cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Risk Redux: The Resurgence of Risk Assessment in Criminal Sanctioning

After almost four decades of “just deserts,” the past several years have seen a remarkable resurgence of risk assessment as an essential component of criminal sanctioning. In this article, we review current practice in the incorporation of risk assessment into the sanctioning systems of several illustrative states, and describe the major dimensions on which state practices differ. We then elaborate the various meanings ascribed to the foundational concept of “risk” in criminal sanctioning, and contrast “risk” with what are now often called “criminogenic needs,” the fulfillment of which ostensibly reduce an offender’s level of “risk.” Finally, we address the choice of an approach to risk assessment in sentencing, particularly in the resource-starved state of current correctional practice.
Prospects for a unified urban general equilibrium theory

This is a short essay on open questions in urban economic theory.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Dividend Taxes and Share Prices: Evidence from Real Estate Investment Trusts

Prior empirical evidence regarding the impact of dividend taxes on firm valuation is mixed. This study avoids some of the complications encountered in previous empirical work by exploiting institutional characteristics of REITs, such as their limited discretion over dividend policy and the relative transparency of REIT assets. We regress the market value of equity on the market value of assets and tax basis, which creates tax deductions that lower future dividend taxes without affecting future pretax cash flow. We find that firm value is positively related to tax basis, suggesting that future dividend taxes are capitalized into share prices. FINANCIAL ECONOMISTS have debated the impact of dividend taxes on firm valuation and the cost of equity capital for decades. In 1970, Brennan proposed that investors should impose a price penalty on the shares of high-dividend firms because capital gains are tax-preferred relative to dividends. In 1978, Miller and Scholes countered that prices may not reflect shareholder taxes because the marginal investor could be a tax-exempt institution. Simultaneously, King (1977), Auerbach (1979), and Bradford (1981) posited that dividend taxes should be capitalized into share prices for all firms that will eventually distribute earnings through dividends, not just for firms that pay current dividends. Theoretically, all three arguments have potential strengths and weaknesses, so empirical investigation is required. Empirical investigation of the share price effects of dividend taxes has followed two primary lines of inquiry. First, studies use long event windows to ex
Elements of a Theory of Design Limits to Optimal Policy

This paper presents a framework for understanding the limits that exist in optimal policy design in dynamic contexts. We consider the design of policies in the context of dynamic linear models. Fundamental design limits exist for policy rules in such environments in the sense that any policy rule embodies tradeoffs between the magnitudes of different frequency-specific components of the variance. Hence policies that are effective in eliminating low frequency variance components of a state variable can only do so at the cost of exacerbating high frequency variance components, and vice versa. Examples of the implications of such tradeoffs are considered. The role of the economists in discussions of public policy seems to me to be to prescribe what should be done in light of what can be done, politics asid e... Milton Friedman (1951, p. 187)
Starspots and spin-orbit alignment for Kepler cool host stars

The angle between the spin axis of the host star and the orbit of its planets (i.e., the stellar obliquity) is precious info rmation about the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems. Measurements of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect revealed that many stars that host a hot-Jupiter have high obliquities, su ggesting that hot-Jupiter formation involves excitation o f orbital inclinations. In this contribution we show how the passage of the planet over starspots can be used to measure the obliquity of exoplanetary systems. This technique is used to obtain - for the first time - the obliquity of a system with several plane ts that lie in a disk, Kepler-30, with the result that the star ha s an obliquity smaller than 10 degrees. The implications for the formation of exoplanetary systems, in particular the hot-J upiter population, are also discussed. Copyright line will be provided by the publisher
Does fair value accounting for non-financial assets pass the market test?

The choice between fair value and historical cost accounting is the subject of long-standing controversy among accounting academics and regulators. Nevertheless, the market-based evidence on this subject is limited. We study the choice of fair value versus historical cost accounting for non-financial assets in a setting where market forces rather than regulators determine the outcome. In general, we find a very limited use of fair value accounting. However, the observed variation is consistent with market forces determining the choice. Fair value accounting is used when reliable fair value estimates are available at a lower cost and when they convey information about operating performance. For example, with very few exceptions, firms’ managers commit to historical cost accounting for plant and equipment. Our findings contribute to the policy debate by documenting the market solution to one of the central questions in the accounting literature. Our findings indicate that, despite its conceptual merits, fair value is unlikely to become the primary valuation method for illiquid non-financial assets on a voluntary basis.
Covid-19 Vaccine Injuries - Preventing Inequities in Compensation.

Covid-19 Vaccine Injuries The United States has developed a robust system for vaccine-injury compensation to alleviate the burdens of adverse medical consequences of vaccines. But this system will ...
Gravitational Waves from Stars Orbiting the Sagittarius A* Black Hole

One of the main astrophysical processes leading to strong emission of gravitational waves to be detected by the future space-borne interferometer Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is the capture of a compact star by a black hole with a mass of a few million solar masses in the center of a galaxy. In previous studies, main-sequence stars were thought not to contribute because they suffer from early tidal disruption. Here we show that according to our simulations of the stellar dynamics of the Sgr A* cluster, there must be one to a few low-mass main-sequence stars sufficiently bound to the central Galactic black hole to be conspicuous sources in LISA observations. The probability that a white dwarf may be detectable is lower than 0.5, and in spite of mass segregation, detection of a captured neutron star or stellar black hole in the center of the Milky Way is highly unlikely.
Do Defendants Pay What Juries Award? Post‐Verdict Haircuts in Texas Medical Malpractice Cases, 1988–2003

Legal scholars, legislators, policy advocates, and the news media frequently use jury verdicts to draw conclusions about the performance of the tort system. However, actual payouts can differ greatly from verdicts. We report evidence on post-verdict payouts from the most comprehensive longitudinal study of matched jury verdicts and payouts. Using data on all insured medical malpractice claims in Texas from 1988–2003 in which the plaintiff received at least $25,000 (in 1988 dollars) following a jury trial, we find that most jury awards received “haircuts.” Seventy-five percent of plaintiffs received a payout less than the adjusted verdict (jury verdict plus prejudgment and postjudgment interest), 20 percent received the adjusted verdict (within ± 2 percent), and 5 percent received more than the adjusted verdict. Overall, plaintiffs received a mean (median) per-case haircut of 29 percent (19 percent), and an aggregate haircut of 56 percent, relative to the adjusted verdict. The larger the verdict, the more likely and larger the haircut. For cases with a positive adjusted verdict under $100,000, 47 percent of plaintiffs received a haircut, with a mean (median) per-case haircut of 8 percent (2 percent). For cases with an adjusted verdict larger than $2.5 million, 98 percent of plaintiffs received a haircut with a mean (median) per-case haircut of 56 percent (61 percent). Insurance policy limits are the most important factor in explaining haircuts. Caps on damages in death cases and caps on punitive damages are also important, but defendants often paid substantially less than the adjusted allowed verdict. Remittitur accounts for a small percentage of the haircuts. Punitive damage awards have only a small effect on payouts. Out-of-pocket payments by physicians are rare, never large, and usually unrelated to punitive damage awards. Most cases settle, presumably in the shadow of the outcome if the case were to be tried. That outcome is not the jury award, but the actual post-verdict payout. Because defendants rarely pay what juries award, jury verdicts alone do not provide a sufficient basis for claims about the performance of the tort system.
Unraveling the complex interrelationships between exchange rates and fundamentals

Abstract This research investigates the intrinsic characteristics of currency values by fundamentally decomposing investor expectations on 16 currencies. The results on 195 exchange rates over several decades indicate investors perceive countries to be more likely to choose devaluation solutions to BOP problems when inflation is lower and when an alternative drop in real income growth is more “painful”. In addition, empirical support is provided for the hypothesis that forward rates often appear biased because the distributional expectations incorporated into them include, for a country with a current account deficit, a small probability of a large spot decline that does not actually occur in most finite samples.
Closed‐End Fund Discounts and Expected Investment Performance

This article provides empirical support for the theory that closed-end fund discounts reflect expected investment performance. Evidence is presented to explain how equity closed-end fund initial public offerings (IPOs) can sell at a premium when existing funds sell at a discount and why the initial IPO premiums decay after the IPO. Relative premium decay data are presented. Tests on (1) the relation between relative premium changes and investment performance following IPOs, (2) relative premium mean-reversion following management changes, and (3) net redemptions following closed-end fund open-endings for funds trading at pre-open-ending announcement discounts individually support and collectively strongly support the theory.
Consumer and Object Experience in the Internet of Things: An Assemblage Theory Approach

The consumer Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to revolutionize consumer experience. Because consumers can actively interact with smart objects, the traditional, human-centric conceptualization of consumer experience as consumers’ internal subjective responses to branded objects may not be sufficient to conceptualize consumer experience in the IoT. Smart objects possess their own unique capacities and their own kinds of experiences in interaction with the consumer and each other. A conceptual framework based on assemblage theory and object-oriented ontology details how consumer experience and object experience emerge in the IoT. This conceptualization is anchored in the context of consumer-object assemblages, and defines consumer experience by its emergent properties, capacities, and agentic and communal roles expressed in interaction. Four specific consumer experience assemblages emerge: enabling experiences, comprising agentic self-extension and communal self-expansion, and constraining experiences, comprising agentic self-restriction and communal self-reduction. A parallel conceptualization of the construct of object experience argues that it can be accessed by consumers through object-oriented anthropomorphism, a nonhuman-centric approach to evaluating the expressive roles objects play in interaction. Directions for future research are derived, and consumer researchers are invited to join a dialogue about the important themes underlying our framework.
Information Sharing in a Supply Chain with Horizontal Competition

This paper examines the incentives for firms to share information vertically in a two-level supply chain in which there are an upstream firm a manufacturer and many downstream firms retailers. The retailers are engaged in a Cournot competition and are endowed with some private information. Vertical information sharing has two effects: "direct effect" due to the changes in strategy by the parties involved in sharing the information and "indirect effect" or "leakage effect" due to the changes in strategy by other competing firms who may infer the information from the actions of the informed parties. Both changes would affect the profitability of the firms. We show that the leakage effect discourages the retailers from sharing their demand information with the manufacturer while encouraging them to share their cost information. On the other hand, the direct effect always discourages the retailers from sharing their information. When voluntary information sharing is not possible, we identify conditions under which information can be traded and show how price should be determined to facilitate such information exchange. We also examine the impact of vertical information sharing on the total supply chain profits and social benefits.
Sharing Access to Intellectual Property through Private Ordering

Intellectual property is a complex mix of different interests that either protects an intellectual creation by an exclusive and proprietary right or guarantees some free access to, and use of, an intellectual creation. The intellectual property (“IP”) laws accommodate these different and often contradictory interests—oscillating between propriety and freedom; exclusivity and sharing; and privatization and socialization. Property and exclusivity are at the core of the intellectual rights—the grant of an exclusive right to the creator in her artistic work or to an inventor in her invention is the primary objective of copyright and patent laws and has all the characteristics of a private property right. Nevertheless, there are many avenues within the intellectual property regime enabling collective access to and use of protected objects. The copyright and patent regimes can equally be described as engines of public availability. The duration of patent rights and copyrights are limited, leaving, by the lapse of time, a number of intellectual creations free for everybody to use. Some products of the mind are excluded from protection—sometimes only to prevent an exploitation of an invention that would adversely harm morality or public policy but more often to ensure free and collective access.1 Limitations on the scope of the exclusive rights conferred by patent or copyright also enable the public, in some circumstances, to use the work or invention without the fear of com-
Hazardous Substances and Activities

This piece analyzes and critically evaluates the enormous number and variety of international instruments addressing the regulation of hazardous substances and activities, from consumer products to nuclear power plants. International authorities are categorized according to regulatory theory, ranging from hazard identification and testing to disposal. Other regulatory approaches include limitations on pollutant releases, prevention of and response to industrial accidents, and international trade in toxic chemicals and waste. Multilateral norms originating from global and regional institutions, UN specialized agencies, and non-UN organizations are analyzed. The piece addresses both "hard" (binding or conventional) and "soft" (nonbinding) instruments, correlating legal form with policy purpose. The relationship between each international policy analogous domestic regulatory approaches is explored.
Reexamining the Pathways to Reduction in Tobacco-Related Disease

Six years ago, when I last wrote on tobacco policy, my perspective was to offer an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of a half-century of tobacco control strategies aimed at reducing the health risks associated with cigarette smoking. I began with a discussion of informational strategies; then turned to public place restrictions; and followed with a treatment of excise tax initiatives. In my view, restrictions on advertising and promotion and resort to tort litigation had been less effective as control efforts, but nonetheless also warranted consideration. In the ensuing years, there have been a number of significant developments that have altered the course of tobacco control policy. Prominent among these developments has been the authority granted to the Food and Drug Administration in the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009; the resort by the industry to litigation in a new guise — particularly reliant on the First Amendment — as an offensive weapon targeting regulatory controls; and the publication of the 2012 Surgeon General’s Report on youth smoking, which makes the case for top-priority attention to underage smoking behavior. These and related measures point to new pathways for breaking through a perceived recent loss of momentum in achieving further reductions in tobacco-related disease, without abandoning what has worked in the recent past. I attempt to pull together these multiple fronts in a Section focused primarily on youth smoking, assessing the promise of present efforts to reduce the harms associated with tobacco. Finally, I offer some brief thoughts from a broader public-health perspective, discussing the framework of tobacco control initiatives from the vantage point of the obesity problem.
Religious Establishment and Autonomy

In Volume I of Religion and the Constitution, Kent Greenawalt explains the rationale for non-establishment of religion, in part, by claiming that "personal autonomy is most fully recognized and the flourishing of religion itself is best served if the government does not sponsor religious understandings and practices." This sentence ends with a parenthetical promising that this subject will be addressed in Volume II. In that volume, he defines autonomy as "unfettered freedom to choose among various options, whether or not an absence of freedom restricts one's exercise of his convictions" (p. 9). He then writes: "In this sense, even if every citizen is free to practice religion as she chooses, including the freedom to practice no religion, full autonomy of choice is limited if the government 'stacks the deck' in favor of one religion or all religions" (p. 9).
Dying to win? Olympic Gold medals and longevity.

Abstract This paper compares mortality between Gold and Silver medalists in Olympic Track and Field to study how achievement influences health. Contrary to conventional wisdom, winners die over one year earlier than losers. I find strong evidence of differences in earnings and occupational choices as a mechanism. Losers pursued higher-paying occupations than winners according to individual Census records. I find no evidence consistent with selection or risk-taking. How people respond to success or failure in pivotal life events may produce long-lasting consequences for health.
The Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Contemporary Conflict: A Legal and Ethical Analysis

The increased use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in contemporary conflict has stirred debate among politicians, government officials, and scholars. Spokespeople for the U.S. government often highlight the precision of UAVs and argue that this quality enables military action to comply with the international humanitarian law principles of distinction and proportionality. This article criticizes the technologically advanced weapons on the same ground on which the U.S. government has defended them: meeting international standards of distinction and proportionality. The article opens with a discussion of the legal implications of Just War theory. It then offers a critique of the politico-military discourse surrounding UAVs and presents a philosophical framework that might lessen the confusion surrounding the ethics of modern warfare. The article closes with a discussion of the various ways that defenders of the UAVs overstate the ability of technology to answer difficult legal and political questions that the principles of distinction and proportionality pose.
Consuming Debt: Structuring the Federal Response to Abuses in Consumer Credit

Predatory lending is an avaricious fraud that demands attention. Several states have enacted new laws to combat predatory lending. Moreover, the battle against predatory lending and other abusive practices has focused attention on the overall structure of consumer credit laws. The current structure is dual; both state and federal governments play significant roles in combating credit fraud. The dual structure has been the source of controversy as federal regulators have claimed the power to preempt state law. This article furthers the structural debate and the effort to combat predatory lending by examining the architecture of consumer credit laws within the federal system. The responsibility for enforcing federal consumer credit laws is divided among many federal agencies. This is confusing and inefficient. To compound the problem, much of the enforcement of consumer credit laws is in the hands of bank regulators rather than consumer protection agencies. The principal role of a bank regulator is to protect the solvency of a bank. The principal role of a consumer protection agency is to protect the consumer. While these two roles can be synergistic, they can also clash. Therefore, tasking the bank regulator with the job of consumer protection creates an intra-agency conflict. This article proposes a range of alternative regulatory structures that could provide for more efficient and fair consumer protection.
Climate change and human rights: Intellectual property challenges and opportunities

Mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change will require innovation and the development of new technologies. Intellectual property laws have a key part to play in the global transfer of climate technologies. However, failures to properly use flexibilities in intellectual property regimes or comply with technology transfer obligations under international climate change agreements calls for a human rights based analysis of climate technology transfer. Climate change is an unprecedented challenge and requires unprecedented strategies. Given the substantial impact of climate change on all of humanity and the ethical imperative to act, a complete rethink of traditional intellectual property approaches is warranted. This chapter proposes a series of intellectual property law policy options, through a human rights framework, aimed at promoting access to technologies to reduce the human suffering caused by climate change.
On Commodification and Self-Ownership

This Article explores the ongoing jurisprudential dispute over whether commodification of the human body, including gendered commodification as produced by biotechnology, conflicts with a desirable exercise of self-ownership rights. Contrary to the prevailing view, it argues that the commodification of the human body caused by biotechnology, including reproductive technologies, does not necessarily undermine the discourse of emancipatory Lockean self-ownership, or feminist and critical revisions of the Lockean paradigm. Commodification of the body by biotechnology, precisely because this technology is universal and indiscriminate, may extend self-ownership to subjugated groups historically denied it. The commodification so feared in emerging biotechnology finds precedent in earlier anti-slavery and emancipatory conceptions of self-ownership, thus undermining many of the central objections to commodification. The Article concludes that there is a real peril that market forces and discrimination may nonetheless disproportionately impact members of subjugated groups and jeopardize the benefits of this newly robust self-ownership. * Professor of Law, Albany Law School. I thank Harold Edgar, Martha Fineman, Christopher Tomlins, Patricia Williams, and Donna Young for helpful comments and suggestions. Thank you also to the Faculty of Law at the University of Rome Tre for accommodating me as a visiting scholar, to the Albany Law School for the sabbatical leave during which this was writtento my research assistants Dan Bresler, Megan Thisse, and Laura Mendelson, and my editors at YJLH for their help, and to Deane and Bill Halewood and Lucas and Isaac Young for everything else. This Article is written in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of the Science of Law (J.S.D.) in the School of Law, Columbia University. 1 Halewood: On Commodification and Self-Ownership Published by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, 2008 Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities [20:131 Who is so fond of this body that he would drag it about with him through all eternity if he could get on without it. 1 Undergirding our selhood and our rights is our creatureliness-that is, our mortal bodies. 2
Asian Territorial Disputes and the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty: The Case of Dokdo

This Article analyzes whether the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, the only multilateral international agreement that draws borders in East Asia, resolves the longstanding dispute over Dokdo between Korea and Japan. It uses the dispute to draw larger lessons about the nature of the treaty that ended World War II in the Pacific and how it structured the peace in Asia differently from that in Europe. It uses U.S. archival material to reconstruct the history of the making of the Treaty, which continues to be the most significant international legal instrument governing post-WWII Asia. Although the Republic of Korea demonstrated a long history of control over Dokdo, Japan annexed the island on February 22, 1905. Japan places much importance on the Treaty’s silence because the Treaty otherwise required Japan to relinquish the territories it acquired before and during World War II. After the fall of the Nationalist government in China, the United States decided to rebuild Japan into a strong regional ally, and consequently negotiated a generous peace treaty with its former WWII enemy. This Article concludes that the Treaty left Dokdo, along with other important issues, open for future resolution.
Border Searches in the Age of Terrorism

The debate between individual freedom and the power of the executive—a contest hotly disputed throughout our nation’s history—rages during times of national crisis. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, represent a crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Reflecting on the likely effects of 9/11 on the legal world, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor captured this sentiment in a speech at New York University Law School mere weeks after that infamous day:
Rare Event Risk and Heterogeneous Beliefs: The Case of Incomplete Markets

This paper provides an equilibrium model subject to heterogeneous beliefs about the likelihood of rare events. I explore asset pricing implications in an incomplete capital market and the effects of market completion. Without explicit rare event insurance, investors insure themselves indirectly through the stock and money markets, the risk premium is countercyclical, and flight to quality effects arise. Upon market completion, the risk premium increases as investors increase their exposure to rare event risk. While market completion leads to a more efficient allocation based on investors’ anticipatory utilities, its effect on ex post efficiency is ambiguous.
The Role of Intermediaries in Facilitating Trade

Abstract This paper documents that intermediaries play an important role in facilitating international trade. We modify a heterogeneous firm model to allow for an intermediary sector. The model predicts that firms will endogenously select their mode of export – either directly or indirectly through an intermediary – based on productivity. The model also predicts that intermediaries will be relatively more important in markets that are more difficult to penetrate. We provide empirical confirmation for these predictions using the firm-level census of China's trade, and generate new facts regarding the activity of intermediaries. We also provide evidence that firms begin to export directly after exporting through intermediaries.
Folded and log-folded-t distributions as models for insurance loss data

A rich variety of probability distributions has been proposed in the actuarial literature for fitting of insurance loss data. Examples include: lognormal, log-t, various versions of Pareto, loglogistic, Weibull, gamma and its variants, and generalized beta of the second kind distributions, among others. In this paper, we supplement the literature by adding the log-folded-normal and log-folded-t families. Shapes of the density function and key distributional properties of the ‘folded’ distributions are presented along with three methods for the estimation of parameters: method of maximum likelihood; method of moments; and method of trimmed moments. Further, large and small-sample properties of these estimators are studied in detail. Finally, we fit the newly proposed distributions to data which represent the total damage done by 827 fires in Norway for the year 1988. The fitted models are then employed in a few quantitative risk management examples, where point and interval estimates for several value-at-r...
Lex talionis: Testosterone and the law of retaliation

Abstract Research examining both the organizing and activating effects of testosterone in one-shot bargaining contexts has been vexed by inconsistencies. Some research finds that high-testosterone men are more likely to reject unfair offers in an ultimatum game and exogenous administration of testosterone to men leads to less generous offers. In contrast, other research finds that higher prenatal exposure to testosterone predicts more generous dictator game offers and administering testosterone to women leads to more generous ultimatum game offers. The current research seeks to resolve these inconsistencies by examining how the organizing effects of testosterone affect bargaining behavior. Because testosterone is associated with status seeking and concerns with social reputation, we hypothesized that testosterone would predict aggressive bargaining but only after provocation. Two studies found that prenatal testosterone exposure, as measured by 2D:4D ratio, led to aggressive responses for both males and females, but only after they received unfair offers. Furthermore, perceptions of fairness violations moderated but did not mediate the effect of testosterone on retributional responding. These results suggest that the organizing effects of testosterone have consistent effects on bargaining behavior for both males and females but its predictive ability requires some form of provocation to emerge.
Language Challenges Faced by International Graduate Students in the United States

Universities and colleges in the United States require international graduate students to provide certain English proficiency documents along with their admission applications before they are admitted to their programs.This study explored the language challenges faced by international graduate students at a Southern university in the U.S. The author also offered recommendations and suggestions to prepare and assist international graduate students in adjusting, adapting, and overcoming their language challenges.
Homeownership, Dissatisfaction and Voting

Abstract This article explores the relationships between homeownership, dissatisfaction with city services, and voting turnout in local elections, using original survey data. Homeowners are more likely than renters to vote, but the pure effect of ownership is not robust to either basic socio-economic controls or an instrumental variable strategy. However, dissatisfaction has a positive, significant and robust effect on likelihood of voting. When interacting homeownership and dissatisfaction, the author finds that dissatisfied homeowners are significantly more likely to vote than both satisfied homeowners and all renters. This finding is consistent with Fischel’s (2001) homevoter hypothesis.
Original Acquisition of Property: From Conquest and Possession to Democracy and Equal Opportunity

Where do property rights come from? If you believe the property casebooks, we acquire original title to property by conquering other nations, hunting animals, catching baseballs, encroaching on our neighbors’ lands, drilling for oil, and finding lost jewels. You’ve heard the expression “possession is nine-tenths of the law.” It turns out it’s actually true. If you can take it, you can keep it—not exactly the most morally attractive justification for the rights of owners. Imagine teaching your children that the way to get things is to grab whatever they can. But maybe there is something to the possession theory. What would we have to believe to make possession a just original source of title to property? Possession is plausible as a source of title only if you are not taking something that already belongs to someone else. If you are the first possessor of an unowned object, like a wild animal or a deserted island, possession is like magic; it allows you to create something out of nothing. Who could reasonably object to your claim? No one has been displaced by your act of occupation and everyone else is perfectly free to go out and hunt their own foxes and discover their own uncharted shores. Two problems disturb this rosy scenario. First, the magic disappears if you take all the cookies on the plate and leave none for your little sister. As John Locke recognized long ago, possession raises no moral issues only as long as it does not deprive others of similar paths to ownership. Locke argued that property rights in land were justified only if “there is enough, and as good left in common for
SYMPOSIUM: RADICAL NEMESIS: RE-ENVISIONING IVAN ILLICH’S THEORIES ON SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: FOREWORD

The eight articles in this Symposium issue, "Radical Nemesis: Re-Envisioning Ivan Illich's Theories on Social Institutions," reflect the divergent topics that Ivan Illich managed to reflect upon in his life’s works. The topics include discussion of prisons, education, family law structures, privatization of welfare services and its impact on labor consciousness, media, and the rule of law. The pieces speak for themselves and need no elaboration here.
Taxes and the Structure of Production

In Austrian theory, the business cycle is caused by expansive monetary policy, which artificially lowers the interest rate below equilibrium rates, necessarily lengthening the structure of production. Can tax alterations also cause an Ausman business cycle? Only if they affect time preference rates, the determinant of the shape of the Hayekian triangle. It is the contention of this paper that changes in taxes possibly can (but need not) impact time preference rates. Thus there may be a causal relation between fiscal policy and the business cycle, but this is not a necessary connection, as there is between monetary policy and the business cycle. This is contentious, since some Austrians argue that there is a praxeological link between tax policy and time preference rates.
Policy Reform and Foreign Direct Investment in Africa: Absolute Progress but Relative Decline

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) increased substantially in the 1990s. However, the rate of increase was meagre compared with other regions. For example, between 1980-89 and 1990-99, FDI in SSA grew by 218%. This compares with an increase of 990% for East Asia, 560% for Latin America, 789% for South Asia and 760% for all developing countries. As a consequence, Africa’s share of FDI to developing countries has declined over time, from about 19% in the 1970s, to 9% in the 1980s and to about 3% in the 1990s. This is in spite of the policy reforms implemented by countries in the region (see above quotation). Thus, with regard to FDI, Africa’s experience as compared with that of other developing countries can be characterised as absolute progress but relative decline. The ineffectiveness of policy reform and the deterioration in Africa’s FDI global position are frustrating to policy-makers in the region. Indeed, African leaders and the international community have grappled, and continue to grapple, with ways to increase FDI flows to the region. For example, one of the main objectives of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which was launched in July 2001, is to
A structural model of sales-force compensation dynamics: Estimation and field implementation

We present an empirical framework to analyze real-world sales-force compensation schemes, and report on a multi-million dollar, multi-year project involving a large contact lens manufacturer at the US, where the model was used to improve sales-force contracts. The model is built on agency theory, and solved using numerical dynamic programming techniques. The model is flexible enough to handle quotas and bonuses, output-based commission schemes, as well as “ratcheting” of compensation based on past performance, all of which are ubiquitous in actual contracts. The model explicitly incorporates the dynamics induced by these aspects in agent behavior. We apply the model to a rich dataset that comprises the complete details of sales and compensation plans for the firm’s US sales-force. We use the model to evaluate profit-improving, theoretically-preferred changes to the extant compensation scheme. These recommendations were then implemented at the focal firm. Agent behavior and output under the new compensation plan is found to change as predicted. The new plan resulted in a 9% improvement in overall revenues, which translates to about $12 million incremental revenues annually, indicating the success of the field-implementation. The results bear out the face validity of dynamic agency theory for real-world compensation design. More generally, our results fit into a growing literature that illustrates that dynamic programming-based solutions, when combined with structural empirical specifications of behavior, can help significantly improve marketing decision-making, and firms’ profitability.
Party Control of State Government and the Distribution of Public Expenditures

This paper examines the effects of party control of state governments on the distribution of intergovernmental transfers across counties from 1957 to 1997. We find that the governing parties skew the distribution of funds in favor of areas that provide them with the strongest electoral support. This is borne out in two ways. (i) Counties that traditionally give the highest vote share to the governing party receive larger shares of state transfers to local governments. (ii) When control of the state government changes, the distribution of funds shifts in the direction of the new governing party. We find only weak evidence that parties reward electorally pivotal counties or counties in electorally pivotal legislative districts. Finally, we find that increased spending in a county increases voter turnout in subsequent elections. This suggests that parties have an electoral incentive to skew the distribution of funds to influence future election results, and the mechanism through which this works is "mobilization" rather than "conversion" of voters in a fixed electorate.
Leverage and Default in Binomial Economies: A Complete Characterization

Our paper provides a complete characterization of leverage and default in binomial economies with financial assets serving as collateral. Our Binomial No-Default Theorem states that any equilibrium is equivalent (in real allocations and prices) to another equilibrium in which there is no default. Thus actual default is irrelevant, though the potential for default drives the equilibrium and limits borrowing. This result is valid with arbitrary preferences and endowments, contingent or noncontingent promises, many assets and consumption goods, production, and multiple periods. We also show that only no-default equilibria would be selected if there were the slightest cost of using collateral or handling default. Our Binomial Leverage Theorem shows that equilibrium Loan to Value (LTV) for noncontingent debt contracts is the ratio of the worst-case return of the asset to the riskless gross rate of interest. In binomial economies, leverage is determined by down risk and not by volatility.
Robustness of size and value effects in emerging equity markets, 1985–2000

Abstract We examine the robustness of size and book-to-market effects in 35 emerging equity markets during 1985–2000. Mean returns for high book-to-market firms significantly exceed mean returns for low book-to-market firms. These findings are robust to tests that control for size effects and that remove extreme returns. Similarly, mean returns for small firms exceed mean returns for large firms. But, the firm size results lack robustness to the removal of extreme returns. Moreover, significant size effects are found in tests that define firm size relative to the local market average, but generally are not found in tests that use absolute firm size. Our findings are confirmed by cross-sectional regressions that control for systematic risk at the global and local levels.
The Moral Effects of Economic Teaching

Over the past 2 decades, dozens of studies have explored the relationship between exposure to economics and antisocial behavior. With a few exceptions, these studies find the economists and economics students are more likely to exhibit a range of “debased” moral behavior and attitudes, both in the controlled environment of the laboratory and in the outside world. This article presents a review of these studies. It draws on the various studies to address the question of whether the found differences are due to a selection effect—that is, those with antisocial tendencies tend to study economics—or an indoctrination effect whereby exposure to economic theory causes antisocial behavior. The article suggests there is evidence that both effects play a role in explaining the debased behavior of economists and students of economics.
Indeterminism and the Property-Patent Equation

I. Intellectual Property, the Property Rights Movement, and the Right To Exclude 64 A. The Property-Patent Equation 64 1. The Relationship Between Intellectual and Real Property 64 2. The Property-Patent Equation as a Right To Exclude 68 B. Defining the Right To Exclude 70
The clonal child: procreative liberty and asexual reproduction.

Whether or not a human child can be cloned is still unclear, however, since that day when Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned, the United States has established a policy preventing federal money from being spent on human cloning experiments. The National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) reviewed the scientific, religious, ethical, and legal issues raised by the prospect of human cloning in the same manner as Dolly. The panel concluded that it posed unacceptable risks. The ban on federal funding for this kind of research has continued. This is despite possible benefits from cloning.The purpose of this article regards the legal questions involving pro-creative rights raised by cloning as a form of reproduction. This includes addressing the matter of whether we have the right to reproduce by any means and legal relationships with cloned children. The article argues that cloning is not as revolutionary as it appears.
A republican law of peoples

Assuming that states will remain a permanent feature of our world, what is the ideal that we should hold out for the international order? An attractive proposal is that those peoples that are alrea...
Sovereign Commitment and Property Rights: the Case of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution

Conventional wisdom in new institutional economics suggests that property rights become more secure following sovereign commitment. The article tests this axiom in the crucial case of the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. I show that despite the wide-ranging constraints imposed after the Revolution on the upper executive, the security of property rights declined. Theoretically, the article argues that the link between sovereign commitment and secure ownership hinges on vertical accountability in the state apparatus. While institutionalizing commitment by the presidency, the Revolution simultaneously exacerbated principal-agent dilemmas within the bureaucracy. Methodologically, the article contributes by triangulating available historical narratives and cross-national quantitative studies. Instead, the focus on one contemporary developing country and the use of qualitative process tracing dissects sovereign commitment and shows the mechanisms through which it can be subverted at lower administrative levels. Sixty-four semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and government officials from six Ukrainian regions, as well as analysis of the local media, provide the data.
Opportunity discovery, entrepreneurial action, and economic organization

This article reviews and critiques the opportunity discovery approach to entrepreneurship and argues that entrepreneurship can be more thoroughly grounded, and more closely linked to more general problems of economic organization by adopting the Cantillon-Knight-Mises understanding of entrepreneurship as judgment. The article begins by distinguishing among occupational, structural, and functional approaches to entrepreneurship and distinguishing among two influential interpretations of the entrepreneurial function—discovery and judgment. It turns next to the contemporary literature on opportunity identification and argues that this literature misinterprets Kirzner's instrumental use of the discovery metaphor and mistakenly makes opportunities the unit of analysis. The article then describes an alternative approach in which investment is the unit of analysis and link this approach to Austrian capital theory. I close with some applications to organizational form and entrepreneurial teams. Copyright © 2008 Strategic Management Society.