cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
ANGULAR MOMENTUM TRANSPORT BY ACOUSTIC MODES GENERATED IN THE BOUNDARY LAYER. I. HYDRODYNAMICAL THEORY AND SIMULATIONS

The nature of angular momentum transport in the boundary layers of accretion disks has been one of the central and long-standing issues of accretion disk theory. In this work we demonstrate that acoustic waves excited by supersonic shear in the boundary layer serve as an efficient mechanism of mass, momentum, and energy transport at the interface between the disk and the accreting object. We develop the theory of angular momentum transport by acoustic modes in the boundary layer, and support our findings with three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations, using an isothermal equation of state. Our first major result is the identification of three types of global modes in the boundary layer. We derive dispersion relations for each of these modes that accurately capture the pattern speeds observed in simulations to within a few percent. Second, we show that angular momentum transport in the boundary layer is intrinsically nonlocal, and is driven by radiation of angular momentum away from the boundary layer into both the star and the disk. The picture of angular momentum transport in the boundary layer by waves that can travel large distances before dissipating and redistributing angular momentum and energy to the disk and star is incompatible with the conventional notion of local transport by turbulent stresses. Our results have important implications for semianalytical models that describe the spectral emission from boundary layers.
Neural Manipulation Planning on Constraint Manifolds

The presence of task constraints imposes a significant challenge to motion planning. Despite all recent advancements, existing algorithms are still computationally expensive for most planning problems. In this letter, we present Constrained Motion Planning Networks (CoMPNet), the first neural planner for multimodal kinematic constraints. Our approach comprises the following components: i) constraint and environment perception encoders; ii) neural robot configuration generator that outputs configurations on/near the constraint manifold(s), and iii) a bidirectional planning algorithm that takes the generated configurations to create a feasible robot motion trajectory. We show that CoMPNet solves practical motion planning tasks involving both unconstrained and constrained problems. Furthermore, it generalizes to new unseen locations of the objects, i.e., not seen during training, in the given environments with high success rates. When compared to the state-of-the-art constrained motion planning algorithms, CoMPNet outperforms by order of magnitude improvement in computational speed with a significantly lower variance.
Turbulent coherent structures and early life below the Kolmogorov scale

Major evolutionary transitions, including the emergence of life, likely occurred in aqueous environments. While the role of water's chemistry in early life is well studied, the effects of water's ability to manipulate population structure are less clear. Population structure is known to be critical, as effective replicators must be insulated from parasites. Here, we propose that turbulent coherent structures, long-lasting flow patterns which trap particles, may serve many of the properties associated with compartments - collocalization, division, and merging - which are commonly thought to play a key role in the origins of life and other evolutionary transitions. We substantiate this idea by simulating multiple proposed metabolisms for early life in a simple model of a turbulent flow, and find that balancing the turnover times of biological particles and coherent structures can indeed enhance the likelihood of these metabolisms overcoming extinction either via parasitism or via a lack of metabolic support. Our results suggest that group selection models may be applicable with fewer physical and chemical constraints than previously thought, and apply much more widely in aqueous environments.
Plasmonic materials for energy: From physics to applications

Physical mechanisms unique to plasmonic materials, which can be exploited for the existing and emerging applications of plasmonics for renewable energy technologies, are reviewed. The hybrid nature of surface plasmon (SP) modes – propagating surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and localized surface plasmons (LSPs) – as collective photon–electron oscillations makes them attractive candidates for energy applications. A high density of optical states in the vicinity of plasmonic structures enhances light absorption and emission, enables localized heating, and drives near-field heat exchange between hot and cold surfaces. SP modes channel the energy of absorbed photons directly to the free electrons, and the generated hot electrons can be utilized in thermoelectric, photovoltaic and photo-catalytic platforms. The advantages and disadvantages of using plasmonics over conventional technologies for solar energy and waste heat harvesting are discussed, and areas where plasmonics is expected to lead to performance improvements not achievable by other methods are identified.
Radius Destabilization in Five-Dimensional Orbifolds due to AN Enhanced Casimir Effect

One of the challenges in connecting higher dimensional theories to cosmology is stabilization of the moduli fields. We investigate the role of a Lorentz violating vector field in the context of stabilization. Specifically, we compute the one-loop Casimir energy in Randall–Sundrum five-dimensional (non-supersymmetric) S1/ Z2 orbifolds resulting from the interaction of a real scalar field with periodic boundary conditions with a Lorentz violating vector field. We find that the result is an enhanced attractive Casimir force. Hence, for stability, positive contributions to the Casimir force from branes and additional fields would be required to counter the destabilizing, attractive effect of Lorentz violating fields.
Fusion of heterogeneous bands and kernels in hyperspectral image processing

Hyperspectral imaging is a powerful technology that is plagued by large dimensionality. Our study explores a way to combat that hindrance via noncontiguous and contiguous (simpler to realize sensor) band grouping for dimensionality reduction. Our approach is different in the respect that it is flexible and it follows a well-studied process of visual clustering in high-dimensional spaces. Specifically, we extend the improved visual assessment of cluster tendency and clustering in ordered dissimilarity data unsupervised clustering algorithms for supervised hyperspectral learning. In addition, we propose a way to extract diverse features via the use of different proximity metrics (ways to measure the similarity between bands) and kernel functions. The discovered features are fused with l ∞ -norm multiple kernel learning. Experiments are conducted on two benchmark data sets and our results are compared to related work. These data sets indicate that contiguous or not is application specific, but heterogeneous features and kernels usually lead to performance gain.
A proof of the Thompson moonshine conjecture

In this paper, we prove the existence of an infinite-dimensional graded supermodule for the finite sporadic Thompson group Th whose McKay–Thompson series are weakly holomorphic modular forms of weight $$\frac{1}{2}$$ 1 2 satisfying properties conjectured by Harvey and Rayhaun.
A simple estimate of gravitational wave memory in binary black hole systems

A simple estimate is given of gravitational wave memory for the inspiral and merger of a binary black hole system. Here the memory is proportional to the total energy radiated and has a simple angular dependence. Estimates of this sort might be helpful as a consistency check for numerical relativity memory waveforms.
Ergodic properties of compositions of interval exchange maps and rotations

We study the ergodic properties of compositions of interval exchange transformations (IETs) and rotations. We show that for any IET T, there is a full measure set of α ∈ [0, 1) so that T Rα is uniquely ergodic, where Rα is rotation by α.
Transverse moments of TMD parton densities and ultraviolet divergences

I review some open questions relating to the large transverse momentum divergences in transverse moments of transverse momentum dependent (TMD) parton correlation functions. I also explain, in an a...
Evidence for the placenta-brain axis: multi-omic kernel aggregation predicts intellectual and social impairment in children born extremely preterm.

Children born extremely preterm are at heightened risk for intellectual and social impairment, including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). There is increasing evidence for a key role of the placenta in prenatal developmental programming, suggesting that the placenta may, in part, contribute to origins of neurodevelopmental outcomes. We examined associations between placental transcriptomic and epigenomic profiles and assessed their ability to predict intellectual and social impairment at age 10 years in 379 children from the Extremely Low Gestational Age Newborn (ELGAN) cohort. Assessment of intellectual ability (IQ) and social function was completed with the Differential Ability Scales-II and Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), respectively. Examining IQ and SRS allows for studying ASD risk beyond the diagnostic criteria, as IQ and SRS are continuous measures strongly correlated with ASD. Genome-wide mRNA, CpG methylation and miRNA were assayeds with the Illumina Hiseq 2500, HTG EdgeSeq miRNA Whole Transcriptome Assay, and Illumina EPIC/850 K array, respectively. We conducted genome-wide differential analyses of placental mRNA, miRNA, and CpG methylation data. These molecular features were then integrated for a predictive analysis of IQ and SRS outcomes using kernel aggregation regression. We lastly examined associations between ASD and the multi-omic-predicted component of IQ and SRS. Genes with important roles in neurodevelopment and placental tissue organization were associated with intellectual and social impairment. Kernel aggregations of placental multi-omics strongly predicted intellectual and social function, explaining approximately 8% and 12% of variance in SRS and IQ scores via cross-validation, respectively. Predicted in-sample SRS and IQ showed significant positive and negative associations with ASD case–control status. The ELGAN cohort comprises children born pre-term, and generalization may be affected by unmeasured confounders associated with low gestational age. We conducted external validation of predictive models, though the sample size (N = 49) and the scope of the available out-sample placental dataset are limited. Further validation of the models is merited. Aggregating information from biomarkers within and among molecular data types improves prediction of complex traits like social and intellectual ability in children born extremely preterm, suggesting that traits within the placenta-brain axis may be omnigenic.
Tiny-box: a tool for the versatile development and characterization of low noise fast x-ray imaging detectors

X-ray Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) have been the workhorse for soft X-ray astronomical instruments for the past quarter century. They provide broad energy response, extremely low electronic read noise, and good energy resolution in soft X-rays. These properties, along with the large arrays and small pixel sizes available with modern-day CCDs, make them a potential candidate for next generation astronomical X-ray missions equipped with large collecting areas, high angular resolutions and wide fields of view, enabling observation of the faint, diffuse and high redshift X-ray universe. However, such high collecting area (about 30 times Chandra) requires these detectors to have an order of magnitude faster readout than current CCDs to avoid saturation and pile up effects. In this context, Stanford University and MIT have initiated the development of fast readout X-ray cameras. As a tool for this development, we have designed a fast readout, low noise electronics board (intended to work at a 5 Megapixel per second data rate) coupled with an STA Archon controller to readout a 512 512 CCD (from MIT Lincoln Laboratory). This versatile setup allows us to study a number of parameters and operation conditions including the option for digital shaping. In this paper, we describe the characterization test stand, the concept and development of the readout electronics, and simulation results. We also report the first measurements of read noise, energy resolution and other parameters from this set up. While this is very much a prototype, we plan to use larger, multi-node CCD devices in the future with dedicated ASIC readout systems to enable faster, parallel readout of the CCDs.
An Investigation of Why Overparameterization Exacerbates Spurious Correlations

We study why overparameterization -- increasing model size well beyond the point of zero training error -- can hurt test error on minority groups despite improving average test error when there are spurious correlations in the data. Through simulations and experiments on two image datasets, we identify two key properties of the training data that drive this behavior: the proportions of majority versus minority groups, and the signal-to-noise ratio of the spurious correlations. We then analyze a linear setting and theoretically show how the inductive bias of models towards "memorizing" fewer examples can cause overparameterization to hurt. Our analysis leads to a counterintuitive approach of subsampling the majority group, which empirically achieves low minority error in the overparameterized regime, even though the standard approach of upweighting the minority fails. Overall, our results suggest a tension between using overparameterized models versus using all the training data for achieving low worst-group error.
Creation of high-fluence precursors by 351-nm laser exposure on SiO2 substrates

The onset of laser-induced damage on the exit surface of fused silica optics when exposed to UV ns pulses is a limiting factor in the design and operation of most high-energy laser systems. As such, significant effort has been expended in developing laser damage testing protocols and procedures to inform laser system design and operating limits. These tests typically rely on multiple laser exposures for statistical validation. For large aperture systems, testing an area equal to that of the optical components in the system is functionally impossible; instead, sub-scale witness samples are interrogated with elevated fluences. We show that, under certain circumstances, the laser exposure used to test one location on a sample will generate additional, laser-induced damage precursors in regions beyond that exposed to laser light and hence degrade the damage performance observed on subsequent exposures. We hypothesize the precursors result from condensation of vaporized silica, which re-condenses as SiOx particles deposited on the exit surface. In addition, we will outline the conditions under which this phenomenon occurs, as well as methods for mitigating or eliminating the effect.
Prediction, Estimation, and Attribution

The scientific needs and computational limitations of the twentieth century fashioned classical statistical methodology. Both the needs and limitations have changed in the twenty‐first, and so has the methodology. Large‐scale prediction algorithms—neural nets, deep learning, boosting, support vector machines, random forests—have achieved star status in the popular press. They are recognizable as heirs to the regression tradition, but ones carried out at enormous scale and on titanic datasets. How do these algorithms compare with standard regression techniques such as ordinary least squares or logistic regression? Several key discrepancies will be examined, centering on the differences between prediction and estimation or prediction and attribution (significance testing). Most of the discussion is carried out through small numerical examples.
Asymptotic gluing of shear-free hyperboloidal initial data sets

We present a procedure for asymptotic gluing of hyperboloidal initial data sets for the Einstein field equations that preserves the shear-free condition. Our construction is modeled on the gluing construction in Isenberg et al. (Ann Henri Poincare 11(5):881–927, 2010), but with significant modifications that incorporate the shear-free condition. We rely on the special Holder spaces, and the corresponding theory for elliptic operators on weakly asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds, introduced by the authors in Allen et al. (Commun Anal Geom 26(1):1–61, 2018) and applied to the Einstein constraint equations in Allen et al. (Class Quantum Grav 33(11):115015, 2016).
A stochastic biomass blending problem in decentralized supply chains

Blending biomass materials of different physical or chemical properties provides an opportunity to adjust the quality of the feedstock to meet the specifications of the conversion platform. We propose a model which identifies the right mix of biomass to optimize the performance of the thermochemical conversion process at the minimum cost. This is a chance-constraint programming (CCP) model which takes into account the stochastic nature of biomass quality. The proposed CCP model ensures that process requirements, which are impacted by physical and chemical properties of biomass, are met most of the time. We consider two problem settings, a centralized and a decentralized supply chain. We propose a mixed-integer linear program to model the blending problem in the centralized setting and a bilevel program to model the blending problem in the decentralized setting. We use the sample average approximation (SAA) method to approximate the chance constraints, and propose solution algorithms to solve this approximation. We develop a case study for South Carolina using data provided by the Billion Ton Study. Based on our results, the blends identified consist mainly of pine and softwood residues. The cost of the centralized supply chain is 2 to 6% lower, which shows that the assumption of centralized decision making leads to underestimating costs in the supply chain.
HapSolo: an optimization approach for removing secondary haplotigs during diploid genome assembly and scaffolding

Despite marked recent improvements in long-read sequencing technology, the assembly of diploid genomes remains a difficult task. A major obstacle is distinguishing between alternative contigs that represent highly heterozygous regions. If primary and secondary contigs are not properly identified, the primary assembly will overrepresent both the size and complexity of the genome, which complicates downstream analysis such as scaffolding. Here we illustrate a new method, which we call HapSolo, that identifies secondary contigs and defines a primary assembly based on multiple pairwise contig alignment metrics. HapSolo evaluates candidate primary assemblies using BUSCO scores and then distinguishes among candidate assemblies using a cost function. The cost function can be defined by the user but by default considers the number of missing, duplicated and single BUSCO genes within the assembly. HapSolo performs hill climbing to minimize cost over thousands of candidate assemblies. We illustrate the performance of HapSolo on genome data from three species: the Chardonnay grape (Vitis vinifera), with a genome of 490 Mb, a mosquito (Anopheles funestus; 200 Mb) and the Thorny Skate (Amblyraja radiata; 2650 Mb). HapSolo rapidly identified candidate assemblies that yield improvements in assembly metrics, including decreased genome size and improved N50 scores. Contig N50 scores improved by 35%, 9% and 9% for Chardonnay, mosquito and the thorny skate, respectively, relative to unreduced primary assemblies. The benefits of HapSolo were amplified by down-stream analyses, which we illustrated by scaffolding with Hi-C data. We found, for example, that prior to the application of HapSolo, only 52% of the Chardonnay genome was captured in the largest 19 scaffolds, corresponding to the number of chromosomes. After the application of HapSolo, this value increased to ~ 84%. The improvements for the mosquito’s largest three scaffolds, representing the number of chromosomes, were from 61 to 86%, and the improvement was even more pronounced for thorny skate. We compared the scaffolding results to assemblies that were based on PurgeDups for identifying secondary contigs, with generally superior results for HapSolo.
Skill-Biased Transition: The Role of Markets, Institutions, and Technological Change

This study attempts to explain why the transition to a market economy is skill-biased. It shows unequivocal evidence on increased skill wage premium and supply of skills in transition economies. It examines whether similar skill???favoring shifts in the Russian and U.S. economies are driven by the same set of factors. Our analysis elaborates on the model of alternative theories of the increased wage skill premium and then evaluates three main hypotheses: skillbiased technological change, the market adjustment hypothesis, and the institutional factor hypothesis. To test these hypotheses, the study uses unique linked employer-employee data that spans the 16 years of the Soviet and transition periods in Russia (1985-2000), with a special emphasis on data quality, measurement errors, and retrospective biases. The main conclusion is that there is no uni-causal and time-invariant explanation for skill-biased changes in wages and employment in the Russian economy. The increased skill wage premium has been driven mainly by institutional factors during the early period and by productivity and technological change during the late transition period, and reinforced by market adjustment of wage ratio to the true differences in labor productivity.
Stochastic synergies in sequential auctions

We consider sequential construction contracts in which bidders may benefit from one auction to the next due to synergistic tasks across the projects auctioned. Theoretical considerations indicate that winners in the earlier auctions are more likely to participate in later auctions. Moreover, conditional on participation, past winners place lower bids, on average, and are so more likely to win in later auctions. We present evidence in support of these predictions using sequential construction auctions conducted by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.
Regulatory Fictions: On Marriage and Countermarriage

Debates about marriage currently capture much public attention. Scholars have pushed beyond the question of whether gays are worthy of marriage to ask whether marriage is worthy of gays. The present moment of questioning marriage in its current form may be brief. Thus, we should take this opportunity to imagine the widest possible range of alternatives to our current marriage regime—what I call countermarriage regimes. This Essay draws on two unlikely sources of legal innovation to expand our thinking about marriage alternatives: literature and anti-gay law. Literature offers an array of countermarriage regimes, including exploding marriage, three strikes marriage, line marriage, renewable marriage, and exculpatory marriage. Anti-gay law, if we reimagine it as applying to everyone, prompts us to consider a world without marriage or indeed without any contracts between intimate partners. In addition to opening our minds to countermarriage possibilities, this Essay shows some overlooked affinities between law and literature, in particular how both law and literature may serve as unlikely sources of regulatory innovation.
Spreading the Word: Price Discovery and Newswire Dissemination of Management Earnings Guidance.

ABSTRACT: This study investigates the impact of dissemination on the efficiency of the price discovery process with respect to management earnings guidance disclosures. I first identify firm and guidance characteristics associated with the likelihood that guidance receives coverage in the Dow Jones Newswires. Using propensity score, within-firm, and returns-based matched control samples of guidance, I find that newswire dissemination is associated with larger initial price reactions and, more importantly, an increase in the speed with which guidance information is incorporated into price. I also find that newswire coverage affects the market's reaction to stand-alone versus bundled guidance and good versus bad news guidance. This study is the first to provide evidence of systematic variation, both across and within firms, in the breadth of guidance dissemination, and it shows that this variation has a substantial effect on how investors respond to guidance. JEL Classifications: G14; M41; L82.
Köbler V. Austria: Expositional Supremacy and Member State Liability

In a series of cases beginning with Francovich v. Italy, the European Court of Justice has recognized that individuals have a right to sue member states in their own courts for violation of the treaties that create the European Community. The most recent decision in that line, Kobler v. Austria, extends this right to individuals who claim that the member state's highest court wrongly applied European law. The Kobler decision continues a trend toward expanded member state liability that looks relatively adventuresome both in terms of European law (which makes no explicit provision for such suits) and when compared to the situation in the United States, where the Supreme Court has developed a judge-made body of sovereign immunity law that protects the member states from many individual suits. This article examines the way the high courts of Europe and the United States approach the task of securing member state compliance with higher law. Despite many differences, the article finds that a theme of expositional supremacy helps to explain the approach of both bodies. Although the Supreme Court has been reluctant to approve direct suits against member states, it oversees a system of federal remedies that provides a number of entry points for litigants who wish to question the constitutionality of state action. European Community law, by contrast, provides fewer opportunities for individuals to challenge member state action and no opportunity for the ECJ to review member state court decisions directly by way of appeal. Viewed in the context of a relatively weak set of alternative remedies, the Kobler decision encourages member state courts to facilitate ECJ review through the preliminary reference procedure. In the end, member state liability may thus help to secure a place for the ECJ comparable to that of the Supreme Court in expounding the meaning of higher law.
Adopting the Stateless

Statelessness, the lack of legally recognized citizenship, affects twelve million people worldwide. The consequences of statelessness frequently lead to compounding human rights abuses, including human trafficking, oppression, and neglect. Few solutions exist for statelessness absent compelled citizenship recognition in a nation state. Coincidentally, inter-adoption is growing in demand, but contracting in available sending states. This article proposes a nexus of statelessness and intercountry adoption where legislation is put forward to adopt stateless individuals, particularly children. This article will analyze pending legislation for the adoption of North Korean stateless persons and recommend legislation to address broader issues of statelessness.
Aftermath of an Unwise Decision: The U.N. Terrorist Sanctions Regime After Kadi II

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Kadi II sought to promote certainty, but instead produced a dangerous muddle. In requiring more formal judicial review of decisions by the United Nations Sanctions Committee to freeze the assets of suspected terrorist financiers, the ECJ failed to observe appropriate limits for EU institutions in a complex and comprehensive United Nations regime. Kadi II failed to display the appropriate level of deference to Sanctions Committee decisions, which are issued pursuant to the Security Council’s mandate to maintain international peace. The ECJ also failed to defer to common sense inferences drawn by the Sanctions Committee, and ignored the procedural safeguard supplied by the 2009 establishment of the Committee’s Office of the Ombudsperson. These flaws put European Union (EU) states in a no-win position, caught between their duty to comply with the decisions of EU tribunals and their duty to comply with Security Council resolutions. While the Security Council and EU member states may be able to establish a tribunal that meets the ECJ’s concerns, that effort will require compromises that may undermine the sanctions program.
Impulse response matching estimators for DSGE models

Abstract The existing asymptotic theory for VAR-based impulse response matching estimators of the structural parameters of DSGE models does not cover situations in which the number of impulse responses exceeds the number of VAR model parameters. We establish the consistency of the estimator in this situation, we derive its asymptotic distribution, and we show how this distribution can be approximated by bootstrap methods. We also demonstrate that under our assumptions special care is needed to ensure the asymptotic validity of Bayesian methods of inference. Finally, we show how to deal with weak identification both under our assumptions and under standard assumptions.
Estimating discount factors for public and private goods and testing competing discounting hypotheses

The observation of declining discount rates in experimental settings has led many to promote hyperbolic discounting over standard exponential discounting as the preferred descriptive model of intertemporal choice. I develop a new framework, consistent with the random utility model, which directly models the intertemporal utility function and produces explicit maximum likelihood estimates of discounting parameters. I apply this estimation method to a stated-preference survey of river basin cleanup options and revealed-preference lottery payment choices. Formal statistical tests fail to find evidence in support of hyperbolic or quasi-hyperbolic discounting. Annual discount rates range from ten to fourteen percent across the data sets and empirical specifications.
What Good is Habeas

This essay examines empirically the effect of the Supreme Court’s 2008 judgment in Boumediene v. Bush, which held that detainees at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba had a right to invoke federal court habeas jurisdiction. Boumediene marked a sharp temporal break because it introduced a new regime of constitutionally mandated habeas jurisdiction for non-citizens detained as “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo. The Boumediene Court envisaged habeas jurisdiction as serving a twofold purpose. First, it claimed habeas vindicates physical liberty interests in line with a longstanding historical understanding of the Writ. Second, the Court viewed habeas as a mechanism to generate or preserve legal boundaries on executive discretion. This essay gathers empirical evidence of the opinion’s effect up to January 2010 to determine whether these goals were fulfilled. While the data is in many respects ambiguous, it strongly suggests the effect of Boumediene on detention policy was not as significant as many believe. For example, less than four percent of releases from the Cuban base have followed a judicial order of release. Even in those cases, it is unclear if judicial action or something else caused release. Because the effects of habeas jurisdiction have been uncertain and perhaps marginal, effusive praise or blame of the Court’s 2008 decision is premature.
Time-to-build and cycles

Abstract We analyze the dynamics of a simple growth model in which production occurs with a delay while new capital is installed (time-to-build). The time-to-build technology is shown to yield a system of functional (delay) differential equations with a unique steady state. We demonstrate that the steady state, though typically a saddle, may exhibit Hopf cycles. Furthermore, the optimal path to the steady state is oscillatory. A counter-example to the claim that ‘models with a time-to-build technology are not intrinsically oscillatory’ is provided. We also provide a primer on the central technical apparatus – the mathematics of functional differential equations.
Franchise Goodwill: Take a Sad Song and Make it Better

FRANCHISE GOODWILL: “TAKE A SAD SONG AND MAKE IT BETTER” Like a marriage, a franchise relationship can end poorly. This franchise “divorce” may produce long-term problems affecting the parties’ ability to conduct business. As in a dissolving marriage, the dispute often centers on ownership: who gets what? Singing the sad refrain of remorse, the franchisee or franchisor laments that she spent her blood, sweat, and tears building the business, only to have the other party claim title to what was built. At its core is a clash over goodwill; and the dispute frequently exposes glaring inconsistencies. The franchisee-franchisor quarrel often features shifting assertions about the nature of the goodwill. Indeed, dueling franchisors and franchisees often switch arguments depending on the situation. That is, a party to a franchise contract – whether franchisor or franchisee – in one context will assert that the franchisee purchased specific rights, including goodwill, as part of a “franchise package.” However, in another circumstance, the same party will declare that goodwill is severable from both the trademark and the franchise and that therefore the franchisee, while buying a franchise, purchased no goodwill. This paper analyzes franchise law cases from the perspectives of termination, nonrenewal, trademark infringement, non-compete covenants, antitrust tying, and taxes to determine why franchisors and franchisees engage in such inconsistent reasoning and what the consequences are for franchising. In addressing the most contentious issues of franchising, the litigants’ and the courts’ adherence to a logical, systemic framework could improve the resolution process for individual cases, and clarify standards of practice for all franchising matters. A proposed standard could lessen the lamentations – the sad songs of franchising – by quickly and fairly resolving the ownership of goodwill.
Birth, death and taxes.

Abstract This paper analyzes the effects of lump-sum tax policy in an overlapping generations model in which consumers have uncertain longevity. It extends previous analyses by considering the case in which private insurance arrangements are actuarially unfair. In addition, it considers the polar case of actuarially fair insurance and the polar case of no insurance. A general condition for debt neutrality is derived. This condition depends explicitly on the degree of actuarial unfairness in insurance and on the extent to which parents care about the utility of their children.
What Counts as Prostitution

What counts, or should count, as prostitution? In the criminal law today, prostitution is understood to involve the provision of sexual services in exchange for money or other benefits. But what exactly is a ‘sexual service’? And what exactly is the nature of the required ‘exchange’? The key to answering these questions is to recognize that how we choose to define prostitution will inevitably depend on why we believe one or more aspects of prostitution are wrong or harmful, or should be criminalized or otherwise deterred, in the first place. These judgements, in turn, will often depend on an assessment of the contested empirical evidence on which they rest. This article describes a variety of real-world contexts in which the ‘what counts as prostitution’ question has arisen, surveys a range of leading rationales for deterring prostitution, and demonstrates how the answer to the definition question depends on the answer to the normative question. The article concludes with some preliminary thoughts on how analogous questions about what should count as sexual conduct arise in the context of consensual offences such as adultery and incest, as well as non-consensual offences such as sexual assault.
Teaching Business Law Through an Entrepreneurial Lens

The legal market has changed. Although change creates uncertainty and fear, it also can create opportunity. This essay explores the opportunity for innovation in the business law curriculum, and the role of simulation to help create more practice-aware new lawyers.
Employee choice of flexible spending account participation and health plan.

Despite the fact that flexible spending accounts (FSAs) are becoming an increasingly popular employer-provided health benefit, there has been very little empirical study of FSA use among employees at the individual level. This study contributes to the literature on FSAs using a unique data set that provides three years of employee-level-matched benefits data. Motivated by the theoretical model of FSA choice presented in Cardon and Showalter (J. Health Econ. 2001; 20(6):935–954), we examine the determinants of FSA participation and contribution levels using cross-sectional and random-effect two-part models. FSA participation and health plan choice are also modeled jointly in each year using conditional logit models. We find that, even after controlling for a number of other demographic characteristics, non-whites are less likely to participate in the FSA program, have lower contributions conditional on participation, and have a lower probability of switching to new lower cost share, higher premium plans when they were introduced. We also find evidence that choosing health plans with more expected out-of-pocket expenses is correlated with participation in the FSA program. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Reflections on a Conversation

No one should doubt the proposition that the ways in which American foreign policy is formulated are worthy of discussion. ... Our deployment of historically-oriented arguments was, then, neither a facade nor an exercise in scholarly irrelevance but rather a corollary of the common goal of the participants in the Symposium to engage in constitutional interpretation rather than some other sort of conversation. Other features of the discussion that might seem to our alien visitor clearly contemporary in their force (for example, Louis Fisher's argument that the modern presidency's initiative in foreign affairs undermines republican government or my claim that "Congress is institutionally incapable of taking the leading role in formulating foreign policy" ) stand, in fact, on the same ground as our historical assertions: they too make use of the modalities of interpretation that serve as the grammar of constitutional law in this society. ... The "mutually affecting relationship between strategy and constitutional law," Bobbitt continues, is "such that some strategic challenges . . . encourage and even demand constitutional adaptations; and that some constitutional changes . . . enable and sometimes require strategic innovation." ... We should also give careful consideration to the principles that ought generally to govern the executive's interpretation of statutes that trench on presidential authority.
Corporate Ethics in the Health Care Marketplace

Consider three examples of problematic corporate decision making: first, in 2002, employees were less likely to have employer-provided insurance than thirty years ago and the price of health care for those who do receive it is ever increasing. Second, while many employees are without health insurance, the compensation for chief executive officers and other executive officers has increased dramatically. Third, consider the well-publicized examples of corporate decisions to engage in fraudulent and unethical business practices. These problems will not be solved by glib references to market ideology that claims markets alone adequately regulate corporate behavior. Nor will these problems be solved by assuming that a few bad apples were responsible. Indeed, only by examining the environmental context in which decision making occurs will corporate ethics in the health care marketplace be furthered. This article is a brief overview of the importance of an organization's structure, policies and practices in the establishment of an ethical climate. An organization's climate affects whether individual employees, as well as the leaders of the organization, make ethical or unethical decisions. Part II of this article begins by defining ethical climates and describes how they are ascertained. Part III discusses two contextual factors in more detail: workplace leadership and reward structures. Finally, this article concludes with some basic recommendations for motivating organizations to work toward creating ethical climates.
Product market competition and cost stickiness

Extant literature on cost stickiness has focused on how firm-specific characteristics affect the asymmetric cost behavior. In this paper, we explore how a firm’s operating environment affects the firm’s cost stickiness. Specifically, we examine the effect of product market competition on cost stickiness since a firm’s investment and cost retention decisions partly depend on how the firm interacts with its rival firms in the product markets. Using two firm-level text-based product market competition measures extracted from management disclosures in firms’ 10-K filings (Li et al. in J Account Res 51(2):399–436, 2013; Hoberg and Phillips in Rev Financ Stud 23(10):3773–3811, 2010; J Polit Econ, 2015), we find strong evidence consistent with cost asymmetry increasing in competition after controlling for known economic determinants of cost stickiness. In additional analyses, we also find that the effect of product market competition on the degree of cost stickiness increases in firms’ financial strength, likely because management in financially stronger firms has more resources for investment expenditures in spite of a sales fall. We also find that cost stickiness is increasing in competition if management is optimistic about future demand, whereas competition is not associated with cost asymmetry if management is pessimistic about future demand. Finally, we find that the relationship between competition and cost stickiness, although statistically insignificant at conventional levels, is more pronounced for single-segment firms relative to multi-segment firms.
Plea Bargaining and the Right to the Effective Assistance of Counsel: Where the Rubber Hits the Road in Capital Cases

In Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Supreme Court held that given the prevalence of plea bargaining in the modern American criminal justice system, the plea negotiation phase of a criminal trial is a “critical stage” of the proceedings. Thus, since a defendant has a Sixth Amendment right to counsel at all critical stages, and thus during plea bargaining, he also has the corollary right to the effective assistance of counsel during plea bargaining. Going forward, courts will be required to address claims that counsel’s failure to persuade a client to accept an offer that was clearly in the client’s best interests was ineffective assistance. This issue will be especially salient in capital cases given that approximately half of current death row inmates rejected a plea bargain that would have spared their lives. In most of the cases in which capital defendants refused to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentece, the prosecution’s offer represented not only the most likely trial outcome, but – in many cases – the best possible trial outcome. This article discusses the reasons defendants facing the death penalty reject life-sparing offers and trial counsel’s responsibilities in encouraging a client to accept a plea bargain in cases literally involving life and death.
Bringing Ideas Back In—A Brief Historiography of American Colonial Law

Famously dismissed by Roscoe Pound as useless antiquarianism, American colonial law has received increasing attention from scholars in recent years. This essay chronicles the rise of American colonial legal history as a field of study. The essay applauds this development, but recommends that the field remember its roots in intellectual history of the sort practiced by several giants of the past.
Inflation, Tax Rules, and the Stock Market

Abstract This paper shows how the interaction of tax rules and expected inflation can decrease substantially the share price per dollar of pretax earnings. The current analysis extends my earlier study [Feldstein (1978)] by recognizing corporate debt, retained earnings, and the role of diverse shareholder investments. As before, the analysis separates household and institutional investors.
Revisiting the Reportedly Weak Value Relevance of Oil and Gas Asset Present Values: The Roles of Measurement Error, Model Misspecification, and Time‐Period Idiosyncrasy

This paper investigates three potential explanations for the puzzlingly weak value relevance of oil and gas asset present values documented in prior research: measurement error, model misspecification, and time‐period idiosyncrasy. I operationally define the magnitude of measurement error as the measurement error variance, estimated using an errors‐in‐variables two‐stage regression model similar to that used by Barth (1991) and Choi et al. (1997). I find that (1) measurement error in the present value measure of oil and gas assets is on average less than the measurement error in the historical cost asset measure; (2) oil and gas assets measured at present value explain significantly more across‐firm and across‐time variation in stock prices than do oil and gas assets measured at historical cost; and (3) model misspecification partially accounts for the puzzlingly weak reported value relevance of the present value measure in prior research.
Effective and necessary: Individual supplier behavior in revenue sharing and wholesale contracts

Abstract We consider under what conditions a revenue sharing contract is most effective at improving system efficiency relative to a simple wholesale price contract. We find that a complex coordinating contract is not always necessary because the wholesale price contract may perform sufficiently well; and coordinating contracts are not always effective if decision makers are strongly risk averse. Using a behavioral laboratory approach, we investigate how a supplier's risk aversion and fairness concerns influence how they set the pricing parameter(s) of a contract. We find that risk-neutral self-interested suppliers were able to improve the system and their own profits significantly under revenue sharing compared to wholesale pricing. However, individual behavioral factors of risk aversion or fairness preferences often made the more complicated revenue sharing contract either ineffective or unnecessary. Specifically, given a fairness-seeking supplier, the simple wholesale price contract is comparably efficient to the revenue sharing contract set by a risk-neutral supplier and we find the coordinating contract is unnecessary. Conversely, given a strongly risk-averse supplier with no concerns for fairness a revenue sharing contract is ineffective in overcoming double marginalization.
Activity-Based Valuation of Bank Holding Companies

Standard valuation methods do not lend themselves to bank holding companies. Banks create value through the types of assets and liabilities they create (e.g., lending and deposit taking relationships). Bank income streams reflect heterogeneous sources of income which differ in their margins of profitability and persistence. Our approach to valuation permits potential differences in the composition of assets, liabilities, income and expenses, and in the profitability and persistence of different sources of income, to reflect themselves in estimated relationships that relate the composition of the balance sheet and income statement to bank value. Our approach explains substantial cross-sectional variation in observed market-to-book values, and residuals from cross-sectional regressions of market-to-book values are useful for predicting future stock returns. Predictable future variation in returns does not reflect priced risk factors, but is related to trading costs.