cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
It Doesn't Pass the Sell Test: Focusing on "The Facts of the Individual Case" in Involuntary Medication Inquiries

Criminal defendants who are incompetent to stand trial have a significant liberty interest in refusing the antipsychotic medication that could restore their competency. The Supreme Court cautioned that instances of intrusion upon that right "may be rare," and, in Sell v. United States, it laid out what it believed to be stringent criteria for when a defendant could be medicated against his will. Yet, since Sell, trial courts have ordered over sixty-three percent of defendants involuntarily medicated. These individuals did not pose a danger to themselves or others, and they were rarely accused of crimes that involved damage to individuals or property. But the medication of these defendants, once predicted to be "rare," has instead become routine.In this article, I argue that the overmedication of non-dangerous defendants is a result of the structure of the Sell test and its tilt in favor of the government. The use of a checklist of four threshold elements favors the issuance of medication orders because the court need not balance the defendant’s liberty interest in avoiding medication against the government’s interest in administering it. In addition, three of the four boxes on the checklist concern medical questions about the efficacy and side effects of antipsychotic medication that will fall in the government’s favor in the vast majority of cases.However, while the Sell test contains the seeds of the overmedication problem, it also contains the solution. The first factor of the test requires courts to consider whether the government interest at stake is "important," and it mandates that courts assess the "facts of the individual case" to determine if the government interest crosses that bar. While few courts have delved deeply into this factor, some have looked to the nonviolent nature of the crime or the government’s minimal likelihood of success on the underlying criminal charge in concluding that the government interest in prosecuting the defendant was not important. I argue that more courts can and should follow this path. Such an approach would limit the involuntary medication of defendants to those exceptional cases where it is truly warranted.
A network analysis of committees in the U.S. House of Representatives

Network theory provides a powerful tool for the representation and analysis of complex systems of interacting agents. Here, we investigate the U.S. House of Representatives network of committees and subcommittees, with committees connected according to “interlocks,” or common membership. Analysis of this network reveals clearly the strong links between different committees, as well as the intrinsic hierarchical structure within the House as a whole. We show that network theory, combined with the analysis of roll-call votes using singular value decomposition, successfully uncovers political and organizational correlations between committees in the House without the need to incorporate other political information.
Internet filtering in China

We collected data on the methods, scope, and depth of selective barriers to Internet usage through networks in China. Tests conducted from May through November 2002 indicated at least four distinct and independently operable Internet filtering methods - Web server IP address, DNS server IP address, keyword, and DNS redirection with a quantifiable leap in filtering sophistication beginning in September 2002.
A Socio-Legal Methodology for the Internal/External Distinction: Jurisprudential Implications

When I became a judge, I stopped being a practicing attorney, and that was the big change in role. The role of a practicing attorney is to achieve a desirable result for the client in the particular case at hand. But a judge can’t think that way. A judge can’t have any agenda. A judge can’t have any preferred outcome in any particular case. And a judge certainly doesn’t have a client. The judge’s only obligation—and it’s a solemn obligation—is to the rule of law, and what that means is that in every single case, the judge has to do what the law requires.1
Designing an Efficient and Incentive Compatible Government-Provided Deposit Insurance Program for Developing and Transitional Economies

This paper reviews the causes of recent banking crises, particularly in the United States. The paper argues that to the extent banks are perceived to be "special," it is primarily because of poorly designed special public policies, particularly safety nets, rather than their inherent characteristics. These flaws have contributed to the costly recent banking crises in most countries of the world. As a result, preventing future crises centers on correcting the flaws in these policies. The U.S. reformed its government-provided deposit insurance structure in the Federal Deposit Insurance and Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA) of 1991 to reduce the moral hazard problem of banks and the agency problem of regulators. The reform focuses on imposing regulatory discipline that mimics the discipline the market imposes on firms not subject to a safety net and on resolving a troubled bank before its economic capital is negative. If successful, this would impose losses only on shareholders and make deposit insurance effectively redundant. Aspects of this new structure appear to be appropriate for other countries.
Testing for structural change in regression quantiles

Abstract Most studies in the structural change literature focus solely on the conditional mean, while under various circumstances, structural change in the conditional distribution or in conditional quantiles is of key importance. This paper proposes several tests for structural change in regression quantiles. Two types of statistics are considered, namely, a fluctuation type statistic based on the subgradient and a Wald type statistic, based on comparing parameter estimates obtained from different subsamples. The former requires estimating the model under the null hypothesis, and the latter involves estimation under the alternative hypothesis. The tests proposed can be used to test for structural change occurring in a pre-specified quantile, or across quantiles, which can be viewed as testing for change in the conditional distribution with a linear specification of the conditional quantile function. Both single and multiple structural changes are considered. We derive the limiting distributions under the null hypothesis, and show they are nuisance parameter free and can be easily simulated. A simulation study is conducted to assess the size and power in finite samples.
Brand perception, cash flow stability, and financial policy.

Abstract This paper demonstrates that intangible assets play an important role in financial policy. Using a proprietary database of consumer brand evaluation, I show that positive consumer attitude toward a firm's products alleviates financial frictions and provides additional net debt capacity, as measured by higher leverage and lower cash holdings. Brand perception affects financial policy through reducing overall firm riskiness, as strong consumer evaluations translate into lower future cash flow volatility as well as higher credit ratings for potentially volatile firms. The impact of brand is stronger among small firms, contradicting a number of reverse causality and omitted variables explanations.
Debt Servicing, Aggregate Consumption, and Growth

Abstract We develop a neo-Kaleckian growth model that emphasizes the importance of consumption behavior. In our model, workers first make consumption decisions based on their gross income, and then treat debt servicing commitments as a substitute for saving. Workers’ borrowing is induced by their desire to keep up with the consumption standard set by rentiers’ consumption, reflecting an aspect of the relative income hypothesis. As a result of this consumption and debt servicing behavior, consumer debt accumulation and income distribution have effects on aggregate demand, profitability, and economic growth that differ from those found in existing models. We also investigate the financial sustainability of the Golden Age and Neoliberal growth regimes within our framework. It is shown that distributional changes between the Golden Age and the Neoliberal regimes, together with corresponding changes in consumption emulation behavior via expenditure cascades, suffice to make the Neoliberal growth regime unsustainable.
Stock markets, banks and growth: Panel evidence

This paper investigates the impact of stock markets and banks on economic growth using a panel data set for the period 1976-98 and applying recent GMM techniques developed for dynamic panels. On balance, we find that stock markets and banks positively influence economic growth and these findings are not due to potential biases induced by simultaneity, omitted variables or unobserved country-specific effects.
Should the Medium Affect the Message? Legal and Ethical Implications of Prosecutors Reading Inmate-Attorney Email

The attorney-client privilege protects confidential legal communications between a party and her attorney from being used against her, thus encouraging full and frank attorney-client communication. It is a venerable evidentiary principle of American jurisprudence. Unsurprisingly, prosecutors may not eavesdrop on inmate-attorney visits or phone calls or read inmate-attorney postal mail. Courts are currently divided, however, as to whether or not they can forbid prosecutors from reading inmateattorney email. This Note explores the cases that address whether federal prosecutors may read inmates’ legal email. As courts have unanimously held, because inmates know that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) monitors all their email, their legal email is unprivileged. In addition, all courts have rejected the argument that prosecutors reading inmates’ legal email impermissibly restricts inmates’ Sixth Amendment right of access to counsel. Accordingly, despite questioning the practice’s propriety, four courts have ruled that there is no legal basis to prevent prosecutors from reading inmate-attorney email. Two courts, however, pursuant to no clear authority, prevented the prosecutors from doing so. This Note argues that prosecutors should abstain from reading inmateattorney email as a matter of self-regulation because this behavior unjustifiably chills inmate-attorney communication. In addition, this Note asserts that BOP’s email monitoring policy unconstitutionally restricts inmates’ Sixth Amendment right of access to counsel, a challenge prisoners’ rights advocates have yet to bring. In cases where BOP’s email monitoring policy is not at issue, or where a court seeks to avoid a constitutional decision, this Note concludes that courts should prevent prosecutors from reading inmates’ legal email by exercising their delegated authority to enforce Rules of Professional Conduct. Specifically, courts
Usefulness of Interest Income Sensitivity Disclosures

We document multiple dimensions of usefulness of banks' interest income sensitivity disclosures. First, we find management-generated sensitivity measures are predictive of future realized changes i...
Monthly cyclicality in retail Investors’ liquidity and lottery-type stocks at the turn of the month

Abstract The well-documented underperformance of lottery stocks masks a within-month cyclical pattern. Demand for lottery stocks increases at the turn of the month, especially in areas whose demographic profile resembles that of typical lottery-ticket buyers (i.e., gamblers), thus driving their prices higher. This effect is rooted in local retail investors’ preference for lottery stocks and propelled by the within-month cyclicality of local investors’ personal liquidity positions. A long-short investment strategy based on this cyclical pattern of lottery stocks’ performance yields gross abnormal returns of about 12.6% per year.
Contract Formalism, Scientism, and the M-Word: A Comment on Professor Movsesian's Under-Theorization Thesis

In two recent essays, Professor Mark L. Movsesian has suggested that a significant difference between the classical formalism of Williston and the formalism of contemporary contracts scholars is the extent to which the earlier work was under-theorized. I want to suggest an area in which there is a consistency to the under-theorization between the classical and the modern contract formalists: the extent to which theorization in anything that approaches metaphysics is, and has been, consistently anathema. Modern theorizing is overwhelmingly of a particular form: dispassionate social science inquiry into how we tick, rarely questioned but implicit norms shaped solely around the utilitarian, if not material, consequence of choices, all seasoned by the occasional post-modern expression of futility and desperation around the indeterminacy of moral issues. It does not address the way we might think about solving the problem outside of the formal models (whether classically or economically based) of the law. In a brief response to Professor Movsesian, I encourage debating over contract law not just in the context of pragmatics of instrumental reason, but as part of a broader inquiry into and struggle with the ends to which any endeavor is directed.
Neural Pruning via Growing Regularization

Regularization has long been utilized to learn sparsity in deep neural network pruning. However, its role is mainly explored in the small penalty strength regime. In this work, we extend its application to a new scenario where the regularization grows large gradually to tackle two central problems of pruning: pruning schedule and weight importance scoring. (1) The former topic is newly brought up in this work, which we find critical to the pruning performance while receives little research attention. Specifically, we propose an L2 regularization variant with rising penalty factors and show it can bring significant accuracy gains compared with its one-shot counterpart, even when the same weights are removed. (2) The growing penalty scheme also brings us an approach to exploit the Hessian information for more accurate pruning without knowing their specific values, thus not bothered by the common Hessian approximation problems. Empirically, the proposed algorithms are easy to implement and scalable to large datasets and networks in both structured and unstructured pruning. Their effectiveness is demonstrated with modern deep neural networks on the CIFAR and ImageNet datasets, achieving competitive results compared to many state-of-the-art algorithms.
Abuse and Harassment Diminish Free Speech

A familiar dichotomy in the legal academy juxtaposes freedom against a contrasting value like security or equality. Applied to speech, the “freedom” half gets assigned to abusers and harassers while those who speak up against harm are perceived as censors or silencers. The dichotomy is unfair to the latter camp: Abuse and harassment threaten not only security and equality but freedom. As phenomena that have grown with the rise of social media, abuse and harassment drive individual speakers from the Internet; cause points of view to be lost to discourse; force attacked persons to spend scarce time and money in pursuit of physical safety; reinforce unjust and oppressive hierarchies; and generate emotional distress, which in turn impedes the production of new speech.
Twenty-First Century Pirates of the Caribbean: How the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Robbed Fourteen Caricom Countries of Their Tax and Economic Policy Sovereignty

This article is concerned with a controversy that has been raging for over four years the anti-harmful tax competition initiative launched by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ("OECD") in April 1998, and that organization's subsequent blacklisting of several small defenseless jurisdictions who have dared to use tax competitive measures to secure for themselves a small piece of the global financial pie. On one side of the controversy sits the OECD: rich, powerful, domineering, and exhibiting many of the features of the colonial powers of the late fifteenth through twentieth centuries. On the other side sits the targeted jurisdictions: mostly islandnations of the Pacific and Caribbean, with their fragile economies and a constant struggle to survive in today's globalized economy. This article focuses on the OECD and on one group of targeted jurisdictions the member states of CARICOM. The article demonstrates how the OECD, through its anti-harmful tax competition initiative, has robbed these Caribbean countries of their sovereign right to determine their tax and economic policies.
A homeowner's dilemma: Anchoring in residential real estate transactions

Abstract We examine whether, and how, listing strategies impact sale prices in residential home sales. Literatures in housing economics, negotiations, and auctions offer diverse predictions around this question. On the one hand, housing studies typically treat home prices as an objective function of property and neighborhood characteristics. Yet, the large and robust literature on anchoring effects ( Tversky and Kahneman, 1974 ) suggests a positive relationship between listing prices and sale prices. Finally, evidence from the auctions literature suggests the opposite pattern through herding behaviors. We analyzed more than 14,000 transactions, taking into account observable property heterogeneity, geographical location and timing of the sales. We find that higher starting prices are indeed associated with higher selling prices, consistent with anchoring. For the average home in our sample, over-pricing between 10 and 20% leads to an increase in the sale price of $117–$163. This effect is particularly strong in areas with higher rates of mortgage foreclosure or serious delinquency. Additional analyses show that our results are unlikely to be driven by seller motivations or unobserved home qualities. We contrast our findings with recommendations and private beliefs of real estate agents, who provide services and advice for about 90% of home sales in the US.
Toward a Next Generation Regulatory Strategy

The FCC is now facing a set of issues that will help shape the future evolution of the Internet and the role of government in its development. In particular, the FCC is in the midst of designing a regulatory regime for broadband platforms. To do so, the FCC must decide both on the appropriate regulatory classification for such platforms and what legal rules (if any) should govern access to such platforms. This Article explains how the FCC, using its "ancillary jurisdiction" authority under Title I of the Communications Act, can develop a reactive regulatory regime that examines allegations of discriminatory access based on a factual record through complaint proceedings. This approach envisions that the FCC would not follow the prescriptive model of regulation (such as that provided by common carrier regulation), but instead would develop a common law, "antitrust-like" model that would focus on competition policy concerns that actually arise.
How Balanced Discussion Shapes Knowledge, Public Perceptions, and Attitudes: A Case Study of Deliberation on the Los Alamos National Laboratory

Prior research has demonstrated the potential impact of carefully orchestrated public forums, such as National Issues Forums and deliberative polls. Many public discussions, however, lack the careful design and focused purposes of such events, and it remains unclear to what extent informal conversations and public meetings can produce the same knowledge gains and attitude changes. If public meetings and conversations are to have similar impacts, they may require important features of deliberation, such as the balanced presentation of alternative viewpoints. To explore the associations of perceived discussion balance with issue knowledge, attitude integration, and the misperception of public attitudes, this study used cross-sectional survey data regarding how New Mexicans view Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The findings confirm the significance of perceived discussion balance for many—but not all—of the positive cognitive impacts of public discussions and conversations. Moreover, these findings show that deliberation is more scarce for some sub-publics than others, and the deliberative experience may be least common for those who need it most.
Sixteen and Pregnant: Minors' Consent in Abortion and Adoption

A minor girl's decision about how to handle an unplanned pregnancy is a highly contested issue. Especially contentious is the minor's ability to consent to an abortion independently of an adult such as her parents or a judge. That issue has received substantial attention from policy makers, scholars, judges, and legislators. Almost no attention has been paid, however, to the decision of a pregnant minor to continue her pregnancy, relinquish her constitutionally protected parental rights, and place a child for adoption. In 37 states, a minor's abortion decision is regulated differently than an adult's, while in only 15 states is a minor's decision to relinquish parental rights and consent to adoption treated any differently from an adult's decision. New neuroscientific advances in the understanding of minors' decisionmaking seem to justify protective regulation of the adoption placement decisions of minor mothers, as does the law's traditional treatment of minors' decisionmaking in areas other than abortion. The justifications often advanced for the need for parental involvement in a minor's abortion decision-the physical/medical risks, the psychological/emotional effects, and the importance of the decisionapply with equal force to the decision about adoption placement. The decision about adoption placement also differs from the abortion decision in at least one crucial respect-the legal complexity of the adoption decision adds another layer to the medical and moral decisions present in abortion. All states should t Professor of Law, Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. No one "builds" a law review article on her own. I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge the contributions of many others to this project I am grateful for the unflagging support of my faculty and helpful comments from faculty when I presented this topic, the lively engagement of my Adoption Law students, the helpful library staff, especially Laura McKinnon, who quickly and competently tracked down legal and non-legal sources alike, and the intellectually stimulating atmosphere of TexasWesleyan University School of Law. And, as a single mother, I know it takes a village to raise a child; thanks to Mimi, Anne and Steve for their special assistance this summer, without which this article would not have been finished. This article is dedicated to my children's birth mothers, who faced situations no mother should have to faceand made decisions no mother should have to make. Copyright C 2013 by the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 100 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 25:1 require that minor mothers have independent legal counsel when making the decision about relinquishment of parental rights and consent to adoption
The economics of franchise contracts

Abstract An incentive problem exists in franchise relationships because of the failure of franchisees to take account of franchisor profit. Franchise contracts ameliorate this malincentive not by specifying a proxy for desired franchisee performance, but by creating a premium stream that facilitates a self-enforcing agreement. The structure of credible commitments within this self-enforcing arrangement is elucidated, with initial franchisee investments shown to serve no performance guaranteeing purpose. Franchisors do not demand large initial lump sum payments from franchisees because doing so makes it more difficult to terminate franchisees for nonperformance. Franchisors use vertical integration when the premium necessary to assure franchisee performance is large.
The Fourteenth Amendment and the Unconstitutionality of Secession

If the Civil War killed secession as a practical matter, the Fourteenth Amendment drove a stake through its heart as a constitutional matter. For Nineteenth Century Americans, citizenship involved both the citizen’s allegiance to the sovereign and the sovereign’s duty to protect the citizen’s rights. Lincoln and other Republicans believed that national citizenship was primary, while Southerners viewed state citizenship as the primary basis for allegiance. The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment confirms that national citizenship is primary and state citizenship is derivative; the privileges or immunities clause forbids state interference with the relationship between citizens and the federal government; and section 5 confirms congressional power to suppress any such state interference. In short, whatever might have been argued before the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment definitively resolved the secession issue.
Discovering Smart Home Internet of Things Privacy Norms Using Contextual Integrity

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices for consumer "smart" homes raises concerns about user privacy. We present a survey method based on the Contextual Integrity (CI) privacy framework that can quickly and efficiently discover privacy norms at scale. We apply the method to discover privacy norms in the smart home context, surveying 1,731 American adults on Amazon Mechanical Turk. For $2,800 and in less than six hours, we measured the acceptability of 3,840 information flows representing a combinatorial space of smart home devices sending consumer information to first and third-party recipients under various conditions. Our results provide actionable recommendations for IoT device manufacturers, including design best practices and instructions for adopting our method for further research.
The Efficiency of Sharing Liability for Hazardous Waste: Effects of Uncertainty Over Damages

The environmental problems of the United States and the European nations have generated a dynamic body of literature in legal and economic research. One of the most significant branches of this research has been the analysis of strict liability versus ex post negligence standards, and the sharing of damages under each regime, when the level of prospective environmental damages can be estimated with certainty. These studies are crucial to policymakers in many countries, whether they are Americans considering the reenactment of the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) statutes,
Range-Based Estimation of Stochastic Volatility Models

We propose using the price range in the estimation of stochastic volatility models. We show theoretically, numerically, and empirically that range-based volatility proxies are not only highly efficient, but also approximately Gaussian and robust to microstructure noise. Hence range-based Gaussian quasi-maximum likelihood estimation produces highly efficient estimates of stochastic volatility models and extractions of latent volatility. We use our method to examine the dynamics of daily exchange rate volatility and find the evidence points strongly toward two-factor models with one highly persistent factor and one quickly mean-reverting factor. VOLATILITY IS A CENTRAL CONCEPT in finance, whether in asset pricing, portfolio choice, or risk management. Not long ago, theoretical models routinely assumed constant volatility (e.g., Merton (1969), Black and Scholes (1973)). Today, however, we widely acknowledge that volatility is both time varying and predictable (e.g., Andersen and Bollerslev (1997)), and stochastic volatility models are commonplace. Discrete- and continuous-time stochastic volatility models are extensively used in theoretical finance, empirical finance, and financial econometrics, both in academe and industry (e.g., Hull and White (1987), Heston (1993), Bates (1996), Ghysels, Harvey, and Renault (1996), Jarrow (1998), Duffie, Pan, and Singleton (2000)). Unfortunately, the estimation of stochastic volatility models has proved quite difficult. The Gaussian quasi-maximum likelihood estimation (QMLE) approach of Harvey, Ruiz, and Shephard (1994), which initially seemed appeal
Asset Pricing in the Dark: The Cross Section of OTC Stocks

Compared to listed stocks, over-the-counter (OTC) stocks are far less liquid, disclose less information, and exhibit lower institutional holdings. We exploit these different market conditions to test theories of cross-sectional return premiums. Compared to return premiums in listed markets, the OTC premium for illiquid stocks is several times higher, the OTC premiums for size, value, and volatility are similar, and the OTC premium for momentum is three times lower. The OTC premiums for illiquidity, size, value, and volatility are largest among stocks that are held almost exclusively by retail investors and those that do not disclose financial information. Theories of differences in investors’ opinions and short sales constraints help to explain these return premiums. Our momentum results are most consistent with Hong and Stein’s (1999) theory based on the gradual diffusion of information.
On the relation between the market-to-book ratio, growth opportunity, and leverage ratio

Abstract The negative relation between the market-to-book ratio and leverage ratio is one of the most widely documented empirical regularities in the capital structure literature. Most related studies take this negative relation as given and debate about its economic interpretation. We show that firms with higher market-to-book ratios face lower debt financing costs and borrow more. The relation between the market-to-book ratio and leverage ratio is not monotonic and is positive for most firms (more than 88% of COMPUSTAT firms and more than 95% of total market capitalization). The previously documented negative relation is driven by a subset of firms with high market-to-book ratios.
Market timing of CTAs: An examination of systematic CTAs vs. discretionary CTAs

This study uses a set of return-based factors to explore market (return and volatility) timing ability of commodity trading advisors (CTAs). Unlike previous research, we use return-based factors that are related to the futures markets in which most CTAs trade. This leads to higher explanatory power for our multifactor model. Our approach allows us to test for the presence of market timing in multiple markets. Accordingly, we are able to identify the markets in which CTAs may have market timing ability. We find that systematic CTAs are generally more skilled at market timing than discretionary CTAs, with the latter having slightly better overall risk-adjusted performance during our study period: January 1994 to December 2004. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:1067–1099, 2009
The Informational Efficiency of the Equity Market As Compared to the Syndicated Bank Loan Market

The loan market is a hybrid between a public and a private market, comprised of financial institutions with access to private information about borrowing firms. We test whether this is reflected in informationally efficient price formation in the loan market vis-a-vis the equity markets, and reject this private information hypothesis. We also reject a liquidity hypothesis which suggests that equity markets always lead loan markets, despite bank lenders' access to private information, because of greater liquidity in equity markets. We further test, and reject, an asymmetric price reaction hypothesis that states that loan returns are more sensitive to negative information whereas equity returns respond symmetrically to both positive and negative information. We find evidence most consistent with an integrated markets hypothesis that suggests that both the equity and syndicated bank loan markets are highly integrated such that information flows freely across markets. This is particularly true when the equity market makers are also loan syndicate members.
Voter‐weighted environmental preferences

This article examines the political economy of preferences with respect to the environment using a new stated preference survey that presents the first benefit values for national water quality levels. The mean valuation greatly exceeds the median value, as the distribution of valuations is highly skewed. The study couples the survey valuations with unique and extensive information on respondent voting patterns. Preferences of registered voters are similar to the preferences of the population at large, but median voters value water quality more than nonvoters. The strongest contrast related to voter-weighted preferences is among voters for different candidates, as those who voted for Gore in the 2000 presidential election have the highest environmental values. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
Patents of Damocles

For centuries, military thinkers have long-recognized that weapons need not actually be fired in order to have a deterrent effect on one’s enemies. The build-up of navies, maintenance of large standing armies, and nuclear deterrence all reflect this simple insight. Outside of military contexts, the weapon need not even be actually displayed in order to have the desired effect, such as the bank robber who pats his pocket menacingly but never actually brandishes a gun. Taking a page from military strategy, many patentholders have also realized that patents can be used as weapons against competitive rivals even without actually enforcing one’s patent rights in court. Like the mythical Sword of Damocles, these patents hang over the head of any potential entrant into the market. Over four decades ago, the Supreme Court in Walker Process recognized that the fraudulent procurement and enforcement of a patent can—if the remaining elements are satisfied—violate antitrust’s prohibition on illegal monopolization. However, courts have narrowly defined “patent enforcement” to mean infringement litigation, which permits monopolists with fraudulently procured patents to illegally monopolize markets while evading antitrust liability so long as they do not explicitly threaten competitors with infringement lawsuits. While there is nothing suspicious about patentholders efficiently using the mere existence of their patents to deter infringement, when the patentee has acquired its intellectual property rights through fraud the ability to exclude competitors without explicitly threatening a lawsuit allows firms to engage in patent fraud while insulating their fraudulently procured patent from legal scrutiny. This Article explains how the current constricted conception of patent enforcement undermines this important antitrust cause of action and seriously weakens both competitive markets and the patent system as well. Part I of this Article explores the balance between antitrust and patent law. While Section Two of the Sherman Act generally condemns monopolies as inefficient and anti-consumer, antitrust law tolerates monopolies created by patents in order to foster innovation. Fraudulently procured patents distort this balance because they injure competition without any countervailing virtues. Recognizing this anti-competitive threat, the Supreme Court in Walker Process held that a monopolist’s fraudulent procurement of a patent can create antitrust liability, provided that the remaining elements of a Section Two claim are established.
Mortgage Modification and Strategic Behavior: Evidence from a Legal Settlement with Countrywide

Abstract We investigate whether homeowners respond strategically to news of mortgage modification programs. We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in modification policy induced by settlement of US state government lawsuits against Countrywide Financial Corporation, which agreed to offer modifications to seriously delinquent borrowers. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that Countrywide's monthly delinquency rate increased more than 0.54 percentage points—a 10 percent relative increase—immediately after the settlement's announcement. The estimated increase in default rates is largest among borrowers least likely to default otherwise. These results suggest that strategic behavior should be an important consideration in designing mortgage modification programs. (JEL D14, G21, K22, R31)
Political Scrutiny and Tax Law Compliance: Evidence from the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004

ABSTRACT: The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (the Act [U.S. House of Representatives 2004]) created a tax holiday encouraging firms to repatriate foreign earnings and invest that capital in the United States. However, the Act did not require a direct tracing of the spending of repatriated funds; accordingly, repatriating firms could ignore the investment prescriptions of the Act, since tax regulators were provided no legally viable basis to pursue violations of the spending requirements. We use this event to provide evidence on the effect of political scrutiny on firms' tax law compliance in a setting where regulatory enforcement plays essentially no role. Our findings suggest that repatriating firms facing greater levels of policymaker scrutiny, relative to other repatriating firms, exhibited greater compliance with the Act by increasing relative expenditures on permitted uses (R&D investment) and restraining expenditures on nonpermitted uses. We also find that the spending patterns are different onl...
Initiation, Experimentation, Implementation of innovations: The case for Radio Frequency Identification Systems

Abstract This research primarily examines the stages hypothesis of the process of technology adoption by management personnel of organizations in the supply chain sector involving the Initiation, Experimentation, and Implementation stages. Further, this research examines key antecedents that may influence the various stages, including top management support, external pressure, and organization size. Using responses provided by top management representatives of 210 supply chain organizations on their organizations’ engagement with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies, this research finds that the stages hypothesis holds for RFID technologies. Specifically, organizations were seen to sequentially progress through the Initiation, Experimentation, and Implementation stages. Over 80% of organizations, who had reached the Implementation stage of adoption, had gone through the Initiation and Experimentation stages as well. Additionally, the data showed that the antecedents exerted varying levels of influences on the three stages. Top management support strongly influenced all three stages; external pressure influenced the Initiation and Implementation stages, and organizational size influenced Experimentation and Implementation stages. The paper discusses several implications for research and practice.
Trademarks, Property, and Propriety: The Moral Economy of Consumer Politics and Corporate Accountability on the World Wide Web

Intellectual Property laws operate as moral economy, governing ownership, behavior, and norms of appropriate symbolic practice. The symbolic meaning of a commodity’s meaning, and the corporate persona in general, must be legally structured so as to constrain surplus meaning and protect against the dilution of symbolic value. Unauthorized appropriations and alternative significations must be monitored or ideally prohibited, thus shaping practices of governmentality in commercial culture. The field of governance is intensified, provoked, and challenged in digital contexts. We examine the intertwined relationship between property and propriety in cyberspace by looking at internet domain name controversies, arguing that the rise of corporate surveillance in IP protection is accompanied by digital resistance and ultimately provides opportunities for new forms of social responsibility in digital environments.
Utilizing online tools to measure effort: Does it really improve student outcome?

Abstract This paper tests to see if and how incorporating an online learning tool affects student outcome in a traditionally taught Principles of Macroeconomics class. Outcome is measured by test grade. Participation in online learning is used to measure student effort. Doing online homework assignments is seen as mandatory effort while accessing a website to voluntarily practice non-grade-bearing problems is seen as voluntary effort. The results show that doing well on online homework assignments does not impact test grades. On the other hand students that voluntarily access the website to practice on additional problems are found to do better on tests. While the results imply that increased effort is linked with better outcome it does not definitely show that adding the online component made a significant difference to student outcome.
Turnaround: Reflections on the Present Day Influence of Negotiations on International Bankruptcy at the Fifth Session of the Hague Conference on Private International Law in 1925

In 1925, the British government sent a delegation to the Fifth Session of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. The Hague Conference had met sporadically since 1893,1 but this was the first time the British government sent a delegation to The Hague to discuss the possibility of a diplomatic convention to reach international agreement on uniform rules on what continental Europeans called “private international law” — matters of jurisdiction, applicable law and procedure.The British delegation held limited authority from the Home Office: it could participate only in deliberations on a possible convention on bankruptcy law, and then only along the instructions provided to it. Given these narrow directions, it is perhaps not surprising that the British delegation left the 1925 conference before it ended and without agreement on a bankruptcy convention. It is, however, surprising today to realize that conversations about conflicts of law rules in international bankruptcies have been going on for almost 90 years. It is even more surprising that the contours of that discussion contain lessons that remain timely.This Article reviews the history of the 1925 Hague Conference proceedings on bankruptcy. My goal is both to reveal this history and to consider it in light of more recent transnational instruments coordinating cross-border bankruptcy proceedings, including the EU Regulation,UNCITRAL’s Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency, and current proposals pending before the UN’s Commission on International Trade Law to consider the drafting of an international instrument to address certain conflicts of law rules applicable in cross-border insolvency proceedings. The paper proceeds in four parts.Part I provides a brief history of the beginnings of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, including Britain’s reticence to participate in this Conference. Part II discusses several initiatives on the topic of international bankruptcy presented before and by the International Law Association (ILA), especially a paper presented at the ILA’s 1924 session by an influential British solicitor, E. Leslie Burgin. Burgin’s efforts are emphasized because he seemed to have succeeded in convincing His Majesty’s Government to attend the Hague Conference on the topic of international bankruptcy law. Part III details preparations for participation in the 1925 conference by Great Britain’s Board of Trade. Part IV considers the proceedings of this Hague Conference on bankruptcy. A final section reflects, with the passage of time, on important lessons learned in this experience, with emphasis on the importance of the form of uniform ruleson conflicts of law in this context.
Carrots for Vetogates: Incentive Systems to Promote Capital Market Gatekeeper Effectiveness

This Article contributes a novel idea to the literature on capital market gatekeepers: positive incentive systems for gatekeepers to perform functions not required of them in exchange for rewards if they perform the functions successfully. Capital market gatekeeping theory relies upon the reputations that gatekeepers are assumed to command and protect backstopped by negative threats of legal liability for failure to perform legally mandated functions. The ineffectiveness of many gatekeepers during the late 1990s and early 2000s revealed practical limitations of the reputational constraint and the reforms that responded to the failures continue to emphasize the legal duties and legal liability that gatekeepers face. Adversely, that emphasis discourages gatekeepers from willingness to perform desired functions—such as to detect for fraud—whereas the positive approach induces performance of such functions. Without necessarily displacing existing reputation constraints and liability strategies, adding an incentive system as a public policy lever could promote gatekeeper effectiveness and poses little downside risk. Approximate Word Count: 24,000 * Professor of Law, Boston College (through 2006-07) and George Washington University (effective 200708). Thanks to John Coffee, Melvin Eisenberg, Claire Hill, Alan Palmiter and other participants in Columbia University Law School’s conference, “Gatekeepers Today: The Professions after the Reforms” (Sept. 29, 2006), where I presented an earlier version of this Article. CARROTS FOR VETOGATES: INCENTIVE SYSTEMS TO INCREASE CAPITAL MARKET GATEKEEPER EFFECTIVENESS Lawrence A. Cunningham INTRODUCTION 3 I. THEORY 6 A. Conceptions 6 1. Gatekeepers 7 2. Whistleblowers 8 3. Hybrids 10 B. Conditions 11 1. Reputation 13 2. Liability 15 3. Assessment 17 II. FAILURE 18 A. Diminished Reputation Constraints 19 1. Partners 19 2. Firms 20 3. Professions 21 B. Reduced Liability Risk 23 C. Systemic Factors 24 III. CARROTS 27 A. A General Model 27 1. Intuition 27 2. Rational Economics 31 3. Behaviorism 35 B. Private Arrangements 37 1. Services 37 2. Contracts 39 3. Teams 43 C. Public Recognition 45 1. Culture 45 2. Functions 47 3. Effects 48 CONCLUSION 52