cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Distributional consequences of rural food levy and subsidized urban rations

Abstract Governments in many developing countries have imposed food levies on farmers to provide subsidized food to urban consumers. The resulting price discrimination between individuals has general equilibrium effects, so that the welfare consequences of such a policy for different socio-economic groups have been controversial. We relate the distributional consequences to the parameters of the economy and identify systematic relationships among different partitions of the outcomes. We show, for instance, that if the policy helps (hurts) richer city-dwellers, then it hurts (helps) poorer farmers.
Class Action Reform, Qui Tam , and the Role of the Plaintiff

This article uses the model of qui tam litigation as a tool to understand class action litigation. Starting with an examination of current class action practice, the article demonstrates how class actions have moved away from the format of traditional individual litigation. Departures from traditional procedural rules have been justified as deterring corporate misconduct, yet these departures are frequently criticized as reducing victim compensation and creating agency problems. The article goes on to consider proposals for class action reform. Existing reform proposals tend to take one of two forms: either they propose remodeling class litigation so that it more closely resembles traditional litigation, or they propose more dramatic departures from traditional procedural rules in order to enhance the deterrence effect of the class suit. The latter reforms, based on the private attorney general model, move class litigation closer to government enforcement litigation. A significant reason for the conflict between these approaches stems from disagreement about whether class actions should focus on victim compensation or deterrence of misconduct. The article argues that, before either approach to class action reform is adopted, class litigation should be understood as offering a third possibility: a hybrid litigation form that combines the attributes of the public and private models. Using the model of qui tam suits, the article attempts to break down the conceptual barrier between public and private litigation. Finally the article examines the implications of this approach. The article suggests that reconceptualizing class litigation as a hybrid offers the potential for coordinating the litigation efforts of the government and the private bar. In addition to creating potential litigation efficiencies, this model allows class litigation effectively to pursue both compensation and deterrence.
The Use of EDGAR Filings by Investors

Using data from the Security and Exchange Commission's Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval (EDGAR) server log, the authors examine the consumption of financial information in filings from 2003 ...
Beneath the Commerce of Nations: A Theory of International Economic Structures

Drawing upon the theory of hegemonic stability, this paper advances a theory of international economic structures. It places particular emphasis on analyzing the whole structure of the international economy, and not simply the absence or presence of hegemony. It finds that there is no axiomatic relationship between hegemony and free trade or declining hegemony and protection. By differentiating between non-hegemonic structures, moreover, the theory of international economic structures also calls into question the appropriateness of the 'British' or '1930' analogy for the future of the present international economy. Finally, the theory is briefly examined through the cases of American trade policy in the inter-war period and the 1970s and early 1980s. The conclusion argues against simplistic analogies between the two periods and maintains that a considerable potential does exist for collective leadership of the international economy in the 1980s. Drawing upon the decline of the Pax Britannica in the late 19th century and the inter-war period, current variants of the theory of hegemonic stability predict that America's declining hegemony will lead to increased economic instability, international conflict and national protectionism. Gilpin, in particular, has argued that there are three possible scenarios for the present and future international economy.
The Unfulfillable Promise of Meritocracy: Three Lessons and Their Implications for Justice in Education

This paper draws on a literature in sociology, psychology and economics that has extensively documented the unfulfilled promise of meritocracy in education. I argue that the lesson learned from this literature is threefold: (1) educational institutions in practice significantly distort the ideal meritocratic process; (2) opportunities for merit are themselves determined by non-meritocratic factors; (3) any definition of merit must favor some groups in society while putting others at a disadvantage. Taken together, these conclusions give reason to understand meritocracy not just as an unfulfilled promise, but as an unfulfillable promise. Having problematized meritocracy as an ideal worth striving for, I argue that the pervasiveness of meritocratic policies in education threatens to crowd out as principles of justice, need and equality. As such, it may pose a barrier rather than a route to equality of opportunity. Furthermore, meritocratic discourse legitimates societal inequalities as justly deserved such as when misfortune is understood as personal failure. The paper concludes by setting a research agenda that asks how citizens come to hold meritocratic beliefs; addresses the persistence of (unintended) meritocratic imperfections in schools; analyzes the construction of a legitimizing discourse in educational policy; and investigates how education selects and labels winners and losers.
Maximizing predictability in the stock and bond markets

We construct portfolios of stocks and bonds that are maximally predictable with respect to a set of ex-ante observable economic variables, and show that these levels of predictability are statistically significant, even after controlling for data-snooping biases. We disaggregate the sources of predictability by using several asset groups — sector portfolios, market-capitalization portfolios, and stock/bond/utility portfolios — and find that the sources of maximal predictability shift considerably across asset classes and sectors as the return horizon changes. Using three out-of-sample measures of predictability — forecast errors, Merton's market-timing measure, and the profitability of asset-allocation strategies based on maximizing predictability — we show that the predictability of the maximally predictable portfolio is genuine and economically significant.
Welfare Analysis in an Extended Harris-Todaro Model: An Application of the Atkinson Theorem

I analyze the welfare effects of a policy of modern sector enlargement (MSENL), and a policy of increasing the efficiency of on-the-job search from the urban informal sector (IEOS) in a generalized Harris-Todaro model. I show that MSENL causes a Lorenz worsening of the income distribution and IEOS causes a Lorenz improvement. In a rare direct application of the Atkinson theorem, I conclude that MSENL decreases social welfare and IEOS increases social welfare for all anonymous, increasing and Schur-concave social welfare functions.
Cannibalization risk and limited liability: implications for firm valuation and capital budgeting

Abstract When two firms combine, the negative cash flows of some projects can cannibalize the positive cash flows of other projects. This may at least partly explain recently documented observations that there is value loss from diversification, value gain from splitting up an existing firm, and that the value loss is higher in the case of diversification into unrelated industries. Also, this may explain why the value and riskiness of an identical project can be different for firms with different assets in place and why the value of a project as stand-alone may be irrelevant for a firm’s investment decisions.
Who Cares About Shareholders? Arbitrage-Proofing Mutual Funds

As is becoming increasingly widely known, mutual funds often calculate their net asset values (NAVs) using stale prices, which causes their daily returns to be predictable. By trading on this predictability, investors can earn 35--70% per year in international funds and 10--25% in asset classes such as small-cap equity and high-yield and convertible bonds. These abnormal returns come at the expense of long-term shareholders, dilution of whom has grown in international funds from 56 basis points in 1998--99 to 114 basis points in 2001. Despite these losses and pressure from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the vast majority of funds are not market-updating their prices to eliminate NAV predictability and dilution, but are instead pursuing solutions that are only partly effective. The speed and efficacy of a fund's actions to protect shareholders from dilution is negatively correlated with its expense ratios and the share of insiders on its board, suggesting that agency problems may be the root cause of the arbitrage problem. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.
The Birth of a Parent: Defining Parentage for Lenders of Genetic Material

With the advances in assisted reproductive technology, the scholarly quest for an all-inclusive legal definition of parentage has proliferated. All too often this quest becomes muddled in Constitutional tangles, in shifting mores, in quagmires of evolving and inconsistent legal parameters on what constitutes a “family”, and in the perceived need to reconcile conflicting state laws governing marriage, adoption and surrogacy contracts. This article suggests a return to the basics. Parents are born with the birth of a child. Notwithstanding the scientific breakthroughs in reproductive technology and the more inclusive modern understanding of the family unit, every child begins with two (and only two) suppliers of genetic material and one (and only one) gestational carrier. Thus, the only logically clear starting point for a legal definition of parentage begins with these three claim-holders to parentage. Once the examination of the concept of parentage is disentangled from the complications of related, but logically independent, legal questions, it becomes clear that unless and until the rights and obligations of parentage are either (voluntarily) contractually waived or (involuntarily) judicially or statutorily terminated, the law must recognize as parent any individual (regardless of his or her gender, sexual orientation or marital status) who is biologically related to a child.
The End of Bordenkircher: Extending the Logic of Apprendi to Plea Bargaining

While the Supreme Court approved of the use of charging threats nearly thirty years ago in Bordenkircher v. Hayes, a more recent line of cases has subtly undermined key premises of that landmark decision. In order to induce guilty pleas, prosecutors might use any of a number of different tactics. A prosecutor might, for instance, charge aggressively in the first instance and then promise to drop the most serious charges in return for a guilty plea to a lesser offense. Bordenkircher addressed the mirror-image of this tactic: the prosecutor filed relatively minor charges at first, but then threatened to pursue more serious charges if the defendant did not plead guilty. The Supreme Court approved of such charging threats based on two considerations: the efficiency benefits of resolving cases by plea instead of jury trial, and the possibility that prosecutors would evade a ban on threats by charging more aggressively in the first instance. The Court's reasoning, however, is inconsistent with Apprendi v. New Jersey and its progeny. Apprendi rejected the use of both efficiency considerations and evasion concerns as grounds for impairing access to juries. Apprendi instead emphasized a need for robust checks and balances within the criminal justice system. Because the Apprendi line of cases addressed sentencing procedures, not plea bargaining, their relevance to Bordenkircher has thus far escaped notice. The Article argues, however, that the Court should now overturn Bordenkircher in light of the values it embraced in Apprendi. The Article also proposes a new test for evaluating the constitutionality of charging threats.
Health Insurance, Risk, and Responsibility after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

This essay explores the new social contract of healthcare solidarity through private ownership, markets, choice, and individual responsibility embodied in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This essay first explains the four main health care risk distribution institutions affected by the Act – Medicare, Medicaid, the individual and small employer market, and the large group market – with an emphasis on how the Act changes those institutions and how they are financed. The essay then describes the “fair share” approach to health care financing embodied in the Act. This approach largely rejects the actuarial fairness vision of what constitutes a fair share while pointing toward a new responsibility to be as healthy as you can. This new responsibility reflects the influence of health economics and health ethics, and it is part of the embrace of risk first described in the insurance as governance literature. There are challenges to achieving the solidarity through individual responsibility envisioned in the Act – most significantly ”risk classification by design” and non-compliance with the mandates – but the Act contains regulatory tools that the states, the new Exchanges, and the Department of Health and Human Services can use to address these challenges.
The Delinquency of Subprime Mortgages

Abstract The lag between the time that a borrower stops making payments on a mortgage and the termination of the loan plays a critical role in the costs borne by both borrower and lender on defaulted loans. While the prior literature uses a multinomial logit approach, statistical tests indicate that we cannot accept the associated assumption of Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA). Using a nested logit specification our results suggest that the recipe for delinquency involves young loans to low credit score borrowers with low or no documentation in housing markets with moderately volatile and flat or declining nominal house prices.
Ego Depletion and Auditors' Busy Season

ABSTRACT: This study examines the impact of busy season on auditors through ego depletion theory. Ego depletion theory posits that using self-control depletes a cognitive resource and decreases the ability to exercise self-control on subsequent tasks, which can decrease judgment and decision-making (JDM) quality. Using a within-subjects quasi-experiment, I compare self-control resources at the onset of days within and outside of busy season to determine whether auditors experience a between-day accumulation of depletion. I predict and find that auditors experience an accumulation of ego depletion, and therefore begin workdays within busy season in a depleted state. Starting a workday in a depleted state can exacerbate within-day depletion, as studied in prior research. This research contributes a theoretical mechanism linking busy season to auditors' JDM quality and expands ego depletion theory by predicting and finding initial evidence of an accumulation effect, a more severe form of depletion than studi...
REITs and Idiosyncratic Risk

This study examines various determinants of idiosyncratic risk from the perspective of un-diversified REIT investors, managers holding options, other option holders, and arbitrageurs. Since real es...
Employment Effects of Minimum Wages: Evidence from a Quasi‐Experiment—Erratum

 2004 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research Published by Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd In an article published in the December 2003 edition of the Australian Economic Review (Leigh 2003), the author mistakenly used data for labour force to population ratios in place of the theoretical model requirement of data on employment to population ratios. Changes in the Western Australian minimum wage could have impacted employment on three margins, and this error meant that the analysis allowed for an effect on only two of these margins. To the extent that increases in the Western Australian minimum wage caused workers to become unemployed, or to shift from full-time to parttime employment, this ought not to have affected the empirical findings. But if increases in the Western Australian minimum wage caused workers to leave the labour force altogether, this would not have shown up in the figures presented. In addition, the original article presented ‘implied elasticities’, which were based on percentage point effects. Since elasticities should, strictly speaking, be percentage effects, the results are re-presented both as percentage point and percentage effects. The full dataset and Stata do-file are available from the author. Tables 2, 3 and 4 from the article are represented below. The main difference to note in Table 2 is that the difference-in-difference estimate is negative and statistically significant for four of the minimum wage rises, negative and insignificant for one, and positive and insignificant for one (versus negative and significant for two, and negative and insignificant for four, as was originally found). In Tables 3 and 4, the corrected results are still statistically significant at the 1 per cent level, but the employment effect of increasing the minimum wage is estimated to be somewhat larger than was reported in the original version. The author sincerely apologises for this error.
Effects of culture on firm risk-taking: a cross-country and cross-industry analysis

This paper investigates the effects of national culture on firm risk-taking, using a comprehensive dataset covering 50,000 firms in 400 industries in 51 countries. Risk-taking is found to be higher for domestic firms in countries with low uncertainty aversion, low tolerance for hierarchical relationships, and high individualism. Domestic firms in such countries tend to take substantially more risk in industries which are more informationally opaque (e.g., finance, mining, oil refinery, IT). Risk-taking by foreign firms is best explained by the cultural norms of their country of origin. These results hold even after controlling for legal constraints, insurance safety nets, and economic development.
Ahistorical Indians and Reservation Resources

This article is an in-depth exploration of the impacts of an Indian tribe deciding to pursue environmentally destructive forms of economic development. The article makes two principal contributions. First, it establishes the Navajo Nation’s decision-making role. Prior mineral resource forms of development may have been formally approved by the tribe but the agreements did not truly belong to the Navajo Nation. Extensive research into earlier agreements shows the heavy influence of the federal government and mining interests historically. Existing scholarship on reservation environmental harm tends to deflect tribal responsibility, attributing such decisions to outside forces. Without denying the challenges the Navajo Nation is facing, the article calls for recognition, despite the romanticism that surrounds Indians and the environment, of tribal agency and responsibility for the proposed environmental destruction. Second, I argue that environmental organizations that make use of federal environmental review processes are complicit in the systematic denial of Indian sovereignty that federal primacy entails. Although there is a strong theoretical argument that the only limits appropriate for Indian nations are those of nation-states under international law, the Article concludes that the relationship between environmental organizations and Indian nations ought to be guided by international human rights law.
Coronavirus: Impact on Stock Prices and Growth Expectations

We use data from aggregate stock and dividend futures markets to quantify how investors’ expectations about economic growth evolved across horizons following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and subsequent policy responses until July 2020 Dividend futures, which are claims to dividends on the aggregate stock market in a particular year, can be used to directly compute a lower bound on growth expectations across maturities or to estimate expected growth using a forecasting model We show how the actual forecast and the bound evolve over time As of July 20th, our forecast of annual growth in dividends points to a decline of 8% in both the United States and Japan and a 14% decline in the European Union compared to January 1 Our forecast of GDP growth points to a decline of 2% in the United States and Japan and 3% in the European Union The lower bound on the change in expected dividends is -17% in the United States and Japan and -28% in the European Union at the 2-year horizon News about U S monetary policy and the fiscal stimulus bill around March 24 boosted the stock market and long-term growth but did little to increase short-term growth expectations Expected dividend growth has improved since April 1 in all geographies
Locke's Biblical Critique

This paper seeks to clarify the relationship between Locke’s political and religious thought. To the extent that Locke’s political thought is an outgrowth of a particular strand of Christianity, its claims to universality would be significantly diminished. This would be the case, however, only if Locke were genuinely religious. Plausible accounts of his religiosity have been offered by Dunn, Waldron, et al., but such accounts become implausible given the presence of a biblical critique within the Two Treatises. The evidence for a critique of the Bible on moral grounds pointed to by Strauss, Pangle, et al. is ambiguous, however, and so fails to refute the pious-Locke hypothesis. This paper argues that close attention to Locke’s analysis of the Hebrew text of Gen. 1:28 unambiguously points to a critique of the Bible on textual grounds. This serves to set the moral critique upon firmer foundations, to imply that the moral critique really is present in the text, and to reestablish the universalist claims of Locke’s political thought.
Shadows on the Cathedral: Solar Access Laws in a Different Light

Unprecedented growth in rooftop solar energy development is drawing increased attention to the issue of solar access. To operate effectively, solar panels require unshaded access to the sun’s rays during peak sunlight hours. Some landowners are reluctant to invest in rooftop solar panels because they fear that a neighbor will erect a structure or grow a tree on nearby property that shades their panels. Existing statutory approaches to protecting solar access for such landowners vary widely across jurisdictions, and some approaches ignore the airspace rights of neighbors. Which rule regime for solar access protection best promotes the efficient allocation of scarce airspace, within the constraints of existing law? This Article applies Calabresi and Melamed’s “Cathedral” framework of property rules and liability rules to compare and analyze existing solar access laws and to evaluate a model solar access statute recently drafted under funding from the United States Department of Energy. Surprisingly, the Article concludes that a statute implementing the Cathedral model’s seldomused “Rule Four” is best suited for addressing solar access conflicts.
Macroprudential Policy - Taxonomy and Challenges

There is increasing recognition that prior to the global financial crisis financial regulation had lacked a macroprudential perspective. There has since been a strong effort to make a new macroprudential orientation operational, including through the establishment of new macroprudential authorities or 'committees' in a number of jurisdictions. These developments raise - and this paper explores - the following three questions. First, what distinguishes macroprudential policy from microprudential policy and what are its key tasks? Second, what powers should be given to macroprudential authorities and what should be their mandate? Third, how can governance arrangements ensure that macroprudential policies are pursued effectively? While arrangements for macroprudential policy will to some extent be country-specific, we identify three basic challenges in setting up an effective macroprudential policy framework and discuss options to address them.
Regional Financial Interlinkages and Financial Contagion within Europe

The ongoing global financial turmoil has increased the importance of understanding the potential spillover effects brought about by financial interlinkages. This article focuses on such interlinkages within Europe and potential contagion channeled through these interlinkages. It discusses the increased role of external financing as a source of funding for credit growth before the turmoil; analyzes potential channels of contagion through financial linkages; and assesses the magnitude of cross-border exposures between emerging and advanced European economies. Based on the stylized facts on these exposures, the article provides indices of exposure to regional contagion that could help identify the likely pressure points and capture potential spillover effects and propagation channels of a regional shock originating from a given country.
Nerdy Money: Bitcoin, the Private Digital Currency, and the Case Against its Regulation

In 1601, Elizabeth I and her government devalued the Irish coin from nine ounces fine to three ounces fine of silver in order to finance the high cost of the Nine Years War in Ireland. 1 This unilateral move by the English government, combined with the failure to remove the old sterling from circulation, caused catastrophic problems throughout Ireland. 2 In addition to rapid inflation in common foodstuffs, the people in Ireland would only accept the new coin at its reduced intrinsic value rather than face value. 3 Further, merchants refused to accept the devalued coin in commercial transactions leading to a shortage of vital goods from England. 4
Marketing Scholarship 2.0

Abstract The system for the design, production, and dissemination of marketing scholarship aimed at contributing to marketing practice is under increasing strain due to pressures exerted by globalization, digitization, and environmentalism. Scholarly research in marketing adheres largely to a twentieth-century manufacturing model. Change is needed now. Marketing scholarship can benefit from embracing a twenty-first-century, collaborative approach to the conception, design, and dissemination of research. “Crowdsourcing” is becoming a frequently employed strategy in industry. Marketing academe should adopt some of the same techniques and technologies to make stronger research contributions that will benefit marketing practice. In particular, more collaboration is needed, both among academic researchers and between academe and industry, to be sure important problems are being investigated using sound theories and methods. An open, collaborative model will allow the field to evolve from Marketing Scholarship ...
The evaluative space grid : A single-item measure of positivity and negativity

The authors introduce the evaluative space grid (ESG), a two-dimensional grid that provides a single-item measure of positivity and negativity. In Study 1, ESG ratings of gamble outcomes were highly correlated with those obtained from conventional, less-efficient, unipolar measures, thus providing evidence for the grid's convergent validity. In Study 2, participants rated their moment-by-moment evaluative reactions to gamble outcomes with the grid every 100 ms; results replicated earlier findings that some outcomes elicit only positivity or negativity whereas others simultaneously elicit positivity and negativity. In Studies 3 and 4, the difference between the grid's positive and negative ratings of several types of stimuli and bipolar valence ratings were highly correlated, thus demonstrating the grid's generalisability and predictive validity. Study 4 also showed that ESG ratings predicted facial electromyographic activity, particularly in tasks involving strongly affective stimuli. Taken together, resu...
Nationwide Service of Process: Due Process Limitations on the Power of the Sovereign

There are a number of instances in which a federal court asserts personal jurisdiction by service of process beyond the territorial limits of the state in which it sits. The most common examples of these assertions of jurisdiction are the use of a state's long-arm statute and the "bulge" provision of the federal rules. But, in addition, there are a number of statutes by which Congress has authorized nationwide service of process in particular circumstances.It is generally accepted that Congress may authorize expansion limits of the states in which it sits, including authorization of extraterritorial service of process. However, a question which must be considered is whether there are any constitutional limitations on this congressional power and, if so, what those limitations are. For absent any restrictions, defendants could find themselves placed in the difficult position of having to litigate a case in a district far from home, with which they have no connection.This Article begins by examining the principles which govern the assertion of personal jurisdiction in federal court. It analyzes examples of situations in which nationwide service of process has been authorized for the purpose of establishing the paradigm by which such authorizations are justified and limited. Finally, this Article suggests that the prevailing paradigm is inadequate and it offers an alternative for dealing with this problem in the future.
Hedging Sudden Stops and Precautionary Contractions

Abstract Even well-managed emerging market economies are exposed to significant external risk, the bulk of which is financial. At a moment's notice, these economies may be required to reverse the capital inflows that have supported the preceding boom. While capital flows crises are sudden nonlinear events (sudden stops), their likelihood fluctuates over time. The question we address in the paper is how should a country react to these fluctuations. Depending on the hedging possibilities the country faces, the options range from pure self-insurance to hedging the sudden stop jump itself. In between, there is the more likely possibility to hedge the smoother fluctuations in the likelihood of sudden stops. The main contribution of the paper is to provide an analytically and empirically tractable model that allows us to characterize and quantify optimal contingent liability management in a variety of scenarios. We show, with a concrete example, that the gains from contingent liability management can easily exceed the equivalent of cutting a country's external liabilities by 10% of GDP.
The Costs of Heightened Pleading

INTRODUCTION 120 I. THE (RE)EMERGENCE OF HEIGHTENED PLEADING STANDARDS 127 II. METHODOLOGY 133 III. RESULTS 140 A. COHORT CHARACTERISTICS 140 B. “CONTROL” GROUP CHARACTERISTICS 149 IV. RAMIFICATIONS 161 A. LIKELY EFFECT OF IQBAL AS INDICATED BY COHORT SUCCESS RATES .... 161 B. LIKELY EFFECT OF IQBAL AS INDICATED BY COMPARISONS BETWEEN COHORT AND ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE DATA 165 C. METHODOLOGICAL OBJECTIONS AND RESPONSES 166 CONCLUSION 169 APPENDIX 170
Post-Retirement Increases in Pensions in the 1980s: Did Plan Finances Matter?

Many firms give postretirement increases in pension benefits to retirees even though the formal pension contract does not require them. A leading explanation for the existence of postretirement increases is that they are part of an implicit employment contract that requires the firm to award postretirement increases when the financial performance of the pension fund is better than expected. Data from the 1986 Employee Benefit Survey is combined with financial information from the Form 5500 tax reporting forms for 1985 to estimate the determinants of postretirement increases in pension benefits between 1980 and 1985. The results indicate that financial factors are not closely related to the incidence of postretirement benefit increases but are important determinants of the magnitude of benefit increases. Other results reveal that proxies for the presence of an implicit contract are positively associated with the probability that a firm will award a postretirement benefit increase.
Does a Seller’s eCommerce Reputation Matter? Evidence from eBay Auctions

With internet commerce, a buyer cannot directly examine the product and so must rely upon the accuracy and reliability of the seller in deciding whether and how much to bid. In this setting, the seller’s reputation can become an important factor in the bid. This paper examines the impact of the seller’s reputation on the willingness of buyers to bid on items sold via internet auctions, using a 1999 mint condition U.S. $5 gold coin whose average price was $32.73. The empirical results show that the seller’s reputation has a positive, statistically signi¢cant, but small impact on the price.
Strengthening of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in 1984: The Original Loopholes, the Amendments, and the Political Factors Behind Their Passage

This commentary discusses the nature of the legal loopholes that existed in the original RCRA statute, and highlights several of the provisions of the 1984 RCRA amendments that serve to either rectify or ameliorate the prior deficiencies. It also examines the political factors that affected the passage of the 1984 amendments, enabling them to pass during a period of anti-regulatory emphasis.
The Strategic Under-Reporting of Bank Risk

We show that banks signicantly under-report the risk in their trading book when they have lower equity capital. A decrease in a bank’s equity capital results in substantially more frequent violations of its self-reported risk levels in the following quarter. These results are consistent with the view that banks under-report their risks to lower their current regulatory capital requirements at the expense of potentially higher future capital requirements that follow if the under-reporting is detected. The under-reporting is especially high during the critical periods of high systemic risk and for banks with larger trading operations. Our results provide evidence that the current regulations give reporting incentives that make the self-reported risk measures least informative precisely when they matter the most.
Creditor financing and overbidding in bankruptcy auctions: Theory and tests

We present unique empirical tests for auction overbidding using data from Sweden's auction bankruptcy system. The main creditor (a bank) can neither bid in the auction nor refuse to sell in order to support a minimum price. However, we argue that the bank may increase its expected revenue by financing a bidder in return for a joint bid strategy, and we show that the optimal coalition bid exceeds the bidder's private valuation (overbidding) by an amount that is increasing in the bank's ex ante debt impairment. We find that bank–bidder financing arrangements are common, and our cross-sectional regressions show that winning bids are increasing in the bank-debt impairment as predicted. While, in theory, overbidding may result in the coalition winning against a more efficient rival bidder, our evidence on post-bankruptcy operating performance fails to support such allocative inefficiency effects. We also find that restructurings by bank-financed bidders are relatively risky as they have greater bankruptcy refiling rates, irrespective of the coalition's overbidding incentive.
The Disappearing Pre-FOMC Announcement Drift.

Abstract Lucca and Moench (2015) document large average excess returns in U.S. equities before scheduled Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings from September 1994 to March 2011, leading to a puzzle not explained by standard asset pricing theory. We extend the sample to December 2019. We find that after first appearing before FOMC announcements accompanied by the Fed Chair press conferences, the pre-FOMC drift essentially disappeared after 2015 in both announcements accompanied by press conferences and announcements not accompanied by press conferences. We discuss a possible explanation for this change: reduced uncertainty.
Framing Goals to Influence Personal Savings: The Role of Specificity and Construal Level:

Abstract In four studies, the authors show that consumers' savings can be increased or decreased merely by changing the way consumers think about their saving goals. Consumers can (1) either specify or not specify an exact amount to save (goal specificity) and (2) focus on either how to save or why to save (construal level). The results illustrate that specific goals help consumers save more when the saving goal is construed at a high level but that nonspecific goals help consumers save more when the saving goal is construed at a low level. The same pattern of results occurs with anticipated saving success and actual savings. Mediation analyses reveal that for high-level construers, specific (vs. nonspecific) goals lead to success because they are perceived as more important. However, specific (vs. nonspecific) goals are also perceived as more difficult, which is more discouraging for low-level construers.
Is the GATT/WTO Biased Against Agricultural Products in Unfair International Trade Investigations?

The unfair-trade codes of the GATT/WTO are better suited to addressing complaints from manufacturing than agriculture. This is because the seasonality and uncertainty of agricultural output, together with substantial use of contracting with factors of production, makes sales at a loss a rational business practice during certain times of the year. This cost dumping induces the use of constructed values in the calculation of dumping margins by the US, which typically generates high duties. The model provides for cyclical dumping arising as a supply phenomenon. This contrasts with cyclical dumping in manufacturing that is induced by demand fluctuations.
Why are Those Options Smiling

The “volatility smile” is a well-known feature of all options markets—well-known, but not well understood, despite the fact that its presence has been documented for many years, and the fact that it represents a really annoying contradiction of our cherished Black-Scholes valuation framework. An enormous amount of research and theoretical modeling have been driven by the desire to “explain” the smile, where “explain” implies finding properties of real-world returns distributions and options markets (fat tails, stochastic volatility, jumps, transactions costs, etc.) such that if the particular deviation from Black-Scholes assumptions were taken properly into account in the valuation model, the apparent smile would disappear. That is, the smile is felt to be caused by the use of the “wrong” pricing model to compute implied volatilities, and under the “true” model, all options would have the same implied volatility (IV). In this article, Ederington and Guan develop strong evidence that that belief is incorrect, without having to specify what the “true” model is. They compute IVs for S&P 500 index futures options from the basic Black 1976 model. If the resulting smile pattern is actually spurious, then a trading strategy of buying low IV contracts and writing high IV contracts should not produce excess returns. But they find that it does. This implies that high IV options really are significantly overpriced relative to low IV options, even though the model used to calculate IV may not be the true model. Exploring their results, they conclude that part of the Black-Scholes smile is spurious, but a substantial part appears to be true mispricing.
Considering Precedent in Louisiana: Balancing the Value of Predictable and Certain Interpretation with the Tradition of Flexibility and Adaptability

Despite the fundamental differences between the doctrines employed in common law and civil law (or mixed) jurisdictions when it comes to the respect paid to prior court decisions and their weight or value, United States courts that follow the common law doctrine of stare decisis have embraced some of the flexibility inherent in the civil law doctrine, and civil law and mixed jurisdictions throughout the world, including Louisiana, that use the doctrine of jurisprudence constante seem to have come to value the predictability and certainty that come with the common law doctrine. This Article suggests that Louisiana courts are striking the right balance between valuing the predictability and certainty of interpretation that comes with a healthy respect for precedent and maintaining the flexibility and adaptability of the law by not strictly considering precedent a source of law. This Article discusses the results of an ongoing examination of the sources of law and the value of precedent in Louisiana. The examination involves a study of Louisiana legislation, Louisiana courts’ writings about the sources of law and precedent, and a survey of Louisiana judges. Part of the examination included reviewing Louisiana judicial opinions on various issues to determine if there were differences in valuing precedent based on area of law or topic. It also included reviewing judicial opinions from the United States Supreme Court and New York state courts to compare these courts’ approaches to the use of precedent with those of the Louisiana courts. The article is based on a paper presented to the Third Congress of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists, which was held in Jerusalem, Israel in June 2011, and the author’s prior writings on the subject.
Towards a Scalable and Distributed Infrastructure for Deep Learning Applications

Although recent scaling up approaches to train deep neural networks have proven to be effective, the computational intensity of large and complex models, as well as the availability of large-scale datasets require deep learning frameworks to utilize scaling out techniques. Parallelization approaches and distribution requirements are not considered in the primary designs of most available distributed deep learning frameworks and most of them still are not able to perform effective and efficient fine-grained inter-node communication. We present Phylanx that has the potential to alleviate these shortcomings. Phylanx presents a productivity-oriented frontend where user Python code is translated to a futurized execution tree that can be executed efficiently on multiple nodes using the C++ standard library for parallelism and concurrency (HPX), leveraging fine-grained threading and an active messaging task-based runtime system.
A cognitive scientist looks at Daubert.

Our system of justice requires that trials be maximally fair. It is part of what holds this society together. Indeed, it is part of the genius of the justice system to have a kind of balance between strict and nurturant morality within the judicial system, so that the system itself provides a kind of moral and political balance.Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc (1993) has upset that balance and has made our judicial system significantly less fair and more politically conservative. Daubert is not just about the application of some procedural rule (Rule 702). Daubert functions in its application as a strategic initiative that significantly moves America in a conservative direction, in the moral and political spheres, as well as in the legal sphere.
Stability of Equilibria in Games with Procedurally Rational Players

Abstract One approach to the modeling of bounded rationality in games is based on the dynamics of evolution and learning. An alternative static and equilibrium-based approach has been developed recently by Osborne and Rubinstein. This paper formalizes Osborne and Rubinstein's dynamic interpretation of their equilibrium concept, uses the criterion of dynamic stability as an equilibrium refinement, and shows that stable equilibria can involve the playing of strictly dominated actions while dominant strategy equilibria can be unstable. These effects cannot occur under standard evolutionary game dynamics. Sufficient conditions for the instability of equilibria are provided for symmetric and asymmetric games. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: C72.
Trade Liberalization in the Presence of Foreign Direct Investment and Tax Credits: Estimates for Costa Rica

Abstract The paper uses a calibrated general-equilibrium model to quantify the welfare impact of trade liberal-ization—and compute the optimal tariff structure—for Costa Rica when trade-policy-induced foreign directinvestment and international capital taxation with credits are present. It shows that complete trade liberal-ization reduces Costa Rica’s welfare, as it leads to an outﬂow of capital and loss of tax revenue which morethan offset the efﬁciency gains from an enhanced resource allocation. The optimal tariff structure for theCosta Rican economy turns out to be a mixture of relatively small import tariffs and subsidies. 1. Introduction A well-known result from the “tariff-jumping” investment literature of the 1970s isthat import-tariff-induced capital inﬂows will be immiserizing for a small openeconomy (e.g., Brecher and Diaz-Alejandro, 1977). It is also known that this resultrelies crucially on the assumption that the host economy does not tax foreign capital(Bhagwati,1973).As Bond (1991) has shown,if this assumption is lifted and taxes paidin the host country by foreign companies are credited in the source country againstthe corresponding domestic tax liability, tariff-induced capital inﬂows are no longerimmiserizing. The reason for this is that in this case foreign capital brings with it taxrevenue that would otherwise go to the capital-exporting country.Therefore,to capturethis revenue and increase national income, it will be optimal for a small economy to impose a tariff on its imports—provided that the importable sector uses capitalintensively.The possibility of import tariffs being welfare-enhancing for a small economy mayhave some policy implications for many developing countries which have embarkedon outward-oriented growth strategies in the last ﬁfteen years or so. First, unilateraltrade liberalization and foreign direct investment ﬁgure prominently in most LDCs’“new”growth strategies.Second,in many developing countries trade liberalization hasimplied a lower tariff protection for the manufacturing sector (relative to others),which tends to be relatively capital-intensive.This, as the Stolper–Samuelson theoremsuggests, will tend to reduce the return to capital and thereby FDI inﬂows to thesecountries.Third,the bulk of FDI in developing countries originates in developed coun-tries, the majority of which uses the tax credit mechanism when taxing foreign sourceincome.
CONVENIENT PRICES AND PRICE RIGIDITY: CROSS-SECTIONAL EVIDENCE

Abstract This paper provides cross‐sectional evidence of convenient prices—prices that simplify and expedite transactions, reducing the time costs from physically making a transaction. Firms may wish to set convenient prices for items that are typically purchased with cash, are sold alone or with a few similar items, and are high‐traffic transactions, that is, that require queuing or are frequently purchased. I collect a new data set and find broad support for the use of convenient prices in locations where making a rapid transaction is important. Convenience also appears to predominantly affect goods and services with above‐average price rigidity.
The Vices of Epistemic Institutionalism

This is Alon Harel's contribution to the symposium on Adrian Vermeule’s book “Law and the Limits of Reason.”