cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
YouTube to be Regulated? : The FCC Sits Tight, while European Broadcast Regulators Make the Grab for the Internet

Today's media has at its disposal a myriad of ways to convey content. Amazed, you watch your children sitting in front of the television, checking their e-mails on a laptop, taking calls on their mobile, and probably downloading music from a dubious Russian Web site -- all simultaneously, drowned in content from diverse sources. With all these platforms bearing content, even the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) admits that the historic rationale for broadcasting regulation - scarcity -- is flawed. This article sets out today's rationales for strong public service broadcasting and tight regulation of audiovisual media. It explains the key characteristics and main pitfalls of American and European broadcasting regulation. It sets the cornerstones for a revised regulatory framework, committed to the goals of both the American and European legal framework, and ready to face the completion of convergence of all audiovisual media.
NutrientNet: An Internet-Based Approach to Teaching Market-Based Policy for Environmental Management.

NutrientNet is an Internet-based environment in which a class can simulate a market-based approach for improving water quality. In NutrientNet, each student receives a role as either a point source or a nonpoint source polluter, and then the participants are allowed to trade water quality credits to cost-effectively reduce pollution in a watershed. The authors provide an overview of the content and structure of this Web site. They focus on the features that make NutrientNet an effective teaching tool for instructors and a rich learning environment for students.
BREAST IMPLANTS AS BEAUTY RITUAL: WOMAN'S SCEPTRE AND PRISON

Somewhere along the way, the story of silicone gel breast implants has lost its focus, has become skewed. The current focus has narrowed to a limited number of connective-tissue diseases that thus far have not been scientifically linked to breast implants. Women claiming symptoms of these and other diseases are being sent very clear messages. If they suffer from a recognized condition such as lupus, they are being told that even though the Settlement Program will compensate them for their condition, their implants were not the cause of that condition. If they suffer from generalized complaints of fatigue, muscle and joint pain, memory loss, and other symptoms, they are told their condition is psychosomatic or even non-existent and fraudulently motivated. Both the breast implant recipients and the general public deserve more complete, accurate information about important medical questions: Are breast implants safe enough? And who should bear the burden of proving harm, or, for that matter safety, when, for instance, state-of-the-art medical technology demonstrates no rupture, but upon removal it becomes apparent that the implants have leaked silicone into the woman's breast tissue that will forever remain in her breasts making mammography and cancer detection difficult? This refrain that the recently released studies conclusively establish no wrongdoing is, however, misleading because these manufacturers and surgeons have committed numerous other wrongs resulting in physical harm for which hundreds of thousands of women will never be compensated.
Flare Prediction Using Photospheric and Coronal Image Data

The precise physical process that triggers solar flares is not currently understood. Here we attempt to capture the signature of this mechanism in solar-image data of various wavelengths and use these signatures to predict flaring activity. We do this by developing an algorithm that i) automatically generates features in 5.5 TB of image data taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory of the solar photosphere, chromosphere, transition region, and corona during the time period between May 2010 and May 2014, ii) combines these features with other features based on flaring history and a physical understanding of putative flaring processes, and iii) classifies these features to predict whether a solar active region will flare within a time period of $T$ hours, where $T = 2 \mbox{ and }24$ . Such an approach may be useful since, at the present time, there are no physical models of flares available for real-time prediction. We find that when optimizing for the True Skill Score (TSS), photospheric vector-magnetic-field data combined with flaring history yields the best performance, and when optimizing for the area under the precision–recall curve, all of the data are helpful. Our model performance yields a TSS of $0.84 \pm0.03$ and $0.81 \pm0.03$ in the $T = 2$ - and 24-hour cases, respectively, and a value of $0.13 \pm0.07$ and $0.43 \pm0.08$ for the area under the precision–recall curve in the $T=2$ - and 24-hour cases, respectively. These relatively high scores are competitive with previous attempts at solar prediction, but our different methodology and extreme care in task design and experimental setup provide an independent confirmation of these results. Given the similar values of algorithm performance across various types of models reported in the literature, we conclude that we can expect a certain baseline predictive capacity using these data. We believe that this is the first attempt to predict solar flares using photospheric vector-magnetic field data as well as multiple wavelengths of image data from the chromosphere, transition region, and corona, and it points the way towards greater data integration across diverse sources in future work.
Strategy and market management of new product development and incremental innovation: evidence from Italian SMEs

The industrial structure of many European countries is dominated by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Although SMEs consider the new product development (NPD) process fundamental for success in the global market, the level of formalisation of the innovation process is very low. Moreover, if we consider the SMEs operating in the mature sectors, such as automotive and machines tools, the situation is worrying. The aim of this paper is to analyse in-depth a sample of manufacturing SMEs located in a highly industrialised Italian region (Piedmont), the strategy used both for NPD and for incremental innovation. The latter may often occur, not so much as structured RD the improvements informally suggested by engineers or technicians engaged in the production process; proposals and initiatives coming from users. The methodology in this paper is a longitudinal study which provides a close-up view of the adoption of these non-structured innovation patterns. Although the SMEs located in this area are specialised rather than diversified in their technological competencies and product range, they lack of information about the financial facilities available to the innovation process and marketing capabilities. These generate two effects: the SMEs cannot cope with the RD they cannot fully take advantage from their innovation process. This research aims to offer some useful considerations to the European policy makers and managers in managing NPD and innovation within SMEs.
WHEN THE EXCEPTION BECOMES THE RULE: MARSH AND SECTARIAN LEGISLATIVE PRAYER POST-SUMMUM

Across the country, federal, state, and local legislative bodies begin their meetings with prayer. Yet, as recent challenges to sectarian legislative prayer demonstrate, legislative prayer rests uneasily at the intersection of the Free Speech and Establishment Clauses. While the government has the right to speak for itself, many contend that it is precluded from engaging in paradigmatic religious activity, such as sectarian prayer. As a result, although legislative prayer has been part of the “fabric of our society” since at least the First Continental Congress, sectarian prayer teeters on the brink of unconstitutionality. Despite the pervasiveness of legislative prayer and the importance of the constitutional issues it raises, the United States Supreme Court did not decide a legislative prayer case until Marsh v. Chambers in 1983. In Marsh, the Court upheld legislative prayers generally but did not explain how Marsh fit within its larger Establishment Clause jurisprudence. Subsequent Supreme Court and lower court decisions, therefore, have treated Marsh as a narrow exception to the Court’s general Establishment Clause rules. This Article examines recent developments that undermine the traditional view of Marsh as a limited exception and place Marsh at the center of the Court’s current view of facially religious government speech. In particular, after analyzing the Court’s discussions of legislative prayer in Marsh and Allegheny, the Article focuses on the recent flood of challenges to sectarian legislative prayers, comparing the widely divergent conclusions reached by the seven Circuit Courts that have heard such cases. It then explores how the Court’s 2009 decision in Summum v. Pleasant Grove City provides a new lens through which to interpret Marsh, contending that the Court’s “recently minted” government speech doctrine (i) is inconsistent with the endorsement test and, in fact, (ii) mandates the Establishment Clause test the Court first developed in Marsh. In the last section, the Article considers the constitutionality of sectarian and nonsectarian legislative prayer in light of Marsh and Summum, arguing that, under this “new” standard, federal, state, and local governments can * Associate Professor of Law, Elon University School of Law. The author had primary responsibility for preparing the “Brief of Amicus Curiae Independence Law Center in Support of Forsyth County, North Carolina” in Joyner v. Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Record No. 10-1232, which currently is on appeal to the Fourth Circuit and which directly implicates many of the issues discussed in this paper. continue to engage in legislative prayer, even if those prayers contain sectarian references.
Crisis Resolution and Bank Liquidity

What is the effect of financial crises and their resolution on banks' choice of liquidity? When banks have relative expertise in employing risky assets, the market for these assets clears only at fire-sale prices following a large number of bank failures. The gains from acquiring assets at fire-sale prices make it attractive for banks to hold liquid assets. The resulting choice of bank liquidity is countercyclical, inefficiently low during economic booms but excessively high during crises. We present evidence consistent with these predictions. While interventions to resolve banking crises may be desirable ex post, they affect bank liquidity in subtle ways: Liquidity support to failed banks or unconditional support to surviving banks reduces incentives to hold liquidity, whereas support to surviving banks conditional on their liquid asset holdings has the opposite effect. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.
Defragmenting World Trade

This article argues that unchecked multiplication of regional trading blocs seriously fragments world trade, and simultaneously debilitates the multilateral trading system. It endeavors to overcome some of shortcomings of existing literature in this field, such as sector-specific approach and concentration on economic analysis. It attempts to offer holistic, normative diagnosis and prescription anchored by the trade, regulatory, and development objective of the global trading system represented by the WTO. From such a telic standpoint, the article highlights teleological failures caused by regionalist fragmentation and proposes both institutional and judicial means to defragment world trade. The article warns that such regionalist fragmentation is trade diverting, rather than trade creating, and tends to hijack the multilateral trade negotiations under the WTO, thereby depriving the current Doha Round of its deserved attention and confidence - possibly even torpedoing the Round entirely. It concludes that to defragment world trade, regional trading blocs should be re-configured to conform to a federalistic order in the constitutional terrain of the multilateral trading system through two multilateralizing solutions - one institutional and one judicial.
A Price Discrimination Model of Trade Promotions

Critics have long faulted the wide-spread practice of trade promotions as wasteful. It has been estimated that this practice adds up to $100 billion worth of inventory to the distribution system. Yet, the practice continues. In this paper, we propose a price discrimination model of trade promotions. We show that in a distribution channel characterized by a dominant retailer, a manufacturer has incentives to price discriminate between the dominant retailer and smaller independents. While offering all retailers the same pricing policy, price discrimination can be implemented through trade promotions because they induce different inventory-ordering behaviors on the part of retailers. Differences in inventory holding costs have been shown to be an important determinant of consumer promotions. Our analysis suggests that differences in holding costs are also potentially an important driver for the use of trade promotions. The implications from our model explain a number of anecdotal and/or empirically observed puzzles about how trade promotions are practiced. For example, our analysis explains why chain stores welcome trade promotions but independents do not. Our analysis outlines implications for managing trade promotions.
A Solution Concept for Majority Rule in Dynamic Settings

We define and explore the notion of a Dynamic Condorcet Winner (DCW), which extends the notion of a Condorcet winner to dynamic settings. We show that, for every DCW, every member of a large class of dynamic majoritarian games has an equivalent equilibrium, and that other equilibria are not similarly portable across this class of games. Existence of DCWs is guaranteed when members of the community are sufficiently patient. We characterize sustainable and unsustainable outcomes, study the effects of changes in the discount factor, investigate efficiency properties, and explore the potential for achieving renegotiation-proof outcomes. We apply this solution concept to a standard one-dimensional choice problem wherein agents have single-peaked preferences, as well as to one involving the division of a fixed aggregate payoff.
Private Equity Performance: A Survey

We survey the literature on private equity performance, focusing on venture capital and buyout funds rather than on portfolio companies. We describe recent findings on performance measures, average fund returns, risk adjustments, cyclicality and liquidity, persistence, interim returns and self-reported net asset values, the performance of different types of investors in funds, and the links between management contracts and fund returns. Buyout funds have outperformed the S&P 500 net of fees on average by approximately 20% over the life of the fund. Venture capital funds raised in the 1990s outperformed the S&P 500, whereas those raised in the 2000s underperformed. The results are consistent across a number of data sets and papers. Before the 2000s, buyout and venture capital fund performance showed strong evidence of persistence. Since 2000, buyout fund persistence has declined, whereas venture capital fund persistence has remained equally strong.
On the role of inexperienced venture capitalists in taking companies public

Abstract We use venture-backed initial public offerings (IPOs) to identify and examine the comparative advantage of inexperienced venture capitalists. We argue that, vis-a-vis more established counterparts, younger venture capital firms have a comparative advantage at producing soft information about relatively opaque start-up companies due to their organizational structure. We then quantify an outcome—IPO initial return—from the matching of venture capitalists and start-up companies that demonstrates how this comparative advantage arises. Our findings thus reveal an important aspect of how inexperienced venture capitalists support start-up companies.
Have Newer Cardiovascular Drugs Reduced Hospitalization? Evidence From Longitudinal Country-Level Data on 20 OECD Countries, 1995-2003

This study examines the effect of changes in the vintage distribution of cardiovascular system drugs on hospitalization and mortality due to cardiovascular disease using longitudinal country-level data. The vintage of a drug is the first year in which it was marketed anywhere in the world. We use annual data on the utilization of over 1100 cardiovascular drugs (active ingredients) in 20 OECD countries during the period 1995-2003. Countries with larger increases in the share of cardiovascular drug doses that contained post-1995 ingredients had smaller increases in the cardiovascular disease hospital discharge rate, controlling for the quantity of cardiovascular medications consumed per person, the use of other medical innovations (computed tomography scanners and magnetic resonance imaging units), potential risk factors (average consumption of calories, tobacco, and alcohol), and demographic variables (population size and age structure, income, and educational attainment). The estimates also indicate that the use of newer cardiovascular drugs has reduced the average length of stay and the age-adjusted cardiovascular mortality rate, but not the number of potential years of life lost due to cardiovascular disease before age 70 per 100,000 population. The estimates indicate that if drug vintage had not increased during 1995-2004, hospitalization and mortality would have been higher in 2004. We estimate that per capita expenditure on cardiovascular hospital stays would have been 70% ($89) higher in 2004 had drug vintage not increased during 1995-2004. Per capita expenditure on cardiovascular drugs would have been lower in 2004 had drug vintage not increased during 1995-2004. However, our estimate of the increase in expenditure on cardiovascular hospital stays is about 3.7 times as large as our estimate of the reduction in per capita expenditure for cardiovascular drugs that would have occurred ($24).
Democracy and Reforms

The authors use a sample of 147 countries to investigate the link between democracy and reforms. Democracy may be conducive to reform, because politicians have the incentive to embrace growth-enhancing reforms to win elections. On the other hand, authoritarian regimes do not have to worry as much about public opinion and may undertake reforms that are painful in the short run but bring future prosperity. The authors test these hypotheses, using data on micro-economic reforms from the World Bank's doing business database. These data do not suffer the endogeneity issues associated with other datasets on changes in economic institutions. The results provide a robust support for the claim that democracy is good for growth-enhancing reforms.
Location of Decision Rights Within Multinational Firms

Using U.S.-based multinational firm data gathered over more than two decades, we examine factors associated with the location of decision rights within these firms, whether the inappropriate assignment of decision rights is associated with poor firm performance, and whether these firms relocate decision rights in response to their evolving environments. We find that a mismatch between the location of decision rights and a firm's environment is associated with weak firm performance. We also show that the likelihood a parent company will alter the assignment of decision rights to a subsidiary is increasing in the extent of a mismatch although this likelihood is decreasing in the strength of the subsidiary's performance.
The Citizenship Clause: A "Legislative History"

Recently, scholars and lawmakers have suggested that the United States, or even states, cease to recognize citizenship of the American-born children of undocumented aliens. This would seem to be a direct contravention of the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, which begins by saying, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Conservative legal scholars have begun to advance scholarly arguments suggesting that the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" language was "intended" by the Framers of the Amendment to require legal status and "full allegiance" to the United States to activate the citizenship guarantee. A review of the legislative debates during the framing of the Amendment reveals little evidence to support this contention. It indicates that the language was designed to exclude two and only two groups: (1) children of diplomats accredited to the United States and (2) members of Indian tribes who maintained quasi-sovereign status under federal Indian law as it existed in 1868. The contrary contention arises out of a partial and strained reading of the debates and an at best partial understanding of the intellectual background of the Amendment. That proponents of a narrower view propound their interpretation as embodying the "clear intent" of the Framers seems to contrary to the record as to raise questions about the very meaningfulness of "originalist" arguments in general.
How Activists Perceive the Utility of International Law

Scholars agree that international law works in part by empowering activists and have elaborated activist-focused theories particularly in the domains of environment and human rights. Some theories emphasize accountability—that law helps activists coerce, punish, and deter offenders. Others emphasize that law helps to foster dialogue that leads to the acceptance of norms, trust, and capacity to foster compliance. Possibly, law does both. We assess these views with a pair of survey experiments applied to 243 highly experienced NGO professionals who have firsthand experience in either environment or human rights. Activists believe that NGOs would be less effective at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases or violations of core human rights in the absence of international law. They see the chief value of law arising through accountability politics rather than by fostering dialogue or capacity. However, the two communities have different views about whether binding or nonbinding agreements work best in their d...
NONPARAMETRIC INFERENCE FOR CONDITIONAL QUANTILES OF TIME SERIES

This paper considers model-free hypothesis testing and con…dence interval construction for conditional quantiles of time series. A new method, which is based on inversion of the smoothed empirical likelihood of the conditional distribution function around the local polynomial estimator, is proposed. The associated inferential procedures do not require variance estimation and the con…dence intervals are automatically shaped by data. We also construct the bias-corrected empirical likelihood which does not require undersmoothing. Limit theories are developed for mixing time series. Simulations show that the proposed methods work well in …nite samples and outperform the normal con…dence interval. An empirical application to inference of the conditional value-at-risk of stock returns is also provided.
More on the effectiveness of public spending on health care and education: a covariance structure model

Using data for a sample of developing countries and transition economies, this paper estimates the relationship between government spending on health care and education and selected social indicators. Unlike previous studies, where social indicators are used as proxies for the unobservable health and education status of the population, this paper estimates a latent variable model. The findings suggest that public spending is an important determinant of social outcomes, particularly in the education sector. Overall, the latent variable approach yields better estimates of a social production function than the traditional approach, with higher elasticities of social indicators with respect to income and spending, therefore providing stronger evidence that increases in public spending do have a positive impact on social outcomes. Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation

An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception of increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse. The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational motives: Individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance. Availability entrepreneurs - activists who manipulate the content of public discourse - strive to trigger availability cascades likely to advance their agendas. Their availability campaigns may yield social benefits, but sometimes they bring harm, which suggests a need for safeguards. Focusing on the role of mass pressures in the regulation of risks associated with production, consumption, and the environment, Professor Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein analyze availability cascades and suggest reforms to alleviate their potential hazards. Their proposals include new governmental structures designed to give civil servants better insulation against mass demands for regulatory change and an easily accessible scientific database to reduce people's dependence on popular (mis)perceptions.
Sustainable Development and the Domination of Nature: Spreading the Seed of the Western Ideology of Nature

This article analyzes the role played by legal institutions in the process of globalization. In particular, it focuses on the deep relationship between sustainable development - the driving force of international environmental law - and the spread of free market democracy. The article argues that sustainable development is not merely a reflection of the successful export of Western ideology, but is itself a force of ideological imperialism whereby Western values not shared nor willingly accepted by other nations are imposed upon them through the implementation of the legal principle. Along the way, the article sheds light on a reinvigorated debate regarding the global spread of Western ideology. By describing in detail the way in which Western ideas of nature are not shared by other nations, the article provides strong evidence that, in the context of international environmental law, legal norms are not necessarily expressive of universally-shared principles. Thus, as critics of Western ideological hegemony argue, the spread of Western ideas does indeed result in the eradication of the ideas of nature held by other cultures.
Yes, but what’s the mechanism? (don’t expect an easy answer).

Psychologists increasingly recommend experimental analysis of mediation. This is a step in the right direction because mediation analyses based on nonexperimental data are likely to be biased and because experiments, in principle, provide a sound basis for causal inference. But even experiments cannot overcome certain threats to inference that arise chiefly or exclusively in the context of mediation analysis—threats that have received little attention in psychology. The authors describe 3 of these threats and suggest ways to improve the exposition and design of mediation tests. Their conclusion is that inference about mediators is far more difficult than previous research suggests and is best tackled by an experimental research program that is specifically designed to address the challenges of mediation analysis.
One-Sided Contracts in Competitive Consumer Markets

This paper shows that one-sided terms in standard contracts, which deny consumers a contractual benefit that seems efficient on average, may arise in competitive markets without informational problems (other than those of courts). A onesided term might be an efficient response to situations in which courts cannot perfectly observe all the contingencies needed for an accurate implementation of a balanced contractual term when firms are more concerned about their reputation, and thus less inclined to behave opportunistically, than consumers are. We develop this explanation, discuss its positive and normative implications, and compare them to those of informationbased explanations for one-sided terms.
Existence and Uniqueness of Equilibrium in Distorted Dynamic Economies with Capital and Labor

Abstract In this paper, we provide a set of sufficient conditions under which recursive competitive equilibrium exists and is unique for a large class of distorted dynamic equilibrium models with capital and elastic labor supply. We develop a lattice based approach to the problem. The class of economies for which we are able to obtain our existence and uniqueness result is considerably larger than those considered in previous work. We conclude by applying the new results to some important examples of monetary economies often used in applied work. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C62, D51, D90, E10.
Whose ‘Loss and Damage’? Promoting the Agency of Beneficiary States

The discussions on loss and damage associated with climate change that opened up within the unfccc in recent years constitute the latest attempt of developing states to obtain something akin to compensation from major greenhouse gas emitters for the adverse social impacts of climate change. These discussions generally contemplate a mechanism financed by developed states that would provide direct support to individuals, corporations, and governments in developing countries (‘vertical’ approach), for instance, through insurance. This article argues that, for practical as well as normative reasons, a loss-and-damage mechanism should instead support vulnerable developing states, in a states-to-states ‘horizontal’ approach. Accordingly, financial support would be provided to developing states that incorporate vulnerable populations and are responsible for protecting them. Three sets of arguments are developed in support of this proposition. First, attributing loss and damage at the individual level is particularly challenging, whereas horizontal approaches allow consideration of probabilistic harm and compensation through bundle payments. Second, horizontal approaches are more suitable for pursuing goals such as economic efficiency, the reduction of loss and damage, the creation of an incentive for climate change mitigation, and broader goals of social justice. Third, vertical approaches go against prevailing principles of international law and involve unjustified interference in the domestic affairs of developing states.
Asset Liquidity and Stock Liquidity

We study the relation between asset liquidity and stock liquidity. Our model shows that the relation may be either positive or negative depending on parameter values. Asset liquidity improves stock liquidity more for firms that are less likely to reinvest their liquid assets (i.e., firms with less growth opportunities and financially constrained firms). Empirically, we find a positive and economically large relation between asset liquidity and stock liquidity. Consistent with our model, the relation is more positive for firms that are less likely to reinvest their liquid assets. Our results also shed light on the value of holding liquid assets.
The optimal jury size when jury deliberation follows a random walk

The existing literature does not agree on the optimal jury size. We demonstrate that the probability of type I and type II errors is not sensitive to the number of jurors under the following three conditions: jurors receive independent signals about a defendant’s guilt during the evidence stage of the trial; the jurors truthfully reveal their signals before deliberations begin through their votes on the first ballot; and the jury’s deliberation follows a random walk. Since the opportunity cost of jury service is positive, this implies an optimal jury size of one.
A Mechanism Design Model of Firm Dynamics: The Case of Limited Commitment

We present a general equilibrium-mechanism design model with two-sided limited commitment that accounts for the observed heterogeneity in firms’ investment, payout and CEO-compensation policies. In the model, shareholders cannot commit to holding negative net present value projects, and managers cannot commit to compensation plans that yield life-time utility lower than their outside options. Firms operate identical constant return to scale technologies with i.i.d. productivity growth. Consistent with the data, the model endogenously generates a power law in firm size and a power law in CEO compensation. We also show that the model is able to quantitatively explain the observed negative relationship between firms’ investment rates and size, the positive relationship between firms’ size and their dividend and CEO payout, as well as variation of firms’ investment and payout policies across both size and age.
Binomial-Beta Hierarchical Models for Ecological Inference

The authors develop binomial-beta hierarchical models for ecological inference using insights from the literature on hierarchical models based on Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms and King’s ecological inference model. The new approach reveals some features of the data that King’s approach does not, can be easily generalized to more complicated problems such as generalR C tables, allows the data analyst to adjust for covariates, and provides a formal evaluation of the significance of the covariates. It may also be better suited to cases in which the observed aggregate cells are estimated from very few observations or have some forms of measurement error. This article also provides an example of a hierarchical model in which the statistical idea of “borrowing strength” is used not merely to increase the efficiency of the estimates but to enable the data analyst to obtain estimates.
Of Meat and Manhood

Sex discrimination law is at a crossroads. While Title VII of the Civil Rights Act has done much to combat formal sex discrimination in employment, the gender-stereotyping theory of sex discrimination – perhaps the most transformative theory of sex discrimination – has been eroded in the courts by a problematic way of thinking about discrimination – the bootstrapping logic. The bootstrapping logic reasons that an employee cannot raise an actionable theory of sex discrimination to “bootstrap” protection for an unprotected trait. This Article uses the cultural relationship between meat-eating and stereotypical notions of masculinity to critique the bootstrapping logic. The centerpiece of this critique is a case-study of an ongoing lawsuit in which an employee has brought a discrimination claim against his former employer, alleging that the employer discriminated against him because he is vegetarian. By focusing on the male vegetarian case study – which involves allegations of vegetarian, sexual orientation, and gender-stereotyping discrimination – the Article argues that sex discrimination often manifests as other forms of bias. In the case of the male vegetarian, what may look like vegetarian or sexual orientation discrimination is really sex discrimination in the form of gender stereotyping.
Wage Flexibility and Openness

This paper analyzes the degree of short-run, real wage flexibility in a two-sector economy under floating rates. This is done by deriving optimal wage indexation in a contracting framework. We find that the more closed the economy, the lower the degree of wage indexation. As a result, output will fluctuate less around its desired level in a more closed economy. These findings further imply that a given unexpected monetary shock will cause as maller output shock in a more open economy, whereas a given real shock will induce a smaller output shock in a more closed economy.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Health, Health Care, and Incompletely Theorized Agreements: A Normative Theory of Health Policy Decision Making

The years 2003-2004 marked the tenth anniversary of the rapid rise and demise of the Clinton administration's health reform efforts. Health reform may again be a political issue in the 2008 congressional and presidential elections. However, analysts still disagree over why large-scale health reform efforts continue to fail in the American political landscape. This article presents a normative theory for analyzing federal health policy decision making in the United States. This theory states that values and norms, particularly their level of generality, and the social agreement or lack thereof around them have a central role in understanding health policy reform. This theory does not attempt to arrive at a single unified framework for explaining health policy reform, and it recognizes the complementary roles of political science and economic explanations. Nonetheless, it argues that unarticulated values and norms have a critical role to play in health-policy making and reform; this role has been inadequately studied and has lacked a theoretical framework. Within this perspective, this article argues that policy goals, which require individuals to make financial commitments (e.g., tax contributions) in the form of redistributing resources for implementation (e.g., universal health insurance), should be analyzed within a normative framework that evaluates individuals' ethical commitments to making such sacrifices that are beyond their self-interest. The distribution of pub-lic moral norms, their degree of internalization, and the social consensus, or lack thereof, that applies to them must be objects of study in the effort to better understand health policy reform. By emphasizing these factors, this approach offers findings distinct from those provided by existing analyses, and the article concludes with prescriptions for future health reform efforts.
Angling for Phishers: Legislative Responses to Deceptive E-Mail

Unsolicited e-mail, called spam, is more than just an annoyance for recipients; some of these e-mails are designed to lure recipients into providing confidential personal and financial data. The sender creates e-mails, resembling those from a well-known companies, requesting that the recipient click on a URL provided, which links to a dummy company Web site where the recipient is asked to input personal information. The e-mail sender may then use the information for illegal purposes. This activity, called “phishing,” is on the rise and is expensive for both individuals and industry. Even though most states have provisions in their anti-spam statutes prohibiting the sending of fraudulent unsolicited e-mails, more states are enacting laws aimed specifically at phishing. This article examines the state laws aimed at stopping phishing as well as proposed federal legislation. The article also considers the sufficiency of Internet crime control measures. It concludes with possible solutions to the phishing problem.
Damages as Reconciliation

This Article explores the possibility of a tort system that includes reconciliation as one of its goals and considers the role of court-ordered damages in such a system. Part I defines the scope of reconciliation advocated in this Article and considers the role of reparation in reconciliation. Part III notes reconciliation's central part in mediation and examines the reasons underlying the divergent aims of mediation and litigation. Part IV discusses the possibility of state-encouraged reconciliation and then proposes some ideas for reform in this regard.
Protection of “Innocent Lawbreakers”: Striking the Right Balance in the Private Enforcement of the Anti “Junk Fax” Provisions of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act

Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), recipients of so-called “junk faxes” can sue the sender in state court to recover statutory damages of up to $500 per fax - $1,500 if the fax was sent “willfully.” But these high statutory damage provisions have led to severe negative consequences to “innocent lawbreakers”: small businesses who unintentionally run afoul of the Act’s prohibitions. Though Congress, with the best intentions, set out to regulate conduct that it believed shifted the costs of advertising form the advertiser to the recipient who was forced to pay for paper and ink to print unwanted advertisements, the inclusion of a private right of action led to the development of a cottage industry of plaintiffs lawyers for whom filing TCPA claims is a significant source of revenue. This Article argues that the unintended effects of the anti-junk fax provisions of the TCPA are most detrimental to small businesses that are placed at risk of significant financial harm for causing only nominal damages to owners of facsimile machines. This is especially true after the real targets of the legislation - large “blast faxers” - have been driven out of business through the enforcement of the Act. This Article argues that, by properly interpreting that Act’s definition of a “facsimile machine,” and applying traditional litigation requirements and equitable doctrines, courts can fulfill Congress’ intention that the Act’s harshest penalties are reserved for truly willful violators. It goes on to suggest that class actions should be eliminated because, when combined with the Act’s statutory damages provision, its effects are devastating to small businesses. It also argues that states should restrict private TCPA enforcement actions to small-claims courts, as Congress envisioned. Thus, innocent lawbreakers can be better protected without negatively affecting enforcement against intentional violators of the Act.
Villagers, Elections, and Citizenship in Contemporary China:

Author(s): O'Brien, KJ | Abstract: In this article, I assess the state of political citizenship in rural China. After discussing the often local and rural origins of citizenship and the meaning of the term itself, I review the limited reforms that have taken place in the election of high-ranking state leaders and people's congress deputies. I then turn to a more promising avenue of inclusion: the villagers' committee (VC) elections that began in the late 1980s. Here, we see notable efforts to heighten cadre responsiveness and draw rural residents into the local polity. At the same time, sizable obstacles to inclusion remain, not least because many electoral rules and practices do not enfranchise villagers reliably. The inescapable conclusion that villagers enjoy (at best) a partial citizenship needs to be qualified, however, owing to evidence that some rural people are starting to challenge improper elections using the language of rights. Building on a rules consciousness and a sensitivity to government rhetoric that have existed for centuries, as well as exploiting the spread of participatory ideologies and patterns of rule rooted in notions of equality, rights, and the rule of law, these villagers are busy advancing their interests within prevailing limits, forcing open blocked channels of participation, and struggling to make still-disputed rights real. In this regard, certain citizenship practices are emerging even before citizenship has appeared as a fully recognized status, and we may be observing the process by which a more complete citizenship comes about.
Are Hedge Funds Systemically Important

Like derivatives, hedge funds are often blamed for causing or at least contributing to economic and financial disruptions, regardless of whether any factual evidence supports that conclusion. The entire financial system was affected in Fall 2008, which then raised the general question of whether hedge funds are a source of systemic risk, and more specifically, whether they engaged in predatory trading that caused or exacerbated the market crash. For example, fear of “bear raids,” presumably by large and aggressive players including hedge funds, led to a ban on short selling for over 1,000 financial stocks during that period. Hedge funds might cause systemic risk intentionally, to make profits while inflicting losses on the system, such as in a bear raid. Or, their impact could be unintentional, if hedge funds experienced forced liquidations of leveraged positions to meet customer redemptions.
Different Religions, Different Politics: Evaluating the Role of Competing Religious Traditions in American Politics and Law

We are in the midst of a continuing debate about the role of religion in American politics and law. Advocates of a greater role for religion in public life—and I count myself among them—lament the privatization of religion and the secularization of public debate. Although some of the claims about privatization and secularization may be exaggerated, it seems undeniable that religion, despite its apparently robust private health, plays a relatively modest role in the public life of modern America. The public role that it does play, moreover, is under a hovering cloud of suspicion, with critics constantly suggesting that the separation of church and state is being threatened.In this essay, I advance a radical proposition: that privatization and secularization are the product, in part, of religious freedom run amuck. In particular, the concept of religious freedom has evolved to include not merely legal toleration, but also a strong commitment to religious equality. This principle of religious equality supports the protection and nurturing of religious diversity in the private realm. Ironically, however, it also suggests that the diversity among religions is irrelevant in determining the proper role for religion in the public sphere, for the equality principle implies that what is right for one is right for all. On this view, whatever the proper role for religion in politics and law, it must be no different for one religion than another. This public leveling of religion, moreover, tends to ensure that the “equal” role that religions play in American public life will be modest, if not inconsequential. Even as we continue to extol its private diversity, religion has become publicly generic and thereby largely insignificant.
An Evaluation of the Recent Move to Centralize the Finance of Public Schools in Michigan

This article examines Michigan's 1994–95 shift from its system of K–12 public education being funded largely by local property taxes, to it being funded predominately by statewide revenue sources. We briefly describe events that led up to the adoption of Michigan's school finance reform and then go into some detail about the tax and revenue-sharing specifics. Since the structure of Michigan's school finance reform is complex, somewhat unique, and likely to be considered as a model for other states to duplicate, this examination will assist policy analysts and policymakers throughout the United States. Other states considering similar reforms will benefit from the simulations we provide with regard to the likely long-run results of Michigan's school finance reform.