique opportunity to investigate the relation between short selling and price discovery. We hypothesize and confirm that ADR short selling on a U.S. exchange is more informative when the ADRs’ underlying shares cannot be short sold in the home market. These and related results suggest that short sellers make a significant contribution to price discovery. Short sellers’ trading activity, representing more than 20% of total ADR share volume, increases the benefits of cross-listing on U.S. exchanges.
Time preference and the importance of saving for retirement

Abstract This study models the importance respondents place on saving for retirement as a function of time preference using a sample of 6812 undergraduate and graduate students. Individual time preference is measured by comparing dollar values over time and through a combination of intertemporal behaviors that may be the most theoretically appropriate measurement of the discount rate for utility over time. Results show strong correlations among decision making domains that involve time discounting. Time preference measured by comparing dollar amounts across time proves a much weaker predictor than a combination of intertemporal behaviors measured either as a linear scale or as factors. In multivariate models, a factor of intertemporal preventive health behaviors is a stronger predictor of the importance of saving for retirement than all other explanatory variables including age, race, parental income, gender, GPA, and college major.
On the Price Comovement of U.S. Residential Real Estate Markets

We investigate the comovement among Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for 14 metropolitan areas between 1992 and 2008. We define the portion of this comovement deemed as fundamental (excessive) as the covariation that can (cannot) be attributed to common fundamental factors directly influencing real estate prices. We find that i) comovement among these markets considerably increased over the sample period, especially in the late 1990s; ii) this increase is mostly attributable to underlying systematic real and financial factors, consistent with a greater fundamental integration of those markets; and iii) excess comovement is a less important factor than commonly believed. We discuss the implications of these results for the evolution of U.S. real estate prices over the last two decades and the ongoing credit crisis.
The revival of shelf-registered corporate equity offerings

Abstract We report that traditional seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) are no longer firms' preferred choice for raising seasoned public equity. Traditional offerings have recently been surpassed by shelf-registered offerings in terms of both annual frequency and total capital raised. This represents a dramatic shift from the 1980s, during which the overwhelming majority of firms favored traditional over shelf-registered offerings. We find that the growth in shelf use is related to firms increasingly valuing and using the option feature of shelf registration to defer offerings. Moreover, the evidence indicates that the way firms now use shelf offerings resolves the shelf under-certification problem and results in no larger market penalties and significantly lower underwriter fees relative to non-shelf offerings. Finally, firms often use universal shelf filings and choose between debt and equity offerings based on the prevailing relative market conditions.
POST‐MERGER PRODUCT REPOSITIONING*

This paper analyzes the effects of mergers between firms competing by simultaneously choosing price and location. Products combined by a merger are repositioned away from each other to reduce cannibalization, and non-merging substitutes are, in response, repositioned between the merged products. This repositioning greatly reduces the merged firm's incentive to raise prices and thus substantially mitigates the anticompetitive effects of the merger. Computation of, and selection among, equilibria is done with a novel technique known as the stochastic response dynamic, which does not require the computation of first-order conditions.
Reset-Free Lifelong Learning with Skill-Space Planning

The objective of \textit{lifelong} reinforcement learning (RL) is to optimize agents which can continuously adapt and interact in changing environments. However, current RL approaches fail drastically when environments are non-stationary and interactions are non-episodic. We propose \textit{Lifelong Skill Planning} (LiSP), an algorithmic framework for lifelong RL based on planning in an abstract space of higher-order skills. We learn the skills in an unsupervised manner using intrinsic rewards and plan over the learned skills using a learned dynamics model. Moreover, our framework permits skill discovery even from offline data, thereby reducing the need for excessive real-world interactions. We demonstrate empirically that LiSP successfully enables long-horizon planning and learns agents that can avoid catastrophic failures even in challenging non-stationary and non-episodic environments derived from gridworld and MuJoCo benchmarks.
Big and Beautiful? Evidence of Racial Differences in the Perceived Attractiveness of Obese Females.

This paper investigates the relationships between body weight, race, and attractiveness in appearance and personality among adolescents. We study a sample of 5947 (non-Hispanic) white and black girls age 12 to 18 who were interviewed by a group of 338 interviewers. We find that overweight and obese white female adolescents are, respectively, 23% and 40% less likely, on average, to be perceived as physically attractive compared to normal-weight white girls. The physical appearance penalties are significantly smaller for overweight and obese black girls compared to white girls. These findings suggest that being overweight or obese is costly due to its negative impact on inner and outer perceived beauty, providing an explanation for the observed stigmatization of overweight and obesity among women in labor and relationship markets. The smaller beauty penalties for black girls above the normal-weight range suggest that the range of body sizes considered attractive may be wider for black females.
Venture Capitalist Involvement and the Long-Run Performance of IPOs

The long-run underperformance of initial public offerings (IPOs) is a well documented anomaly. Recent research has shown that venture-backed IPOs marginally outperform non venture-backed IPOs and posits that venture capitalists (VCs) may add value through a variety of methods. We investigate the relation between the degree of involvement by VCs and the long-run performance of IPOs. We find a positive relationship between the proportion of monitoring directors (VC and independent directors) and long-run performance, evidence consistent with VCs shaping the board to increase monitoring. Further, it appears that VC-backed firms are able to reduce asymmetric information through attracting analysts and large shareholders thus improving long-run performance. Our results suggest that the underperformance of IPOs may be driven in part by those firms with none or low degrees of VC involvement.
Competition, Risk and Managerial Incentives

This paper examines how the degree of competition among firms in an industry affects the optimal incentives that firms provide to their managers. A central assumption is that there is free entry and exit in the industry, which implies that changes in the nature of competition lead to changes in the equilibrium market structure. The main result is that as the intensity of product market competition increases (as a result of greater product substitutability or greater market size), principals unambiguously provide stronger incentives to their agents to reduce costs. At the same time, more intense competition also leads to more volatile firm-level profits. Consequently, managers’ incentives are positively correlated with firm-level risk, consistent with empirical evidence. A decrease in the cost of entering the market has the opposite effect on incentives, but still induces a positive correlation between risk and incentives.
The XMM-Newton View of the Nucleus of NGC 4261

We present the first results from an XMM-Newton observation of the Fanaroff-Riley type I galaxy NGC 4261, which harbors a supermassive black hole and a low-ionization nuclear emission-line region. Here we focus on the X-ray properties of the nucleus, using the European Photon Imaging Camera pn data. The 0.6-10 keV continuum in best fitted by a thermal component with kT ~ 0.7 keV, plus a power law with photon index Γ ~ 1.4, absorbed by a column density NH ~ 4 × 1022 cm-2. An unresolved Fe K emission line with EW ~ 280 eV is detected at ~7 keV. We also detect, for the first time, short-term flux variability from the nucleus, on a timescale of 3-5 ks. The short-term variations rule out an advection-dominated accretion flow as the only production mechanism of the X-ray continuum. Instead, we argue that the inner jet contributes to the emission in the X-ray band.
Internal Versus External Capital Markets in the Insurance Industry: The Role of Reinsurance

This study compares internal and external sources of capital in the insurance industry by analyzing reinsurance activity between affiliated and unaffiliated insurers. Tests are performed using data from a large sample of property-liability insurers that are affiliated with at least one other property-liability insurer. Results indicate that while demands for internal and external reinsurance have some factors in common, there are cost-based differences in internal and external capital, as well as structural differences in the use of internal and external reinsurance. Results are consistent with previous theories related to internal versus external capital markets.
Beliefs, bias, and regime uncertainty after Hurricane Katrina

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between beliefs and economic policy in the context of gasoline prices following Hurricane Katrina.Design/methodology/approach – The paper applies three contributions – by North, Caplan and Higgs – to the question of gasoline pricing policy; and surveys public opinion regarding interference with prices.Findings – The paper identifies evidence of “anti‐market bias” in polling data, press releases, and legislation, and argues that the uncertainty emanating from statutes restricting “price gouging” may reduce investment in the provision of “necessary goods and services” after natural disasters.Originality/value – The paper is of value in offering evidence of anti‐market and anti‐foreign bias among what might be called political first responders to Hurricane Katrina, and posits the view that interference with prices compounded the shortages facing the Gulf coast or any other disaster‐stricken area.
Exchange rate exposure, hedging, and the use of foreign currency derivatives

Abstract We examine whether firms use foreign currency derivatives for hedging or for speculative purposes. Using a sample of S&P 500 nonfinancial firms for 1993, we find evidence that firms use currency derivatives for hedging, as their use, significantly reduces the exchange-rate exposure firms face. We also find that, while the decision to use derivatives depends on exposure factors (i.e., foreign sales and foreign trade) and on variables largely associated with theories of optimal hedging (i.e., size and R&D expenditures), the level of derivatives used depends only on a firm's exposure through foreign sales and trade.
Judges as Humans: Interdisciplinary Research and the Problems of Institutional Design

We demand a lot from judges. The job description calls for traits such as impartiality, fairness, independence, integrity, civility, and professionalism. What is more, the judge should exemplify these traits not merely on good days, but every day in every case. The longstanding conception of the judge in the American legal system calls for an Olympian figure, who remains above the fray and whose primary mode of action is detached reaction. That, of course, is an impossible ideal. Judges are people, and people are fallible. Observers have undoubtedly always recognized this, regardless of however strong the tendencies to believe otherwise. Lately, however, the recognition has become more systematic, evidenced by a proliferation of empirical work by both legal scholars and political scientists, as well as work drawing on the insights of psychology to illuminate judicial behavior. The result is an increasingly nuanced picture of judicial behavior, and the ways in which it departs from our idealized conception.
Casimir Effects in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

Abstract The long-range interaction between two atoms and the long-range interaction between an ion and an electron are compared at small and large intersystem separations. The vacuum dressed atom formalism is applied and found to provide a framework for interpretation of the similarities between the two cases. The van der Waals forces or Casimir–Polder potentials are used to obtain insight into relativistic and higher multipolar terms.
Revisiting Title IX's Feminist Legacy: Moving Beyond The Three-Part Test

Introduction 453 I. Title IX’s Legacy: Explosive Growth in Girls’ and Women’s Sports Participation, but Deep-Seated Resistance to Challenging Male Privilege in the Structure of Sports 457 II. Leadership Structures in Sport: More Women Play, but Fewer Women Lead 459 III. Cuts in Men’s Sports as a Remedy for Discrimination Against Women 466 IV. Feeding the Sports Machine: The Role of Money in Justifying Sex Discrimination in Sport 469 A. Essentializing Inequality in the Body: The Convergence of the Market Defense and Covert Assessments of a Natural Gender Order 471 B. The Role of the Market in Justifying Sex Discrimination in Sports 477 Conclusion 482
The median split: Robust, refined, and revived

In this rebuttal, we discuss the comments of Rucker, McShane, and Preacher (2015) and McClelland, Lynch, Irwin, Spiller, and Fitzsimons (2015). Both commentaries raise interesting points, and although both teams clearly put a lot of work into their papers, the bottom line is this: our research sets the record straight that median splits are perfectly acceptable to use when independent variables are uncorrelated. The commentaries do a good job of furthering the discussion to help readers better develop their own preferences, which was the purpose of our paper. In the final analysis, neither of the commentaries pose any threat to our findings of the statistical robustness and valid use of median splits, and accordingly we can reassure researchers (and reviewers and journal editors) that they can be confident that when independent variables are uncorrelated, it is totally acceptable to conduct median split analyses.
The welfare economics of cooperative and noncooperative fiscal policy

Abstract In the absence of Ricardian equivalence, lump-sum transfers between households within a country can alter the pattern of national saving and consumption, allowing the government to exploit the country's size in world trade and in international borrowing and lending. Redistribution across generations through unfunded social-security retirement schemes or public-sector deficit finance with lump-sum taxes and transfers enables a national planner to affect both the static and intertemporal terms of trade when trade restrictions or discriminatory taxation of asset income are unavailable due to international agreements. The case for cooperative fiscal-policy formation by governments of interdependent economies is examined in an overlapping-generations economy with internationally perfectly mobile capital and a single relative price, the world interest rate. The optimum unfunded social-security scheme when no distortionary tax instruments are allowed is derived for a government with nationalistic social preferences. This policy targets both intergenerational-distribution objectives and interest-rate objectives. The absence of distortionary taxes implies that no overall loss in world surplus need result from the strategic use of lump-sum transfers, so that coordination of intergenerational transfers is unnecessary for Pareto optimality. When internationally enjoyed public goods are introduced, allocational efficiency requires cooperative selection of national exhaustive public-spending programs, but it does not demand that the financing of public expenditures be coordinated.
Using Single-Neuron Recording in Marketing: Opportunities, Challenges, and an Application to Fear Enhancement in Communications:

This article introduces the method of single-neuron recording in humans to marketing and consumer researchers. First, the authors provide a general description of this methodology, discuss its advantages and disadvantages, and describe findings from previous single-neuron human research. Second, they discuss the relevance of this method for marketing and consumer behavior and, more specifically, how it can be used to gain insights into the areas of categorization, sensory discrimination, reactions to novel versus familiar stimuli, and recall of experiences. Third, they present a study designed to illustrate how single-neuron studies are conducted and how data from them are processed and analyzed. This study examines people's ability to up-regulate (i.e., enhance) the emotion of fear, which has implications for designing effective fear appeals. The study shows that the firing rates of neurons previously shown to respond selectively to fearful content increased with emotion enhancement instructions, but onl...
The Relation between CEO Compensation and Past Performance

ABSTRACT: This study focuses on the relation between current compensation and past performance measures as signals of a chief executive officer's (CEO's) ability. We develop a simple two-period principal-agent model with moral hazard and adverse selection and test theoretical predictions using CEO compensation data from 1993–2006. Consistent with the predictions, we find that salary (bonus) is positively (negatively) associated with past performance for both continuing and newly hired CEOs. We also find that while current salary is positively associated with future performance, current bonus is not. As the model suggests, salary is adjusted to meet the reservation utility and information rent, and is positively correlated over time to reflect ability. Bonus serves to address moral hazard and adverse selection by separating high-ability agents into riskier contracts. Our results indicate that it is important to disaggregate cash compensation into salary and bonus components to understand the dynamic intera...
Does the Tax Law Discriminate Against the Majority of American Children: The Downside of Our Progressive Rate Structure and Unbalanced Incentives for Higher Education?

Our graduate income tax structure provides an incentive to shift income to lower-bracket family members. However, some parents have much more latitude to shift income to their children than do others. Income derived from services and private business - by far the majority of American income - is less favored than income derived from publicly traded securities. The rationale given for this discrimination is that parents in services or private business, as opposed to those in securities, do not actually part with control of their property. This article explores these tax broader (yet subtle) tax benefits and their impact on the majority of children seeking a higher education. Proposed solutions to this lack of uniformity are discussed.
Contextualizing Regimes: Institutionalization as a Response to the Limits of Interpretation and Policy Engineering

When legal language and the effects of public intervention are indeterminate, generalist lawmakers (legislatures, courts, top-level administrators) often rely on the normative output of contextualizing regimes—institutions that structure deliberative engagement by stakeholders and articulate the resulting understanding. Examples include the familiar practices of delegation and deference to administrative agencies in public law and to trade associations in private law. We argue that resorting to contextualizing regimes is becoming increasingly common across a broad range of issues and that the structure of emerging regimes is evolving away from the wellstudied agency and trade association examples. The newer regimes mix public and private participation in novel ways. Their structures are less hierarchical than those of traditional administrative agencies and less clearly bounded than those of traditional trade associations. While the traditional regimes function to make solutions developed in more specialized realms available to generalist lawmakers, the newer ones function to organize collaborative inquiry where neither specialists nor generalists have well-developed understandings of problems or solutions. We explore the structure of such regimes and their relation to generalist lawmakers through three examples—a health and safety regime that straddles private and public law (the California Leafy Greens Products Handler Marketing Agreement), a civil rights regime (the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative), and an international environmental regime (the Dolphin Conservation Program of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission).
Too many physicians: physician-assisted suicide after Glucksberg/Quill.

This article discusses the 2007 decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in the two physician assisted suicide (PAS) cases, describes the policy debate about the permissibility of assisted suicide, and discusses experience under the Oregon statute that legalizes PAS in certain cases. The article also summarizes the moral arguments for and against PAS and euthanasia, and discusses the prospects for further legislation.
The Political Economy of International Financial Regulation

INTRODUCTION 1405 I. THE ORIGINS OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL REGULATION 1409 A. THE BRETTON WOODS SYSTEM 1409 B. THE RISE OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCE 1413 C. INTERNATIONAL REGULATORY COOPERATION 1416 II. THE POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL REGULATION 1422 A. RATIONAL CHOICE THEORIES OF IFR 1422 B. HISTORICAL PATH DEPENDENCE AND IFR 1425 C. THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF IFR 1427 D. EXPLAINING OUTCOMES 1436 III. WHY REGULATE INTERNATIONAL FINANCE? 1437 A. THE BASELINE: REGULATORY UNILATERALISM 1437 B. FIVE OBJECTIVES OF INTERNATIONAL REGULATORY COOPERATION ..... 1439 C. WHY SOFT LAW AND TRNS? 1456 IV. INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL REGULATION AFTER THE CRISIS 1459 A. HOW DID THE CRISIS AFFECT IFR? 1459 B. POST-CRISIS ACHIEVEMENTS 1463 C. WHERE TO FROM HERE? 1470 CONCLUSION 1473
Burying the “Continuing Body” Theory of the Senate

In the U.S. Senate, only one-third of the members stand for election every two years; the rest carry over from one congressional term to the next. In this regard the Senate differs from the House of Representatives, where all members stand for election every two-year cycle. That much is familiar, but what legal consequences flow from this structural difference? According to some legislators, courts, and commentators, this difference is very important in that it makes the Senate, but not the House, a "continuing body." The continuing-body idea is invoked to defend highly controversial aspects of Senate practice. By far the most familiar context in which the idea arises-and the one with the most potential for generating serious conflict-is the debate over the legality of the filibuster. Under the current Senate rules, it is extremely difficult to restrict or eliminate filibusters, for any attempt to amend the Senate rules can itself be filibustered. Further, precisely because the Senate is considered a continuing body, these nearly unamendable Senate rules never expire but instead remain in effect indefinitely. As a result, the Senate's supermajoritarian rules are entrenched against future majoritarian change. The continuingbody idea is thus used to justify an outcome that would otherwise seem to conflict with the usual principle that current legislative majorities are not bound by their predecessors' decisions. The basic thesis of this Article is that the continuing-body notion, though frequently invoked, cannot withstand scrutiny. I offer several arguments in support of that thesis. The arguments question the premises of the continuing-body idea, attack its supposed conclusions, and demonstrate * Assistant Professor, University of Houston Law Center. For helpful comments on previous versions, I thank Richard Albert, Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, Josh Chafetz, Robert Dove, David Dow, Matthew Green, Stephen Huber, Michael Stem, Seth Barrett Tillman, Stephen Vladeck, Howard Wasserman, and audiences at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting, the University of Houston Law Center, and the University of Texas School of Law (where Mitch Berman was especially generous with comments). Needless to say, the foregoing readers do not necessarily agree with my conclusions, and the responsibility for any errors or misjudgments lies with me. I gratefully acknowledge funding from the University of Houston Law Foundation. I thank Omid Bachari, Niles Illich, andJerad Najvar for research assistance.
Accounting Comparability and Economic Outcomes of Mandatory IFRS Adoption

This study examines the associations between four economic outcomes of the 2005 mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and concurrent changes in two important accounting constructs, accounting comparability and reporting quality. My primary purpose is to evaluate the relative importance of cross-country accounting comparability and firm-specific reporting quality in explaining previously documented increases in Tobin's Q, stock liquidity, analyst forecast accuracy, and analyst forecast agreement following IFRS adoption. Given that improvements in both comparability and reporting quality are primary stated objectives of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), it is important to understand their relative roles in shaping the information environment of financial statement users following IFRS adoption. Using 1,861 first-time adopters in 23 countries, I find that firms with a larger improvement in comparability have larger increases in Q, liquidity, forecast accuracy, and forecast agreement following adoption, relative to other adopters. In contrast, improvements in reporting quality around adoption appear to have only a second-order effect that is generally limited to Q effects among those adopters with concurrent improvements in comparability. These results are robust to alternative design and variable specifications. Finally, I continue to find these results for samples restricted to countries with weaker pre-adoption institutional environments and countries that did not initiate proactive financial statement reviews, indicating that strong institutions and regulatory improvements are not driving the results. Overall, my results suggest that improvements in cross-country accounting comparability played an important role in the previously documented economic benefits that accrued to 2005 mandatory IFRS adopters.
From Nuclear War to Net War: Analogizing Cyber Attacks in International Law

On April 27, 2007, Estonia suffered a crippling cyber attack launched from outside its borders. It is still unclear what legal rights a state has as a victim of a cyber attack. For example, even if Estonia could conclusively prove that Russia was behind the March 2007 attack there is no clear consensus on how Estonia could legally respond, whether with armed force, its own cyber attack, or some other measure. The scholarly literature dealing with these questions, as well as the ethical, humanitarian, and human rights implications of information warfare (IW) on national and international security is scarce. Treatments of IW outside the orthodox international humanitarian law (IHL) framework are nearly non-existent. This underscores the tension between classifying cyber attacks as merely criminal, or as a matter of state survival calling for the same responses as conventional threats to national security. International law has been slow to adapt. The facts on the ground, and the widespread, amorphous use and rapid evolution of the internet in many ways challenge state sovereignty. I will advocate that the best way to ensure a comprehensive regime for cyber attacks is through a new international accord dealing exclusively with cyber security and its status in international law. Yet, the international community lacks the political will to tackle this issue directly. Until such an accord becomes politically viable, it is critical to examine how existing treaty systems may extend to cover the novel facts presented by cybe attacks. Together, existing treaties form a dual track approach to cyber attacks - one that is available for cyber attacks that do not rise to the level of an armed attack, and another that is activated once an armed attack occurs. To that end this paper will examine the most apt analogues in international law to form an appropriate legal regime for the various types of cyber attacks - whether it is humanitarian law (laws of war), human rights law (regulation of nation states behavior), or some novel combination of these and other treaty systems. In framing this regime, it will be argued that cyber attacks represent a threat to international peace and security as daunting and horrific as nuclear war. Yet the nuclear non-proliferation model is not a useful analogy since the technology necessary to conduct IW is already widespread in the international community. Instead, other analogies will rely on communications and cyber law, space law, and the law of the sea. The main failings of existing international treaties that touch on cyber law though are that most do not carry enforcement provisions. Nor do they specify how the frameworks change or fall away entirely during an armed attack. Nevertheless, regardless of whether or not cyber attacks fall below the threshold of an armed attack these bodies of law have a role to play in forming an appropriate regime. The cyber attack on Estonia in April, 2007, presents an example of the dire need for clarity in the international law of non-conventional warfare using modern technology.
Implied Wavier after Seminole Tribe

Part I of this Article briefly traces the history of the Supreme Court's Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence, focusing in particular on the opinions developing the doctrines of implied waiver and abrogation. Part II makes the case that the doctrine of implied waiver retains validity after Seminole Tribe, at least with respect to federal statutes passed pursuant to the Spending Clause that condition the receipt of federal funds on the states' waiver of the Eleventh Amendment and statutes passed under Congress's other Article I powers that regulate an activity voluntarily undertaken by the states. Finally, Part III considers other potential constitutional impediments to the resurrection of the implied waiver doctrine, examining both the scope of Congress's authority under the Spending Clause and, more generally, the Tenth Amendment's protection of state sovereignty. The Article concludes that although Seminole Tribe prevents Congress from unilaterally abrogating the states' Eleventh Amendment immunity when it acts under Article I, nothing bars Congress from using its Article I powers to solicit state waivers of the Eleventh Amendment.
Hatch-Waxmanizing Copyright

This short article proposes a novel concept for counter balancing "copyright overspills". In the background of the discussion is the common reality of users succumbing to right-holders attempts to license uses which are most likely fair uses, or completely free of copyright protection. These practices have attracted considerable attention in recent literature. Most scholarly proposals in this context emphasize the need to clarify the contours of the fair use doctrine, and to remove doctrinal ambiguities. The article argues that these initiatives are probably insufficient for overcoming users risk-aversion in copyright markets. The analysis reflects an inherent structural imbalance within copyright law. While the law is designed around the prevailing narrative of providing an incentive for innovation, it is quite oblivious to providing an incentive to challenge copyright overspills. The article argues, then, that users should be provided with an actual incentive to challenge undue attempts to broaden copyright's scope.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Housing: Good Intentions Gone Awry

The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) are the two dominant entities in the secondary market for residential mortgages in the United States. This chapter describes and discusses these two companies and their special status in the U.S. residential mortgage market and recommends their true privatization, as well as a set of additional reform measures that would improve the efficiency of housing construction and consumption in the U.S. economy. Along the way, we will address a number of major issues that concern housing and its special place in the political landscape of America. JEL Classification Numbers: G21, G28
A Constitutional Wealth Tax

Policymakers and scholars are giving serious consideration to a federal wealth tax. Wealth taxation could address the harms from rising economic inequality, promote equality of social and economic opportunity, and raise the revenue needed to fund critical government programs. These reasons for taxing wealth may not matter, however, if a federal wealth tax is unconstitutional. Scholars debate whether a tax on a wealth base (a “traditional wealth tax”) would be a “direct tax” subject to apportionment among the states by population. This Article argues, in contrast, that this possible constitutional restriction on a traditional wealth tax may not matter. If the Court struck down a traditional wealth tax, Congress could instead tax wealth by adjusting a taxpayer’s income tax liability on account of her wealth. This Article describes three general methods for making this adjustment (collectively, “Wealth Integration” methods). A taxpayer’s wealth could affect her taxable income base (the “Base Method”), the applicable rate schedule (the “Rate Method”), or the availability of credits against tax (the “Credit Method”). Wealth Integration methods could replicate the economic effects of a traditional wealth tax but with an intrinsically different constitutional analysis. The Court could strike down Wealth Integration methods only by overruling settled prior precedent, invalidating many current features of the income tax, and fundamentally restricting Congress’s power to tax income under the Sixteenth Amendment. Finally, the possibility that Congress could instead tax wealth through Wealth Integration methods provides a new argument why the Court should uphold a traditional wealth tax. Otherwise, the Court would have to choose between fundamentally restricting the Sixteenth Amendment — and jeopardizing the income tax as we know it — or distinguishing between economically similar taxes on the basis of their formal label while still allowing Congress to tax wealth and diminishing the effect of the apportionment requirement as a restraint on Congress’s taxing power.
Use of High Quantification Evidence in Fair Value Audits: Do Auditors Stay in their Comfort Zone?

ABSTRACT: Research documents significant management bias and opportunism around the discretionary inputs of audited complex estimates, including fair value measurements (FVMs), which raises questio...
ASSESSING PROTECTIONISM AND SUBSIDIES IN AGRICULTURE — A GRAVITY APPROACH

This paper provides the first comprehensive empirical analysis of agricultural trade using a gravity model. The data set covers bilateral trade in agricultural goods for 152 countries over the periods 1990–1993 and 1999–2002. The estimations support claims that protectionism and distortive subsidies to agriculture remain widespread among industrialised nations, which are shown to import fewer and export more agricultural products than expected given other economic, political and geographic determinants of trade. However, some developing regions which are often thought to be the main victims of industrial-country protectionism are also found to be relatively closed to agricultural trade. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Legislation that Isn't?Attending to Rulemaking's "Democracy Deficit"

Philip Frickey' s commitment to practical legal studies won my admiration early on in his career. In this welcome celebration of his extraordinary career, it seems fitting to essay something "practical"?to attempt a constructive approach to an enduring problem?that has some bearing on his lifelong attention to the problem of "interpretation." If it will not make the problem go away, perhaps it will provide a basis for understanding its inevitable tensions, and in that way will help us step past theoretical exegeses suggesting the possibility of simple answers.
INCREMENTAL VALIDITY OF PERCEPTUAL SPEED AND ACCURACY OVER GENERAL MENTAL ABILITY

This study extends previous research by examining the incremental validity of a specific aptitude, perceptual speed and accuracy (PS), when it is operationalized as both the number correct (NC) and the number wrong (NW). We test the hypotheses that the NC on the PS test predicts the criterion of task performance and the NW predicts (negatively) rules compliance (RC). Based on the responses of 133 warehouse workers, hierarchical regression analyses supported both hypotheses. After controlling for respondents' demographic characteristics (race, gender, and age) and general mental ability (GMA), the NC on the PS test accounted for incremental validity in prediction of task performance (ΔR= .06, 15% increase), and the NW on the PS test accounted for substantial incremental validity in prediction of (lack of) RC (ΔR= .16, 73% increase). In addition, after controlling for demographic characteristics and both GMA and the specific ability, Conscientiousness accounted for unique validity in prediction of both task performance (ΔR= .07, 15% increase) and RC (ΔR= .06, 16% increase). Practical and theoretical implications for selection practices and models of job performance are discussed.
Vices and Virtues of Misguided Replications: The Case of Asymmetric Dominance:

The likelihood of replicating an effect such as asymmetric dominance (AD) largely depends on other, usually more important choice drivers (e.g., attributes, values). Accordingly, it is not surprising that the AD effect is often not observed when other choice drivers have greater impact and/or when the AD configuration is unlikely to be perceived. However, when price is an attribute (and in many other cases), the AD effect is often observed in both properly designed studies and the real world. The author notes that Frederick, Lee, and Baskin (2014) raise important questions, but they would have made a greater contribution had they (1) systematically studied the drivers of AD perceptions, (2) more accurately tried to replicate previous AD effect demonstrations, and (3) systematically studied the repulsion effect. The author also briefly comments on the Yang and Lynn (2014) studies, which he asserts did not test the AD effect properly in most cases.
The Political Ontology of Race

Race theory is dominated by two camps. Eliminativists rely on a biological ontology, which contends that the concept of race must be biologically grounded, in order to repudiate the very term, on grounds that it is epistemologically vacuous and normatively pernicious. Conservationists use a social ontology, in which race is based on social practices, in order to retain racial categories in remedial social policies, such as affirmative action and race-based political representation. This article attempts to reorient this debate in two ways. First, it challenges the idea that racial identity is entirely unchosen by defending a political ontology of race that, unlike the biological and social ontologies, affirms the role of non-white agency in determining the political salience of ascribed racial identity. It then transcends the normative impasse between eliminativism and conservationism by contending that all three ontologies are potentially valuable and dangerous, depending on where they are applied. The biological ontology is defensible for evolutionary and medical research, the social ontology for affirmative action and anti-discrimination policy, and the political ontology for political representation.