cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Heterogeneity, Brokerage, and Innovative Performance: Endogenous Formation of Collaborative Inventor Networks

In this study, I examine how past performance influences the relative positions of actors in a network and how the actor-level heterogeneity in quality mediates the often-demonstrated association between brokerage and performance. On the collaboration network of U.S. biotech inventors during 1976--1995, I find that inventors with superior track records are more apt to form collaboration ties that enhance brokerage, thereby occupying positions that allow them to broker across network boundaries. Controlling for past performance significantly weakens the positive relationship between brokering position and innovative performance. Furthermore, when inventor-level heterogeneity is controlled for through inventor fixed effects, the position-performance correlation disappears. These findings suggest that, at least for collaborative inventors, actor-level heterogeneity such as performance history largely drives the asymmetry in brokerage, explaining most of the position--performance association.
What does the brain tell us about trust and distrust? evidence from a functional neuroimaging study

Determining whom to trust and whom to distrust is a major decision in impersonal IT-enabled exchanges. Despite the potential role of both trust and distrust in impersonal exchanges, the information systems literature has primarily focused on trust, alas paying relatively little attention to distrust. Given the importance of studying both trust and distrust, this study aims to shed light on the nature, dimensionality, distinction, and relationship, and relative effects of trust and distrust on economic outcomes in the context of impersonal IT-enabled exchanges between buyers and sellers in online marketplaces. This study uses functional neuroimaging (fMRI) tools to complement psychometric measures of trust and distrust by observing the location, timing, and level of brain activity that underlies trust and distrust and their underlying dimensions. The neural correlates of trust and distrust are identified when subjects interact with four experimentally manipulated seller profiles that differ on their level of trust and distrust. The results show that trust and distrust activate different brain areas and have different effects, helping explain why trust and distrust are distinct constructs associated with different neurological processes. Implications for the nature, distinction and relationship, dimensionality, and effects of trust and distrust are discussed.
Civil Rights in Ordinary Tort Cases: Race, Gender, and the Calculation of Economic Loss

This article explores race and sex bias in the computation of damages for loss of future earning capacity, an important component of economic loss in personal injury cases. It analyzes recent cases in the United States and in Canada which reject the use of race and sex-based tables to determine awards for female and minority plaintiffs and explains the method used by the special master in the September 11th Compensation Fund. Chamallas explores objections to reform – from both the “right” and the “left” — and makes the case for connecting civil rights principles to civil litigation. 18025-TEXT.NATIVE.1117119517PROF_CHAMALLAS_CLEAN.DOCCHAMALLAS_PRINTREADY5/26/20055/9/20054/14/2005 8:01 AM12:45:38 PM4:51 PM 101 CIVIL RIGHTS IN ORDINARY TORT CASES: RACE, GENDER, AND THE CALCULATION
Group robust stability in matching markets

Abstract We introduce the notion of group robust stability which requires robustness against a combined manipulation, first misreporting preferences and then rematching, by any group of students in the school choice type of matching markets. Our first result shows that there is no group robustly stable mechanism even under acyclic priority structures. Next, we define a weak version of group robust stability, called weak group robust stability. Our main theorem, then, proves that there is a weakly group robustly stable mechanism if and only if the priority structure of schools is acyclic, and in that case, it coincides with the student-optimal stable mechanism.
Do Trust and Trustworthiness Pay Off

Are individuals who trust others better off than those who do not? Do trustworthy people prosper more than untrustworthy ones? We formulate and, using data from the World Values Survey, empirically evaluate predictions about the relationship between an individual’s income and his self-reported attitudes toward trust and trustworthiness, and predictions about how these relationships are mediated by the average level of trust and trustworthiness in the country. On average, exhibiting trust has a positive, while exhibiting trustworthiness has a negative impact on income. More strikingly, the payoff to being trustworthy increases with the average level of trust in a given country.
Changing the Plan: The Challenge of Applying Environmental Review to Land Use Initiatives

This article examines the tension between the environmental review process and the initiative process in land use decision-making. While the environmental review process deliberately imposes constraints on decision makers enacting laws, the initiative process is intended to eliminate constraints on voters' ability to directly enact laws. As a result, states have made a trade-off: either land use decisions can be made by initiative but environmental review laws do not apply, or environmental review laws apply to land use decisions but those decisions cannot be made by initiative. This article contends that both versions of the trade-off are problematic. The first results in a double standard: a land use regulation passed via ballot initiative is entirely exempt from state environmental review laws, even though the exact same regulation, if passed legislatively, would be subject to those laws. The second results in voter disenfranchisement: environmental review is preserved, but at the cost of barring voters from using the initiative for land use issues that may literally be in their backyards. Using the contrasting approaches of California and Washington as a lens to focus the analysis, this Article provides a comprehensive analysis of the textual, structural, and policy justifications underlying the trade-off. The Article challenges the assumptions about the incompatibility of the two processes, and suggests that modifying each process to accommodate the other better reflects the balancing of interests at the core of land use law.
The specification of GARCH models with stochastic covariates

A number of studies investigate whether various stochastic variables explain changes in return volatility by specifying the variables as covariates in a GARCH(1, 1) or EGARCH(1, 1) model. The authors show that these models impose an implicit constraint that can obscure the true role of the covariates in the analysis. They illustrate the problem by reconsidering the role of contemporaneous trading volume in explaining ARCH effects in daily stock returns. Once the constraint imposed in earlier research is relaxed, it is found that specifying volume as a covariate does little to diminish the importance of lagged squared returns in capturing the dynamics of volatility. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 28:911–934, 2008
Is There a Trade-off between Security and Liberty? Executive Bias, Privacy Protections, and Terrorism Prevention

I develop a game-theoretic model of an interaction between an antiterrorist agency and a terrorist organization to analyze how the probability of a terrorist attack varies when the level of privacy protections changes. I derive two implications. First, privacy and security from terrorism need not be in conflict: when accounting for strategic interactions, reducing privacy protections does not necessarily increase security from terrorism. Second, and more important, the antiterrorist agency will always want less privacy. The very agency whose expertise affords it disproportionate influence on policy making will prefer a reduction in privacy protections even when that reduction harms security from terrorism. The analysis has implications for understanding the relationship between government powers and civil liberties in the context of terrorism prevention and times of emergencies more generally.
The Vote Motive

Public choice scholars have written a great deal about the functioning of democracy. Ex cept for my own arguing for a reinforced majority, this has mainly been analysis with few suggestions for improvements. I would like to suggest that public choice scholars begin making suggestions for improvements. There is no reason to believe our present institutions are ideal, and indeed great reason to believe they are not. I suggest that we begin making constructive suggestions for improvements. As a beginning I offer a problem which I hope will attract the attention of scholars in the field and I also hope they will solve it. Suppose that we have 12 voters and they are to make decisions as to which of three alternatives, A, B and C, should be adopted. Their preferences are as follows: 5 4 3 ABC B C A CAB Assume that A is the first motion put forward, a proposal to amend it and adopt B is made, and then a further amendment proposing C is offered. Following the rules of order C is first put against B, and B wins. B is then put against the original motion A, and A wins. But note if C were put against A, C would win. It is not obvious that C is the wrong solution here. Indeed it's hard to think of what the proper outcome should be. We appear to have found a significant problem in democracy. This does not, of course, prove that there is another system without significant problems. Still, we would prefer a system that does not generate paradoxes so easily. I had always been an admirer of the rules of order whether we call them Jefferson's rules, Robert's rules, or the speaker's rules. They appear to be a collection of rules of procedure
KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION TO OVERCOME ONTOLOGICAL HETEROGENEITY: CHALLENGES FROM FINANCIAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS

The shift toward global networking brings with it many opportunities and challenges. In this paper, we discuss key technologies in achieving global semantic interoperability among heterogeneous information systems, including both traditional and Web data sources. In particular, we focus on the importance of this capability and the technologies we have designed to overcome ontological heterogeneity, a common type of disparity in financial information systems. Our approach to representing and reasoning with ontological heterogeneities in data sources is an extension of the context interchange (COIN) framework, a mediator-based approach for achieving semantic interoperability among heterogeneous sources and receivers. We also analyze the issue of ontological heterogeneity in the context of source-selection, and offer a declarative solution that combines symbolic solvers and mixed integer programming techniques in a constraint logic-programming framework. Finally, we discuss how these techniques can be coupled with emerging Semantic Web related technologies and standards such as Web-Services, DAML+OIL, and RuleML, to offer scalable solutions for global semantic interoperability. We believe that the synergy of database integration and Semantic Web research can make significant contributions to the financial knowledge integration problem, which has implications in financial services, and many other e-business tasks.
Predicting mechanical property plateau in laser polymer powder bed fusion additive manufacturing via the critical coalescence ratio

This work is funded by the Department of Energy's Kansas City National Security Campus, operated by Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, LLC under contract number DE-NA0002839.
Technical trading rule profitability and foreign exchange intervention

Abstract There is reliable evidence that simple rules used by traders have some predictive value over the future movement of foreign exchange prices. This paper will review some of this evidence and discuss the economic magnitude of this predictability. The profitability of these trading rules will then be analyzed in connection with central bank activity using intervention data from the Federal Reserve. The objective is to find out to what extent foreign exchange predictability can be confined to periods of central bank activity in the foreign exchange market. The results indicate that after removing periods in which the Federal Reserve is active, exchange rate predictability is dramatically reduced.
Endogenous Competition Alters the Structure of Optimal Auctions

Potential bidders respond to a seller's choice of auction mechanism for a common-value or affiliated-values asset by endogenous decisions whether to incur an information-acquisition cost (and observe a private estimate), or forgo competing. Privately informed participants decide whether to incur a bid-preparation cost and pay an entry fee, or cease competing. Auction rules and information flows are quite general; participation decisions may be simultaneous or sequential. The resulting revenue identity for any auction mechanism implies that optimal auctions are allocatively efficient; a nontrivial reserve price is revenue-inferior. Optimal auctions are otherwise contentless: any auction that sells without reserve becomes optimal by adjusting any one of the continuous, spanning parameters, e.g., the entry fee. Seller's surplus-extracting tools are now substitutes, not complements. Many econometric studies of auction markets are seen to be flawed in their identification of the number of bidders.
PRICING IN AN INCOMPLETE MARKET WITH AN AFFINE TERM STRUCTURE

We apply the principle of equivalent utility to calculate the indifference price of the writer of a contingent claim in an incomplete market. To recognize the long-term nature of many such claims, we allow the short rate to be random in such a way that the term structure is affine. We also consider a general diffusion process for the risky stock (index) in our market. In a complete market setting, the resulting indifference price is the same as the one obtained by no-arbitrage arguments. We also show how to compute indifference prices for two types of contingent claims in an incomplete market, in the case for which the utility function is exponential. The first is a catastrophe risk bond that pays a fixed amount at a given time if a catastrophe does not occur before that time. The second is equity-indexed term life insurance which pays a death benefit that is a function of the short rate and stock price at the random time of the death of the insured. Because we assume that the occurrence of the catastrophe or the death of the insured is independent of the financial market, the markets for the catastrophe risk bond and the equity-indexed life insurance are incomplete.
Sense and Nonsense in ESG Ratings

Concerns about the future of the natural environment, prevailing social conditions, and governance of private and public institutions inspire today’s ESG movement. This paper proposes a heuristic that can be useful in examining the ESG-scoring issue. We begin with a social control diagnostic covering business activities – one that addresses the interests and actions of various stakeholders in the system. We examine its dynamics in the context of economic, social, and political pressures, including various initiatives to set standards against which business conduct may be calibrated. We evaluate efforts to create metrics that reflect normative improvements in ESG outcomes and performance scoring against them. We assess the industrial organization of the ESG ratings industry and review key empirical studies of ESG-driven investing. We conclude with policy recommendations intended to alleviate existing shortcomings in ESG ratings and improve their role in capital allocation and corporate governance.
Lyapunov stability of smart inverters using linearized distflow approximation

Author(s): Saha, SS; Arnold, D; Scaglione, A; Schweitzer, E; Roberts, C; Peisert, S; Johnson, NG | Abstract: Fast-acting smart inverters that utilize preset operating conditions to determine real and reactive power injection/consumption can create voltage instabilities (over-voltage, voltage oscillations and more) in an electrical distribution network if set-points are not properlynconfigured. In this work, linear distribution power flow equations and droop-based Volt–Var and Volt–Watt control curves are used to analytically derive a stability criterion using Lyapunov analysis that includes the network operating condition. The methodology is generally applicable for control curves that can be represented as Lipschitz functions. The derived Lipschitz constants account for smart inverter hardware limitations for reactive power generation. A local policy is derived from the stability criterion that allows inverters to adapt their control curves by monitoring only local voltage, thus avoiding centralized control or information sharing with other inverters. The criterion is independent of the internal time-delays of smart inverters. Simulation results for inverters with and without the proposed stabilization technique demonstrate how smart inverters can mitigate voltage oscillations locally and mitigate real and reactive power flow disturbances at the substation under multiple scenarios. The study concludes with illustrations of how the control policy can dampen oscillations caused by solar intermittency and cyberattacks.
The Mythical Beginnings of Intellectual Property

Author(s): Silbey, Jessica M | Abstract: It has become commonplace to justify intellectual property protection with homage to utilitarianism (maximizing the incentive to create, invent or produce quality goods) or natural rights (people should own the product of their creative, inventive or commercial labor). Despite the on-going dominance of these theories, there remains a dissatisfying lack of a comprehensive explanation for the value of intellectual property protection. This is in part because the economic analysis of law tends to undervalue the humanistic element of intellectual property. This Article aims to fill that void. It offers a new explanation for intellectual property rooted in narrative theory. Whereas utilitarianism and natural rights theories are familiar, there is at least another basis for intellectual property protection. This Article contends that all the U.S. copyright, patent and trademark regimes are structured around and legitimated by central origin myths – stories that glorify and valorize enchanted moments of creation, discovery or identity. As a cultural analysis of law, rather than the more familiar economic theory of law, this Article seeks to explain how these intellectual property regimes work the way they do. And as a narrative explanation for the structure of intellectual property protection, this Article enhances the more customary economic or philosophical accounts of intellectual property because narrative, especially one devoted to myth-making in our society, provides “models for human behavior and, by that very fact, gives meaning and value to life.”Origin stories serve both ontological and epistemological functions. They infuse everyday life and relations with significance by explaining why things are as they are and by providing guidance for how things should evolve based on what we already understand about our world. Origin stories also literally give a culture life by designating a beginning and a history. Finally, most origin stories are political, legitimating or justifying certain relations of power in society. This Article is a comparative analysis of the “origin stories” that structure several branches of United States intellectual property protection: copyright, trademark and patent law. When contrasting the three statutory intellectual property regimes for their structured valuation and reification of their own origin myth, the Article shows how the origin myths structuring intellectual property protection articulate a well-worn story about the origins and continuing vitality of the American republic (rugged individualism and the American dream). Each part also draws on popular cultural stories about intellectual property and a recent intellectual property dispute to illuminate how origin myths structure the respective discourses of these intellectual property systems and explain adjudicative results.Jessica M. Silbey, The Mythical Beginnings of Intellectual Property, 15 Geo. Mason L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2008).
Taxes as regulatory tools: An argument for expanding New York City's taxing authority

This Note explores the regulatory role of tax policy in New York City and argues that the City’s power to tax independently should be increased. Currently, New York City must seek permission from the New York State Legislature to impose new taxes or change the structure of existing taxes. This restriction is justified primarily by the revenue-raising function of tax policy—an analysis that ignores the important role tax policy plays in creating effective regulatory regimes. The first Part of this Note sorts out the tangled relationship between fiscal policy tools such as taxation, regulation, user fees, and spending, and suggests factors relevant to determining which tool is most appropriate to use in a given situation. The Note next discusses New York State’s scheme for distributing authority over taxation and regulation, and provides an overview of local government law. The concluding Part of this Note argues that New York City should be given more independent taxing authority and directly addresses arguments against the granting of greater municipal taxing power.
Antitrust, Innovation, and Uncertain Property Rights: Some Practical Considerations

The intersection of antitrust and intellectual property circumscribes two century-long debates. The first pertains to questions about how antitrust law and intellectual property law interact, and the second pertains to questions about how parties can exploit property rights, including intellectual property rights, to exclude competitors. This iBrief finesses these questions and turns to practical considerations about how innovation and intellectual property can impinge antitrust enforcement. This iBrief develops two propositions. First, although collaborative research and development has often been and remains unwittingly misunderstood, what is understood about it is consistent with the longstanding observation that antitrust has rarely interfered with collaborative ventures. Second, shifting focus from “intellectual property rights” to “uncertain property rights” makes it easier to understand what innovation and intellectual property imply for enforcement processes. Both intellectual property and tangible assets imply the same processes, but the boundaries of intellectual properties may be uncertain and may, in turn, allow parties to game enforcement processes in ways that would not be feasible in antitrust matters that principally feature tangible assets. Even so, uncertain property rights might not frustrate enforcement processes as the antitrust authorities may yet be able to factor parties’ strategic behaviors into the design of antitrust remedies.
Two-tiered entrepreneurship and economic development

Abstract This paper argues that there are two tiers of entrepreneurship important for economic development. One is concerned with investments in productive technologies that improve productivity and better service consumer needs. The other is concerned with the creation of protective technologies that secure citizens’ private property rights vis-a-vis one another. In the developing world where governments cannot or do not protect citizens against predation, “institutional entrepreneurs” devise private mechanisms of property protection, providing the security required for productive entrepreneurship to grow. However, private protection technologies can be a double-edged sword. While private protection technologies enable some investment and exchange by securing citizens’ property where government does not, potential constraints on these technologies’ effectiveness may simultaneously limit their ability to expand investment and exchange beyond modest levels.
Instinctive and Cognitive Reasoning: A Study of Response Times*

Lecture audiences and students were asked to respond to virtual decision and game situations at gametheory.tau.ac.il. Several thousand observations were collected and the response time for each answer was recorded. There were significant differences in response time across responses. It is suggested that choices made instinctively, that is, on the basis of an emotional response, require less response time than choices that require the use of cognitive reasoning.
The Inter-American Human Rights System: An Effective Institution for Regional Rights Protection?

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights are charged with protecting human rights in the Western Hemisphere. This Article explains the workings of this regional human rights system, examining its history, composition, functions, jurisdiction, procedure, jurisprudence, and enforcement. The Article also evaluates the system's historical and current effectiveness. Particular attention is given to the disconnect between the system's success with the region's Latin-American nations and its rejection by Anglo-American States, as well as to the potential to use the system to improve human rights in Cuba.
Contextual alignment of ontologies in the eCOIN semantic interoperability framework

The prospect of combining information from diverse sources for superior decision making is plagued by the challenge of semantic heterogeneity, as data sources often adopt different conventions and interpretations when there is no coordination. An emerging solution in information integration is to develop an ontology as a standard data model for a domain of interest, and then to define the correspondences between the data sources and this common model to eliminate their semantic heterogeneity and produce a single integrated view of the data sources. We first claim that this single integrated view approach is unnecessarily restrictive, and instead offer the view that ontologies can simultaneously accommodate multiple integrated views provided the accompaniment of contexts, a set of axioms on the interpretation of data allowing local variations in representation and nuances in meaning, and a conversion function network between contexts to reconcile contextual differences. Then, we illustrate how to achieve semantic interoperability between multiple ontology-based applications. During this process, application ontologies are aligned through the reconciliation of their context models, and a new application with a virtual merged ontology is created. We illustrate this alternative approach with the alignment of air travel and car rental domains, an actual example from our prototype implementation.
The (Non-) Impact of UN Sanctions on North Korea

This article examines the extent to which UN Security Council sanctions imposed on North Korea following Pyongyang's nuclear test have impacted North Korea's foreign trade.
Quality of XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy: Empirical Evaluation using SEC Filings

The primary purpose of a data standard is to improve the comparability of data created by multiple standard users. Given the high cost of developing and implementing data standards, it is desirable to be able to assess the quality of data standards. We develop metrics for measuring completeness and relevancy of a data standard. These metrics are evaluated empirically using the US GAAP taxonomy in XBRL and SEC filings produced using the taxonomy by approximately 500 companies. The results show that the metrics are useful and effective. Our analysis also reveals quality issues of the GAAP taxonomy and provides useful feedback to the taxonomy users. The SEC has mandated that all publicly listed companies must submit their filings using XBRL beginning mid 2009 to late 2014 according to a phased-in schedule. Thus our findings are timely and have practical implications that will ultimately help improve the quality of financial data.
Advertising Spillovers: Evidence from Online Field Experiments and Implications for Returns on Advertising

AbstractThe author analyzes the impact of online ads on the advertiser’s competitors, using data from randomized field experiments on a restaurant-search website. He finds that ads increase the chances of sales for nonadvertised restaurants significantly. The spillover benefits are concentrated on restaurants that serve the advertiser’s cuisine and have a high rating on the restaurant-search website. The extent of spillovers also depends on the intensity of the advertising effort. The spillovers are largest when the intensity (frequency) of advertising is low. As the intensity increases, the spillovers disappear and the advertiser gains more sales. These patterns are consistent with the following mechanism: ads increase the chance of consumers buying the advertised product but also remind consumers of similar (nonadvertised) options. Higher ad intensity leads to a stronger direct effect favoring the advertiser and can offset the spillover caused by the broader reminder.
Safeguards for mentally disabled respondents in removal proceedings.

The US immigration system has “aptly been called a labyrinth that only a lawyer could navigate,” a beast that is “second only to the Internal Revenue Code in complexity.” Despite the byzantine nature of the immigration system, only about 43 percent of individuals in removal proceedings were represented by attorneys in 2010. Both noncitizens and individuals claiming US citizenship have a statutory right to legal representation, but counsel must be obtained “at no expense to the government,” and detained individuals must overcome significant hurdles when attempting to procure or work with an attorney. The ICE Health Services Corps (formerly called the Department of Immigration Health Services), the division of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for providing healthcare services to immigration detainees, indicates that approximately 15 percent of individuals in immigration detention — about 4,500 of the 33,000 individuals detained on any given day — suffer from a mental disability. Many are unable to obtain legal representation or are pressured into accepting removal without an attorney present. This note discusses the problems mentally disabled individuals face in the immigration system and argues for a new avenue to protect their constitutional rights until a right to appointed representation is gained through legislation or litigation.
Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales

Abstract The growth of Internet-based piracy has led to a wide-ranging debate over how copyright policy should be enforced in the digital era. In this paper we analyze the impact of the US government's shutdown of a major piracy site – Megaupload.com – on digital sales and rentals of movies. Exploiting cross-country variation in pre-shutdown usage of Megaupload, we find that the shutdown of Megaupload and its associated sites caused digital revenues for three major motion picture studios to increase by 6.5–8.5%. Our results suggest that some consumers will turn to legal channels when a major filesharing site is shut down, and by extension that illegal filesharing displaces digital movie sales.
A class of /N=1 supersymmetric RG flows from five-dimensional /N=8 supergravity

Abstract We consider the holographic dual of a general class of N =1 ∗ flows in which all three chiral multiplets have independent masses, and in which the corresponding Yang–Mills scalars can develop particular supersymmetry-preserving vevs. We also allow the gaugino to develop a vev. This leads to a six parameter subspace of the supergravity scalar action, and we show that this is a consistent truncation, and obtain a superpotential that governs the N =1 ∗ flows on this subspace. We analyse some of the structure of the superpotential, and check consistency with the asymptotic behaviour near the UV fixed point. We show that the dimensions of the six couplings obey a sum rule all along the N =1 ∗ flows. We also show how our superpotential describes part of the Coulomb branch of the nontrivial N =1 fixed point theory.
Equality, Conscience, and the Liberty of the Church: Justifying the Controversiale Per Controversialius

This paper considers the central normative claim of Martha Nussbaum’s Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality, viz., that the U.S. Constitution’s religion clauses should be construed to provide equal (and extensive) protection to the vulnerable human faculty called conscience. The paper argues that Nussbaum’s argument from Rawlsian political liberalism that leads to her normative constitutional claim amounts, perversely, to an attempt to justify the controversial by the more controversial. The paper goes on to argue that while equality and conscience are concepts that are reasonably contested, Nussbaum illegitimately gives them priority over the also reasonably contested concept of the liberty of the church(es). The paper concludes by arguing, with the help of Jacques Maritain and William Galston, that the political sphere is better shaped (and limited) by robust respect for the equality of humans, freedom of conscience, and the liberty of the churches (and certain other groups), but without our either pretending that any of them is not reasonably contestable or attempting to mold churches (and certain other groups) in the image of the state. Along the way, the paper evaluates Nussbaum’s claim that Maritain was perhaps the first political
The Constitutionality of Online Vote Swapping

The boondoggles of the 2000 presidential election were not limited to dimpled chads, standards of review, or Supreme Court Justices making a mockery of federalism. The forgotten issue of the 2000 election, and the issue that stands to impact presidential politics in 2004, took place in cyberspace. While an election close enough for hanging chads to decide the outcome is not likely to recur, online vote swapping will be back in 2004.
The three–phase dividend discount model and the ROPE model

The ROPE model is a three-phase model that generates estimates of future dividends by incorporating estimates of return on equity and payout ratios rather than assuming that dividend growth rates decline linearly as in the second stage of the three-phase model. Growth firms often experience an increase in dividends as they move toward maturity because rising payout rates counteract declines in return on equity. Although tests are difficult to carry out, they indicate that the ROPE model provides estimates that are closer to market prices than those of the standard three-phase model.
Decisions, Disasters, and Deference: Rethinking Agency Expertise after Fukushima

This Article examines regulatory failures at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that were identified after the Fukushima nuclear accident. Post-Fukushima analysis uncovered multiple areas of inadequate reactor oversight — earthquake and flooding hazards, emergency preparedness, and risks from potential power loss and spent fuel pool fires. Top level managers within the agency further found the NRC’s regulation of severe accidents to be a “patchwork” that employed inconsistent standards and failed to require operating reactors to address updated risk analysis.Numerous parties — states, localities, nonprofits, individuals and licensing boards — had tried to raise these issues over many years. But the NRC’s rules and procedures impeded effective public participation that could have required much earlier recognition of these hazards. Contrary to administrative law scholarship urging less stringent judicial review to prevent ossification and to allow agency experts room for improving standards, this study shows extreme deference to have undermined expert judgment. Rather, the courts’ hands off approach allowed the NRC to create procedures and regulations that blocked information and constrained decision-makers.This Article draws upon numerous sources: NRC policy statements and individual Commissioners’ voting comments; the Fukushima Task Force Report, staff responses, Commission decisions reviewing staff proposals for responding to the Task Force Report, regulatory updates from staff to the Commission; NRC requests for information and licensee responses; licensing boards, appeal boards, and Commission rulings; draft and final NEPA regulations, draft and final environmental impact statements; General Accountability Office Reports; NRC review of prior regulations and publications by the NRC’s history department.My hope is that this paper can contribute to a process — proposed by Jerry Mashaw — of interrogating agencies internal workings with the aim of ultimately improving the “invisible” aspects of administrative law.
Pulling a Rabbi Out of His Hat: The Bankruptcy Magic of Dick Posner

This essay was written for a volume celebrating Judge Richard Posner's 25 years on the bench. The article considers his opinion in Bank of America v. Moglia, which addresses the status of rabbi trusts in bankruptcy. The rabbi trust is first and foremost a tax device, a way to ensure a contigent delayed payment and yet do so without incurring current tax income to the beneficiary of the trust. But the key condition that delays the receipt of income - namely that the assets of the trust remain available to the general creditors of the entity creating the trust - means that the trust operates as an asset partitioning device and a way to protect assets for unsecured creditors from potential invasion by secured creditors. Asset partitioning is ubiquitous, and we see it in many forms, such as limited liability corporations and securitization. It is rare to see a device that works to the benefit of a changing group of general creditors. The rabbi trust, as seen in Moglia, emerges as superior to the negative pledge, which may be its closest cousin.
The Impact of Explicit and Implicit State Taxation of U.S. Government Obligations on the Structure of Banks' Investment and Financing Portfolios

In this paper we examine the effects of differential state taxation of U.S. Government obligations (USOs) on how banks structure their investment and financing portfolios, the riskiness of banks' assets, and how implicit tax effects are impounded in investments' returns. Twenty‐seven states tax USOs (taxing states) and 23 states and the District of Columbia do not (nontaxing states). We find that banks in taxing states hold significantly greater amounts of USOs, which are among the least risky assets banks can hold, and we find that these banks hold a less risky mix of assets. Consistent with compensating for the lower risk of their asset mix, we also find that these banks hold less capital. Taken together, these results are consistent with effective bank regulation enforcement, since banks have similar capital to risk‐weighted asset ratios in spite of differing tax‐based incentives to hold riskless assets. We also examine the impact of implicit taxes on banks' USO holdings and related accounts and find t...
Between the Kingdom and the Desert Sun: Human Rights,Immigration, and Border Walls

A peculiar construction boom is in progress worldwide: border walls are being installed by wealthy countries at an unprecedented rate in order to control unwanted immigration by poor people. This Article asks why, almost a quarter of a century after the Iron Curtain came down, the walls are now going up again. It suggests a provocative answer: these separation barriers are a logical response by States to the way in which human rights law has been enforced in cases bearing on immigration. In other words, and counter-intuitively, the recent boom in border wall construction signals the success of the human rights tradition, rather than its failure to establish an alternative to territorial sovereignty. At the same time, this Article also uses the case study of walls to make a larger point on the intractability of the human rights regime that bears on immigration. Building on a systematic analysis of jurisprudence, I argue that human rights courts and quasi-judicial bodies utilize an arbitrary category— territory—to balance the policy interests of the individual non-national and the State. The result is essentially random from the perspective of both of these stakeholders. Walls make concrete a perverse side effect of this compromise: because the regime conflates access with territory, it disproportionately rewards strong young men who already have sufficient capacity (in age, gender, or resources) to scale the barrier, even if their predicament may not actually call for protection. But it privileges them only after they have risked themselves, and if they survive that risk at all. And so, at least when it comes to immigration, the DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15779/Z380P11 * Moria Paz is a fellow at Stanford Law School. She is thankful to Gabriella Blum, William Forbath, Martti Koskenniemi, David Luban, Itamar Mann, Samuel Moyn, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Daria Roithmayr, Paul K. Saint-Amour, Hila Shamir, Nomi Stolzenberg, Markus Wagner and Ralph Wilde for reading earlier drafts. In particular, she is grateful to Barbara Fried, Mark Kelman, Amalia Kessler, and Peter Kozodoy for conversation as she developed the Article. She also wants to thank Rich Porter and Sergio Stone from SLS library for invaluable help with the research. Published by Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository, 2016 2 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 34:1 human rights regime operates in effect as a natural selection mechanism. This is fundamentally unstable and unjust. There is no larger eternity than a door marked: closed today. Closed forever; no one’s opening it, no one’s coming. There are no clouds in the sky. Accept the verdict; sign. No one’s opening. Go home, dream on.
Who Fits the Profile?: Thoughts on Race, Class, Clusters, and Redevelopment

This essay shifts the discussion of gentrification and redevelopment to consider the mechanics of exclusion in the formulation and operation of today's commercial retail shopping venues typically included in today's urban redevelopment projects. In particular the essay discusses the exclusionary implications of geo-demographic cluster classification systems that use race and class to construct profiles of desirable customers for urban redevelopment schemes.
Dynamic Consumption and Portfolio Choice with Stochastic Volatility in Incomplete Markets

This paper examines the optimal consumption and portfolio choice problem of long-horizon investors who have access to a riskless asset with constant return and a risky asset (‘stocks’) with constant expected return and time varying precision – the reciprocal of volatility. Markets are incomplete, and investors have recursive preferences defined over intermediate consumption. The paper obtains a solution to this problem that is exact for investors with unit elasticity of intertemporal substitution of consumption, and approximate otherwise. The optimal portfolio demand for stocks includes an intertemporal hedging component that is negative when investors have coefficients of relative risk aversion larger than one, and the instantaneous correlation between volatility and stock returns is negative, as typically estimated from stock return data. Our estimates of the joint process for stock returns and precision (or volatility) using US data confirm this finding. But we also find that stock return volatility does not appear to be variable and persistent enough to generate large intertemporal hedging demands.
A New Affirmative Defense to the FCPA for Countries Exiting Major Internal Strife

In 1977, in the wake of the largest political scandal in American history, the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Facing the threat of massive fines, the U.S. and U.S.-affiliated companies began pulling back from investing in countries that were perceived as “corrupt.” While this is one of the specific goals of the FCPA, there have also been unintended consequences. In particular, this law has harmed countries that have a history of corruption, but because of some form of major internal strife ending recently, are in the perfect position for U.S. companies to enter their market and positively influence the development of a more transparent market. As no current exception or affirmative defense adequately protects this type of action, this paper proposes a new affirmative defense allowing companies to receive permission to enter these nations with a few restrictions.
The Peril and Promise of Preferred Stock

This Article presents a comprehensive legal analysis of preferred stock in the wake of the doctrinally transformative cases ofTrados (2009), LC Capital (2010), and Thoughtworks (2011). These cases mark the culmination of a long and gradual decimation of the legal rights of preferred shareholders under Delaware corporate law. Preferred stock has become less secure than ever, as opportunistic issuers have demonstrated the ability and the willingness to divert its investment value to the common equity. As a result, it is disappearing, along with its unique financial properties that help struggling firms avoid insolvency. This Article offers a novel solution to restore preferred stock to viability: a specific division of corporate control between preferred and common that will allow them to harmoniously co-exist. One central advantage of this approach is that it requires no changes in existing law to be implemented; only clever, sophisticated bargaining by each side is required. 'Assistant Professor of Law, Michigan State University College of Law. Thanks to Dan Barnhizer, Mae Kuykendall, Bruce Bean, Larry Backer, Glen Staszewski, Virginia Harper Ho and all the participants in the Michigan State College of Law Junior Faculty Forum.
A comparison of resampling and recursive partitioning methods in random forest for estimating the asymptotic variance using the infinitesimal jackknife

The infinitesimal jackknife (IJ) has recently been applied to the random forest to estimate its prediction variance. These theorems were verified under a traditional random forest framework which uses classification and regression trees (CART) and bootstrap resampling. However, random forests using conditional inference (CI) trees and subsampling have been found to be not prone to variable selection bias. Here, we conduct simulation experiments using a novel approach to explore the applicability of the IJ to random forests using variations on the resampling method and base learner. Test data points were simulated and each trained using random forest on one hundred simulated training data sets using different combinations of resampling and base learners. Using CI trees instead of traditional CART trees as well as using subsampling instead of bootstrap sampling resulted in a much more accurate estimation of prediction variance when using the IJ. The random forest variations here have been incorporated into an open source software package for the R programming language.
Banks, stock markets, and China's 'great leap forward' ☆

Abstract Using quarterly data for 1995–2005, we examine the role of financial factors in China's recent increases in real sector activity. After describing the institutional challenges that China faces in building a well-functioning equity market to complement its banking system, a series of cointegrated vector autoregressive models and the associated variance decompositions and impulse response functions show that banking sector development was central to these successes. At the same time, we find that stock market development, as measured by market size and trading volume, did not contribute significantly to them. We suspect that lingering questions regarding the quality of China's stock markets are largely responsible for the latter result, though it also may reflect the smaller size of the “stock market economy” relative to the broader economy in which we measure outcomes.