cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Deployment of a double scatter system for directional detection of background neutron radiation

Abstract The detection of special nuclear materials (SNM) requires the understanding of nuclear signatures that allow the discrimination against background. In particular, understanding neutron background characteristics such as count rates and energies and their correlations with environmental conditions and surroundings of measurement locations is important in enhancing SNM detection capabilities. The Mobile Imager of Neutrons for Emergency Responders (MINER) was deployed for 8 weeks in downtown San Francisco (CA) to study such neutron background characteristics in an urban environment. Of specific interest was the investigation of the impact of surrounding buildings on the neutron background count rates and to answer the question whether buildings act as absorber of neutrons or as sources via the so-called ship effect. MINER consists of 16 liquid scintillator detector elements and can be operated as a neutron spectrometer, as a neutron imager, or simply as a counter of fast neutrons. As expected, the neutron background rate was found to be inversely proportional to the atmospheric pressure. In the energy range where MINER is most sensitive, approximately 1–10 MeV, it was found that the shape of the detected background spectrum is similar to that of a detected fission spectrum, indicating the limited discrimination power of the neutron energy. The similarities between the detected background neutron spectrum and fission sources makes it difficult to discriminate SNM from background based solely on the energies observed. The images produced using maximum likelihood expectation maximization revealed that neutrons preferentially are coming from areas in the environment that have open sky, indicating that the surrounding buildings act as absorbers of neutrons rather than sources as expected by the ship effect. The inherent properties of a neutron scatter camera limit the achievable image quality and the effective deployment to systematically map neutron background signatures due to the low count rate.
A novel experimental approach for dynamic quantification of liquid saturation and capillary pressure in shale

Abstract Determination of dynamic fluid intrusion in tight oil reservoirs requires a very careful and precise estimation of changes in fluid volumes during spontaneous and forced imbibition. Because of the extremely low permeability of these mudrocks, only very small volumes of fluid can flow through the matrix. To overcome this limitation, the pressure decay method commonly used to estimate permeability and porosity in tight rocks is adapted to determine liquid saturation in tight rocks using a slightly compressible fluid as the confining medium. This adaptation uses the transient pressure drop within the bulk liquid surrounding the rock during confinement, to dynamically estimate the volume of fluid intrusion within the tight rock. Pressure decay data for shale samples from the Eagle Ford, Utica and Bakken formations, each of varying particle diameter were obtained experimentally from batch tests. The total pressure drop observed for each shale type was used to measure oil saturations and a pseudo capillary pressure curve was derived from the pressure and saturation data. These measurements were confirmed with NMR measurements made on the same samples (before and after oil saturation). The results show that shale formations with larger permeability tend to absorb more incremental oil during forced imbibition than that which it absorbs during spontaneous imbibition. Furthermore, it was observed that the duration of oil intrusion at lower initial pressures during forced imbibition was longer than the time interval observed for oil intrusion at higher initial pressures for the same particle size. Also, in relation to particle size, it was observed that a significant amount of oil intrusion occurred at lower pressures for large shale crushed samples during forced imbibition, in contrast to smaller oil intrusion observed for small sized particles at lower pressures. The reason for this is because larger sized samples possess micro cracks which serve as extra channels through which oil can penetrate.
Defect-Level Switching for Highly Nonlinear and Hysteretic Electronic Devices

Nonlinear and hysteretic electrical devices are needed for applications from circuit protection to next-generation computing. Widely-studied devices for resistive switching are based on mass transport, such as the drift of ions in an electric field, and on collective phenomena, such as insulator-metal transitions. We ask whether the large photoconductive response known in many semiconductors can be stimulated in the dark and harnessed to design electrical devices. We design and test devices based on photoconductive $\mathrm{Cd}\mathrm{S}$, and our results are consistent with the hypothesis that resistive switching arises from point defects that switch between deep- and shallow-donor configurations: defect-level switching. This electronic device design principle, photoconductivity without photons, leverages decades of research on photoconductivity and defect spectroscopy. It is easily generalized and will enable the rational design of nonlinear hysteretic devices for future electronics.
Efficient waveform covariance matrix design and antenna selection for MIMO radar

Abstract Controlling the radar beam-pattern by optimizing the transmit covariance matrix is a well-established approach for performance enhancement in multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) radars. In this paper, we investigate the joint optimization of the waveform covariance matrix and the antenna position vector for a MIMO radar system to approximate a given transmit beam-pattern, as well as to minimize the cross-correlation between the probing signals at a number of given target locations. We formulate this design task as a non-convex optimization problem and then propose a cyclic optimization approach to efficiently approximate its solution. We further propose a local binary search algorithm in order to efficiently design the corresponding antenna positions. We show that the proposed method can be extended to the more general case of approximating the given beam-pattern using a minimal number of antennas as well as optimizing their positions. Our numerical investigations demonstrate a great performance both in terms of accuracy and computational complexity, making the proposed framework a good candidate for usage in real-time radar waveform processing applications such as MIMO radar transmit beamforming for aerial drones that are in motion.
Determinants of Government Efficiency

Summary We compile the first large cross-country panel dataset of public sector performance and efficiency, encompassing 114 countries on all income levels from 1980 to 2004, with about 1,800 country-year observations for the education sector and about 900 observations for health. We regress these indicators on potential economic, institutional, demographic, and geographic determinants. Our most resounding conclusion is that higher government expenditure relative to GDP tends to be associated with lower efficiency in the respective sector. Moreover, we find that richer countries exhibit better public sector performance and efficiency, and that government accountability and demographic factors also play a significant role.
A Framework for Modeling "Real-Life" Airline Networks

This paper develops a new model, which allows for the co-existence of hub-and-spoke and point-to-point networks in the airline industry. Passengers are segmented between the non-stop and one-stop services. In the baseline model, the monopoly airlines ability to segment the market and effectively set up the mixed network depends on the cost savings due to the through-hub service relative to exogenous quality difference between the one-stop and non-stop flights. Socially inefficient entry with the new non-stop service where an incumbent is operating the hub-and-spoke network is possible.
Internal Affairs Doctrine: California Versus Delaware in a Fight for the Right to Regulate Foreign Corporations

The Internal Affairs Doctrine ("IAD") has traditionally been a categorical rule mandating that in corporate conflict-of-laws scenarios, only the incorporating state has the right to regulate a corporation's internal affairs. California has created a statutory exception to the IAD, however, that allows regulation of the internal affairs of out-of-state corporations in limited circumstances. In 2005, in VantagePoint Venture Partnets 1996 v. Examen, Inc., the Supreme Court of Delaware rejected California's statutory exception and its associated public policy in an attempt to reestablish the status quo of the IAD as an absolute mandate. This Note offers a critique of the VantagePoint opinion and argues that California's statutory exception should be universally accepted. This Note also suggests that the real motivation driving the VantagePoint court's decision to reject an exception to the IAD may have been to protect Delaware's lucrative corporate chartering business and annual fran-
Synthesizing TSCA and REACH: Practical Principles for Chemical Regulation Reform

The European Union’s newly enacted comprehensive regulation for industrial chemicals, known as REACH, draws heavily on three decades of experience in the United States under the Toxic Substances Control Act. Much of that experience has been negative, inasmuch as TSCA is widely regarded as a disappointment among US environmental laws, and so REACH deliberately reverses many of the legislative choices that Congress made in TSCA. REACH also takes advantage of important new regulatory concepts that were not available to the framers of TSCA thirty years ago. The passage of REACH has sparked renewed interest in reforming TSCA, and the reformers will undoubtedly look to REACH for ideas. This article contends that, while many aspects of REACH can fairly be understood as the Anti-TSCA, on closer examination REACH follows many of TSCA’s fundamental approaches to chemicals regulation. The fundamental similarities offer a unique opportunity to develop a synthesis of the two regulatory regimes, which could form the practical basis for updating TSCA. While reform based on a synthesis of TSCA and REACH would be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, it could nevertheless greatly improve chemicals regulation in the US. This article offers principles for such reform. The article concludes with a discussion of the global impact of national regulatory systems like REACH.
Property and Precaution

Property in land suffers from an unacknowledged precautionary deficit. Ownership is dispensed in standardized blocks of monopoly control that are routinely retained in their entirety until someone raises an issue regarding an actual or potential incompatible land use. This arrangement, which encourages owners to take sustained, unpriced draws against a limited stock of future flexibility, sets the stage for future impasse as inconsistent plans develop. It also makes property an unnecessarily accident-prone institution, given the role that bargaining failure plays in producing costly land use conflicts. Expanding the slate of potential precautions beyond owners’ locational and operational choices to include their choices about the strength and content of their own entitlements can offer new traction on land use disputes. In this essay, I propose using a local option exchange to confront owners with the opportunity costs of maintaining veto power over unused, low-valued rights. Enabling owners to relinquish property-rule protection of such rights before conflicts arise could reduce the costs of incompatible land uses by making property more flexible and communicative. This approach also carries interesting institutional and theoretical implications. Among other things, it requires rethinking the limits of customization in property bundles and the potential for owner participation in entitlement definition.
Why No “Efficient Breach” in the Civil Law?: A Comparative Assessment of the Doctrine of Efficient Breach of Contract

The aim of this article is to evaluate the American theory of "efficient breach" of contract, long heralded by the proponents of the law and economics movement, as a civil law scholar would do in his own jurisdiction. Because of a number of cultural and doctrinal hurdles that stand in the way of judicial and scholarly recognition of the theory, civilian jurisdictions are less favorable for the existence and development of the doctrine of efficient breach than American law is. By identifying and discussing these hurdles, this article attempts to make the scholarship of both economists and comparativists more relevant to each other by contributing to the dialogue between the two.
Understanding language-elicited EEG data by predicting it from a fine-tuned language model

Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings of brain activity taken while participants read or listen to language are widely used within the cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics communities as a tool to study language comprehension. Several time-locked stereotyped EEG responses to word-presentations – known collectively as event-related potentials (ERPs) – are thought to be markers for semantic or syntactic processes that take place during comprehension. However, the characterization of each individual ERP in terms of what features of a stream of language trigger the response remains controversial. Improving this characterization would make ERPs a more useful tool for studying language comprehension. We take a step towards better understanding the ERPs by finetuning a language model to predict them. This new approach to analysis shows for the first time that all of the ERPs are predictable from embeddings of a stream of language. Prior work has only found two of the ERPs to be predictable. In addition to this analysis, we examine which ERPs benefit from sharing parameters during joint training. We find that two pairs of ERPs previously identified in the literature as being related to each other benefit from joint training, while several other pairs of ERPs that benefit from joint training are suggestive of potential relationships. Extensions of this analysis that further examine what kinds of information in the model embeddings relate to each ERP have the potential to elucidate the processes involved in human language comprehension.
Market Integration and (the Limits of) the First Sale Rule in North American and European Trademark Law

This Article explores the intricate relationship between the exercise of trademark rights and the free movement of goods in the marketplace, and considers the effectiveness and the limitations of the principle of trademark first sale (also known as trademark exhaustion) in promoting the free movement of goods across international borders, notably across members of free trade areas. In particular, this Article examines the application of the principle of trademark first sale and the resulting process of market integration that has characterized to date the members of NAFTA and the European Union. Based upon this comparison, this Article argues that the creation of an effective system of free movement of goods in free trade areas requires, at a minimum, the adoption of uniform national rules providing for the exhaustion of national trademark rights with respect to products lawfully distributed worldwide or, at least, in the territory of all members of those areas. This Article highlights, however, that effective market integration across free trade areas may be jeopardized when corporations can use material differences in product quality to control product distribution and prevent the free movement of goods even when members of these areas nominally permit the importation of products lawfully distributed internationally or, at least, in the territory of other members. Following the analysis of the approaches adopted by NAFTA and the European Union, this Article stresses that the convergence of national standards, the mutual recognition of product characteristics, or the acceptance into national markets of materially different products from other members carrying appropriate labels disclosing these differences can nonetheless overcome these barriers. Ultimately, this Article concludes that invoking trademark protection to segment the market against the parallel trade of genuine goods not only undermines the purpose of free trade areas; it also goes against the general scope of trademark protection, which protects consumers against confusion and trademark owners against illegitimate acts that could take unfair advantage of, or damage the reputation of, the marks, and does not include the prohibition of the resale of genuine goods that trademark owners themselves have introduced into the market, even if in the territory of another member of a free trade area.
Fool Me Once: U.S. v. Aleynikov and the Theft of Trade Secrets Clarification Act of 2012

This Note analyzes the effect of the Theft of Trade Secrets Clarification Act ("TTSCA"), and argues that Congress should continue to cast a watchful eye on the Economic Espionage Act ("EEA"). Section I examines the EEA in detail, including its rocky history with the void for vagueness doctrine. Section II details the plight of Sergey Aleynikov and his arduous path through the federal court system, culminating in his recent arrest under New York State law. Section III examines the TTSCA’s scope and the unintended concomitant confusion it created in Agrawal — tried under one version of the EEA, but likely to be decided under another ex post facto. Finally, Section IV analyzes potential outcomes in the Agrawal case and argues that federal preemption is crucial to the healthy operation of the EEA. In order to ensure justice under the EEA, federal preemption — rather than the uncertainty of a mixed bag of state statutes — is necessary.
Stakeholder dialogue as an institutional strategy for sustainable development in China : the case of community environmental roundtables

Stakeholder dialogue, as an alternative institutional strategy for environmentally and socially sustainable development, has received little attention from researchers and practitioners in developing countries such as China, even though the dialogue strategy can potentially lead public governance to a more efficient level. This paper first discusses the potential of stakeholder dialogue as an institutional tool for promoting sustainable development in China, and then presents a pilot program of stakeholder dialogue recently developed in China -- the community environmental roundtables. Community leaders organize roundtable dialogues where representatives from government agencies, companies and the local residents exchange their views toward certain environmental issues they are facing and discuss possible ways to resolve the issues. Informal agreements are reached during the dialogues and implemented after them. This community roundtable dialogue strategy has been piloted in dozens of Chinese municipalities, addressing various environmental issues. A survey of dialogue participants shows that significant impacts have been generated on environmental protection, community management, as well as social and institutional development at the community level. Mutual understanding and trust among the government, companies, and local citizens are enhanced, environmental and social conflicts are reduced, and the public performance of various parties has been improved. This approach is expected to help solve other conflicts and public governance issues in China as well. The potential challenges of institutionalizing such a program in China are also discussed in the paper.
Constrained Regulatory Exit in Energy Law

In recent years, the federal government’s efforts to open up competitive electricity markets have transformed how we think about the regulation of energy. In many respects, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) broad “deregulatory” efforts, which commenced in the 1990s, might appear to be a case of paradigmatic regulatory exit as defined by J.B. Ruhl and Jim Salzman. But our case study of FERC’s restructuring of wholesale electricity markets reveals some important institutional features that make exit in federalism contexts, and under federal statutory duties, a rich and difficult problem. In the context of energy, exit from one regulatory sphere can create regulatory gaps. This has led FERC, which largely exited the regulation of wholesale electricity rates, to increase regulation in other spheres. It has also invited forms of intergovernmental exchange, as states have emulated or otherwise responded to FERC’s regulatory modifications in the areas in which states have jurisdiction. In this sense, the transition to competitive energy supply markets has involved constrained exit characterized by a hydraulic back-and-forth between regulators and institutions in an effort to ensure that statutory duties are fulfilled and other public needs are met. This assessment of regulatory exchange has a prescriptive implication: a federal regulator seeking to exit specific forms of conventional regulation needs to proactively develop strategies to facilitate regulatory exchange, while simultaneously preserving its authority over important substantive values related to its regulatory mission. Attention to “offsetting” regulations is often necessary to ensure that problematic regulatory gaps will not arise. In the energy context, these strategies might also include the use of mechanisms that give other institutions a voice in implementing exit strategies, as well as better ex ante regulatory planning for market enforcement that will continue after partial exit. We argue that it is not only a good strategy for federal regulators to recognize this hydraulic feature of exit, but that cooperative federalism statutes such as the Federal Power Act often require them to do so.
Is the FDA too conservative or too aggressive?: A Bayesian decision analysis of clinical trial design

Implicit in the drug-approval process is a trade-off between Type I and Type II error. We explore the application of Bayesian decision analysis (BDA) to minimize the expected cost of drug approval, where relative costs are calibrated using U.S. Burden of Disease Study 2010 data. The results for conventional fixed-sample randomized clinical-trial designs suggest that for terminal illnesses with no existing therapies such as pancreatic cancer, the standard threshold of 2.5% is substantially more conservative than the BDA-optimal threshold of 27.9%. However, for relatively less deadly conditions such as prostate cancer, 2.5% is more risk-tolerant or aggressive than the BDA-optimal threshold of 1.2%. We compute BDA-optimal sizes for 25 of the most lethal diseases and show how a BDA-informed approval process can incorporate all stakeholders’ views in a systematic, transparent, internally consistent, and repeatable manner.
Are Fairness Opinions Fair? The Case of Mergers and Acquisitions ∗

Abstract Over the period 1994–2003, 80% of targets and 37% of acquirers obtain a third-party assessment of the fairness of a merger or acquisition. These fairness opinions do not affect deal outcomes when used by targets, but they affect deal outcomes when used by acquirers. The deal premium is lower in transactions if the acquirer obtains a fairness opinion, and is further reduced if multiple advisors provide an opinion. However, the acquirer's announcement-period return is 2.3% lower if the acquirer has a fairness opinion, especially if the acquirer pays a high premium, indicating that investors are skeptical of these transactions.
Quality of Information and Oligopolistic Price Discrimination

Recent developments in information technology (IT) have resulted in the collection of a vast amount of customer-specific data. As IT advances, the quality of such information improves. We analyze a unifying spatial price discrimination model that encompasses the two most studied paradigms of two-group and perfect discrimination as special cases. Firms use the available information to classify the consumers into different groups. The number of identifiable consumer segments increases with the information quality. Among our findings (1) when the information quality is low, unilateral commitments not to price discriminate arise in equilibrium; (2) after a unique threshold of information precision such a commitment is a dominated strategy, and the game becomes a prisoners' dilemma; and (3) equilibrium profits exhibit a U-shaped relationship with the information quality.
Measuring Information Technology Spillovers

The measurement of the impact of IT spillovers on productivity is an important emerging area of research. Studies of IT spillovers often adopt a “production function” approach commonly used for measuring R&D spillovers, in which an external pool of IT investment is modeled using weighted measures of the IT investments of other firms, industries, or countries. We show that when using this approach, measurement error in a firm's own IT inputs can exert a significant upward bias on estimates of social returns to IT investment. This problem is particularly severe for IT spillovers because of the high levels of measurement error in most available IT data. The presence of the bias term can be demonstrated by using instrumental variable techniques to remove the effects of measurement error in a firm's own IT inputs. Using panel data on IT investment, we show that measurement error corrected estimates of IT spillovers are 40% to 90% lower than uncorrected estimates. This bias term is increasing in the correlation between the IT pool and firms' own IT investment. Therefore, estimates from models of spillover pools are less sensitive to the issues identified in this paper when the spillover paths minimize the correlation between a firm's own IT investment and the constructed external IT pool. Implications for researchers, policy makers, and managers are discussed.
Dating the State: The Moral Hazards of Winning Gay Rights

On August 1, 2009, a masked man dressed in black carrying an automatic weapon stormed into Beit Pazi in Tel Aviv, the home of the Aguda, the National Association of GLBT in Israel. He opened fire on a group of gay and lesbian teenagers who were meeting in the basement for “Bar-Noar,” or “Youth Bar,” killing two people and wounding at least ten others. This terrible act of violence attracted immediate national and international attention and condemnation. President Simon Peres declared the next day: [T]he shocking murder carried out in Tel Aviv yesterday against youths and young people is a murder which a civilized and enlightened nation cannot accept. . . . Murder and hatred are the two most serious crimes in society. The police must exert great efforts in order to catch the despicable murderer, and the entire nation must unite in condemning this abominable act.
BIDDING WARS OVER R&D-INTENSIVE FIRMS: KNOWLEDGE, OPPORTUNISM, AND THE MARKET FOR CORPORATE CONTROL

The knowledge-based theory of the firm suggests that, as knowledge intensity increases, knowledge management concerns, not opportunism, should increasingly drive organizational boundary decisions. ...
Socrates and Langdell in Legal Writing: Is the Socratic Method a Proper Tool for Legal Writing Courses?

While the Socratic method has historically been the predominant tool for legal education in many first year classes, its use in legal writing classes has been less widespread. Instead, legal writing classes have been at the forefront of teaching innovation in law, and this innovation has trickled down into other first year classes. However, in the rush to use innovative teaching methods, the value of the Socratic method as a teaching tool should not be ignored. The Socratic method, if used correctly, has the potential to be a valuable tool in the teaching of legal writing. This article explores the fitness of the Socratic method as a tool for the teaching of legal writing classes in the first-year law school curriculum. It considers the advantages of the Socratic method as a tool for active learning, teaching cognitive skills in legal analysis, and encouraging the development oral skills. The article also explores the common criticisms of the Socratic method: the argument that it is humiliating and terrorizing for students; that it is hierarchical and unfair to women students; that it hides the ball and wastes class time; and that it encourages laziness and confusion in both students and professors. The article concludes that, while many of these criticisms have merit, the nature of legal writing classes has the potential to ameliorate the ill-effects of the Socratic method, and to enhance the methods advantages as a teaching tool.
Female empowerment: impact of a commitment savings product in the Philippines

Summary Female “empowerment” has increasingly become a policy goal, both as an end to itself and as a means to achieving other development goals. Microfinance in particular has often been argued, but not without controversy, to be a tool for empowering women. Here, using a randomized controlled trial, we examine whether access to and marketing of an individually held commitment savings product lead to an increase in female decision-making power within the household. We find positive impacts, particularly for women who have below median decision-making power in the baseline, and we find this leads to a shift toward female-oriented durables goods purchased in the household.
The time-varying leading properties of the high yield spread in the United States

Abstract We propose a comprehensive empirical examination of the time-varying leading properties of two high yield spreads in the United States, and compare them with the leading properties of the term spread between the mid-1980s and the end of 2011. In a large set of in-sample and out-of-sample forecast exercises, we show that high yield spreads are not reliable predictors of future economic activity, as measured by the real gross domestic product and industrial production. Their predictive content for economic growth, which is statistically and economically significant between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the new century, vanishes in the second half of the 2000s. This disappearance is coincident with (i) structural breaks in the relationship, which largely occurred in the early years of the past decade and during the 2007–2009 financial crisis, and (ii) the reappearance of the leading properties of the term spread in recent years. In general, despite the recent deterioration of much of their predictive content, high yield spreads still tend to outperform the term spread for predicting economic growth at horizons of up to one year in both the in-sample and out-of-sample exercises, even after accounting for time-varying parameters in the model specifications.
Are Assurance Services Provided by Auditors on Initial Public Offerings Influenced by Market Conditions

The initial public offering (IPO) market is characterized by large, periodic swings in new issue volume, commonly referred to as hot and cold markets. We compare IPO assurance fees over these cycles controlling for factors that are potentially associated with hot IPO markets. We find that average assurance fees are lower during hot market periods and that fee coefficients associated with certain clientand IPO-specific attributes are lower during hot markets. Our results are consistent with the explanation that IPO assurance services are influenced by varying client demands to defer or accelerate the date of the new issue in order to capitalize on market conditions.
Factors affecting initial disability allowance rates for the Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs: the role of the demographic and diagnostic composition of applicants and local labor market conditions.

Various factors outside the control of decision makers may affect the rate at which disability applications are allowed or denied during the initial step of eligibility determination in the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs. In this article, using individual-level data on applications, I estimate the role of three important factors—the demographic characteristics of applicants, the diagnostic mix of applicants, and the local unemployment rate—in affecting the probability of an initial allowance and state allowance rates. I use a random sample of initial determinations from 1993 through 2008 and a fixed-effects multiple regression framework. The empirical results show that the demographic and diagnostic characteristics of applicants and the local unemployment rate substantially affect the initial allowance rate. An increase in the local unemployment rate tends to be associated with a decrease in the initial allowance rate. This negative relationship holds for adult DI and SSI applicants and for SSI childhood applicants.
Transient Stability of Droop-Controlled Inverter Networks with Operating Constraints

Due to the rise of distributed energy resources, the control of networks of grid-forming inverters is now a pressing issue for power system operation. Droop control is a popular control strategy in the literature for frequency control of these inverters. In this paper, we analyze transient stability in droop-controlled inverter networks that are subject to multiple operating constraints. Using a physically-meaningful Lyapunov-like function, we provide two sets of criteria (one mathematical and one computational) to certify that a post-fault trajectory achieves frequency synchronization while respecting operating constraints. We show how to obtain less-conservative transient stability conditions by incorporating information from loop flows, i.e., net flows of active power around cycles in the network. Finally, we use these conditions to quantify the scale of parameter disturbances to which the network is robust. We illustrate our results with numerical case studies of the IEEE 24-bus system.
The Rise and Fall of the Note: Changing Paper Lengths in ACM CSCW, 2000-2018

In this note, I quantitatively examine various trends in the lengths of published papers in ACM CSCW from 2000-2018, focusing on several major transitions in editorial and reviewing policy. The focus is on the rise and fall of the 4-page note, which was introduced in 2004 as a separate submission type to the 10-page double-column "full paper" format. From 2004-2012, 4-page notes of 2,500 to 4,500 words consistently represented about 20-35% of all publications. In 2013, minimum and maximum page lengths were officially removed, with no formal distinction made between full papers and notes. The note soon completely disappeared as a distinct genre, which co-occurred with a trend in steadily rising paper lengths. I discuss such findings both as they directly relate to local concerns in CSCW and in the context of longstanding theoretical discussions around genre theory and how socio-technical structures and affordances impact participation in distributed, computer-mediated organizations and user-generated content platforms. There are many possible explanations for the decline of the note and the emergence of longer and longer papers, which I identify for future work. I conclude by addressing the implications of such findings for the CSCW community, particularly given how genre norms impact what kinds of scholarship and scholars thrive in CSCW, as well as whether new top-down rules or bottom-up guidelines ought to be developed around paper lengths and different kinds of contributions.
Sources of gains in horizontal mergers: evidence from customer, supplier, and rival firms

Abstract We investigate the upstream and downstream product-market effects of a large sample of horizontal mergers and acquisitions from 1980 to 1997. We construct a data set that identifies the corporate customers, suppliers, and rivals of the firms initiating horizontal mergers and use this data set to examine announcement-related stock market revaluations and post-merger changes in operating performance. We find little evidence consistent with increased monopolistic collusion. However, we do find evidence consistent with improved productive efficiency and buying power as sources of gains to horizontal mergers. The nature of the buying power gains, i.e., rents from monopsonistic collusion or improved purchasing efficiency, is also investigated.
The Optimal Level of Social Security Benefits

The optimal level of social security benefits depends on balancing the protection that these benefits offer to those who lack the foresight to provide for their own old age against the welfare costs of distorting economic behavior. The primary such cost is the distortion in private saving. The present paper derives the level of social security benefits that is optimal in three basic cases. In the first section the paper derives the optimal level of benefits for an economy in which all individuals do not anticipate retirement at all and therefore do no saving. The second and third sections then derive optimal benefits for two different definitions of incomplete myopia.
Stand and Deliver: Effects of Boston’s Charter High Schools on College Preparation, Entry, and Choice

We use admissions lotteries to estimate effects of attendance at Boston’s charter high schools on college preparation and enrollment. Charter schools increase pass rates on Massachusetts’ high-stakes exit exam, with large effects on the likelihood of qualifying for a state-sponsored scholarship. Charter attendance also boosts SAT scores sharply and increases the likelihood of taking an Advanced Placement (AP) exam, the number of AP exams taken, and AP scores. Charters induce a substantial shift from 2- to 4-year institutions, though the effect on overall college enrollment is modest. Charter effects on college-related outcomes are strongly correlated with charter effects on earlier tests.
News Implied Volatility and Disaster Concerns

We extend back to 1890 the volatility implied by options index (VIX), available only since 1986, using the frequency of words on the front-page of the Wall Street Journal. News implied volatility (NVIX) captures well the disaster concerns of the average investor over this longer history. NVIX is particularly high during stock market crashes, times of policy-related uncertainty, world wars and financial crises. We find that periods when people are more concerned with a rare disaster, as proxied by news, are either followed by periods of above average stock returns, or followed by periods of large economic disasters. We estimate that the disaster probability has a half-life of four to eight months and annual volatility of 4% to 6%. Our findings are consistent with the view that hard to measure time-varying rare disaster risk is an important driver behind asset prices.
EDUCATIONAL VOUCHERS AND CREAM SKIMMING

Epple and Romano (1998) show equilibrium provision of education by public and private schools has the latter skim off the wealthiest and most-able students, and universal vouchers lead to further cream skimming. Here we study voucher design that injects private-school competition and increases technical efficiencies without cream skimming. Conditioning vouchers on student ability without restriction on participating schools' policies fails to affect significantly cream skimming. However, by adding restrictions like tuition constraints, such vouchers can reap the benefits of school competition without increased stratification. This is accomplished while allowing voluntary participation in the voucher system and without tax increases.
WHY THE LUCK PROBLEM ISN’T

Libertarianism about free will is the view that we have free will of a variety that is incompatible with the thesis of determinism. A traditional challenge to such views is something called "The Luck Problem." In its most basic form, the worry is that if free will involves non-deterministic causation, exercises of free agency are necessary subject to some or another form of luck. The Luck Problem is frequently regarded as among the most serious challenges to the tenability of libertarian theories of free will. Indeed, one of the main reasons to adopt the primary competitor position — compatibilism, or the view that free will is compatible with determinism — has historically been the thought that the luck problem constitutes an insurmountable problem for libertarianism. This paper argues for a new understanding of the Luck Problem and its significance. On the present account, either the Luck Problem is also a problem for compatibilists, or else it is not a problem for either libertarians or compatibilists. After arguing for this dilemma, I show why the most promising horn to take is the "no problem for either." The core of the argument is that there is good reason to think at least some compatibilist accounts have a satisfactory answer to the Luck Problem, and that (surprisingly) many libertarian accounts can help themselves to that solution.
Three Fallacies of Contemporary Jurisprudence

Modern legal thought overlooks basic religious questions about the authority, purpose and limits of law. These questions are fundamental to a proper jurisprudential study, yet are routinely ignored. This paper addresses the three basic fallacies that have developed from the failure of legal scholars to examine the religious foundations of the law, and suggests a reordering of basic legal theory in line with this new thinking.
Inspecting the Mechanism: An Analytical Approach to the Stochastic Growth Model

Abstract This paper argues that a clear understanding of the stochastic growth model can best be achieved by working out an approximate analytical solution. The proposed solution method replaces the true budget constraints and Euler equations of economic agents with loglinear approximations. The model then becomes a system of loglinear expectational difference equations, which can be solved by the method of undetermined coefficients. The paper uses this technique to study shocks to techno- logy and shocks to government spending financed by lump-sum or distortionary taxation. It emphasizes that the persistence of shocks is an important determinant of their macroeconomic effects.
Alternative profitability measures and cross-section of expected stock returns: international evidence

This paper provides an extensive international analysis of the cross-sectional return predictive power of a variety of firm-level profitability measures, calculated from different combinations of measures of earnings and scaling variables. We show that this cross-sectional predictive relation is more pronounced when profit is measured by gross profit and when profits are scaled by enterprise value or market value of equity. Our findings support the hypotheses that the predictive power of “profits-to-market price” factor is partly attributable to stock mispricing arising from systematic behavioral biases and partly to the choice of a “clean” measure of earnings.
Making Renewable Energy a Reality-Finding Ways to Site Wind Power Facilities

This article considers the increased interest in wind power as an alternative to conventional electricity generation in the United States. After examining the pros and cons of the wind energy technology, it discusses the land use and environmental implications of siting large, utility scale wind farm facilities. It suggests ways in which the siting of such facilities might be treated in the future.
MNE/NGO partnerships and the legitimacy of the firm

Abstract This manuscript investigates the legitimating function of Multinational Enterprise (MNE)/Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) partnerships. First, it reviews the complexities inherent in the MNE's quest for social legitimacy. Then, it discusses the characteristics of MNE/NGO partnerships, and the growing anecdotal evidence about their applications for managing corporate social legitimacy. Next, propositions are advanced to suggest how the complexities in the legitimating environment of the MNE may drive its decision to partner with an NGO. Partnership governance and outcomes are also discussed and several examples of MNE/NGO partnerships are presented to illustrate how firms use them to manage their social legitimacy.
Not all scientists pay to be scientists: PhDs’ preferences for publishing in industrial employment

Abstract It is often assumed that academically trained scientists have a strong taste for science and are willing to “pay” for the ability to openly disclose their research results. However, little is known regarding how scientists considering jobs in industrial R&D make trade-offs between positions that allow publishing on the one hand and positions that do not allow publishing but offer higher pay on the other. Using data on over 1900 science and engineering PhD candidates about to enter the job market, we find that while some are unwilling to give up publishing at virtually any price, over one third of those most likely to seek positions in industrial research are willing to forego publishing for free. We develop a simple model of the “price” scientists assign to publishing in firms and explore potential sources of heterogeneity empirically. We find that the price of publishing increases with individuals’ preferences for various benefits from publishing such as peer recognition and contributing to society, but it decreases with their preference for money. Scientists who believe themselves to be of high ability and who train at top tier institutions have a higher price of publishing. Yet, they are more expensive to hire (not less) even if publishing is allowed. We discuss implications for research on the economics of science and on compensating differentials, for managers seeking to attract and retain academically trained personnel, and for firms considering their participation in open science.
Antisense lncRNA Transcription Drives Stochastic Protocadherin α Promoter Choice

Stochastic and combinatorial activation of clustered Protocadherin (Pcdh) α, β, and γ gene promoters generates a cell-surface identity code in individual neurons that functions in neural circuit assembly. Here we show that Pcdhα promoter choice requires transcription of a long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) initiated from newly identified promoters located in the protein coding sequence of each Pcdhα exon. Antisense transcription of the lncRNA through the sense promoter results in its activation and in DNA demethylation of the binding sites for the CCCTC-binding protein, CTCF, located in close proximity to both sense and antisense promoters. Increased CTCF binding promotes the assembly of long-range DNA contacts between the activated promoter and a neuron-specific enhancer, thus locking in the epigenetic state of the stochastically chosen Pcdhα promoter. Examination of this hierarchical molecular mechanism in differentiating olfactory sensory neurons, suggests that antisense Pcdhα transcription is a key prerequisite for stochastic Pcdhα promoter choice in vivo.
Running on empty? Financial leverage and product quality in the supermarket industry

This paper examines whether debt financing can undermine a supermarket firm's incentive to provide product quality. In the supermarket industry, product availability is an important measure of a retailer's quality. Using US consumer price index microdata to track inventory shortfalls, I find that taking on high financial leverage increases shortfalls. Highly leveraged firms appear to be degrading their products' quality in order to preserve current cash flow for debt service. Although reducing quality can erode both current sales and customer loyalty, firms appear to be willing to risk these outcomes in order to achieve benefits associated with debt finance. (JEL D92, G31, G32, L15, L81)