cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Interaction-Aware Behavior Planning for Autonomous Vehicles Validated With Real Traffic Data

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) need to interact with other traffic participants who can be either cooperative or aggressive, attentive or inattentive. Such different characteristics can lead to quite different interactive behaviors. Hence, to achieve safe and efficient autonomous driving, AVs need to be aware of such uncertainties when they plan their own behaviors. In this paper, we formulate such a behavior planning problem as a partially observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) where the cooperativeness of other traffic participants is treated as an unobservable state. Under different cooperativeness levels, we learn the human behavior models from real traffic data via the principle of maximum likelihood. Based on that, the POMDP problem is solved by Monte-Carlo Tree Search. We verify the proposed algorithm in both simulations and real traffic data on a lane change scenario, and the results show that the proposed algorithm can successfully finish the lane changes without collisions.
Theory and Practice in Legal Education: An Essay on Clinical Legal Education

In this Article, the author argues that where clinical education fits within the law school curriculum does not have to be viewed as simply a question of whether more skills training is needed to balance the theory of the traditional curriculum. The author posits that stating the question this way obscures the choices already made, as most types of legal education have elements of both theory and practice. However, how the terms "theory" and "practice" are defined strongly influences how various aspects of legal education are perceived. Therefore, the way we view clinical education depends as much upon the viewpoint of the observer as it does upon the intrinsic nature of the activity. The author argues that the division of legal education into theoretical and practical categories is not simply a reflection of the natural order, but is a choice. The author explores various views of what is meant by the terms "theory" and "practice" and argues that there is choice involved in the definition of these terms. Therefore, even if legal education is labeled as practical, the author posits that this label can mean something other than skills training. However, though clinical legal education can in fact be viewed in these different ways, it tends to be understood solely as a form of skills training, which is predominantly technical. The author subsequently concludes that this limited labeling of clinical courses results in other possibilities within the law school curriculum being ignored.
Innovation, Market Orientation, and Organizational Learning: An Integration and Empirical Examination:

Research on market orientation and organizational learning addresses how organizations adapt to their environments and develop competitive advantage. A significant void exists in current models of ...
F-theory and unpaired tensors in 6D SCFTs and LSTs

Author(s): Morrison, David R; Rudelius, Tom | Abstract: We investigate global symmetries for 6D SCFTs and LSTs having a single "unpaired" tensor, that is, a tensor with no associated gauge symmetry. We verify that for every such theory built from F-theory whose tensor has Dirac self-pairing equal to -1, the global symmetry algebra is a subalgebra of $\mathfrak{e}_8$. This result is new if the F-theory presentation of the theory involves a one-parameter family of nodal or cuspidal rational curves (i.e., Kodaira types $I_1$ or $II$) rather than elliptic curves (Kodaira type $I_0$). For such theories, this condition on the global symmetry algebra appears to fully capture the constraints on coupling these theories to others in the context of multi-tensor theories. We also study the analogous problem for theories whose tensor has Dirac self-pairing equal to -2 and find that the global symmetry algebra is a subalgebra of $\mathfrak{su}(2)$. However, in this case there are additional constraints on F-theory constructions for coupling these theories to others.
International evidence on tradables and nontradables inflation

Abstract Using 1970–1985 sectoral data for the OECD we find that inflation in nontradable goods exceeds inflation in tradables. We identify a demand shift towards nontradables and faster growth of total factor productivity in the tradable goods sector as the prime causes of the differential inflation. In addition, disinflation attempts and the exchange rate regime appear to have exerted significant influence on the relative inflation rate.
Accounting discretion, loan loss provisioning, and discipline of Banks’ risk-taking

Examining banks across 27 countries, we estimate two measures of the forward-looking orientation reflected in discretionary loan provisioning practices within a country. We document that forward-looking provisioning designed to smooth earnings dampens discipline over risk-taking, consistent with diminished transparency inhibiting outside monitoring. In contrast, forward-looking provisioning reflecting timely recognition of expected future loan losses is associated with enhanced risk-taking discipline. Thus, proposals to change loan loss accounting embed significant risks of unintended consequences, as gains from reducing pro-cyclicality may be swamped by losses in transparency that dampen market discipline and increase the scope for less prudent risk-taking by banks.
Proving Markets Inefficient: The Variability of Federal Court Decisions on Market Efficiency in Cammer v. Bloom and Its Progeny

This fall, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Amgen v. Connecticut Retirement Plans. Among the issues the Court may address is the role of market efficiency in the class certification phase of securities fraud litigation.This now decade-old paper was one of the first systematic explorations of federal courts' attempts to assess market efficiency so as to determine whether or not to apply Basic v. Levison's "Fraud-on-the-Market" presumption of reliance. Reviewing the cases available at the time, the paper explores the challenges confronting courts when economic theory is seemingly adopted as precent. It concludes by recommending that the Supreme Court revisit the issue and recognize that, at the heart of Basic, there was a policy choice to eliminate the traditional common-law requirement of reliance in the securities fraud context.
The Optimal Weighting of Indicators for a Crawling Peg

Abstract This paper derives optimal weights for current-account and reserve indicators for adjusting the exchange rate (a ‘crawling peg’). Kenen (1975) showed that use of a current account indicator alone would not stabilize reserves, while a reserve indicator results in unstable fluctuations in the exchange rate. This paper builds on the framework of Phillips (1954) to analyze the problem in terms of optimal control. We show that in all cases the optimal combination is a weighted average. With a fairly low variance of the current account and a large effect of an exchange rate change on the current account, the weight of the current account is quite close to its welfare weight. An increase in either the variance or the elasticities reduces the weight of the current account in the optimal formula.
Textual risk disclosures and investors’ risk perceptions

We examine the association between changes in companies’ textual risk disclosures in 10-K filings and changes in stock market and analyst activity around the filings. We find that annual increases in risk disclosures are associated with increased stock return volatility and trading volume around and after the filings. Increases in risk disclosures are also associated with more dispersed forecast revisions around the filings. In contrast to prior literature documenting resolved uncertainties in response to various types of company disclosures, our findings suggest that textual risk disclosures increase investors’ risk perceptions. However, the results are less pronounced for firm-level disclosures that deviate from those of other companies in the same industry and year. These results lend support for critics’ arguments that firm-level risk disclosures are more likely to be boilerplate.
End the Experiment: The Attorney-Client Privilege Should Not Protect Communications in the Allied Lawyer Setting

In recent years, courts have seen an explosion of claims that communications need not be disclosed because they enjoy the protection of something often referred to as the “common interest doctrine.” These claims — claims of attorney-client privilege — occur in two situations: the joint client setting and the allied lawyer setting. In a joint client situation, an attorney represents two or more clients on a matter with all parties working together on the joint endeavor. In an allied lawyer situation, several entities or individuals work together on a matter of common interest but the parties have separate lawyers. This Article argues, uncontroversially, that the privilege should continue to apply to communications in the joint client situation. In contrast, this Article argues, quite controversially, that communications in the allied lawyer setting should not enjoy the protection of the privilege. Applying the privilege to the joint client setting is simply applying the privilege to communications between an attorney and that attorney’s clients — clients who have engaged the attorney to represent them jointly. Applying the privilege furthers the rationale of the privilege. When the privilege is applied in the allied lawyer setting, however, the privilege protects communications that are not between an attorney and that attorney’s client. The application does not further the privilege’s rationale. In addition, the confusion surrounding the application of the privilege in this setting has eviscerated the certainty necessary for the privilege to accomplish any goal. Any possible benefit to the application is outweighed by the damage done to the truth-finding mission of the justice system. Applying the privilege in the allied lawyer setting is a practice based on a flawed precedent from 1871 and followed by courts only in recent decades. It is a practice that should not continue.
The Effects of Economic and Political Development on GDP Growth Volatility

The existing literature argues that both higher levels of political and economic development can dampen real GDP growth volatility. The problem, however, is that both forms of development are thoug...
A currency index global capital asset pricing model

The application of an international capital asset pricing relationship with two factors, the global market portfolio and a currency index, is described and illustrated. The model and illustration help demonstrate a problem with the common practice of adjusting an asset’s expected rate of return across currencies via nominal riskless interest rate differentials.
Identifying the relationship between length of hospital stay and the probability of readmission

ABSTRACTWe estimate the effect of hospital length of stay (LOS) on the probability of 30-day readmission for 516,768 patients hospitalized with heart failure in California from 2005 to 2011. We use hospital crowding as an instrumental variable to control for bias from omitted health characteristics. Our results suggest that the literature, which has for 30 years identified readmission rates increasing with LOS, has not controlled for omitted variable bias when estimating the benefits from a patient’s hospital stay.
Statutory Construction in Federal Appellate Tax Cases: The Effect of Judges' Social Backgrounds and of Other Aspects of Litigation

"Statutory Construction" examines the effect of judges' social backgrounds on the method of statutory construction used to justify decisions in a database of federal appellate tax cases. It concludes that social backgrounds have a modest effect. Relatively few descriptive statistics were statistically significant, as was also true of predictive statistics. Results regarding aspects of the case, such as the type of taxpayer (e.g., individual, business) or representation by a lawyer, were more robust. These results are consistent with earlier research by the author on the same topic, in a database of federal trial tax cases.
Costly litigation and optimal damages

Abstract A basic principle of law is that damages paid by a liable party should equal the harm caused by that party. However, this principle is not correct when account is taken of litigation costs, because they too are part of the social costs associated with an injury. In this article we examine the influence of litigation costs on the optimal level of damages, assuming that litigation costs rise with the level of damages. Due to this consideration, we demonstrate that optimal damages can lie anywhere between zero and the harm plus the victim's litigation costs.
Rights as Signals

Abstract Because rights operate as trumps over normal governmental interests, they have an inherent cost. Consequently, by entrenching protection for human rights, governments can signal a willingness to give up power in the short term to obtain long‐term benefits. Investors can infer from this that the government has a low discount rate and is less likely to pose a threat of expropriation. Similarly, when courts vigorously enforce human rights, they dramatize their judicial independence, which is valuable to investors, who themselves may have no interest in human rights. Thus, human rights enforcement may help encourage investment and thereby indirectly foster economic growth.
Pay, productivity and aging in Major League Baseball

Using panels of player pay and performance from Major League Baseball (MLB), we examine trends in player productivity and salaries as players age. Pooling players of all ability levels leads to a systematic bias in regression coefficients. After addressing this problem by dividing players into talent quintiles, we find that the best players peak about 2 years later than marginal players, and development and depreciation of performance appear to be more pronounced for players with the highest ability levels. Within-career variation, however, is less pronounced than between-player variation, and the performance level of players within a given quintile will typically remain lower than the talent level for rookies in the next higher quintile. We also find preliminary evidence that free agents are paid proportionately to their production at all ability levels, whereas young players’ salaries are suppressed by similar amounts.
What Drives Firm-Level Stock Returns?

I use a vector autoregressive model (VAR) to decompose an individual firm's stock return into two components: changes in cash-flow expectations (i.e., cash-flow news) and changes in discount rates (i.e., expected-return news). The VAR yields three main results. First, firm-level stock returns are mainly driven by cash-flow news. For a typical stock, the variance of cash-flow news is more than twice that of expected-return news. Second, shocks to expected returns and cash flows are positively correlated for a typical small stock. Third, expected-return-news series are highly correlated across firms, while cash-flow news can largely be diversified away in aggregate portfolios. BY DEFINITION, A FIRM'S STOCK RETURNS are driven by shocks to expected cash flows (i.e., cash-flow news) and/or shocks to discount rates (i.e., expectedreturn news). There is a substantial body of research measuring the relative importance of cash-flow and expected-return news for aggregate portfolio returns (e.g., Campbell (1991) and Campbell and Ammer (1993)), but virtually no evidence on the relative importance of these components at the firm level. In this paper, I estimate a vector autoregression (VAR) from a large firmlevel panel (the 1954 to 1996 CRSP-COMPUSTAT intersection). The VAR and Campbell's (1991) return-decomposition framework enable me to decompose the firm-level stock return into cash-flow and expected-return news and to estimate how important these two sources of stock-return variation are for an individual firm. In addition, I measure whether positive cash-flow news is typically associated with an increase or decrease in expected returns.
Attitudes of Police Officers Towards Syringe Access, Occupational Needle-Sticks, and Drug Use: A qualitative Study of one City Police Department in the United States

Removal of legal barriers to syringe access has been identified as an important part of a comprehensive approach to reducing HIV transmission among injecting drug users (IDUs). Legal barriers include both “law on the books” and “law on the streets,” i.e., the actual practices of law enforcement officers. Changes in syringe and drug control policy can be ineffective in reducing such barriers if police continue to treat syringe possession as a crime or evidence of criminal activity. Despite the integral role of police officers in health policy implementation, little is known of their knowledge of, attitudes toward, and enforcement response to harm-minimisation schemes. We conducted qualitative interviews with 14 police officers in an urban police department following decriminalisation of syringe purchase and possession. Significant findings include: respondents were generally misinformed about the law legalising syringe purchase and possession; accurate knowledge of the law did not significantly change self-reported law enforcement behaviour; while anxious about accidental needle sticks and acquiring communicable diseases from IDUs, police officers were not trained or equipped to deal with this occupational risk; respondents were frustrated by systemic failures and structural barriers that perpetuate the cycle of substance abuse and crime, but blamed users for poor life choices. These data suggest a need for more extensive study of police attitudes and behaviours towards drug use and drug users. They also suggest changes in police training and management aimed at addressing concerns and misconceptions of the personnel, and ensuring that the legal harm reduction programs are not compromised by negative police interactions with IDUs. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Targeting rules for monetary policy

Abstract We develop a framework for the analysis of targeting rules for monetary policy, derive the optimal money-supply rule, and use an explicit criterion to evaluate the relative desirability of other targeting rules governing the money supply process.
Trade dependency, bargaining and external debt

Abstract This paper analyzes the welfare effects of a conditional debt relief in the presence of partial defaults. Even for an economy in a state of partial default, external finance for investment in highly trade-dependent sectors may be warranted. A marginal relief of the present debt service, conditional on an equivalent increase in investment in the trade-dependent sectors, will benefit the debtor and will increase the future repayment. Investment targeted towards highly productive trade-dependent sectors will benefit both creditors and debtors. The investment can be implemented by a marginal relief of the present debt service, or through direct investment.
Because of “Because”: Examining the Use of Causal Language in Relative Performance Feedback

ABSTRACT: This study examines how the use of causal language in conveying relative performance feedback impacts subsequent task performance. Research in linguistics has shown that causal language, defined as language reflecting the search for reasons (commonly expressed through words such as “because” and “thus”), impacts how recipients process received information. We use a laboratory experiment to show that causal language has a differential effect when used in negative versus positive feedback. In the case where initial relative performance is low, the high use of causal language in the resulting negative performance feedback leads to a greater improvement in subsequent performance, compared to low use of causal language. Conversely, when initial relative performance is high, greater use of causal language in delivering positive feedback results in a smaller improvement in performance. Our results indicate that employees' cognitive processes and reactions to performance feedback are influenced by the l...
Educational Networks, Mutual Fund Voting Patterns, and CEO Compensation

Mutual funds whose managers are in the same educational network as the firm's CEO are more likely to vote against shareholder-initiated proposals to limit executive compensation than out-of-network funds are. This voting propensity is stronger when voting among the funds in a family is not unanimous. Furthermore, CEOs of firms who have relatively high levels of educationally connected mutual fund ownership have higher levels of compensation than their unconnected counterparts. This aspect of executive compensation is related to both the abnormal trading performance of the connected investors in the firm and the perceived quality of firm management by the connected investors. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.
Millions of election outcomes from a single profile

By changing the choice of a positional voting method, different election rankings can result from a fixed profile. A geometric theory is developed to explain why this occurs, to completely characterize all possible sets of rankings that can arise in this manner, to determine the number of rankings and other properties of these sets of rankings, to design profiles that cause the different conclusions, to develop elementary tools to analyze actual data, and to compare new types of social choice solutions that are based on the set of rankings admitted by a profile. A secondary theme is to indicate how results for voting theory can be obtained with (relative) ease when they are analyzed with a geometric approach.
Is There a Disability Gap in Employment Rates in Developing Countries

Summary This paper examines differences in employment rates between persons with and without disabilities in 15 developing countries using the World Health Survey (WHS). We find that people with disabilities have lower employment rates than persons without disabilities in nine countries. Across countries, disability gaps in employment rates are more often found for men than women. The largest disability gap in employment rates is found for persons with multiple disabilities. For countries with a disability gap, results from a logistic decomposition suggest that observable characteristics of persons with/without disabilities do not explain most of the gap.
Narrative and Drama in the American Trial

This short essay summarizes an understanding of the trial as a medium in which law is realized or actualized, rather than imposed or enforced. It suggests that we should pay close attention to the actual practices that prevail at trial, its "consciously structured hybrid" of languages and practices, if we want to understand the nature of law.
C. Elegans Exhibits Coordinated Oscillation in Gene Expression During Development

The advent of automated cell lineaging and the ability to track gene expression at single‐cell resolution in vivo in C. elegans has yielded a dramatically more complete view into developmental processes. We present a novel meta‐analysis of the EPIC single‐cell‐resolution gene expression dataset of Bao, Murray, Waterston et al., and show that a linear combination of the expression levels of the developmental genes in that dataset is strongly correlated with the wall‐ clock developmental age of the organism during early development, irrespective of the cell division rate of different cell lineages. We uncover a pattern of collective sinusoidal oscillation in gene expression, with multiple dominant sinusoidal frequencies, pointing to the existence of a global coordinated mechanism governing the timing of gene expression during development. We furthermore present a new method derived from Fisher's Discriminant Analysis that can be used to produce sinusoidal oscillations of any frequency and phase using just a linear weighting of the expression patterns of the genes in this dataset, strengthening the view that oscillatory timing mechanisms play an important role in development. The Fisher's Discriminant Analysis method also constitutes a generally useful tool for identifying the differential gene expression patterns that most strongly separate two distinct phenotypic or developmental traits.
Allocating Power Over Fact-Finding in the Patent System

Under well-settled patent law, the decision regarding whether to grant or deny a patent turns on technical fact-finding. Recommendations made in recent patent system reform reports issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) could have a substantial impact on which patent institution has power over fact-finding. The FTC's approach to power allocation is relatively explicit: the USPTO's factual findings should be accorded a low level of deference when made in the context of an ordinary patent grant; significant deference when made in the context of a patent denial; and perhaps the highest level of deference when in a post-grant review. While the NAS study does not focus as explicitly on how courts should treat USPTO fact-finding, its recommendations also have significant implications for power allocation. In this Essay, I argue that, in their areas of overlap, both the FTC and NAS reports properly account for the fact-finding competence - or lack thereof - of the USPTO. Where the reports diverge, however, the FTC report may do a better job of accurately diagnosing, and suggesting remedies for, the relevant fact-finding problem.
Lying as a Violation of Grice's First Maxim of Quality

According to the traditional philosophical definition, you lie if and only if you assert what you believe to be false with the intent to deceive. However, several philosophers (e.g., Carson 2006, Sorensen 2007, Fallis 2009) have pointed out that there are lies that are not intended to deceive and, thus, that the traditional definition fails. In 2009, I suggested an alternative definition: you lie if and only if you say what you believe to be false when you believe that one of Paul Grice's conversational norms (“Do not say what you believe to be false”) is in effect. Faulkner (forthcoming), Stokke (forthcoming), and Pruss (2012) have subsequently argued that my 2009 definition fails as well because it counts some statements that are clearly not lies as being lies. In this paper, I identify some additional counter-examples of this sort. But I argue that my 2009 definition can easily be revised to deal with such counter-examples once we clarify that the relevant norm is really against communicating something false rather than against merely saying it. Nevertheless, I show that even this revised version of my 2009 definition fails because it counts some statements that are lies as not being lies. Lies told by young children – which uncontroversially count as lies on the traditional philosophical definition – suggest that lying (as well as asserting in general) does not require believing that such a norm is in effect. Even so, I claim that, since all liars intend to do something that would violate this norm if it were in effect, there is a successful definition of lying that is at least in the spirit of my 2009 definition.
Cognitive load in the multi-player prisoner's dilemma game: Are there brains in games?

We find that differences in the ability to devote cognitive resources to a strategic interaction imply differences in strategic behavior. In our experiment, we manipulated the availability of cognitive resources by applying a differential cognitive load. In cognitive load experiments, subjects are directed to perform a task which occupies cognitive resources, in addition to making a choice in another domain. The greater the cognitive resources required for the task implies that fewer such resources are available for deliberation on the choice. In our experiment, subjects played a finitely repeated multi-player prisoner's dilemma game under two cognitive load treatments. In one treatment, subjects were placed under a high cognitive load (given a 7 digit number to recall) and subjects in the other were placed under a low cognitive load (given a 2 digit number). According to two different measures, we find evidence that the low load subjects behaved more strategically. First, the low load subjects exhibited more strategic defection near the end of play than the high load subjects. Second, we find evidence that low load subjects were better able to condition their behavior on the outcomes of previous periods.
RURAL LOW-INCOME HOUSING AND MASSACHUSETTS CHAPTER 40B: A PERSPECTIVE FROM THE ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS

The Massachusetts Low and Moderate Income Housing Act ("Act") was enacted in 1969 to promote the construction of low­ income housing in restrictively zoned Massachusetts communi­ ties. It seeks to achieve its goal by providing a builder's remedy which, in effect, overrides local zoning ordinances. The local Zoning Board of Appeals ("ZBA"), in deciding whether to issue a Comprehensive Permit under the Act, must evaluate the local and regional need for lowto moderate-income housing and weigh that need against local concerns over health, safety, design, and open space conservation. This Article examines the diffi­ culty of applying the Act in rural towns. First, it focuses on the role that the Act asks ZBAs to play in the approval process. Next it examines two issues arising in the application of the Act to rural communities: the determination of the "region" when there is no obvious city/suburb relationship, and the assessment of the need for lowto moderate-income housing in the region and the locality. The Article discusses how different results may be obtained if "need" is informed by an "in-place" approach to housing policy as opposed to a "mobility relief" approach. The * Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law. B.A. Cornell University; J.D., LL.M. Boston University; M.P.A. Harvard University. The author thanks Sam Stonefield and Jerold Kayden for their extensive criticisms of earlier drafts of this Article. Their willingness to read earlier drafts should in no way be understood as an endorsement of any of the positions taken herein. The author also thanks his research assistant, John Terra, and Dean Donald Dunn of the Western New England College School of Law for supporting this project with a research grant. All mistakes, misconceptions, and omissions are the author's sole responsibility.
The cone condition, properness, and extremely desirable commodities

This note links two conditions which have generated some interest in the literature and have an important role in proving the existence of an equilibrium, the second welfare theorem and the core equivalence theorem in infinite dimensional commodity spaces: These are thecone condition introduced in Chichilnisky and Kaiman (1980), and theproperness condition in Mas-Colell (1986a), which were studied also in Yannelis and Zame (1986), Aliprantis et al. (1987a, b) and (1989), Aliprantis and Burkinshaw (1988), Mas-Colell (1986b), Chichilnisky and Heal (1984, 1992), and Rustichini and Yannelis (1991) among others. I establish that these two conditions are the same. Indeed, the cone condition coincides also with the assumption of anextremely desirable commodity used in Yannelis and Zame (1986) and Rustichini and Yannelis (1991). The motivation for studying these conditions comes from the same economic application, showing the need to bring within the scope of equilibrium theory commodity spaces whose positive orthants have empty interior, a typical situation in infinite dimensional linear spaces.
Controversially Executing the Law: George W. Bush and the Constitutional Signing Statement

During his two terms in office, President George W. Bush dramatically increased the use of the signing statement to make constitutional objections to more than 1,000 provisions passed by Congress and enacted into law. These presidential protests are frequently targeted at legislative veto provisions, which Congress continues to utilize as an oversight resource, despite the landmark ruling in INS v. Chadha, which declared the legislative veto unconstitutional. By accounting for the number of legislative veto provisions included in legislation, this paper considers the substance of legislation as an important factor in eliciting presidential signing statements. Using an original data set that catalogues the number of legislative vetoes passed by Congress from 1973 to 2006, this analysis suggests that the increased use of the signing statement in recent decades is attributable in part to the congressional practice of including greater numbers of legislative veto provisions in legislation. Results from this r...
The Rights of the Accused in Saudi Criminal Procedure

A comparative law study of the procedural rights afforded criminal defendants in proceedings held under Sharia law in Saudi Arabia.
The theoretical separation of brand equity and brand value: Managerial implications for strategic planning

During the past 15 years, brand equity has been a priority topic for both practitioners and academics. In this paper, the authors propose a new framework for conceptualising brand equity that distinguishes between brand equity, conceived of as an intrapersonal construct that moderates the impact of marketing activities, and brand value, which is the sale or replacement value of a brand. Such a distinction is important because, from a managerial perspective, the ultimate goal of brand management and brand equity research should be to understand how to leverage equity to create value.
On variable capital utilization and international trade theory

Abstract If variable capital utilization results from within-period technological productivity variations, no modification of standard trade theory is required. If it results from within-period factor price variations, the modifications required are those of many factors in variable supply, i.e., non-traded goods.
Information, noise, and asset prices: An experimental study

A series of laboratory asset markets is conducted to examine the effect of noisy information releases on security prices. The price reaction to a given information release has been hypothesized to be positively related to the degree of uncertainty just prior to the release and negatively related to the degree of noise in the information itself. A series of two-period markets is conducted with noisy information provided between periods. Prior uncertainty and noise are manipulated. Using a random effects regression procedure, strong support is found for both hypotheses.
Inculcation, Bias, and Viewpoint Discrimination in Public Schools

The First Amendment prohibition on viewpoint discrimination, a particularly invidious species of content discrimination, represents a consistent theme in the U.S. Supreme Court’s free speech clause jurisprudence. In the elementary and secondary public school context, the Supreme Court has not explicitly applied the doctrinal framework of viewpoint discrimination to a school practice or policy restricting speech. However, in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Court’s initial application of the First Amendment to student speech in public secondary schools, the Court stated that schools may not fashion students into “closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate.” The Court’s language in Tinker leaves the reader to understand that there is a line between inculcation and indoctrination – and that the Court can, if called upon, readily distinguish between the two. This article investigates the concept of improper indoctrination and makes a fairly narrow doctrinal point about how to interpret and apply the Court’s free speech doctrine in light of concerns about possible indoctrination. Part I of the article identifies the type of bias to which the Court’s jurisprudence is opposed, highlighting religion, political preference, and race as the most likely targets. Part II argues that particularly in the case of religion, free speech safeguards permit students to “push back” against official efforts to enforce orthodoxy and can be helpful for students’ developing identity. Part III applies the no-bias standard to a sampling of school speech cases.
Farm Workers and the Fair Labor Standards Act: Racial Discrimination in the New Deal

This Article presents proof of the discriminatory purpose behind the exclusion of farm workers from the maximum hours and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act . Part II of this Article discusses the standards governing impermissible purpose review. Part III presents the evidence of the unconstitutional purpose. Subpart III(A) demonstrates the current disproportion-ate impact of the exclusion. Subpart III(B) describes the southern plantation system, which provided the historical and political context for New Deal legislation. A full understanding of the role of discrimination in excluding agricultural labor from the New Deal must begin with a knowledge of the roles played by, and the relationship between, agriculture and racial discrimination. In addition, as Part II demonstrates, the Supreme Court has established history as a fundamental source of evidence for a race-based equal protection claim. Subpart III(C) analyzes the political realities of the New Deal and the scope of racial discrimination in New Deal programs other than FLSA, particularly as these programs affected agriculture. The clear discriminatory pattern in all New Deal programs provides important circumstantial evidence that the same pattern existed in FLSA. Finally, subpart III(D) examines FLSA itself. Understandably, direct legislative history of a discriminatory purpose in excluding farm workers from FLSA is sparse. Nevertheless, the primary, if not only, beneficiaries of the exclusion were the large agricultural employers of the South (and of California) who depended upon a cheap supply of minority labor, much as they had depended upon slave labor before 1865. Blacks, Hispanics, and members of other "discrete and insular" racial minorities make up a majority of farm workers affected by the overtime exclusion. Even without direct evidence, this Article presents sufficient circumstantial evidence to prove that this disproportionate impact was no accident, but rather an intended and unconstitutional result.
Asymptotic Equivalence of Probabilistic Serial and Random Priority Mechanisms

The random priority (random serial dictatorship) mechanism is a common method for assigning objects. The mechanism is easy to implement and strategy-proof. However, this mechanism is inefficient, because all agents may be made better off by another mechanism that increases their chances of obtaining more preferred objects. This form of inefficiency is eliminated by a mechanism called probabilistic serial, but this mechanism is not strategy-proof. Thus, which mechanism to employ in practical applications is an open question. We show that these mechanisms become equivalent when the market becomes large. More specifically, given a set of object types, the random assignments in these mechanisms converge to each other as the number of copies of each object type approaches infinity. Thus, the inefficiency of the random priority mechanism becomes small in large markets. Our result gives some rationale for the common use of the random priority mechanism in practical problems such as student placement in public schools.
International aspects of invasive species management: a research agenda

We propose a research agenda for studying six basic questions about the impacts of alternate international invasive species control mechanisms on economic agents in a nation such as the USA. The six questions are as follows. First, when can one justify a trade ban as an effective regulatory policy? Second, what are the properties of control rules that vary by port of entry and whether a shipment is viewed as a routine or as a first-time entry? Third, when should a port manager in the USA use information about the dollar value of the products being transported by ships from two exporting firms and the expected time it takes to inspect ships from these two firms to grant preferential treatment to one or the other firm? Fourth, what are some reasonable measures of the trade related risk from invasive species? Fifth, how useful is strategic trade policy as an invasive species management tool? Finally, when analyzing a biological invasion, is it more appropriate to focus on the likelihood of this event or, instead, on the magnitude of the event?
Fatherhood and Equality: Reconfiguring Masculinities

Work-family policy debate in the United States has focused on work and the workplace, and has presumed its primary beneficiaries are women. Women’s increased participation in the workplace brought the conflict between work and family sharply into view, and generated solutions geared toward assisting women. An underlying assumption has been that men would change at home by taking on a fair share of family work and care, consistent with norms of equality and gender neutrality. Consistent with these norms, if equality were
Meta-Transportability of Causal Effects: A Formal Approach

This paper considers the problem of transferring experimental ndings learned from multiple heterogeneous domains to a dierent environment, in which only passive observations can be collected. Pearl and Bareinboim (2011) established a complete characterization for such transfer between two domains, a source and a target, and this paper generalizes their results to multiple heterogeneous domains. It establishes a necessary and sufcient condition for deciding when eects in the target domain are estimable from both statistical and causal information transferred from the experiments in the source domains. The paper further provides a complete algorithm for computing the transport formula, that is, a way of fusing observational and experimental information to synthesize an unbiased estimate of the desired eects.
Director Ownership, Governance, and Performance

We study the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the relationship between corporate governance and company performance. We consider 5 measures of corporate governance during the period 1998–2007. We find a significant negative relationship between board independence and operating performance during the pre-2002 period, but a positive and significant relationship during the post-2002 period. Our most important contribution is a proposal of a governance measure, namely, dollar ownership of the board members, that is simple, intuitive, less prone to measurement error, and not subject to the problem of weighting a multitude of governance provisions in constructing a governance index.
Information Asymmetries and the Rights to Exclude

This article addresses a central question in property theory: In a world where an owner can exercise the right to exclude third parties from his resource in any of several ways, what causes him to adopt a particular exclusionary strategy? Orthodox property scholarship has focused a great deal of attention on those exclusion rights that arise under trespass law. This paper suggests that much can be gained from thinking about exclusion with a bigger tent approach, one that is sensitive to the ways in which non-trespass-based exclusion rights substitute for in rem, trespass-based rights. Non-trespass-based exclusion rights include exclusionary vibes, which are communicative signals that make undesirable third parties feel unwelcome, as well as exclusionary amenities, which impose a disproportionate tax on the undesirable by bundling permission to use a resource with an obligation to pay for a separate, polarizing resource. It turns out that information asymmetries often drive owners' decisions about what exclusion strategies to adopt. Where third parties seeking to use property possess private information about their own preferences, behaviors, and intentions, and the owner cannot discover this private information at a low cost, the owner is likely to delegate the exclusion function to the would-be entrants by employing non-trespass-based exclusion strategies. By contrast, where there is little private information involved, or private information can be discovered by the owner at a low cost, the owner is more likely to employ trespass-based exclusion rights. This relationship between information asymmetries and the choice of exclusion strategies suggests new possibilities for creative government intervention in those settings where particular exclusion strategies conflict with public policy interests. It is well understood that the government can impose outright prohibitions, proscribing some forms of exclusion and permitting other forms. This is the strategy the government has adopted in the housing discrimination arena. Alternatively, the government can adopt subtler but equally effective strategies that regulate access to private information as a means of altering owners' incentives to exclude. Megan's Law is the most prominent and far-reaching example of the subtle approach, although many aspects of information privacy law affect owners' incentives in much the same way. In short, by rendering private information public or public information private, the state can alter, sometimes radically, the mix of exclusion strategies that resource owners employ.
Updating inventories of substitutable resources in response to forecast updates

We show simple yet optimal results to update the inventory/capacity levels, expected profit, fill rates, and service levels of substitutable resources in response to an updating of the mean demand forecasts for the resources. We find that a change in the mean demand of one resource does not affect the optimal inventory level of any other resource. The results are obtained for demands with location-scale distribution, and for a revenue structure satisfying a triangle property such that the manager will always use the inventory of a resource to meet her own demand first before using it for substitution. The results for updating the performance measures also extend to managers who maintain non-optimal inventory/capacity levels. Implications for procurement, sales and operational planning, and multi-store operations are discussed.
Fundamentals-based risk measurement in valuation

ABSTRACT: We propose a methodology to incorporate risk measures based on economic fundamentals directly into the valuation model. Fundamentals‐based risk adjustment in the residual income valuation model is captured by the covariance of ROE with market‐wide factors. We demonstrate a method of estimating covariance risk out of sample based on the accounting beta and betas of size and book‐to‐market factors in earnings. We show how the covariance risk estimate can be transformed to obtain the fundamentals‐based cost of equity. Our empirical analysis shows that value estimates based on fundamental risk adjustment produce significantly smaller deviations from price relative to the CAPM or the Fama‐French three‐factor model. We further find that our single‐factor risk measure, based on the accounting beta alone, captures aspects of risk that are indicated by the book‐to‐market factor, largely accounting for the “mispricing” of value and growth stocks. Our study highlights the usefulness of accounting numbers i...