cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
At the End of Our Article III Rope: Why We Still Need the Equal Rights Amendment

It is time for feminist advocates to once again pursue ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (“ERA”) to realize what has not been achieved through litigation in the Article III courts. The application of the Equal Protection Clause to sex discrimination claims has been limited by the failure of the Supreme Court to subject claims of sex discrimination to the “strict scrutiny” standard of review, the Court’s requirement that men and women be deemed similarly situated, and the unwillingness of the Court to allow claims for disparate impact. The interpretation of state level constitutional guarantees of equality has shown that the ERA is the best option to overcome the serious inadequacies in the protection offered by existing equal protection jurisprudence and to achieve rigorous protection against sex discrimination.
Reasonable Provocation: Distinguishing the Vigilant from the Vigilante in Self-Defense Law

The right of self-defense is often viewed as a bedrock principle in the criminal law. That right, however, is subject to certain restrictions. Among those restrictions is the requirement in most jurisdictions that the individual claiming self-defense cannot have provoked the conflict. The precise contours of what constitutes provocation vary by jurisdiction. Each jurisdiction, to some extent, leaves unanswered the question of whether individuals can intentionally insert themselves into situations where violence is reasonably foreseeable and still maintain a claim of self-defense. The key problem in making these determinations is distinguishing between vigilant community members hoping to protect their communities and vigilantes seeking to mete out their own brand of extrajudicial law enforcement. While the former may be socially desirable, a society of laws can have little tolerance for the latter. Defining the boundary between these behaviors requires a carefully crafted rule that balances the interests of society and the needs of the individual. After identifying and examining the three primary frames for defining provocation in the context of self-defense, this article argues that courts should adopt a two-part inquiry when weighing whether a defendant is precluded from claiming self-defense: (1) Were the defendant’s allegedly provocative actions objectively reasonable?, and (2) Was the risk of violence that the defendant incurred reasonable in light of the totality of circumstances? Either as a stand-alone rule or as a gloss on the currently existing frames, this standard would preserve societal notions of justice while providing a measure of clarity to jurors and members of society at large.
Unraveling a puzzle: the case of value line timeliness rank upgrades

We examine a sample of Value Line’s timeliness rank upgrades that occur immediately following earnings announcements and find that pre-event price momentum has significant incremental explanatory power for post-event drift, after controlling for the level of earnings surprise. Therefore, the stock price drift following Value Line’s timeliness upgrades cannot be viewed as driven only by the post-earnings announcement drift phenomenon. Instead, these findings indicate that, among other factors, Value Line has been exploiting the price momentum effect for decades. Black (Financ. Anal. J. 29:10–14, 1973) clearly stated that it does indeed do this, but his assertion has not yet been verified as an explanation of the puzzling drift that follows Value Line rank upgrades.
Merchant Commodity Storage Practice Revisited

Commodity merchants use various heuristics to value leasing contracts on storage facilities as real options and make inventory trading decisions. Two prominent heuristics sequentially reoptimize simple models, leading to the so-called rolling intrinsic (RI) policy and rolling basket of spread options (RSO) policy. The extant literature numerically demonstrates that these two policies are nearly optimal in many realistic settings and can be used with Monte Carlo simulation to obtain fairly accurate estimates of the value of storage contracts. This paper provides a theoretical basis for the observed benefit of reoptimization with these heuristics and additional numerical evidence for the near optimal performance of the RI and RSO policies in several practical cases, but shows that the RI policy significantly outperforms the RSO policy in some of these cases. This research also proves that the RSO policy has a double basestock target structure, a known property of an optimal policy that is trivially true for...
Flexible Bivariate Count Data Regression Models

The article develops a semiparametric estimation method for the bivariate count data regression model. We develop a series expansion approach in which dependence between count variables is introduced by means of stochastically related unobserved heterogeneity components, and in which, unlike existing commonly used models, positive as well as negative correlations are allowed. Extensions that accommodate excess zeros, censored data, and multivariate generalizations are also given. Monte Carlo experiments and an empirical application to tobacco use confirms that the model performs well relative to existing bivariate models, in terms of various statistical criteria and in capturing the range of correlation among dependent variables. This article has supplementary materials online.
The Origin of Parental Rights: Labor, Intent, and Fathers

Most theories of parentage fail to explain the genesis of the right to parent-for example, why does a biological relationship generate parental rights? This Article shows that the law of parental rights mirrors theories of acquiring property, and that the law has shifted over time, from favoring a property right based in genetics to a Lockean theory of property rights earned through labor. The growth of Lockean labor-based theories is epitomized in reforms to parentage laws that incorporate functional theories of parenting, meaning that adults who perform caretaking work that creates a significant relationship with children are recognized as legal parents, even if they are not genetically related to the child. A laborbased understanding of parentage may even reach to gestational work performed by the pregnant woman. This Lockean labor-based theory, however, poses a challenge to male parental rights, because men have fewer opportunities to contribute labor for the benefit of the child. This disparity is heightened in the context of unwed biological fathers, who must create a significant relationship with the child before gaining constitutional parental rights. This Article argues that intent to be a father, as demonstrated through behavior preparing for a child's arrival, should be incorporated into labor-based theories of parentage. Including an intentbased approach will thus address a gendered inequality in existing parental law.
How Much Do Hospitals Cost Shift? A Review of the Evidence

Context: Hospital cost shifting—charging private payers more in response to shortfalls in public payments—has long been part of the debate over health care policy. Despite the abundance of theoretical and empirical literature on the subject, it has not been critically reviewed and interpreted since Morrisey did so nearly fifteen years ago. Much has changed since then, in both empirical technique and the health care landscape. This article examines the theoretical and empirical literature on cost shifting since 1996, synthesizes the predominant findings, suggests their implications for the future of health care costs, and puts them in the current policy context. Methods: The relevant literature was identified by database search. Papers describing policies were considered first, since policy shapes the health care market in which cost shifting may or may not occur. Theoretical works were examined second, as theory provides hypotheses and structure for empirical work. The empirical literature was analyzed last in the context of the policy environment and in light of theoretical implications for appropriate econometric specification. Findings: Most of the analyses and commentary based on descriptive, industrywide hospital payment-to-cost margins by payer provide a false impression that cost shifting is a large and pervasive phenomenon. More careful theoretical and empirical examinations suggest that cost shifting can and has occurred, but usually at a relatively low rate. Margin changes also are strongly influenced by the evolution of hospital and health plan market structures and changes in underlying costs. Conclusions: Policymakers should view with a degree of skepticism most hospital and insurance industry claims of inevitable, large-scale cost shifting. Although some cost shifting may result from changes in public payment policy, it is just one of many possible effects. Moreover, changes in the balance of market power between hospitals and health care plans also significantly affect private prices. Since they may increase hospitals’ market power, provisions of the new health reform law that may encourage greater provider integration and consolidation should be implemented with caution.
Barnette's Big Blunder

Among the most celebrated statements ever issued in a Supreme Court opinion is Justice Robert Jackson's resounding declaration in Barnette v. West Virginia Board that "[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." By using the preposition "or" rather than "and," Jackson asserted two constitutional prohibitions: government may not force citizens to confess an orthodoxy, but government may also not prescribe any orthodoxy. Upon reflection, however, the "no prescription" prohibition is manifestly untenable, and neither Justices nor scholars have ever tried to apply it in any consistent way. Nonetheless, this impossible prohibition exerts a powerful and unfortunate rhetorical influence over constitutional discourse: recent examples discussed in the article include work by respected legal scholars including Kent Greenawalt and Michael McConnell and judicial decisions including the recent Newdow decision on the Pledge of Allegiance. This article first explains why the "no prescription" prohibition could not possibly be taken at face value. The article then considers the various ways in which courts and scholars have tried to qualify or reinterpret that prohibition (such as by limiting the prohibition to religion), and it argues that these efforts do not succeed in avoiding the decisive objections to a "no prescribed orthodoxy" principle. Our constitutional discourse would be more honest and cogent, the article concludes, if Barnette's "no prescription" principle were excised "root and branch."
The Vicissitudes of Tort: A Response to Professors Rabin, Sebok & Zipursky

This response essay probes three themes that tie together three articles submitted for a tort symposium on “The Limits of Predictability and the Value of Uncertainty.” First, I explore the use of unpredictability as a code word for an assault on tort doctrine in response to an out-of-control tort system. In his historical account of the evolution of tort, Professor Rabin focuses on the canonical “no duty” rules of the nineteenth century and the contemporary rules-based limitations on open-textured liability in the twentieth century. But largely missing from this account is the story of rules promoting tort liability, such as strict liability, vicarious liability, negligence per se, and the like. Second, I probe the link between unpredictability and insurance. I argue that Professor Sebok’s efforts to distinguish champerty from illegal gambling and to analogize it to a form of insurance will inevitably fall short of establishing social acceptance or embrace of the practice. Third, I highlight the role of the U.S. Supreme Court and its incursions into the state law domain of tort in the name of predictability. Professor Rabin is doubtful that the U.S. Supreme Court will achieve great strides in its endeavor to quell unpredictability in punitive damages. Professor Zipursky has considerable angst about the Court’s making inroads into privacy and emotional distress torts. Such incursions are in keeping with the Court’s longer-term project of procedural reform of the civil litigation system in the name of unpredictability, but are novel in their ambition to launch frontal attacks.
The Combatant’s Stance: Autonomous Weapons on the Battlefield

Do Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) qualify as moral or rational agents? This paper argues that combatants on the battlefield are required by the demands of behavior interpretation to approach a sophisticated AWS with the “Combatant’s Stance” — the ascription of mental states required to understand the system’s strategic behavior on the battlefield. However, the fact that an AWS must be engaged with the combatant’s stance does not entail that other persons are relieved of criminal or moral responsibility for war crimes committed by autonomous weapons. This article argues that military commanders can and should be held responsible for perpetrating war crimes through an AWS regardless of the moral status of the AWS as a culpable or non-culpable agent. In other words, a military commander can be liable for the acts of the machine independent of what conclusions we draw from the fact that combatants — even artificial ones — must approach each other with the combatant’s stance. The basic framework for this liability was established at Nuremberg and subsequent tribunals — both of which focused on how a criminal defendant can be responsible for allowing a metaphorical “machine” — such as a concentration camp — to commit an international crime. The novelty in this technological development is that the law must shift from dealing with the metaphor of the “cog in the machine” to a literal machine. Nonetheless, this article also concludes that there is one area where international criminal law is ill suited to dealing with a military commander’s responsibility for unleashing an AWS that commits a war crime. Many of these cases will be based on the commander’s recklessness and unfortunately international criminal law has struggled to develop a coherent theoretical and practical program for prosecuting crimes of recklessness.
Expressive Minimalism and Fuzzy Signals: The Judiciary and the Role of Law

In this article, Goodwin offers an alternative view of judicial minimalism. She emphasizes that minimalism or low-level signaling by the court is nonetheless expressive. In the realm of biotechnology, Goodwin argues, judicial minimalism might be driven by three factors: limited information; ambivalence; or an expectation that Congress will demarcate the appropriate boundaries and conduct for biotech actors. Goodwin urges an understanding of expressive minimalism as a form of judicial action as it has communicative force, even if it becomes misunderstood as ambivalence. The author hypothesizes that rather than motivating legislative action, or imbuing the bench with greater wisdom or information, expressive minimalism in the context of biotechnology will likely send fuzzy signals that will not be clear messages to the legislature. If this is correct, expressive minimalism will not result in legislative action. Goodwin is doubtful that fuzzy signals from the judiciary will promote the development of responsive public policy in contemporary biotechnology cases or those to come. Courts have the capacity to articulate principles that acknowledge minority interest when the legislature is captured by majoritarian interests. Therefore, expressive minimalism in the courts will undermine the legitimacy of timely, equitable claims initiated by plaintiffs. By that, the article suggests that expressive minimalism will be understood as denying the ripeness of some claims, or as implying that current law does not fit the futuristic-type problems common in biotech cases. Instead, defaults will be created whereby fuzzy messages will tend to absolve - or at least give a pass to - rogue biotech actors.
Reframing Antitrust in Light of Scientific Revolution: Accounting for Transaction Costs in Rule of Reason Analysis

This Article contends that modern rule of reason analysis, informed by workable competition’s partial equilibrium trade-off paradigm, is suitable for evaluating only a subset of agreements that may reduce transaction costs. The Article distinguishes between “technological” and “non-technological” transaction costs. Technological transaction costs entail the bargaining and information costs first emphasized by Ronald Coase, while non-technological transaction costs result from more fundamental departures from perfect competition, departures creating a risk of opportunism that accompanies relationship-specific investments.
The Influence of Race in Residential Mortgage Closings

This study examines how applicants identified as Asian, Black or Hispanic differ in mortgage closing outcomes compared to the remaining applicants. First, the findings show that minority applicants...
The Theory of Alimony

Although alimony has long been a feature of divorce law, there is no theory explaining why either spouse should have a financial obligation to the other that survives their marriage. Explanations based on gender roles, or assessments of blame for the marriage's failure, are inconsistent with modern attitudes. More recently, commentators and courts have suggested that contract or partnership concepts explain alimony obligations. In Part I of this Article, Professor Ellman demonstrates the inadequacy of theories that use analogies to contract or partnership to explain or justify the imposition of alimony obligations. In Part II he offers a new theory of alimony based on a societal policy of encouraging sharing behavior in marriage by requiring compensation, at divorce, for the loss in earning capacity arising from such sharing behavior. Employing three basic principles, subsidiary rules, and numerous examples, Part II develops this general policy into a comprehensive theory.
Targeted photostimulation uncovers circuit motifs supporting short-term memory.

Short-term memory is associated with persistent neural activity that is maintained by positive feedback between neurons. To explore the neural circuit motifs that produce memory-related persistent activity, we measured coupling between functionally characterized motor cortex neurons in mice performing a memory-guided response task. Targeted two-photon photostimulation of small (<10) groups of neurons produced sparse calcium responses in coupled neurons over approximately 100 μm. Neurons with similar task-related selectivity were preferentially coupled. Photostimulation of different groups of neurons modulated activity in different subpopulations of coupled neurons. Responses of stimulated and coupled neurons persisted for seconds, far outlasting the duration of the photostimuli. Photostimuli produced behavioral biases that were predictable based on the selectivity of the perturbed neuronal population, even though photostimulation preceded the behavioral response by seconds. Our results suggest that memory-related neural circuits contain intercalated, recurrently connected modules, which can independently maintain selective persistent activity. Two-photon photostimulation and imaging of a cortical short-term memory circuit reveal intercalated modules that can independently maintain memory. The modules are defined by connectivity between neurons with similar task-related tuning.
Anxiety in the face of risk

We model an anxious agent as one who is more risk averse with respect to imminent risks than with respect to distant risks. Based on a utility function that captures individual subjects’ behavior in experiments, we provide a tractable theory relaxing the restriction of constant risk aversion across horizons and show that it generates rich implications. We first apply the model to insurance markets and explain the high premia for short-horizon insurance. Then, we show that costly delegated portfolio management, investment advice, and withdrawal fees emerge as endogenous features and strategies to cope with dynamic inconsistency in intratemporal risk-return trade-offs.
Causing Death for Compassionate Reasons in American Law

There is no single American law on causing death for compas sionate reasons. The federal distribution of powers leaves the rele vant areas of law mainly to the states. Federal constitutional law has been invoked only in connection with the outer limits within which state law may govern. So far it has not been successfully employed to invalidate state regulation. Consequently, there are at least 50 laws dealing with end-of-life decisions. Nevertheless, the basic organiza tion of the legal issues has turned out to be similar in almost all American jurisdictions and I will treat the subject generally. It is important to be mindful, however, that, in this respect. I have adopted a significant simplification in order to facilitate exposition.
Stakeholders' implicit claims and accounting method choice

Abstract Based on theory and anecdotal evidence, we argue that ongoing implicit claims between a firm and its customers, suppliers, employees, and short-term creditors create incentives for management to choose long-run income-increasing accounting methods. Variables selected to proxy for the extent to which a firm depends on these implicit claims are found to be significant in explaining cross-sectional variation in inventory and depreciation methods. These variables remain incrementally significant when we include traditional variables found to have explanatory power in prior studies (i.e., leverage, bonus compensation, tax, and regulatory/political exposure variables).
Legal Services and the Organized Bar: A Reminiscence and a Renewed Call for Cooperation

Taken together, the first annual Arthur Liman Symposium at the Yale Law School and the twenty-ninth reunion of the 1969 Reginald Heber Smith community lawyer fellows affords a welcome opportunity to look back over three decades of interplay between the legal services program and the organized bar. My own reminiscence: In the summer of 1969, only a year after the convulsive events of 1968, 250 very young lawyers gathered on the bucolic campus of Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia to spend several weeks in training as future "Reggies." Throwing modesty to the wind, a present-day review of that group's credentials demonstrates that the best and the brightest from the most prestigious law schools had been selected to participate. Legal services in its infancy, sheltered in the dynamic and burgeoning Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), had the luxury back then to fund two-year fellowships for all of these young lawyers. Our mission: to avoid any obligation to engage in day-to-day client intake, and instead to dream up test cases and class actions, launch legislative initiatives, and organize community action programs. Extra lawyers, law reform efforts, lobbying, and community organizing all sound as quaint as high-buttoned shoes to those of us who gnash our teeth over the current restrictions, both financial and programmatic, that cramp the style of federally funded legal services programs today. But in 1969, because of this fellowship and the entire OEO program, anything seemed possible. Poverty would be defeated within a few years. The inadequate nutrition, slum housing, dismal education, and marginal health of the poor in America would all become historical artifacts, eliminated by the efforts of lawyers with a mission. We Reggies were eager and bursting with enthusiasm. Fed daily doses of inventive strategies and innovative approaches, we honestly believed that we lawyers could cure the domestic problems in America, though
Which Institutional Investors Trade Based on Private Information About Earnings and Returns

Recent work suggests that institutional investors execute profitable trades based on private information about earnings and returns. We provide new evidence on the prevalence and sources of such informed trading by (1) testing for the creation and liquidation of positions based on private information, (2) introducing private information proxies that reflect the size and nature of an institution's position in each portfolio firm, and (3) using a methodology that examines multiple investor characteristics simultaneously at the institution-firm level. We find that changes in ownership by institutions with large positions in a firm are consistent with informed trading. However, other previously documented proxies for private information produce results more consistent with risk-based trading (e.g., investment style) or insignificant in the presence of other proxies (e.g., fiduciary type). We also find that informed trading is more prevalent in small firms and when the large positions are taken by investment advisers and large institutions.
Firm Performance, Capital Structure, and the Tax Benefits of Employee Stock Options

This paper analyzes the relation between the capital structure of a firm and the tax benefits realized from the exercise of stock options. Theory suggests that firms with tax benefits from the exercise of stock options should carry less debt since tax benefits are a non-debt tax shield. We find that both long- and short-term debt ratios are negatively related to the size of tax benefits from option exercise. Moreover, one-year changes in long-term leverage are negatively related to changes in the number of options exercised. Such a relation does not exist for changes in short-term leverage. Finally, firms with option-related tax benefits tend to issue equity, with the net amount of equity issued an increasing function of these tax benefits.
Global diversification and IPO returns

A large number of newly listed firms have significant involvement in international business activity. In this paper, we examine the effect of international business activity on the pricing of initial public offerings (IPOs), post-IPO performance, and survival. In a large sample of U.S. IPOs over 1981–2012, we find that firms with exports and/or foreign sales prior to going public have significantly lower underpricing than firms without international business activity. Furthermore, firms with international business activity significantly outperform purely domestic IPO firms over 3- and 5-year periods after going public and have a significantly higher survival rate. Overall, we provide strong evidence that global diversification has an economically significant effect on the valuation and subsequent performance of firms going public.
Business Cycle Monitoring with Structural Changes

This paper examines the predictive content of coincident variables for monitoring U.S. recessions in the presence of instabilities. We propose several specifications of a probit model for classifying phases of the business cycle. We find strong evidence in favor of the ones that allow for the possibility that the economy has experienced recurrent breaks. The recession probabilities of these models provide a clearer classification of the business cycle into expansion and recession periods, and superior performance in the ability to correctly call recessions and to avoid false recession signals. Overall, the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of these models are far superior as well as their ability to timely signal recessions. The results indicate the importance of considering recurrent breaks for monitoring business cycles.
Modeling Geographic Ferrous Scrap Markets: Regional Prices and Interregional Transactions in the United States*

. The U.S. Regional Ferrous Scrap Model analyzes spatial variations in prices for two grades of ferrous scrap using a logistic model of choice under differentiated products. The model uses a computer-generated equilibrium framework to solve for prices that support the observed spatial distribution of supply and demand quantities. This paper presents the model's formal structure and its solution algorithm. The model specification is highly disaggregated with 1,212 supply and 240 demand regions. Characteristics of the equilibrium solution are described for prices and interregional flows. Sensitivity of equilibrium values to changes in model parameters is reported.
The Promise of Grutter: Diverse Interactions at the University of Michigan Law School

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School on the grounds of educational diversity. Yet, the Court’s assumption that admitting diverse students into law school would result in improved race relations, livelier classroom conversations, and better professional outcomes for students has never been empirically tested. This article relies on survey and focus group data collected at the University of Michigan Law School campus itself in March 2010 to examine whether and how diversity affects learning. Data analysis makes clear that there are sufficient numbers of students of color on campus to yield diverse interactions, and that positive interracial student exchanges are occurring. However, the lively discussions that the Grutter Court anticipated are infrequent visitors inside the classroom, where they may be especially important; by excluding these “diversity discussions,” law schools may fail to achieve the optimal academic and professional outcomes often associated with educational diversity. ∗ This article would not have begun nor been completed without the support of a number of groups and individuals. Many colleagues provided feedback that significantly shaped this article into its current form; these individuals include: Kaimi Wenger, Kristi Bowman, Charles Daye, Jerry Kang, Gowri Ramachandran, Rican Vue, and Rebecca Lee. I also thank Erwin Chemerinsky, Devon Carbado, and Rachel Moran for helpful suggestions and advice along the way, as well as Walter Allen, Charles Daye, Abigail Panter, and Linda Wightman for their ongoing encouragement and inspiration. I thank Thomas Jefferson School of Law (TJSL) Dean Rudy Hasl for his support of diversity generally and of this research project specifically. Bryce Dodds and Natalie Ghayoumi provided outstanding research assistance. Versions of this article benefited from feedback received at the Society of American Law Teacher’s (SALT) annual teaching conference in December 2010 and the TJSL Junior Faculty Workshop in February 2011. Finally, I thank the 505 University of Michigan Law School students who participated in the Perspectives on Diversity study, the cooperative administration at the University of Michigan Law School, and the University of Michigan Law School Diversity Task Force for helping with local logistics.
The impact of monetary policy on bank balance sheets

Abstract This paper uses disaggregated data on bank balance sheets to provide a test of the lending view of monetary policy transmission. We argue that if the lending view is correct, one should expect the loan and security portfolios of large and small banks to respond differentially to a contraction in monetary policy. We first develop this point with a theoretical model; we then test to see if the model's predictions are borne out in the data. Overall, the empirical results are supportive of the lending view.
A Formal System for Analyzing Conveyances of Property Under the Common Law

This article reports on the development of a system for analyzing property transfers. Under the common law, the relationship between a transferor's language and the particular present and future interests in property that it creates can be technical and complex. This article describes a system that addresses some challenges in the law the governs property transfers.
Economic Links and the Spillover Effect of Earnings Quality on Market Risk

ABSTRACT: Based on the theoretical framework of Lambert, Leuz, and Verrecchia (2007), I predict that higher earnings quality of economically related public firms reduces a firm's systematic market risk. Using alternative sets of economically related firms, this study provides significant evidence consistent with my prediction. Specifically, a conditional CAPM regression shows that not only a firm's earnings quality, but also the earnings quality of related public firms lowers the loading of firm excess return on the market factor. Regressions based on the three-factor model provide similar results. Further, I provide evidence on cross-sectional variations in the effect of related firms' earnings quality. These results are economically significant and robust in several additional tests. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by providing the first evidence on the long-term externalities of financial information quality in the capital market. Data Availability: All analyses are based on publicly ...
Negative Vote Buying and the Secret Ballot

We offer a model of "negative vote buying"--paying voters to abstain. Although negative vote buying is feasible under the open ballot, it is never optimal. In contrast, a combination of positive and negative vote buying is optimal under the secret ballot: Lukewarm supporters are paid to show up at the polls, whereas lukewarm opponents are paid to stay home. Paradoxically, the imposition of the secret ballot increases the amount of vote buying--a greater fraction of the electorate vote against their intrinsic preferences than under the open ballot. Moreover, the secret ballot may reduce the costs of buying an election. The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.
Why are population flows so persistent

Abstract A neoclassical model of local growth is developed by integrating the static equilibrium underlying compensating differential theory as the steady state of a neoclassical growth model. Numerical results show that even very small frictions to labor and capital mobility along with small changes in local productivity or local quality of life suffice to cause highly persistent population flows. Wages and house prices, in contrast, jump most of the way to their new steady state. The model suggests that cross-sectional regressions of local population growth can help to identify past and present changes in the determinants of representative-agent welfare. More generally, it provides a framework for interpreting observed local growth rates.
Blurring the Boundaries Between Immigration and Crime Control After September 11th

Although the escalating criminalization of immigration law has been examined at length, the social control dimension of this phenomenon has gone relatively understudied. This Article attempts to remedy this deaciency by tracing the relationship between criminal punishment and immigration law, demonstrating that the War on Terror has further blurred these distinctions and exposing the social control function that pervades immigration law enforcement after September 11th prioritized counterterrorism. In doing so, the author draws upon the work of Daniel Kanstroom, Michael Welch, Jonathan Simon and Malcolm Feeley.
Franchise Contracting: The Effects of The Entrepreneur's Timing Option and Debt Financing

We solve a sequential-moves game that involves three players: the franchisor, the entrepreneur, and the banks. The franchisor chooses the contract terms (a one-time franchise fee and a royalty rate for on-going payments). The entrepreneur dynamically decides when to sign this contract, open a store, and apply for debt financing to cover the initial investment. In response to the entrepreneur's application, banks competitively determine loan rates. We find that the franchisor should use royalty cash flows and not the franchise fee to extract value from the entrepreneur. This is a new explanation of empirical evidence that franchise contracts favor royalties over franchise fees. To account for the possibility of the entrepreneur's bankruptcy and bankruptcy costs, the franchisor should decrease the royalty rate. However, despite a lower rate, the threshold for the entrepreneur to open the store is higher in the model with financing than in the model without financing. This threshold is much higher than it would have been for the integrated system, which in turn is higher than the static break-even-NPV threshold. If a franchisor ignores financing considerations, she will suffer from having to wait longer for the store opening and from a higher bankruptcy probability. We predict that the franchisor is the main beneficiary of the entrepreneur's greater initial wealth and that the franchisor will benefit more if she assumes a greater share of the store's operating costs.
Western Frontier or Feudal Society?: Metaphors and Perceptions of Cyberspace

This Article examines how metaphors influence perceptions of cyberspace. Among other things, the Article studies the comparison of cyberspace to the American western frontier and the metaphor's construction of cyberspace as a "place" whose natural characteristics guarantee freedom and opportunity. This supports an often-made claim that cyberspace is different from real space, and that government should generally refrain from regulating the Internet. The Article surveys the basis of the Western Frontier metaphor in academic history and popular culture, and concludes that the metaphor misleads people to overestimate cyberspace's "natural" ability to guarantee freedom and opportunity. The Article accomplishes this, in part, by offering feudal society as a metaphor for cyberspace and showing how prominent features of cyberspace correspond to key components of feudal society. The Article does not claim that cyberspace is thoroughly feudal, but it does argue that the feudal society metaphor valuably dislodges the Western Frontier metaphor and reminds us that law has an important role to play in shaping the future of the Internet.
The Past, Present, and Future of Trans-Substantivity in Federal Civil Procedure

The trans-substantivity principle – the same procedural rules should apply regardless of the substance of the case – has been a central feature of modern federal civil procedure since its beginnings in 1938. In recent years, however, a number of scholars have questioned whether the principle should continue to govern procedural rulemaking. Mirroring this scholarly disquiet, legislatures have crafted substance-specific rules to apply in heavily-litigated areas of substantive doctrine. The future of trans-substantivity is uncertain. In this symposium contribution, I use the history of the rise of trans-substantivity in American civil procedure as a basis to predict its role going forward. This history, beginning in the early nineteenth century and culminating in 1938, illuminates the jurisprudential foundation for trans-substantivity, its normative implications, and the political role it played in assisting the development of court-supervised rulemaking. I then assess the current status of trans-substantivity. Recent legislative developments call the jurisprudential and normative bases for trans-substantivity into question, but court-supervised rulemakers continue to limit themselves to trans-substantive rules. Guided by this pattern of institutional behavior, I argue that the principle, however theoretically suspect, has a role going forward as a mechanism for the allocation of rulemaking power. Court-supervised rulemakers can strengthen their legitimacy if they limit themselves to trans-substantive rules, while substance-specific departures from the principle should come from legislatures.
Common auditors in M&A transactions

Abstract We examine merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions in which the acquirer and the target share a common auditor. We predict that a common auditor can help merging firms reduce uncertainty throughout the acquisition process, which allows managers to more efficiently allocate their capital, resulting in higher quality M&As. Consistent with our prediction, we find that deals with common auditors have higher acquisition announcement returns than do non-common-auditor deals. Further, we find that the common-auditor effect is more pronounced for deals with greater pre-acquisition uncertainty and deals involving acquirers and targets that are audited by the same local office of the common auditor. We also find that there is an increased probability of an M&A for firms with a common auditor. Collectively, our evidence suggests that common auditors act as information intermediaries for merging firms, resulting in higher quality acquisitions.
Rethinking the “Religious-Question” Doctrine

I. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS-QUESTION DOCTRINE ......... 1014! II. THE HEART OF THE RELIGIOUS-QUESTION DOCTRINE 1019! III. A WORD ABOUT THE FREE EXERCISE CLAUSE AND THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE 1024! IV. CONCLUSION 1027!
Policing, Danger Narratives, and Routine Traffic Stops

This Article presents findings from the largest and most comprehensive study to date on violence against the police during traffic stops. Every year, police officers conduct tens of millions of traffic stops. Many of these stops are entirely unremarkable—so much so that they may be fairly described as routine. Nonetheless, the narrative that routine traffic stops are fraught with grave and unpredictable danger to the police permeates police training and animates Fourth Amendment doctrine. This Article challenges this dominant danger narrative and its centrality within key institutions that regulate the police. The presented study is the first to offer an estimate for the danger rates of routine traffic stops to law enforcement officers. I reviewed a comprehensive dataset of thousands of traffic stops that resulted in violence against officers across more than 200 law enforcement agencies in Florida over a 10-year period. The findings reveal that violence against officers was rare and that incidents that do involve violence are typically low risk and do not involve weapons. Under a conservative estimate, the rate for a felonious killing of an officer during a routine traffic stop was only 1 in every 6.5 million stops, the rate for an assault resulting in serious injury to an officer was only 1 in every 361,111 stops, and the rate for an assault against officers (whether it results in injury or not) was only 1 in every 6,959 stops. This Article is also the first to offer a comprehensive typology of violence against the police during traffic stops. The typology indicates that a narrow set of observable contextual factors precedes most of this violence—most commonly, signs of flight or intoxication. The typology further reveals important qualitative differences regarding violence during traffic stops initiated for only traffic enforcement versus criminal enforcement. The study has significant implications for law enforcement agencies and courts. The findings and typology have the potential to inform police training and prompt questions about whether greater invocation of police authority during routine stops for traffic violations undermines, rather than advances, both officer and civilian safety. The findings also lay an early empirical foundation for rethinking fundamental assumptions about officer safety and routine traffic stops in Fourth Amendment doctrine. This Article ultimately urges institutional actors that regulate the police to abandon oversimplified danger narratives surrounding routine traffic stops in favor of context-rich archetypes that more accurately reflect the risks and costs of policing during these stops.
A Political Theory of Blackmail: A Reply to Professor Dripps

This essay was originally presented at the Rutgers Institute for Law and Philosophy as part of the Symposium on The Evolution of Criminal Law Theory. It is a Reply to Professor Donald Dripps’ politically-based justification for blackmail’s prohibition. Under Dripps’ account, by exacting payment from the victim blackmail is an impermissible form of private punishment that usurps the state’s public monopoly on law enforcement. This essay demonstrates that Dripps’ account is either under-inclusive or over-inclusive or both. Dripps’ account is applied to a number of the standard blackmail scenarios by which theories of blackmail are typically assessed. Dripps’ account is under-inclusive by failing to treat as blackmail Victim-Welcomed Blackmail, Non-Monetary Blackmail, Rebuffed Blackmail, and Non-Informational Blackmail which the law considers as blackmail. And it is over-inclusive by treating as blackmail Victim-Initiated Exchange and Unconditional Disclosure which the law does not recognize as blackmail.
The Incentive for Vertical Integration

This paper evaluates the incentive of firms to vertically integrate in a simple 2X2 Bertrand model of two substitutes that are each comprised of two complementary components. It confirms that all prices fall as a result of a vertical merger. Further, we find that, when the composite goods are poor substitutes, producers of complementary components are better off after integration. Thus, at equilibrium, each pair of complementary goods is produced by a single firm (parallel vertical integration). In contrast, when the composite goods are close substitutes, vertical integration reduces profits of the merging firms and is therefore undesirable. Thus, at equilibrium, all four products are produced by independent firms (independent ownership). The reason for the change in the direction of the incentive to merge is that, as the composite goods become closer substitutes, competition between them reduces prices (in comparison to full monopoly) thereby eliminating the usefulness of a vertical merger in accomplishing the same price effect. We also find that, for intermediate levels of substitution, firms producing complementary components prefer to merge only if the substitute good is produced by an integrated firm. Thus, for intermediate levels of substitution, both parallel vertical integration and independent ownership are equilibria. When the demand system is symmetric, total surplus is higher in parallel vertical integration, for all degrees of substitution among the products, even for the case when the goods are close substitutes and parallel vertical integration is not the equilibrium outcome. Thus, the market provides less vertical integration than is optimal from a social surplus maximizing point of view.