cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Reckless Disregard: The Bush Administration's Policy of Cutting Taxes in the Face of an Enormous Fiscal Gap

The Bush administration's policy of sharply cutting taxes while increasing government spending is both misguided and harmful. Presumably rationalized in private as a way of shrinking government over the long term without paying a current political price, this policy in fact increases the government's distributional intervention by handing money to current voters at the expense of younger and future generations. Moreover, the ballooning fiscal gap may lead to an Argentina-style meltdown in the U.S. government's position as a borrower in world capital markets, potentially yielding chronic inflation, unemployment, and bank and currency crises that may affect our economic productivity for an indefinite period.
Circuit Split or a Matter of Semantics? The Supreme Court's Upcoming Decision on Rule 10b-5 "Scheme Liability" and Its Implications for Tax Shelter Fraud Litigation

After Internal Revenue Service investigations exposed widespread fraud among tax shelter promoters, angry investors sued for securities fraud under Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b-5, which provides a cause of action against “primary violators” of the Rule but not against mere “aiders and abettors.” This controversial distinction is further complicated by the recent introduction of “scheme liability” lawsuits under two previously obscure provisions of Rule 10b-5. This Note examines the circuit split over the “primary violator”/“aider and abettor” distinction in scheme liability claims, arguing that the circuits’ conflicting concepts of scheme liability actually cover similar conduct, and that tax shelter promoters likely will be considered primary violators under either concept.
Treaties: Strategic considerations

This paper presents a rationalist approach to treaty formation and adherence, where nations are motivated by their self-interest in a strategic framework that accounts for other nations’ responses. Key considerations include coordination games, dynamic cooperation, institutional design, and the aggregation technology of public supply. Dynamic aspects involve multilateral cooperation under a variety of game forms. Treaty design is essential in motivating nations to fulfill obligations without the need for enforcement. Some properties of public goods, such as the manner in which individual contributions determine the available consumption level, have a crucial influence over nations’ incentives to adhere to treaties once ratified. The role of morality and conformity are captured in the strategic framework presented.
The Anti-Patent: A Proposal for Startup Immunity

The controversy surrounding the current implementation of the patent system is well known. Some question whether the system has become entirely dysfunctional and disincentives innovation, particularly as the law operates within some industries. Moreover, early stage companies, particularly those just beginning to gain success, are particularly vulnerable targets for lawsuits. Notably, these same companies can be rich sources of important technological innovation.Because the U.S. has always had a patent system, it is impossible to understand the intended and unintended consequences of eliminating this form of intellectual property protection even in a limited manner. As economist Fritz Machlup stated in 1958, "[i]f we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge of its economic consequences, to recommend instituting one. But since we have had a patent system for a long time, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge, to recommend abolishing it." The current one-size-fits all patent system locks companies into the system, even for those that might prefer to leave it. This paper proposes an entirely new, limited immunity for a small sector of innovative organizations that wish to operate outside the patent system for a limited period of time. Specifically, this article proposes the outlines of program for a voluntary class of "patent free" startups and emerging companies. This allows the grantee to obtain immunity from all patent assertions during the allotted time period. As a true opt-out, start-ups are precluded from obtaining patents during the opt-out period. Instead, the inventions created by these entities pass to the public domain. Because the program is voluntary, it will permit each entity to balance the benefits against the burdens of the patent system and make and individualized determination whether to "go patent-free" for a limited twenty-year term. Further, this piece considers the risks that a startup might encounter by engaging with this proposed program.
The Cutoff Structure of Top Trading Cycles in School Choice

This article develops a tractable theoretical framework for the Top Trading Cycles (TTC) mechanism for school choice that allows quantifying welfare and optimizing policy decisions. We compute welfare for TTC and Deferred Acceptance (DA) under different priority structures and find that the choice of priorities can have larger welfare implications than the choice of mechanism. We solve for the welfare-maximizing distributions of school quality for parametrized economies and find that optimal investment decisions can be very different under TTC and DA. Our framework relies on a novel characterization of the TTC assignment in terms of a cutoff for each pair of schools. These cutoffs parallel prices in competitive equilibrium, with students’ priorities serving the role of endowments. We show that these cutoffs can be computed directly from the distribution of preferences and priorities in a continuum model and derive closed-form solutions and comparative statics for parameterized settings. The TTC cutoffs not only clarify the role of priorities in determining the TTC assignment but also demonstrate that TTC is more complicated than DA.
Robotic cells with stochastic processing times

This article considers the scheduling of flow shops with a common server that performs all material handling, including the transfer of parts between machines, in the context of robotic cell flow shops. Specifically, the first analytic study of the operations of a robotic cell in which one process has a stochastic processing time, which is common in the microlithography portion of semiconductor manufacturing, is presented. How to measure throughput in such cells is defined and then how the proximity of the stochastic process to the bottleneck process affects throughput is demonstrated. The distribution function of the robot's sequence time is found and verified with simulation results. This yields formulas for the cell's expected throughput. On-line scheduling schemes to improve throughput are presented.
Which candidates do the public discuss online in an election campaign?: The use of social media by 2012 presidential candidates and its impact on candidate salience

Abstract The effects of new communication technologies on election campaigns, and the effectiveness of media-centered campaign strategies more broadly, remain ongoing subjects for debate in political science. This study provides some of the first empirical evidence about the potential impact of social media on the 2012 U.S. presidential elections, by testing the association between “candidate salience” and the candidates' level of engagement in online social media sphere. We define “candidate salience” as the extent to which candidates are discussed online by the public in an election campaign, and have selected the number of mentions presidential candidates receive on the social media site, Twitter, as means of quantifying their salience. This strategy allows us to examine whether social media, which is widely recognized as disruptive in the broader economic and social domains, has the potential to change the traditional dynamics of U.S. election campaigns. We find that while social media does substantially expand the possible modes and methods of election campaigning, high levels of social media activity on the part of presidential candidates have, as of yet, resulted in minimal effects on the amount of public attention they receive online.
Development of Response Evaluation and Decision (RED) and antisocial behavior in childhood and adolescence

Using longitudinal data on 585 youths (48% female; 17% African American, 2% other ethnic minority), the authors examined the development of social response evaluation and decision (RED) across childhood (Study 1; kindergarten through Grade 3) and adolescence (Study 2; Grades 8 and 11). Participants completed hypothetical-vignette-based RED assessments, and their antisocial behaviors were measured by multiple raters. Structural equation modeling and linear growth analyses indicated that children differentiate alternative responses by Grade 3, but these RED responses were not consistently related to antisocial behavior. Adolescent analyses provided support for a model of multiple evaluative domains of RED and showed strong relations between aggressive response evaluations, nonaggressive response evaluations, and antisocial behavior. Findings indicate that RED becomes more differential (or specific to response style) and is increasingly related to youths' antisocial conduct across development.
Price controls and electoral cycles

This paper studies the interactions between electoral considerations and the imposition of price controls by opportunistic policymakers. The analysis shows that a policy cycle emerges in which price controls are tightened in periods leading to the election, and relaxed immediately afterwards. The shape of the cycle is shown to depend on the periodicity of elections, the relative weight attached by the public to inflation as opposed to the macroeconomic distortions associated with price controls, the nature of wage contracts, and the degree of uncertainty about the term in office.
Are labor regulations driving computer usage in India's retail stores?

Abstract A commonly held but untested view is that the use of modern technology such as computers could be endogenous to labor regulations. This paper confirms this view using the Enterprise survey's data on 1948 retail stores in India.
Piercing the Brilliant Veil: Two Stories of American Racism

There are two stories about racism in America. In one, we have moved far beyond our early sins of slavery and segregation. Students of color attend elite colleges and professional schools; they serve as doctors and lawyers, nonprofit leaders and captains of industry. In the second story, forty percent of our nation’s Black pre-schoolers live in poverty; one-third of young Hispanics fare as poorly. Racial slurs, hostility, and disdain for minority students permeate elementary and secondary schools, and high school graduation rates for Whites far outstrip those for Black or Hispanic students.This Comment explores these two competing stories, using a recent empirical study by Deirdre Bowen to explore their accuracy. Bowen’s research shows that, although the first story expresses our remarkable progress on racial discrimination, the second demonstrates the systemic bias that continues to constrain us. Candid acknowledgement of the second story should inform race-based policy initiatives like affirmative action.
Anonymous Markets and Monetary Trading

Abstract We study infinite-horizon monetary economies characterized by trading frictions that originate from random pairwise meetings, and commitment and enforcement limitations. We prove that introducing occasional trade in ‘centralized markets’ opens the door to an informal enforcement scheme that sustains a non-monetary efficient allocation. All is required is that trading partners be patient and their actions be observable. We then present a matching environment in which trade may occur in large markets and yet agents’ trading paths cross at most once. This allows the construction of models in which infinitely lived agents trade in competitive markets where money plays an essential role.
Growing Pains: Audit Quality and Office Growth

This study provides evidence on how local office growth affects audit quality. We predict that significant recent growth will temporarily stress office resources, leading to a negative relation between office-level growth and audit quality. To test this prediction, we examine a sample of 17,062 firm-year observations from 2005 to 2010. Results indicate a consistent negative relation between changes in volume of audit work and audit quality. Specifically, clients of offices that experience increases in workload over the prior year have greater absolute discretionary accruals as well as an increased likelihood of restatement. Our tests also indicate that the effect of office growth is transient and vanishes after one year. We find limited evidence that the size of the auditor's national network of offices partially mitigates the negative effects of office growth on audit quality. We further show that proxies for audit quality are negatively related to office-level growth from new and existing clients. These findings are robust to controls for client and auditor characteristics as well as alternative specifications of growth. Taken together, evidence indicates that while larger offices provide higher audit quality, the benefits of office size are not realized immediately and rapid growth temporarily impairs audit quality. These results are informative to regulators concerned with audit quality and to practitioners charged with adjusting to office growth.
Who Benefits from Obtaining a GED? Evidence from High School and Beyond

This paper examines the value of the GED credential and the conventional high school diploma in explaining the earnings of 27-year-old males in the early 1990s. The data base is the High School and Beyond sophomore cohort. We replicate the basic findings of prior studies that implicitly assume the labor market value of the GED credential does not depend on the skills with which dropouts left school. We show that these average effects mask a more complicated pattern. Obtaining a GED is associated with higher earnings at age 27 for those male dropouts who had very weak cognitive skills as tenth graders, but not for those who had stronger cognitive skills as tenth graders.
The Role of Agents and Brokers in the Market for Health Insurance

Health insurance markets in the United States are characterized by imperfect information, complex products, and substantial search frictions. Insurance agents and brokers play a significant role in helping employers navigate these problems. However, little is known about the relations between the structure of the agent/broker market and access and affordability of insurance. This article aims to fill this gap by investigating the influence of agents/brokers on health insurance offering decisions of small firms, which are particularly vulnerable to problems of financing health insurance. Using a unique membership database from the National Association of Health Underwriters together with a nationally representative survey of employers, we find that small firms in more competitive agent/broker markets are more likely to offer health insurance and at lower premiums. Moreover, premiums are less dispersed in more competitive agent/broker markets.
The Economics of Trade Disputes, the GATT’s Article XXIII, and the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Understanding

Economic theory has yet to provide a convincing argument that can explain why the threat of retaliation under the GATT/WTO dispute settlement procedures is not sufficient to prevent countries from violating the agreement. We consider the question of why countries violate the agreed–upon rules in the face of explicit provisions which allow them to legally adjust their trade policy. Using the GATT/WTO institutional structure and the guiding principle of reciprocity, we provide a theory suggesting when countries will choose to implement protection in violation of GATT/WTO rules, as opposed to under the relevant safeguards provisions, when trade policy adjustments are necessary between “negotiating rounds.”
Credit Contagion from Counterparty Risk

Standard credit risk models cannot explain the observed clustering of default, some times described as "credit contagion." This paper provides the first empirical analysis of credit contagion via direct counterparty effects. We find that bankruptcy announce ments cause negative abnormal equity returns and increases in CDS spreads for credi tors. In addition, creditors with large exposures are more likely to suffer from financial distress later. This suggests that counterparty risk is a potential additional channel of credit contagion. Indeed, the fear of counterparty defaults among financial institu tions explains the sudden worsening of the credit crisis after the Lehman bankruptcy in September 2008.
Learning competitive equilibrium

Abstract We consider a pure exchange economy repeated from a fixed endowment for an indefinite number of periods and posit a learning rule which directs convergence to competitive equilibrium. In each period trade converges to an allocation in the contract set, where agents interpret the current (common) normalized utility gradient as a vector of prices to determine the implied wealth redistribution relative to their endowments. Agents who are less wealthy at the new allocation are designated subsidizers , and demand to provide smaller subsidies in subsequent periods of economic activity. Our model is a globally stable alternative to Walras’ tâtonnement .
The emerging Russian banking system

Value-added in Russian banks grew by 43 per cent while GDP declined by 32 per cent in the early years of the transition in Russia. This paper offers explanations for the unusual success of the Russian banking sector and the determinants of individual bank performance. The evidence comes from balance sheet data for 563 Moscow banks and 160 regional banks on January 1, 1995 and January 1, 1996. Important factors include the Central Bank policy of channelling low-interest directed credits to state enterprises through banks, the ability of banks to obtain large-scale interest-free deposits, and the resulting high interest rate spreads in an environment of high inflation, and the extent to which banks were formerly part of the Soviet system.
BIAS-REDUCED LOG-PERIODOGRAM AND WHITTLE ESTIMATION OF THE LONG-MEMORY PARAMETER WITHOUT VARIANCE INFLATION

The bias-reduced log-periodogram estimator of Andrews and Guggenberger (2003, Econometrica 71, 675–712) for the long-memory parameter d in a stationary long-memory time series reduces the asymptotic bias of the original log-periodogram estimator of Geweke and Porter-Hudak (1983) by an order of magnitude but inflates the asymptotic variance by a multiplicative constant cr, for example, c1 = 2.25 and c2 = 3.52. In this paper, we introduce a new, computationally attractive estimator by taking a weighted average of estimators over different bandwidths. We show that, for each fixed r ≥ 0, the new estimator can be designed to have the same asymptotic bias properties as but its asymptotic variance is changed by a constant cr* that can be chosen to be as small as desired, in particular smaller than cr. The same idea is also applied to the local-polynomial Whittle estimator in Andrews and Sun (2004, Econometrica 72, 569–614) leading to the weighted estimator . We establish the asymptotic bias, variance, and mean-squared error of the weighted estimators and show their asymptotic normality. Furthermore, we introduce a data-dependent adaptive procedure for selecting r and the bandwidth m and show that up to a logarithmic factor, the resulting adaptive weighted estimator achieves the optimal rate of convergence. A Monte Carlo study shows that the adaptive weighted estimator compares very favorably to several other adaptive estimators.We thank a co-editor and three referees for very helpful suggestions. We are grateful for the constructive comments offered by Marc Henry, Javier Hidalgo, and especially Katsumi Shimotsu.
Does drinking really decrease in bad times

This paper investigates the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and drinking using individual-level data from 1987 to 1999 interview years of the "behavioral risk factor surveillance system" (BRFSS). We confirm the procyclical variation in overall drinking identified in previous research using aggregate sales data and show that this largely results from changes in consumption by existing drinkers, rather than movements into or out of drinking. Moreover, the decrease occurring during bad economic times is concentrated among heavy consumers, with light drinking actually rising. We also find no evidence that the decline in overall alcohol use masks a rise for persons becoming unemployed during contractions. These results suggest that any stress-induced increases in drinking during bad economic times are more than offset by declines resulting from changes in economic factors such as lower incomes.
An analytic model of angular momentum transport by gravitational torques: from galaxies to massive black holes

We present analytic calculations of angular momentum transport and gas inflow in galaxies, from scales of ∼ kpc to deep inside the potential of a central massive black hole (BH). We compare these analytic calculations to numerical simulations and use them to develop a sub-grid model of BH growth that can be incorporated into semi-analytic calculations or cosmological simulations. Motivated by both analytic calculations and simulations of gas inflow in galactic nuclei, we argue that the strongest torque on gas arises when non-axisymmetric perturbations to the stellar gravitational potential produce orbit crossings and shocks in the gas. This is true both at large radii ∼0.01―1 kpc, where bar-like stellar modes dominate the non-axisymmetric potential, and at smaller radii ≲10 pc, where a lopsided/eccentric stellar disc dominates. The traditional orbit-crossing criterion is not always adequate to predict the locations of, and inflow due to, shocks in gas+stellar discs with finite sound speeds. We derive a modified criterion that predicts the presence of shocks in stellar-dominated systems even absent formal orbit crossing. We then derive analytic expressions for the loss of angular momentum and the resulting gas inflow rates in the presence of such shocks. We test our analytic predictions using hydrodynamic simulations at a range of galactic scales, and show that they successfully predict the mass inflow rates and quasi-steady gas surface densities with a small scatter ≃0.3 dex. We use our analytic results to construct a new estimate of the BH accretion rate given galaxy properties at larger radii, for use in galaxy and cosmological simulations and semi-analytic models. While highly simplified, this accretion rate predictor captures the key scalings in the numerical simulations. By contrast, alternate estimates such as the local viscous accretion rate or the spherical Bondi rate fail systematically to reproduce the simulations and have significantly larger scatter.
Hate Speech, Democratic Legitimacy and the Age of Trump

Should democracies punish hate speech? Eric Heinze, Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London, has written an important new book on this subject, Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship. At the center of Heinze’s book is a revolutionary idea: Instead of debating whether democracies per se can or cannot legitimately ban hate speech (which assumes all democracies are the same), we should only condemn hate speech as illegitimate in those democracies that are longstanding, stable and prosperous. In this essay, I show how Heinze’s idea frees the debate over hate speech regulation from the Europe vs. America dichotomy that has haunted it for years, while carrying a special poignancy for the United States in the age of Trump.
FX Dynamics, Limited Participation, and the Forward Bias Anomaly

Standard foreign exchange (FX) models with goods price stickiness and instantaneous asset market adjustments imply FX overshooting (Dornbusch, 1976), which can explain the forward bias anomaly. Lyons (2001) explained the anomaly via limited participation of FX speculators due to Sharpe ratios lower than equity market alternatives, which implies FX undershooting to interest differential shocks. I derive the time-series implications of overshooting and undershooting for the joint forward/spot FX dynamics in a vector error correction model. I use generalized impulse response analysis (Pesaran and Shin, 1998) to test those implications. All FX studied (pound, deutsch mark, French franc, yen, and Canadian dollar) have dynamics consistent with undershooting during the period from 1975 to 1998.
The politics of mapping platforms: participatory radiation mapping after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster:

The release of the Google Maps API in 2005 spurred a trend of mapping mashups, adding cartography to online participatory culture. This article will present how the affordances of these ‘platforms’ give shape to the online participation of concerned citizens willing to access information during an environmental crisis. Based on the analysis of the radiation mashups created after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in 2011, this article will highlight two types of online participation. First, participation as data extraction, where concerned actors either monitored data using Geiger counters or extracted and republished data from official websites. Second, participation as data aggregation, where maps were used to display and compare radiation measurements from official or crowdsourced venues. The conclusion will highlight the necessity to study how online platforms assign a place and temporality to online participation.
National origin and immigrant welfare recipiency

This paper explores national origin differences in the welfare recipiency of immigrants to the United States. We develop an economic model of immigration which generates implications about how welfare utilization should vary according to characteristics of the country of origin. The empirical analysis reveals that a few source country characteristics explain over two-thirds of the variance of welfare recipiency rates across national origin groups, and changes in the average source country characteristics of the foreign-born population between 1970 and 1980 can account for most of the rise in immigrant welfare use that occurred over the decade.
Waiting to settle: Multilateral bargaining with subjective biases

Abstract We study multilateral bargaining games where agents disagree over their bargaining power. We show that if agents are extremely optimistic, there may be costly delays in an arbitrarily long finite game but if optimism is moderate, all sufficiently long games end in immediate agreement. We show that the game with extreme optimism is highly unstable in the finite-horizon, and we examine the ramifications of this instability on the infinite-horizon problem. Finally, we consider other voting rules, and show that the majority-rule may be more efficient than the unanimity rule when agents are optimistic.
The Effect of Portfolio Weighting on Investment Performance Evaluation: The Case of Actively Managed Mutual Funds

Among the factors influencing investment performance measurement is the weight dedicated to each security. This paper develops metrics for measuring the extent of equal weighting and value weighting of a portfolio. A sample of 506 actively managed mutual funds shows that funds tend to be equally weighted to a greater degree than they are value weighted, implying that investment performance based solely on a single value-weighted benchmark may not adequately identify excess performance. We propose a two-factor model utilizing both a value-weighted and an equally weighted index and show that the model provides a better fit than the single-index model.(JEL G1)
On Commercial—and Corporate—Speech

Government, the Supreme Court has told us, has a lot of freedom to regulate commercial advertising on the ground that it’s false or misleading, but almost none to restrict its content on any other ground. That distinction isn’t justifiable; it never has been. But it relates to a parallel tension in the law’s treatment of speech by for-profit corporations. Both the law of commercial speech and the law of corporate speech are riven, rooted in foundational contradictions between the libertarian principles bound up in conventional first amendment philosophy and an alternative approach recognizing the ways private power distorts public discourse. Nuanced understanding of what commercial speech and corporate speech have in common, and what they are not, supports the conclusion that the Supreme Court is taking the law of commercial speech in the wrong direction.
Does increasing access to infrastructure services improve the targeting performance of water subsidies

There is ample evidence that utility subsidies imbedded in inverted block and other tariff structures are not well targeted to the poor, simply because the poor tend to have much lower access rates to water and electricity networks than richer households. This paper provides an analysis of the changes over time in the targeting performance of water consumption subsidies in Nicaragua. Becuase access rates to piped water increased substantially between 2001 and 2005, the targeting performance of consumption subsidies improved, despite the fact that the tariff structure remained essentially the same over time. It is shown that the observed changes in access rates had a much higher impact for improving the targeting performance of consumption subsidies than changes in the tariff structure could have had if they had been implemented. The results suggest that one of the best ways to improve the targeting of consumption subsidies may be to increase access rates, so that the poor have a better chance of receiving the subsidies. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Inflation expectations and the price at the pump

Abstract Consumer inflation expectations are positively correlated with gas prices. The optimal monetary policy response to energy price fluctuations depends on whether inflation expectations are excessively sensitive to gas prices, perhaps due to their high volatility and salience. I use multi-horizon microdata to study the dynamics of consumers’ gas price and inflation expectations. Consumers do not “overweight” gas prices in their perception of inflation, relative to the expenditure share of gas. They believe gas price inflation is negatively autocorrelated and feeds into core inflation moderately. The impact of gas prices on inflation expectations fades quickly with forecast horizon.
Distinguishing Economically from Legally Formal Firms: Targeting Business Support to Entrepreneurs in South Africa's Townships

Although the government of South Africa (SA) has formally adopted a policy of proactive support of entrepreneurship, providing business assistance to all of its entrepreneurs is beyond SA’s financial and human resource capabilities. This study utilizes the results of an in-depth survey of entrepreneurs in SA’s townships to find: (1) The business and owner traits that predict revenues and job creation among the township entrepreneurs, (2) The key issues that challenge township entrepreneurs; and (3) What the answers to these issues imply about the appropriate content and recipients of business assistance to township entrepreneurs. A distinction is helpful in framing this study’s approach. In SA, registered (licensed) businesses are legally formal firms. In contrast, economically formal firms have institutionalized processes that lead to success as a profit-making firm. We use this distinction in our analysis of the data and framing of the implications for business assistance strategy in SA.
The Role of Absolute Continuity in “Merging of Opinions” and “Rational Learning”☆

Abstract D. Blackwell and L. Dubins (1962, Ann. Math. Statist.38, 882–886) showed that opinions merge when priors are absolutely continuous. E. Kalai and E. Lehrer (1993, Econometrica61, 1019–1045) use this result to show that players in a repeated game eventually play like a Nash equilibrium. We provide an alternative proof of merging of opinions that clarifies the role of absolute continuity while casting doubt on the relevance of the result. Persistent disagreement, the opposite of merging, allows the construction of a sequence of mutually favorable “bets.” By a law of large numbers, both agents are certain they will win these bets on average. This certain disagreement violates absolute continuity. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C11, C69, C72, D83.
Emotional intelligence and legal education.

The traditional knowledge-based law school curriculum is slowly giving way to one that increasingly exposes students to various lawyering skills. Nonetheless, legal educators are generally averse — or at best ill equipped — to support that training with the empathic and psychological skills good lawyering demands. The author discusses how emotional intelligence is essential to good lawyering and argues that it can and should be cultivated in law school. The article draws upon three examples of popular culture to explore both the absence and possibilities of interpersonal intelligence in the practice of law. The author also describes her own law school's current project of re-imagining legal education and explains how the development of emotional skills might be incorporated into that vision.
Drug Firms, the Codification of Diagnostic Categories, and Bias in Clinical Guidelines:

The possibility that industry is exerting an undue influence on the culture of medicine has profound implications for the profession's public health mission. Policy analysts, investigative journalists, researchers, and clinicians have questioned whether academic-industry relationships have had a corrupting effect on evidence-based medicine. Psychiatry has been at the heart of this epistemic and ethical crisis in medicine. This article examines how commercial entities, such as pharmaceutical companies, influence psychiatric taxonomy and treatment guidelines. Using the conceptual framework of institutional corruption, we show that organized psychiatry's dependence on drug firms has led to a distortion of science. We describe the current dependency corruption and argue that transparency alone is not a solution. We conclude by taking the position that the corruption of the evidence base in diagnostic and practice guidelines has compromised the informed consent process, and we suggest strategies to address this problem.
After the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: The Court of Justice as a Human Rights Adjudicator?:

This article examines the engagement by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights over the period since the Charter was made formally binding by th...
A Great and Revolutionary Law? The First Four Years of India’s Right to Information Act

India’s 2005 Right to Information Act (RTIA) is among dozens of national laws recently adopted similar to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Drawing on several large studies examining the act’s implementation, the author finds that Indian citizens filed about 2 million requests for information under the RTIA during its first two and half years. However, use of the law was constrained by uneven public awareness, poor public planning, and bureaucratic indifference or outright hostility. Requirements for proactive disclosure of information are often ignored. The necessary mechanisms for enforcing the new law are also strained by a growing number of complaints and appeals. Nonetheless, RTIA advocates demonstrate its transformative potential and continue to press energetically for more effective implementation. Public authorities and civil society organizations have developed a number of practical innovations that may be useful for other developing countries to adopt when considering similar laws.
Material Vulnerabilities: Data Privacy, Corporate Information Security, and Securities Regulation

1 ABSTRACT: This article undertakes a normative and empirical legal inquiry into the manner information security vulnerabilities are being addressed through law and in the marketplace. Specifically, this article questions the current legislative paradigm for information security regulation by presenting a critique grounded in information security and cryptography theory. Consequently, this article advocates shifting our regulatory approach to a process-based security paradigm that focuses on improving security of our system as a whole. Finally, this article argues that in order to accomplish this shift with least disruption to current legal and economic processes, expanding an existing set of well-functioning legal structures is preferable to crafting new legal structures. Securities disclosure law is already focused on regulating the most connected points in our economy, publicly traded entities. Public companies provide a good starting point for spreading better information security behaviors because of this connectedness; disclosure of public companies’ information security behaviors will assist them in maximizing shareholder value and will assist regulators in finding the inadequately secure points in our economy.
Israel's Legal Obligations to Gaza After the Pullout

This paper explores Israel's legal obligations to Gaza in the wake of the Israeli pullout from the territory in September 2005. The paper argues that obligations under both the international law of occupation and the Israel-Palestinian Authority interim agreements continue to exist for Israel. The pullout may have altered the political dynamic in the Middle East but legally it has changed nothing.
Condoning the Crime: The Elusive Mens Rea for Complicity

There is a long history of disagreement about what the mens rea for complicity is. Some courts take it to be the intention for the underlying crime to succeed while others take mere knowledge of the underlying crime to be sufficient. Still others propose that the mens rea for complicity tracks the mens rea of the underlying crime-the so-called "derivative approach. " However, as argued herein, these familiar approaches face difficulties. Accordingly, we have reason to continue our search for the elusive mens rea for complicity. This Article develops a new account of the mens rea for complicity, drawing on an older approach informed by agency law principles. In particular, I argue that a distinct attitude of condoning the underlying crime is best seen as the mens rea for complicity. This approach yields a more principled framework for determining when accomplice liability is warranted than the existing approaches do. Moreover, it demonstrates that certain reforms to the current legal regime are warranted. Most importantly, the law should recognize that complicity comes in degrees. While reforms of this sort have been previously proposed for reasons relating to causation, this Article argues that different levels of complicity must also be recognized on independent mens rea grounds.
Conservation: From Voluntary Restraint to a Voluntary Price Premium

This paper investigates how concern for the environment translates into predictable patterns of consumer behavior. Two types of behavior are considered. First, individuals who care about environmental quality may voluntarily restrain their consumption of goods and services that generate a negative externality. Second, individuals may choose to pay a price premium for goods and services that are more environmentally benign. A theoretical model identifies a symmetry between such voluntary restraint and a voluntary price premium that mirrors the symmetry between environmental policies based on either quantities (quotas) or prices (taxes). We test predictions of the model in an empirical study of household electricity consumption with introduction of a price-premium, green-electricity program. We find evidence of voluntary restraint and its relation to a voluntary price premium. The empirical results are consistent with the theoretical model of voluntary conservation.
Multiscale Intensity Models for Single Name Credit Derivatives

We study the pricing of defaultable derivatives, such as bonds, bond options, and credit default swaps in the reduced form framework of intensity‐based models. We use regular and singular perturbation expansions on the intensity of default from which we derive approximations for the pricing functions of these derivatives. In particular, we assume an Ornstein‐Uhlenbeck process for the interest rate, and a two‐factor diffusion model for the intensity of default. The approximation allows for computational efficiency in calibrating the model. Finally, empirical evidence on the existence of multiple scales is presented by the calibration of the model on corporate yield curves. Work partially supported by NSF grants DMS‐0306357 and DMS‐0456195.
Whose expectations augment the Phillips curve

Abstract This letter uses consumer survey data to estimate expectations-augmented Phillips curves with inflation expectations disaggregated by socioeconomic and demographic groups. The inflation expectations of high-income, college-educated, male, and working-age people play a larger role in inflation dynamics than do the expectations of other groups of consumers or of professional forecasters.
Per Se Illegality of Concerted Refusals to Deal: A Rule Ripe for Reexamination

Section 1 of the Sherman Act proscribes "[e]very contract, combination . . . or conspiracy, in restraint of trade." Early Supreme Court cases interpreting this provision held that it required a determination by the trier of fact of the "reasonableness" of the challenged conduct in each case — an approach which came to be known as the "rule of reason." In subsequent cases, however, the Court has held that certain conduct is unreasonable per se. That is, once a court has determined that such conduct has taken place, it is foreclosed from undertaking an inquiry into the reasonableness of that conduct. One form of activity that has been declared unreasonable per se is the group boycott, or concerted refusal to deal. Recently, this particular doctrine has been the subject of much concern and criticism by lower federal courts and commentators. Although many courts adhere unquestioningly to this per se rule, others have either found the doctrine inapplicable to the facts at bar or resorted to limiting a rule upon which the Supreme Court has placed no limitations. As a result, the present state of the law reflects much confusion. Recently, in Continental T.V., Inc. v. GTE Sylvania Inc. the Supreme Court took a step unprecedented in at least the last sixty-five years of antitrust jurisprudence — it overturned a per se rule which had outlawed all vertical territorial and customer restraints in which the buyer acquired title to the goods, and reinstated a rule of reason analysis for this type of conduct. One of the rationales given by the Sylvania Court for rejecting a per se approach was the frequent criticism the old rule — the Schwinn doctrine had received both in the literature and in the lower courts.The Supreme Court has repeatedly indicated its adherence to the per se rule respecting group boycotts. Yet, in view of the recent treatment this rule has received in the courts and in the law journals, the Sylvania decision gives reason to believe that this particular doctrine might also be the subject of reexamination and possible modification. This Article will first explore the development of the rule holding concerted refusals to deal unreasonable per se and the justification for such an approach. It will then consider why many courts and commentators are dissatisfied with the present approach and will discuss how lower federal courts have avoided using it. Finally, the Article suggests that criticism of the per se rule is justified, and proposes a partial return to a rule of reason analysis, with carefully defined criteria for testing legality and a more narrowly circumscribed per se rule.
Eleven Big Ideas About Conflict: A Superficial Guide for the Thoughtful Journalist

When Professor Richard Reuben asked me to speak about the most basic ideas in conflict resolution to a group that included renowned journalists and journalism scholars, I balked. Surely these notions would seem too obvious, mundane, or superficial. But Richard - a practicing journalist for many years as well as an expert on conflict - assured me that the audience would find most of them surprising and useful. I hope he is correct.I plan to present eleven ideas from the dispute resolution literature that I find particularly helpful in my work and life and which I think any journalist would benefit from knowing. The list is a bit idiosyncratic, reflecting my own peculiar journey in the academic and professional worlds of conflict, which has leaned toward the kinds of disputes in which lawyers routinely get involved. So I make no claim that these are the top eleven ideas, and I hope that other commentators will supplement and amend this list.
The optimal income tax when poverty is a public ‘bad’

Abstract Poverty is considered as an aggregate negative externality that may affect people differently depending on their aversion to poverty. If society is on average averse to poverty, then the optimal income tax schedule displays negative marginal tax rates at least for the less skilled individuals. Negative marginal tax rates play the role of a Pigouvian earnings subsidy and foster the supply of labor of poor individuals. The no-distortion at the endpoints result which is therefore violated can be restored once the focus is shifted from individual to social distortions.
Don’t let your robots grow up to be traders: Artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and asset-market bubbles

Abstract Researchers who have examined markets populated by “robot traders” have claimed that the high level of allocative efficiency observed in experimental markets is driven largely by the “intelligence” implicit in the rules of the market. Furthermore, they view the ability of agents (artificial or human) to process information and make rational decisions as unnecessary for the efficient operation of markets. This paper presents a new series of market experiments that show that markets populated with standard robot traders are no longer efficient if time is a meaningful element, as it is in all asset markets. While simple two-season markets with human subjects reliably converge to an efficient equilibrium, markets with minimally intelligent robot traders fail to attain this equilibrium. Instead, these markets overshoot the equilibrium and then crash below it. In addition to firmly establishing the role of trader intelligence in asset-market equilibrium, these experiments also provide insights into why bubbles and crashes are consistently observed in many asset-market laboratory experiments using human subjects.