cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Publish or Paris? Evidence of How Judges Allocate Their Time

A utility-maximizing model of judicial behavior predicts that, all else equal, judges who have stronger preferences for publishing opinions, who have lighter workloads, or who are able to write publishable decisions more efficiently are more likely to publish their decisions. Using federal district court judges' decisions regarding the constitutionality of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, this article presents empirical support for these predictions. Many judicial, institutional, and other characteristics are examined that should be correlated with a judge's workload or with a judge's taste for, or efficiency in, publishing opinions. These analyses find that, all else equal, judges who held prior political positions, who received higher American Bar Association (ABA) ratings, who had lighter caseloads, who had longer tenures, who struck down the guidelines, or who had a greater chance of promotion to a U.S. court of appeals were more likely to publish their decisions. In addition, judges' publication decisions were significantly affected by the prior decisions of judges in the same district, but little affected by those of judges in other districts. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.
Corporate Sport Sponsorship and Stock Returns: Evidence from the NFL

Most home stadiums/arenas of major-sport teams in the U.S. are sponsored by large publicly traded companies. Using NFL data we find that stock returns to the sponsoring firms are affected by the outcomes of games played in their stadiums. Wins in Monday night games generate next-day abnormal returns 50 basis points higher than losses. The effect is 80 basis points in the post-season and when the game outcome is unexpected. This does not revert over the next few days. Outcomes of NFL games could serve as a reasonably exogenous instrument for investor sentiment.
Design and Analysis of Switchback Experiments

Switchback experiments, where a firm sequentially exposes an experimental unit to random treatments, are among the most prevalent designs used in the technology sector, with applications ranging from ride-hailing platforms to online marketplaces. Although practitioners have widely adopted this technique, the derivation of the optimal design has been elusive, hindering practitioners from drawing valid causal conclusions with enough statistical power. We address this limitation by deriving the optimal design of switchback experiments under a range of different assumptions on the order of the carryover effect --- the length of time a treatment persists in impacting the outcome. We cast the optimal experimental design problem as a minimax discrete optimization problem, identify the worst-case adversarial strategy, establish structural results, and solve the reduced problem via a continuous relaxation. For switchback experiments conducted under the optimal design, we provide two approaches for performing inference. The first provides exact randomization based p-values, and the second uses a new finite population central limit theorem to conduct conservative hypothesis tests and build confidence intervals. We further provide theoretical results when the order of the carryover effect is misspecified and provide a data-driven procedure to identify the order of the carryover effect. We conduct extensive simulations to study the empirical properties of our results and conclude with practical suggestions.
Cross-national differences in risk preference and lay predictions.

This research explores whether there are systematic cross-national differences in choice-inferred risk preferences between Americans and Chinese. Study 1 found (a) that the Chinese were significantly more risk seeking than the Americans, yet (b) that both nationals predicted exactly the opposite—that the Americans would be more risk seeking. Study 2 compared Americans' and Chinese risk preferences in investment, medical and academic decisions, and found that Chinese were more risk seeking than Americans only in the investment domain and not in the other domains. These results are explained in terms of a ‘cushion hypothesis’, which suggests people in a collectivist society, such as China, are more likely to receive financial help if they are in need (i.e. they could be ‘cushioned’ if they fell), and consequently, they are less risk averse than those in an individualistic society such as the USA. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Managing for breakthroughs in productivity

This article is about creating and managing projects so as to deliberately and predictably produce results well beyond what could have been reasonably expected beforehand. This methodology was originated in the mid-1980’s and applied to 20 engineering projects at IBM with spectacular results. In the years since, many projects in a myriad of fields have been managed using the same techniques with similar results. This article describes the original IBM projects and some of the additional projects undertaken since then. It also outlines the methodology used and provides perspective on why the methodology works and the pitfalls to be avoided. George Bernard Shaw (1903) captured the essence of the work reported in this article: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
Does Mandatory Adoption of IFRS Enhance Earnings Quality? Evidence From Closer to Home

The global accounting convergence and the often discussed probable adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by U.S. regulators is a timely topic. We contribute to the literatu...
Monetary policy transmission under different banking structures: The role of capital and heterogeneity

Abstract This work deals with the transmission of monetary policy through the bank loan market, in the presence of a capital requirement regulation. Unlike standard models, based on the “representative bank” shortcut, we adopt the heterogeneous agents approach: this allows us to explicitly model the strategic interaction between well-capitalized and under-capitalized banks. The main results are the following. (I) The propagation of a monetary policy impulse through the loan market differs considerably, depending on the market structure: under monopolistic competition, strategic complementarity among well-capitalized banks leads to a “multiplier effect”; in the Cournot oligopoly framework, an effect of the opposite sign is at work, due to strategic substitutability. (II) Well-capitalized banks are more important, in shaping the adjustment following a monetary policy shock, than what is implied by their relative number over total; this fact strengthens the monetary policy effectiveness. This result holds under both monopolistic competition and oligopoly, although the interaction among banks, leading to such a result, differs across the two banking structures.
Royal C. Gardner: Lawyers, swamps, and money: U.S. wetland law, policy, and politics

In Lawyers, Swamps, and Money, Royal C. Gardner injects much needed humor into a topic that can be dense, difficult, and often riddled with intense controversy. Wetland law and policy in the USA consists of a confusing web of statutes, regulations, permits, and guidance documents, which an army of judges have reviewed and interpreted through constitutional and narrower lenses. Gardner brings both levity and as much clarity as possible to this quagmire through popular references that range from the 1950s children’s book Dear Garbage Man to Far Side cartoons and even a quote from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Methods for second order meta-analysis and illustrative applications ☆

This paper presents methods for second order meta-analysis along with several illustrative applications. A second order meta-analysis is a meta-analysis of a number of statistically independent and methodologically comparable first order meta-analyses examining ostensibly the same relationship in different contexts. First order meta-analysis greatly reduces sampling error variance but does not eliminate it. The residual sampling error is called second order sampling error. The purpose of a second order meta-analysis is to estimate the proportion of the variance in mean meta-analytic effect sizes across multiple first order meta-analyses attributable to second order sampling error and to use this information to improve accuracy of estimation for each first order meta-analytic estimate. We present equations and methods based on the random effects model for second order meta-analysis for three situations and three empirical applications of second order meta-analysis to illustrate the potential value of these methods to the pursuit of cumulative knowledge.
How American Workers Lost the Right to Strike, and Other Tales

To paraphrase a veteran labor scholar, if you want to know where the corpses are buried in labor law, look for the "of course" statements in court opinions.' By "of course" statements, he meant propositions that are announced as if they were self-evident, requiring no justification. Each year, thousands of law students read such statements in labor law casebooks. And each year, they duly ask themselves prodded sometimes by the casebook's notes how these conclusions could be justified in legal terms. But often there seems to be no answer, and the mystery continues. This Essay recounts the origins of five such "of course" statements, each of which has had a devastating impact on the American labor movement. The five statements are:
Looking Backward and Forward at the Suspension Clause

This essay considers whether the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which states that the “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus” may not be suspended except in cases of “invasion of rebellion,” has since its enactment had an implicit “time of war” exception, even though suspensions would literally seem limited to instances in which the United States was actually “invaded” by an enemy or when internal “rebellion” had broken out.
Doctors as pawns? Law and medical ethics at Guantánamo Bay.

This article (based on a paper presented at the Seton Hall Law School Guantanamo Teach-In/Conference in October 2006) explores the relationship between law and medical ethics through the lens of detainee abuse at Guantanamo Bay. It describes the U.S. Administration's exercises in legal exceptionalism - designed to limit or disapply international legal protections for detainees in the war on terror - and makes a case for robust ethics codes governing the participation of a variety of health professionals in interrogation scenarios. The article also critiques recent ethical position statements adopted by the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association.
Horizontal Political Externalities: the Supply and Demand of Disaster Management

This Article discusses the dynamics of shared political accountability and provides a supply- and demand-side analysis of disaster management. Because multiple levels of government share political accountability in national scale disasters, disaster management is subject to a collective action problem. Introducing the concept of horizontal political externalities, this Article explains the shortcomings of disaster management in terms of asymmetric political accountability costs for ex ante preparedness and ex post relief. In the presence of shared accountability, investments in prevention and relief by one government actor confer positive externalities upon other government actors by reducing the overall chance of being held responsible in ensuing disasters. In contrast, ex post disaster relief involves negative externalities when action by one agency makes other agencies or representatives look worse. Because positive externalities are undersupplied and negative externalities are oversupplied, political externalities distort disaster management policy. When political accountability is shared, no single actor bears the full brunt of accountability. In addition, uncertainty and finger-pointing reduce the total sum of political accountability. The different effects of ex ante and ex post disaster management on political accountability may shed light on events before and after Hurricane Katrina. I provide suggestions for further avenues of empirical and theoretical research on this new positive political theory of horizontal political externalities and political accountability losses.
The monetary mechanism of stateless Somalia

A peculiar monetary institution emerged during the period of interregnum in Somalia from January 1991 to August 2012. Without a functioning government to restrict the supply of notes in circulation, Somalis found it profitable to contract with foreign printers and import forgeries. The exchange value of the largest denomination Somali shillings note fell from US $0.30 in 1991 to US $0.03 in 2008. However, the purchasing power eventually stabilized at the cost of producing additional notes.
CEO Equity Incentives and Financial Misreporting: The Role of Auditor Expertise

ABSTRACT: Prior studies find inconsistent evidence regarding the effect of CEO equity incentives on financial misreporting. We argue that this inconsistency stems from not considering detection mechanisms that mitigate the effect of equity incentives on misreporting by limiting the ability of managers to carry out such manipulative activities. Using auditor industry expertise as one such detection mechanism, we document that CEO equity incentives are positively associated with misreporting only in subsamples where auditor expertise is low, but not where expertise is high. The implication of these results is that auditor expertise lowers the cost of granting equity-based incentives and that firms audited by an industry expert grant their CEOs greater equity incentives. We find strong evidence in favor of this implication. Controlling for previously identified determinants of CEO equity incentives, we find that firms audited by an industry expert grant their CEOs 14 percent more equity incentives than firms...
Burton D. Wechsler, Scholar of Struggle

This article is an appreciation of the scholarship of retired Washington College of Law Professor Burton D. Weschsler.
Stock Options and Total Payout

In this paper, we examine how stock option usage affects total corporate payout. Using fixed-effects panel data estimators on various samples of ExecuComp firms from 1993 to 2005, we find the higher the executive stock options, the lower the total payout, ceteris paribus. We also find some evidence that firms increase payouts through repurchases in order to offset earnings per share dilution that occurs due to usage of executive and non-executive stock options. However, incentives from not having dividend protection for options appear to dominate those from antidilution, resulting in lower total payout for firms with higher options usage.
The Creditors' Bargain and Option-Preservation Priority in Chapter 11

Corporate reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code is built on the foundation of the absolute priority rule, which requires that senior creditors be paid in full before any value can be distributed to junior creditors. The standard law and economics understanding is that absolute priority follows inevitably from the “creditors’ bargain” model. That model tells us that the optimal system of reorganization must respect nonbankruptcy contract rights while maximizing the expected value of assets in bankruptcy. The conventional wisdom is that absolute priority fits this bill as the singular way of protecting creditors’ nonbankruptcy contract rights. But what if this conventional wisdom is incorrect? A closer look at the structure of corporate debt suggests that it is. Junior creditors issue debt supported by the residual value of the debtor firm. The repayment of that debt is contingent on the future value of the firm: the junior creditors receive any future value that exceeds the face value of the senior debt. It is well recognized that this right is the equivalent of a call option on the firm’s assets. And yet Chapter 11 destroys the value of that call option by collapsing all future possibilities to present-day value. Thus, absolute priority eliminates the nonbankruptcy contract rights of junior creditors and creates new rights in going-concern value for senior creditors. This Article examines the potential of an alternative priority mechanism that protects both the junior creditors’ call-option value and the senior creditors’ nonbankruptcy contract rights. This mechanism — which I call Option-Preservation Priority — is shown to protect the nonbankruptcy contract rights of all creditors and maximize the expected value of assets in bankruptcy
Energy shocks and financial markets

This study analyzes the information transmission mechanism linking oil futures with stock prices, where we examine the lead and lag cross-correlations of returns in one market with the others. We investigate the dynamic interactions between oil futures prices traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and U.S. stock prices, which allows us to examine the effects of energy shocks on financial markets. In particular, we examine the extent to which these markets are contemporaneously correlated, with particular attention paid to the association of oil price indexes with the SP 12 major industry stock price indices and 3 individual oil company stock price series. We also examine the extent to which price changes or returns in one market dynamically lead returns in the others and whether volatility spillover effects exist across these markets. Using VAR model estimates for various time series of returns we find that petroleum industry stock index and our three oil company stocks are the only series where we can reject the null hypothesis that oil futures do not lead Treasury Bill rates and stock returns, while we can reject the hypothesis that oil futures lag these other two series. Finally, the return volatility evidence for oil futures leading individual oil company stocks is much weaker than is the evidence for returns themselves.
Privacy and Library Public Services: Or, I Know What You Read Last Summer

SUMMARY The privacy and confidentiality of library use are often at odds with efficiency in and customization of library public services. When librarians make decisions about services and privacy, they should consider strategic approaches to defining and discussing privacy and become familiar with the law of library privacy and their ethical commitment to privacy in library use. A wide range of library services and efficiencies threaten privacy and introduce the potential for secondary uses of personally identifying information collected by the library. Market failure for privacy weakens the value of consumer surveys and consent as substitutes for librarians' choices between privacy and services. Compromises such as those outlined by the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee offer reasonable approaches to libraries and librarians struggling with the uncertainties that characterize the challenge of meeting both service and privacy interests.
Work experience as a source of specification error in earnings models: implications for gender wage decompositions

This paper models the bias from using potential vs actual experience in log wage models. The nature of the problem is best viewed as specification error as opposed to classical errors-in-variables. We correct for the discrepancy between potential and actual work experience and create a predicted measure of work experience. We use the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and extend our findings to the Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample. Our results suggest that potential experience biases the effects of schooling and the rates of return to labor market experience. Using such a measure in earnings models underestimates the explained portion of the male–female wage gap. We are able to separately identify the decomposition biases associated with incorrect experience measures and biased parameter estimates.
Does Federalism Matter? Its Perplexing Role in the Corporate Governance Debate

Federalism has played a perplexing role in the development of corporate governance policies in the United States. Federalism’s appealing attributes – diversity, competition, innovation and efficiency – are touted as core values by defenders of Delaware’s dominance in corporate law. At the same time, the need for a “national solution” is often emphasized in increasingly successful appeals to limit the states’ role in regulating securities transactions and adjudicating securities fraud claims. The inconsistent application of federalism principles in these closely related fields is puzzling. Why should a set of values so central to the corporate law debate be set aside so readily in discussions of securities law policy? This Article explores this question and concludes that the protracted debate regarding the proper division of authority among state and federal regulatory actors is an unfortunate distraction. Because state and federal regulators alike have vast authority and experience in regulating corporate conduct and securities practices, academic discussion should focus more on how best to coordinate action among diverse regulators to maximize the benefits of concurrent authority and minimize its burdens. The Article proposes an integrated approach to corporate regulation in which state and federal regulators are equally engaged in setting corporate governance policies. An integrated approach can help facilitate democratic deliberation, improving the prospect that government policies will reflect the public will. An integrated perspective can also free academic discussions from unnecessary distractions created by unavailing efforts to constrain corporate law and securities law within separate and distinct spheres. DOES FEDERALISM MATTER.DOC 8/22/2006 5:26:02 PM DOES FEDERALISM MATTER?: ITS PERPLEXING ROLE IN THE CORPORATE GOVERNANCE DEBATE
Immunity Ratione Personae of Foreign Government Officials and other Topics: The Sixty-Fifth Session of the International Law Commission

The International Law Commission held its sixty-fifth session in Geneva from May 6 to June 7, and from July 8 to August 9, 2013, under the chairmanship of Bernd H. Niehaus (Costa Rica). The Commission devoted most of the sixty-fifth session to discussing three topics: immunity of state officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction, subsequent agreements and subsequent practice in relation to the interpretation of treaties, and protection of persons in the event of disasters. Notably, the Commission provisionally adopted three draft articles and commentaries identifying three categories of senior governmental officials—heads of state, heads of government, and foreign ministers—as entitled to immunity ratione personae from foreign criminal jurisdiction for their public or private acts, an immunity that ceases once they leave office.
From Convergence to Comity in Corporate Law: Lessons from the Inauspicious Case of SOX

The Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) shook the corporate world beyond US borders more than Enron shook the corporate world within them. This paper goes beyond the prodigious commentary on the Act itself to understand the nature of its reception outside the USA. It first develops a hubs-and-spokes account of global corporate life in which corporate purpose (which varies around the world) forms the hub and radiates spokes constituting governance, finance, accounting and auditing — all of which also differ around the world. Using this model, the paper suggests that non-US receptions of the Act exhibited unfounded fear that the export of US norms concerning the spokes of corporate life could redefine corporate conceptions of the hub, corporate purpose. It also shows the fallacy in the ‘no scandal here’ argument emanating from countries around the world. Although global reactions to the Act may therefore have been somewhat overstated, the Act certainly carried a whiff of exporting US corporate norms around the world by fiat. A key lesson for the USA is that, the next time US corporate scandals erupt and Congress adopts a legislative response, it should automatically exempt non-US issuers pending Securities and Exchange Commission determination of the necessity of applying the reforms to them. A related implication of this model and interpretation concerns debate over whether corporate life around the world is converging to a single model or remaining path dependent and varied. Moves like SOX seem to change the character of both the debate and the direction of evolving corporate life. The normative pay-off contends that the superior road to harmonious corporate life is to develop comity rather than to hope for convergence.
Real roots near the unit circle of random polynomials

Let $f_n(z) = \sum_{k = 0}^n \varepsilon_k z^k$ be a random polynomial where $\varepsilon_0,\ldots,\varepsilon_n$ are i.i.d. random variables with $\mathbb{E} \varepsilon_1 = 0$ and $\mathbb{E} \varepsilon_1^2 = 1$. Letting $r_1, r_2,\ldots, r_k$ denote the real roots of $f_n$, we show that the point process defined by $\{|r_1| - 1,\ldots, |r_k| - 1 \}$ converges to a non-Poissonian limit on the scale of $n^{-1}$ as $n \to \infty$. Further, we show that for each $\delta > 0$, $f_n$ has a real root within $\Theta_{\delta}(1/n)$ of the unit circle with probability at least $1 - \delta$. This resolves a conjecture of Shepp and Vanderbei from 1995 by confirming its weakest form and refuting its strongest form.
Learning and using electronic information products and services: A field study

Abstract Because of its implications for revenues, marketers of Electronic Information Products and Services (EIPS) are interested in increasing usage of their offering. In this research we investigate how structuring the initial-learning experience can impact subsequent usage. The initial learning experience can be structured by varying the amount of process-based or content-based knowledge that consumers acquire during the initial learning phase. A field experiment where actual usage of a complex, Web-based EIPS was monitored is described. Results show that both content-based and process-based learning are important, though emphasizing either to the virtual exclusion of the other during the initial learning experience may be deleterious for usage.
Spring-loading future performance when no one is looking? Earnings and cash flow management around acquisitions

We find evidence that performance—reflected in earnings and cash flows—is transferred from targets to acquirers around acquisitions. Using a sample of 2128 completed deals from 1985 to 2010, our results suggest that targets depress performance when investor attention declines once the deal parameters are set, and much of that performance understatement is transferred to boost post-acquisition acquirer performance. Evidence of variation across subsamples provides additional confirmation: transfers are more visible for large deals (with transfers large enough to be detected) and muted for pooling transactions (with lower incentives to transfer). We contribute to the earnings management literature by showing that earnings and cash flows are transferred not just within firms but also across firms, and to the mergers and acquisitions literature by documenting that performance is managed not only before but also after deals are announced.
Hotelling Games with Three, Four, and More Players

. This paper extends the interval Hotelling model with quadratic transport costs to the n-player case. For a large set of locations including potential equilibrium configurations, we show for n > 2 that firms neither maximize differentiation—as in the duopoly model—nor minimize differentiation—as in the multi-firm game with linear transport cost. Subgame perfect equilibria for games with up to nine players are characterized by a U-shaped price structure and interior corner firm locations. Results are driven by an asymmetry between firms. Interior firms are weaker competitors than their rivals at the corners. Increasing the number of firms shifts even more power to the corner firms. As a result, there is too much differentiation from the social perspective if n ≤ 3, while adding firms leads to a level of differentiation in equilibrium below the social optimum.
Interactive browsing and navigation in relational databases

Although researchers have devoted considerable attention to helping database users formulate queries, many users still find it challenging to specify queries that involve joining tables. To help users construct join queries for exploring relational databases, we propose ETable, a novel presentation data model that provides users with a presentation-level interactive view. This view compactly presents one-to-many and many-to-many relationships within a single enriched table by allowing a cell to contain a set of entity references. Users can directly interact with this enriched table to incrementally construct complex queries and navigate databases on a conceptual entity-relationship level. In a user study, participants performed a range of database querying tasks faster with ETable than with a commercial graphical query builder. Subjective feedback about ETable was also positive. All participants found that ETable was easier to learn and helpful for exploring databases.
The Statistical Behavior of GDP after Financial Crises and Severe Recessions

Do severe recessions associated with financial crises cause permanent reductions in potential GDP? If the economy eventually returns to its trend, does the return take longer than the return following recessions not associated with financial crises? We develop a statistical methodology appropriate for identifying and analyzing slumps, episodes that combine a contraction and an expansion and end when the economy returns to its trend growth rate. We analyze the Great Depression for the United States, severe and milder financial crises for advanced economies, severe financial crises for emerging markets, and postwar recessions for the United States and other advanced economies. The preponderance of evidence for episodes comparable with the current U.S. slump is that, while potential GDP is eventually restored, the slumps last an average of nine years. If this historical pattern holds, the Great Recession that started in 2007:Q4 will not ultimately affect potential GDP, but the Great Slump is not yet half over.
Whose call is it? Targeting universal service programs to low-income households' telecommunications preferences

Do universal service programs give customers what they want? This paper uses new survey data to study low-income households' telecommunications choices in the United States and to consider the degree to which such households' preferences are addressed by existing universal service programs. The research shows that households that choose only one form of telecommunications increasingly are choosing a mobile phone, while those that choose to have both modes of communications are shifting their usage towards their mobile phones. These trends are less pronounced among higher-income households. One implication for universal service policy is that traditional subsidies for landline phones are increasingly ineffective in reaching low-income households such subsidies are designed to help; subsidies for acquiring and using mobile phone services might be more beneficial to low-income households than traditional subsidies for landline phones.
Bias and the Effectiveness of Third-Party Conflict Management Mechanisms

To uncover the relationship between bias and effective conflict resolution, we explore the bias of third parties and the techniques they employ in the diplomatic management of river, maritime, and territorial claims. We find that bias increases the likelihood that a third party will engage in unobtrusive techniques like good offices and decreases its propensity to pursue involved mechanisms like arbitration. Additionally, bias is inversely related to the range of issues addressed at a settlement attempt. As such, unbiased third parties are more effective because they are used for the management techniques that have the most potential to resolve conflicts.
The Allocation of Talent: Implications for Growth

A country's most talented people typically organize production by others, so they can spread their ability advantage over a larger scale. When they start firms, they innovate and foster growth, but when they become rent seekers, they only redistribute wealth and reduce growth. Occupational choice depends on returns to ability and to scale in each sector, on market size, and on compensation contracts. In most countries, rent seeking rewards talent more than entrepreneurship does, leading to stagnation. Our evidence shows that countries with a higher proportion of engineering college majors grow faster; whereas countries with a higher proportion of law concentrators grow more slowly.
The Congressional Failure to Enforce Equal Protection through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

This article addresses whether Congress has an obligation pursuant to the Equal Protection Clause to further equal protection and, if so, whether its current education funding mechanisms violate that obligation. The article argues that Congress’s responsibility under the 14th Amendment is neither mandatory, nor entirely discretionary, but rather includes a duty to act in good faith in enforcing equal protection, which, at the very least, prohibits Congress from actively undermining equal protection. Federal funding of education, while previously consistent with this 14th Amendment duty, has come to undermine equality in education, primarily because it has lost its focus on equality and, instead, attempted to further education reform agendas. The article analyzes the various details of how federal funds are distributed, how they are inconsistent with equal protection, and how the problems can be remedied. By doing so, this article is the first connect equal protection with federal funding and establish an obligation for Congress to ensure certain types of school equity.
Law and Cultural Conflict

The relationship between law and cultural conflict is a subject that is relevant to numerous contemporary disagreements about the substance of rights. The article does not attempt to intervene into these disagreements, but instead to construct a common framework of analysis that might facilitate constructive dialogue among those who would otherwise disagree. The framework offers three dimensions in which the relationship of law to cultural conflict might be assessed. The first dimension concerns the sociological relationship between law and culture. The simplest model of this relationship, which the article calls the "Devlin model," assumes that law is the expression of a coherent antecedent culture that is the ultimate source of society's identity and authority. This view of law underlies many contemporary formulations of constitutional and common law, as well as various claims to national self-determination and multiculturalism. The Devlin model is radically oversimplified, however, because it undertheorizes both law and culture. It fails to recognize the many ways in which law can not only enforce an antecedent culture, but also constitute that culture, as well as displace it in the name of instrumental rationality. The Devlin model also fails to recognize that a society's culture is typically neither stable, coherent nor singular. The article offers a typology of the various relationships that law can assume with cultural contestation and heterogeneity. The second dimension concerns the form of legal intervention. Different forms of interventions place the law in different relationships with cultural conflict. Legislation differs from adjudication; criminal law differs from administration regulation. The article uses the case of Romer v. Evans to explore how the fact of cultural conflict can affect the creation of judicially created constitutional rights. The dialectic between cultural conflict and judicially-enforced constitutional rights should primarily be understood as a matter addressed by the substantive jurisprudence of constitutional law. The third dimension concerns the nature of legal rights. Some rights, like those protected by the First Amendment, promote cultural diversity in ways that other rights, like those protected by the Equal Protection Clause do not. The first kind of rights are hospitable to cultural conflict; the second are not. The distinction turns on the difference between rights that understand cultural values as instantiated by particular forms of social relationships, and rights that understand the prevention of state regulation as a necessary but not sufficient condition for the realization of cultural values. The article parses the various factors that are relevant for determining which kinds of rights the law ought to implement.
Trade and growth in the presence of distortions

Abstract Tariffs and other policy distortions typically lower real national income relative to what it otherwise would have been for any given rate of factor accumulation. Even so, policy distortions may raise an economy's real measured growth rate and, somewhat deceivingly, give the impression that national welfare has benefited from things like tariff protection. This would be an incorrect conclusion. This paper discusses the issue of how policy distortions can affect the rate of growth for a small, open economy. For example, in the presence of exogenously given factor accumulation, a tariff can either raise or lower an economy's growth rate (measured by the change in the value of output at world prices), relative to the no-distortion growth rate. We also discuss the relevance of this result for tariff uniformity, ‘tariff jumping’ foreign direct investment, and the empirical literature on trade and growth. Finally, we use a numerical simulation model of Egypt to assess whether the costs of its tax disto...
Why Does High Inflation Raise Inflation Uncertainty

Abstract This paper presents a model of monetary policy in which a rise in inflation raises uncertainty about future inflation. When actual and expected inflation are low, there is a consensus that the monetary authority will try to keep them low. When inflation is high, policymakers face a dilemma: they would like to disinflate, but fear the recession that would result. The public does not know the tastes of future policymakers, and thus does not know whether disinflation will occur.
Financial Satisfaction and Perceived Income Through a Demographic Lens: Do Different Race/Gender Pairs Reap Different Returns to Income?

Abstract The subjective assessment of personal income, insofar as it reflects or sheds light upon the (potentially different) economic incentive structures facing workers of different demographic groups, has far-reaching implications for public policy and private decision-making alike. This paper explores the impact of personal income on financial satisfaction and on perceived income, focusing on demographic differences across the following groups: white males, black males, white females and black females. The results indicate that different race/gender pairs do respond to income differently. For both financial satisfaction and perceived relative income, white females, black females and black males all have lower returns to personal income than do white males. White males, in other words, appear to reap more “bang for the buck” in terms of both of the outcome variables, even after a host of control variables are introduced. The possibility that social comparison among (racial and gender) ingroups is driving the observed demographic differences is discussed.
Incumbent Landscapes, Disruptive Uses: Perspectives on Marijuana-Related Land Use Control

The story behind the move toward marijuana’s legality is a story of disruptive forces to the incumbent legal and physical landscape. It affects incumbent markets, incumbent places, the incumbent regulatory structure, and the legal system in general which must mediate the battles involving the push for relaxation of illegality and adaptation to accepting new marijuana-related land uses, against efforts toward entrenchment, resilience, and resistance to that disruption.This Article is entirely agnostic on the issue of whether we should or should not decriminalize, legalize, or otherwise increase legal tolerance for marijuana or any other drugs. Nonetheless, we must grapple with the fact that many jurisdictions are embracing a type of “legality innovation” regarding marijuana. I define “legality innovation” as that effect which begins with the change in law that leads to the development of the lawful relevance of, lawful business regarding, and legal use for a newly-legal product, the successful deployment of which depends on the relative acceptance of the general public which must provide a venue for its operations along with the relative change in the consuming public’s attitudes as a result of the introduction of legality.Marijuana-related land uses are and will be controversial. Regulatory responses, neighborhood disputes, permit battles, and opposition coalitions are all predictable both as a matter of logical analysis in light of legal standards but also, very importantly, due to the lessons of history with similarly-situated, precursor land uses like liquor stores, adult entertainment, bars, nightclubs, massage parlors, and the like leading the way. The Article also discusses the role of incumbent interests groups in shaping the new marijuana-related regulatory structure, including revealing Baptist and bootlegger coalitions that exist to oppose relaxation of marijuana laws and thwart land use successes of the marijuana industry in order to maintain their incumbent value or profit position. Finally, the Article engages with the growing literature in the social sciences on place and space, examining how the spaces and places we inhabit and in which we conduct our business and social affairs are necessarily impacted whenever legality innovations like we are seeing with marijuana work to disrupt the incumbent landscape.
Pervasive duplication of tumor suppressors in Afrotherians during the evolution of large bodies and reduced cancer risk

From the gigantic blue whale to the minuscule bumblebee bat, animals come in all shapes and sizes. Any species can develop cancer, but some are more at risk than others. In theory, if every cell has the same probability of becoming cancerous, then bigger animals should get cancer more often since they have more cells than smaller ones. Amongst the same species, this relationship is true: taller people and bigger dogs have a greater cancer risk than their smaller counterparts. Yet this correlation does not hold when comparing between species: remarkably large creatures, like elephants and whales, are not more likely to have cancer than any other animal. But how have these gigantic animals evolved to be at lower risk for the disease? To investigate, Vazquez and Lynch compared the cancer risk and the genetic information of a diverse group of closely related animals with different body sizes. This included elephants, woolly mammoths and mastodons as well as their small relatives, the manatees, armadillos, and marmot-sized hyraxes. Examining these species’ genomes revealed that, during evolution, elephants had acquired extra copies of ‘tumour suppressor genes’ which can sense and repair the genetic and cellular damages that turn healthy cells into tumours. This allowed the species to evolve large bodies while lowering their risk of cancer. Further studies could investigate whether other gigantic animals evolved similar ways to shield themselves from cancer; these could also examine precisely how having additional copies of cancer-protecting genes helps reduce cancer risk, potentially paving the way for new approaches to treat or prevent the disease.
Serving America's Business? Graduate Business Schools and American Business, 1945–60

The rise of graduate business schools occurred during a period of enormous growth, followed by dramatic decline in the fortunes of American business. Because so many M.B.A.-educated executives had difficulty managing their companies' response to dramatic changes in markets and technology, this study examines how business education has influenced managerial attitude and practices. Columbia and Harvard Business Schools were examined to see how, as well, their educational approaches provided managers with the skills, information and confidence to make both entrepreneurial and operational decisions. Both schools effectively prepared their graduates for operational decisions, but did not successfully provide their managers with the skills and knowledge to facilitate entrepreneurial decisions. Moreover, the study also found that American business was not actively engaged in the direction of graduate business education. Thus, the reliance of American business upon graduate business schools may have had consequen...
Temperate climate - Innovative outputs nexus

Technological change is a vital human activity that interacts with geographic factors and environment. The purpose of the study here is to analyse the relationship between geo-climate zones of the globe and technological outputs in order to detect favourable areas that spur higher technological change and, as a consequence, human development. The main finding is that innovative outputs are higher in geographical areas with a temperate climate (latitudes). In fact, warm temperate climates are favourable environments for human societies that, by a long-run process of adaptation and learning, create platforms of institutions and communications systems, infrastructures, legal systems, economic governance and socio-economic networks that support inventions and diffusion of innovations. The linkages between observed facts show the vital geo-climate sources of fruitful patterns of the technological innovation and economic growth.
Changing the Rules of the Game: Offshore Financial Centers, Regulatory Competition & Financial Crises

Politicians from New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are blaming offshore financial centers (OFCs) for contributing to the current global financial crisis by failing to adequately regulate their financial industries. These criticisms are mistaken for three reasons. First, OFCs offer different rather than less regulation. Since most OFC financial products are aimed at sophisticated and institutional investors, OFC regulators are less concerned with protections for retail investors than are regulators in jurisdictions like the United States. This enables them to adopt less costly regulations that are still effective at preventing fraud and other financial crimes. Second, OFCs play a particularly important role in providing regulatory competition. OFCs have innovated in areas of law from captive insurance to trusts, pushing onshore jurisdictions like the United States to respond. For example, Vermont has innovated in captive insurance in response to competition from Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Third, OFCs provide an important means for onshore jurisdictions to price discriminate in their taxation. Without OFCs, companies based in high tax jurisdictions like Canada, France, and the United States would find it more difficult to compete internationally with companies from lower tax jurisdictions. Preserving OFC-competition thus benefits onshore jurisdictions.