cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Warm Glow or Cold, Hard Cash? Social Identity Effects on Consumer Choice for Donation versus Discount Promotions:

Abstract Across five studies, the authors investigate how social identification influences consumer preference for discount-based promotions (i.e., cents-off deals) versus donation-based promotions (in which purchase results in a donation to a charitable cause). In doing so, they demonstrate the interplay between self-construal and a specific social identity (i.e., that associated with the particular charity featured in a donation-based promotion) on consumers' preferences for these two types of promotions. The results show that, in general, consumers possessing interdependent self-construals prefer donations to a greater extent than those with independent self-construals. However, the findings further indicate that these effects of self-construal are attenuated if (1) the donation-based promotion does not involve a charity that is identity congruent or (2) a cause-congruent identity is more salient than self-construal at the time of decision making. The authors also identify boundary conditions of charit...
THE PRESENT VALUE MODEL WITH STOCHASTIC DISCOUNT RATE AND AN ANN PROCESS FOR BROAD DIVIDENDS

This paper uses an artificial neural network (ANN) model to forecast broad dividends, and computes fundamental stock prices with a stochastic discount factor (SDF). Broad dividends are used because they measure payouts to shareholders more accurately. Since nonlinearity is found in broad dividends, an ANN process is fit to these. Empirical results show that the consumption-based broad dividends model with ANN forecasting procedure predicts fundamental prices better, compared with models using linear dividends process, narrow dividends, or a constant discount factor. Nonetheless, actual stock prices remain largely detached from fundamental prices. Deviations between actual and fundamental prices, positive or negative, are found to coincide with business cycles, a result not consistent with alternative models considered in the paper.
Conditioning Prices on Purchase History

The rapid advance in information technology now makes it feasible for sellers to condition their price offers on consumers' prior purchase behavior. In this paper we examine when it is profitable to engage in this form of price discrimination when consumers can adopt strategies to protect their privacy. Our baseline model involves rational consumers with constant valuations for the goods being sold and a monopoly merchant who can commit to a pricing policy. Applying results from the prior literature, we show that although it is feasible to price so as to distinguish high-value and low-value consumers, the merchant will never find it optimal to do so. We then consider various generalizations of this model, such as allowing the seller to offer enhanced services to previous customers, making the merchant unable to commit to a pricing policy, and allowing competition in the marketplace. In these cases we show that sellers will, in general, find it profitable to condition prices on purchase history.
Wrongful life, wrongful birth, wrongful death, and the right to refuse treatment: can reasonable jurisdictions recognize all but one?

While most jurisdictions recognize wrongful pregnancy or wrongful birth actions, very few recognize wrongful life actions. Yet, many of the rationales for and against recognizing the latter apply with equal force to the former. The article examines a variety of arguments offered to justify refusing to recognize wrongful life actions, concluding both that those arguments are unpersuasive and that the developing refusal-of-treatment jurisprudence militates in favor of recognizing an action for wrongful life.
Littlewood–Paley theory for matrix-weighted function spaces

We define the vector-valued, matrix-weighted function spaces $$\dot{F}^{\alpha q}_p(W)$$ (homogeneous) and $$F^{\alpha q}_p(W)$$ (inhomogeneous) on $${\mathbb {R}}^n$$ , for $$\alpha \in {\mathbb {R}}$$ , $$0<p<\infty $$ , $$0<q \le \infty $$ , with the matrix weight W belonging to the $$A_p$$ class. For $$1<p<\infty $$ , we show that $$L^p(W) = \dot{F}^{0 2}_p(W)$$ , and, for $$k \in {\mathbb {N}}$$ , that $$F^{k 2}_p(W)$$ coincides with the matrix-weighted Sobolev space $$L^p_k(W)$$ , thereby obtaining Littlewood-Paley characterizations of $$L^p(W)$$ and $$L^p_k (W)$$ . We show that a vector-valued function belongs to $$\dot{F}^{\alpha q}_p(W)$$ if and only if its wavelet or $$\varphi $$ -transform coefficients belong to an associated sequence space $$\dot{f}^{\alpha q}_p(W)$$ . We also characterize these spaces in terms of reducing operators associated to W.
What Real-World Criminal Cases Tell Us About Genetics Evidence

Rapid advances in genetic and neuroscience research over the past few decades have fueled a focus on how such information is viewed and used by the criminal justice system. Researchers at the University of Utah recently conducted an unprecedented experimental study indicating that psychopathic criminal offenders are more likely to receive lighter sentences if a judge was aware of genetic and neurobiological explanations for the offender’s psychopathy. This Article contends that the study’s conclusions derive from substantial flaws in the study’s design and methodology. The hypothetical case upon which the study is based captures just one narrow and unrepresentative component of how genetic and neurobiological information operates, and the study suffers from serious omissions that affect the validity and reliability of its results. It is important to call attention to these problems given that the study’s widely publicized findings are likely to bolster inaccurate perceptions regarding the dangers of allowing behavioral genetics evidence in criminal cases. This Article concludes with a detailed discussion of a number of recent criminal cases involving behavioral genetics evidence. Familiarity with such cases may improve the real-world applicability of future experimental studies exploring the influence of genetics evidence on criminal cases.
From Dirty to Green: Increasing Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in Environmental Justice Communities

The stifling summer heat that raged across the nation was difficult for everyone, but one group had a more difficult time than others — those who could not afford to cool their homes. Disparities like these will likely only get worse. Low-income communities of color that are already vulnerable and disproportionately impacted by pollution will shoulder a larger burden of climate change impacts. These neighborhoods, often called environmental justice communities, have fewer resources to adapt to the effects of climate change. More measures should be taken to increase the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency in environmental justice communities before the gap becomes worse.A myriad of policies promote the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency resources throughout the United States. These measures are justified by reasons ranging from energy security and job creation to environmental mitigation. Many of these measures are not targeted towards any particular community, but rather are general measures designed to encourage the development of these resources in a particular state or area of a state. A limited number of policies have strayed from this general approach and are designed to target sectors of the population that are more vulnerable to rising energy prices. These policies are often focused on lowering a person’s energy bill rather than reducing a person’s energy needs and environmental burdens. Most recently, the federal government authorized some funding to encourage energy efficiency and renewable energy development in low-income communities in the recovery fund. These funds, however, were limited and are unlikely to reoccur.New policies are needed to increase renewable energy development and energy efficiency in environmental justice communities.
Choice in Computer-Mediated Environments

In the last several years, the increased diffusion of computer and telecommunications technologies in businesses and homes has produced new ways for organizations to connect with their customers. These computer mediated environments (CMEs) such as the World Wide Web raise new research questions. In this paper, we examine the potential research issues associated with CMEs in five areas: (1) decision processes, (2) advertising and communications, (3) brand choice, (4) brand communities, and (5) pricing.
THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF PUBLIC ENFORCEMENT OF LAW

This article surveys the theory of the public enforcement of law — the use of public agents (inspectors, tax auditors, police, prosecutors) to detect and to sanction violators of legal rules. We first present the basic elements of the theory, focusing on the probability of imposition of sanctions, the magnitude and form of sanctions, and the rule of liability. We then examine a variety of extensions of the central theory, concerning accidental harms, costs of imposing fines, errors, general enforcement, marginal deterrence, the principal-agent relationship, settlements, selfreporting, repeat offenders, imperfect knowledge about the probability and magnitude of fines, and incapacitation.
Fire Sales in Finance and Macroeconomics

Analysts of the recent financial crisis often refer to the role of asset "fire sales" in depleting the balance sheets of financial institutions and aggravating the fragility of the financial system. The term "fire sale" has been around since the nineteenth century to describe firms selling smoke-damaged merchandise at cut-rate prices in the aftermath of a fire. But what are fire sales in broad financial markets with hundreds of participants? As we suggested in a 1992 paper, a fire sale is essentially a forced sale of an asset at a dislocated price. The asset sale is forced in the sense that the seller cannot pay creditors without selling assets. The price is dislocated because the highest potential bidders are typically involved in a similar activity as the seller, and are therefore themselves indebted and cannot borrow more to buy the asset. Indeed, rather than bidding for the asset, they might be selling similar assets themselves. Assets are then bought by nonspecialists who, knowing that they have less expertise with the assets in question, are only willing to buy at valuations that are much lower. In this paper, we selectively review some of the research on fire sales, emphasizing both concepts and supporting evidence. We begin by describing our 1992 model of fire sales and the related findings in empirical corporate finance. We then show that models of fire sales can account for several related phenomena during the recent financial crisis, including the contraction of the banking system and the failures of arbitrage in financial markets exemplified by historically unprecedented differences in prices of very similar securities. We then link fire sales to macroeconomics by discussing how such dislocations of security prices and the reduction in balance sheets of banks can reduce investment and output. Finally, we consider how the concept of fire sales can help us think about government interventions in financial markets, including the evidently successful Federal Reserve interventions in 2009. Fire sales are surely not the whole story of the financial crisis, but they are a phenomenon that binds together many elements of the crisis.
Environmental Controls, Scarcity Rents, and Pre-Existing Distortions

Abstract One might suppose that an emissions tax has an advantage over command and control (CAC) regulations since it raises revenue that can be used to cut other distorting taxes. In this paper, we show that the focus on revenue raising is misplaced. In a simple analytical general equilibrium model, we show that the same welfare effects of environmental protection can be achieved, by taxes that raise revenue, certain command and control regulations that raise no revenue, and even subsidies that cost revenue. Instead, the pre-existing labor tax distortion is exacerbated by policies that generate privately-retained scarcity rents.
Gender and Roll Call Voting Behavior in Congress: A Cross-Chamber Analysis

Numerous studies have examined the roll call voting behavior of women in Congress. Much of this scholarship has focused on whether female legislators tend to be more liberal than their male colleagues. However, most of this research has examined whether gender differences exist within a specific legislative chamber. This paper seeks to build on this past research by exploring whether the relationship between the descriptive and substantive representation of women is contingent upon the institutional context in which female legislators serve. Using Common Space Scores which estimate the roll call voting behavior of U.S. Senators and U.S. House members on a scale that allows for comparisons across each chamber this study analyzes the voting records of Female Senators, Male Senators, Female House Members and Male House Members in the 109th-111th Congresses. The results show that in the contemporary Congress, gender exerts minimal influence on how legislators cast their votes with the exception of female Republican Senators who are noticeably more liberal than Republicans in both the House and Senate.
Adaptive h‐refinement for reduced‐order models

Our work presents a method to adaptively refine reduced-order models a posteriori without requiring additional full-order-model solves. The technique is analogous to mesh-adaptive h-refinement: it enriches the reduced-basis space online by ‘splitting’ a given basis vector into several vectors with disjoint support. The splitting scheme is defined by a tree structure constructed offline via recursive k-means clustering of the state variables using snapshot data. This method identifies the vectors to split online using a dual-weighted-residual approach that aims to reduce error in an output quantity of interest. The resulting method generates a hierarchy of subspaces online without requiring large-scale operations or full-order-model solves. Furthermore, it enables the reduced-order model to satisfy any prescribed error tolerance regardless of its original fidelity, as a completely refined reduced-order model is mathematically equivalent to the original full-order model. Experiments on a parameterized inviscid Burgers equation highlight the ability of the method to capture phenomena (e.g., moving shocks) not contained in the span of the original reduced basis.
A Continuous-Time Model of Career Concerns and Human Capital Accumulation

We develop a continuous-time model of career concerns that incorporates human capital accumulation throughout the working life. Workers are able to generate an output that follows a diffusion process with a drift that is the sum of effort and ability ("talent"). Talent corresponds to a hidden process that mean-reverts toward a trend that is endogenously changing over time as a consequence of on-the-job skills accumulation. We find that estimates of talent discount past output observations at relatively high rates, leading to broad inefficiencies in the standard setting of career concerns with exogenous talent specifications. Nevertheless, it is precisely this high-discounting which makes human capital accumulation a channel for extracting additional informational rents from belief-distortion. As a consequence, effort levels are typically different to the ones predicted by previous career concerns models, yet inefficiencies are far from being eliminated.
Testing conditional symmetry against one-sided alternatives in square contingency tables

For a (k×k) square contingency table with ordered categories, letX(Y) denote the row (column) number. The conditional symmetry model is given byP(X=i, Y=j|X Y), ∀i<j. In this paper, we study the likelihood ratio tests of conditional symmetry in a square contingency table against two particular classes of one-sided alternatives. We obtain the maximum likelihood estimators under each alternative. The asymptotic null distributions of the likelihood ratio statistics are shown to have chi-bar square type distributions. A simulation study is performed by comparing the powers of different tests. The theory developed is illustrated by using the famous eye vision data from Stuart (1953).
Deadbeat Dads & Welfare Queens: How Metaphor Shapes Poverty Law

Since the 1960s, racialized metaphors describing dysfunctional parents have been deployed by conservative policymakers to shape the way that the public views anti-poverty programs. The merging of race and welfare has eroded support for a robust social safety net, despite growing poverty and economic inequality throughout the land. This Article begins by describing the influence that metaphors have on the way people unconsciously perceive reality. It proceeds by examining historical racial tropes for Black families and how they were repurposed to create the Welfare Queen and Deadbeat Dad, the metaphorical villains of welfare programs. It also tracks the demise of welfare entitlements and the simultaneous ascendency of punitive child support enforcement intended to penalize both “absent” parents and families with non-normative structures. Ultimately, this Article argues that the focus on demonizing Black parents in the welfare system has created an obstacle to providing necessary resources to alleviate the suffering of a growing number of poor children of all races, the intended beneficiaries of public assistance. “[P]eople in power get to impose their metaphors.”
Children's Welfare Exposure and Subsequent Development

Abstract We examine the extent to which children are exposed to the welfare system through their mother's receipt of benefits and its impact on several developmental outcomes. Using data from the matched mother–child file from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we find that children's welfare exposure is substantial. By age 10, over one-third of all children will have lived in a welfare household; black, non-Hispanic children face a much higher rate of exposure. Simple correlations suggest a strong negative relationship between maternal welfare receipt and children's outcomes. In this paper, we implement three alternative strategies (instrumental variables, sibling differences, and child fixed effects models) designed to identify whether this correlation can be attributed to the mother's welfare receipt directly or to other characteristics of mothers who receive welfare, regardless of whether or not those characteristics are observable to the researcher. Based on the results of all three estimation strategies, we find little evidence of any causal link between maternal welfare receipt and children's developmental outcomes.
Financial Statement Analysis of Leverage and How It Informs About Profitability and Price-to-Book Ratios

This paper presents a financial statement analysis that distinguishes leverage that arises in financing activities from leverage that arises in operations. The analysis yields two leveraging equations, one for borrowing to finance operations and one for borrowing in the course of operations. These leveraging equations describe how the two types of leverage affect book rates of return on equity. An empirical analysis shows that the financial statement analysis explains cross-sectional differences in current and future rates of return as well as price-to-book ratios, which are based on expected rates of return on equity. The paper therefore concludes that balance sheet line items for operating liabilities are priced differently than those dealing with financing liabilities. Accordingly, financial statement analysis that distinguishes the two types of liabilities informs on future profitability and aids in the evaluation of appropriate price-to-book ratios.
A (10/7)-approximation algorithm for an optimum cyclic solution in additive travel-time robotic cells

This paper considers the problem of scheduling operations in bufferless robotic cells that produce identical parts. Finding a cyclic solution that minimizes the long-run average time to produce a part has long been a fundamental open problem. Most research has been focused on finding an optimal 1-unit cyclic solution. However, it is known that an optimal multi-unit cyclic solution can be better than an optimal 1-unit cyclic solution for cells with four or more machines. For additive travel-time cells, we present a linear-time algorithm that produces a cyclic solution whose per unit cycle time is within a factor of 10/7 of the optimum. This result improves the current best 3/2-approximation guarantee.
Management Always Wins the Close Ones

While much has been made of "shareholder democracy" as a lever of corporate governance, there is little evidence about the efficacy of voting. This paper empirically examines votes on management-sponsored resolutions and finds widespread irregularities in the distribution of votes received by management. Management is overwhelmingly more likely to win votes by a small margin than lose by a small margin. The results indicate that, at some point in the voting process, management obtains highly accurate information about the likely voting outcome and, based on that information, acts to influence the vote. The precise point at which this occurs is unclear, though it is likely to be near the "poll-closing" time. Whatever the cause of management's advantage, it is clear that shareholder voting does not constitute a "representative" direct democracy.
Proprietary Costs and the Disclosure of Information About Customers

In deciding how much information about their firms’ customers to disclose, managers face a trade off between the benefits of reducing information asymmetry with capital market participants and the costs of aiding competitors by revealing proprietary information. This paper investigates the determinants of managers’ choices to disclose information about their firms’ customers using a comprehensive data set of customer-information disclosures over the period 1976–2006. We find robust evidence in support of the hypothesis that proprietary costs are an important factor in firms’ disclosure choices regarding information about large customers.
Market potential, increasing returns and geographic concentration

Abstract In this paper, I examine the spatial correlation between wages and consumer purchasing power across U.S. counties to see whether regional demand linkages contribute to spatial agglomeration. First, I estimate a simple market-potential function, in which wages are associated with proximity to consumer markets. Second, I estimate an augmented market-potential function derived from the Krugman model of economic geography, parameter estimates for which reflect the importance of scale economies and transport costs. The estimation results suggest that demand linkages between regions are strong and growing over time, but quite limited in geographic scope.
Monopoly Money: Foreign Investment and Bribery in Vietnam, a Survey Experiment

Prevailing work argues that foreign investment reduces corruption, either by competing down monopoly rents or diffusing best practices of corporate governance. We argue that the mechanisms generating this relationship are not clear because the extant empirical work is too heavily drawn from aggregations of total foreign investment entering an economy. Alternatively, we suggest that openness to foreign investment has differential effects on corruption even within the same country and under the same domestic institutions over time. We argue that foreign firms use bribes to enter protected industries in search of rents, and therefore we expect variation in bribe propensity across sectors according to expected profitability. We test this effect using a list experiment embedded in three waves of a nationally representative survey of 20,000 foreign and domestic businesses in Vietnam, finding that the effect of economic openness on the probability to engage in bribes is conditional on policies that restrict investment.
Public Communities, Private Rules

As the American population grows, communities are seeking creative property tools to control individual land uses and create defined community aesthetics, or distinctive “built environments.” In the past, private covenants were the primary mechanism to address this sort of need. Public communities, however, have begun to implement covenant-type “private” rules through zoning overlays, which place unusually detailed restrictions on individual property uses and, in so doing, have created new forms of “rule-bound” communities. This Article will argue that all types of rule-bound communities are uniquely important because they respond to resident consumers’ heightened demand for a community aesthetic. It will also highlight their problems, however. Many community consumers are marginally familiar with private covenants and traditional zoning, but they are largely unaware of the relatively new zoning overlays used to form public rule-bound communities. Yet the rules in overlays are extensive, are applied to existing landowners, and are not easily modified to meet changing community needs over time. And covenants, despite offering a more traditional tool for aesthetic control, create their own problems of incomplete consumer notice and barriers to effective modification. This Article will analyze the impact of these problems, as well as a lack of responsiveness to ongoing consumer demands for the maintenance of desired rules, on rule-bound communities’ ability to meet consumer demands for a community aesthetic. It will conclude that rule-bound communities should provide better visual notice of rules and should implement processes that allow for residents to better influence the initial content of rules and how rules are perpetuated or changed.
A review of tax research

In this paper, we present a review of tax research. We survey four main areas of the literature: (1) the informational role of income tax expense reported for financial accounting, (2) corporate tax avoidance, (3) corporate decision-making including investment, capital structure, and organizational form, and (4) taxes and asset pricing. We summarize the research areas and questions examined to date and what we have learned or not learned from the work completed thus far. In addition, we provide our opinion as to the interesting and important issues for future research.
Expanding the Empirical Picture of Federal Sentencing: An Invitation

313 Federal Sentencing Reporter, Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 313–317, ISSN 1053-9867 electronic ISSN 1533-8363. ©2011 Vera Institute of Justice. All rights reserved. Please direct requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/fsr.2011.23.5.313. Expanding the Empirical Picture of Federal Sentencing: An Invitation
Tropical Deforestation, Tenure Insecurity and Unsustainability

This article explores the effects of tenure insecurity on the migrant's decision to convert tropical frontier forestland to unsustainable agriculture. We develop and extend a Faustmann model to explore the effects of insecure property rights and unsustainability on the migrant's decision to convert tropical forestland to crop production, to maintain it for long-term timber production, or to mine the forest for timber and then abandon the land. We then provide a numerical simulation of the migrant's land-use decision based on data from the Amazon to compare the returns to mahogany plantation as opposed to agricultural conversion or timber mining, increasing insecurity of land tenure leads to a decline in the value of timber relative to agricultural production and thus creating an incentive for forest conversion. However, when land is easily degraded and tenure insecurity is high, timber mining and land abandonment may be a particular problem. Finally, we examine the role of private and government investment in establishing and maintaining secure land tenure. Once government arrives at the frontier, it can encourage sustainable timber production through providing secure harvesting rights and setting an optimal concession fee.
Lenity on Me: LVRC Holdings LLC v. Brekka Points the Way Toward Defining Authorization and Solving the Split Over the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

According to one recent survey, almost 60% of employees who leave their jobs take company data with them. Indeed, technological advances have made it easier than ever for employees to walk out the door with confidential information: "The digital world is no friend to trade secrets." Companies’ data loss prevention programs have struggled to keep up with such advances during the current economic downturn. In recent years, employers have increasingly filed lawsuits using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to punish employees who absconded with company data and to deter further abuses.This Note examines the debate over the nature of unauthorized access in the context of the maturing circuit split. Part I provides an overview of the CFAA and introduces the cause for disagreement. Part II discusses the development of the split of authority interpreting without authorization under the CFAA and focuses on the milestone cases in the debate. Part III analyzes the recent Ninth Circuit case, LVRC Holdings LLC v. Brekka, and its disparagement of International Airport Centers, L.L.C. v. Citrin, the Seventh Circuit's prior influential interpretation. Part IV evaluates several of the interpretive methods courts have used to reach their conclusions and finds them unsatisfactory to resolve the question. Finally, Part V proposes that courts should interpret the CFAA in light of the rule of lenity to arrive at a narrow construction and definition of unauthorized access.
Market-Based Credit Ratings

We present a methodology for rating in real-time the creditworthiness of public companies in the U.S. from the prices of traded assets. Our approach uses asset pricing data to impute a term structure of risk neutral survival functions or default probabilities. Firms are then clustered into ratings categories based on their survival functions using a functional clustering algorithm. This allows all public firms whose assets are traded to be directly rated by market participants. For firms whose assets are not traded, we show how they can be indirectly rated by matching them to firms that are traded based on observable characteristics. We also show how the resulting ratings can be used to construct loss distributions for portfolios of bonds. Finally, we compare our ratings to Standard & Poors and find that, over the period 2005 to 2011, our ratings lead theirs for firms that ultimately default.
Concerning Self-Love: Analytic Problems in Frankfurt’s Account of Love

In The Reasons of Love, Harry Frankfurt proposes a philosophical account of love according to which there are four necessary conditions for the occurrence of love. We may ask reasonable questions about these four conditions: (1) Is each condition adequately analytically defined? (2) Is each condition plausibly a necessary condition for love, and has Frankfurt defended their necessity with good arguments? (3) Are all four conditions consistent with each other? And (4) if the four conditions are only necessary, and hence tell us only when love is absent, what must be added to Frankfurt’s account which would tell us, just as importantly, when love is present? In this essay I address these questions, although some more than others, especially in trying to understand Frankfurt’s claims about “self-love.” It emerges from this investigation that Frankfurt’s central metaethical thesis, which he has been advancing for three decades—that caring about or loving something logically precedes valuing it, and hence that we cannot have value-mentioning reasons for loving something or someone—starts to fall apart.
Corporate Governance, Enforcement, and Firm Value: Evidence from India

This article analyzes the impact of corporate governance on firm value using a sequence of reforms in India (Clause 49) enacted in 2000, for which more severe penalties were introduced in 2004. The reforms did not apply to all firms and resulted in treatment and control groups of firms with overlapping characteristics. A difference-in-difference approach (controlling for various factors including firm-specific time trends) shows a substantial positive causal effect of the reforms in combination with the 2004 sanction increase. A regression discontinuity analysis, focusing on the thresholds for application of the reforms, leads to similar results. Across various specifications, the estimated effect is at least 6% of firm value. This effect is large, but comparable in magnitude to effects found in other studies of major corporate governance reforms, especially in emerging markets. (JEL G34, G38, K22, O16). The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.
Firm balance sheets and monetary policy transmission

The functioning of internal capital markets in financial conglomerates facilitates a novel identification strategy of the balance sheet channel of monetary policy. We look at small subsidiary banks that are affiliated with the same holding company but operate in different geographical areas. These banks face the same marginal cost of funds due to internal capital markets, but face different borrowers as they concentrate their lending with small local businesses. Exploring cross-sectional variation in local economic conditions across these subsidiaries, we investigate whether borrower creditworthiness influences the response of bank lending to monetary policy. Our results are consistent with a demand-driven transmission mechanism that works through firm balance sheets and is independent from the bank lending channel.
Valuing pilot projects in a learning by investing framework: An approximate dynamic programming approach

We introduce a general discrete time dynamic framework to value pilot project investments that reduce idiosyncratic uncertainty with respect to the final cost of a project. The model generalizes different settings introduced previously in the literature by incorporating both market and technical uncertainty and differentiating between the commercial phase and the pilot phase of a project. In our model, the pilot phase requires N stages of investment for completion. With this distinction we are able to frame the problem as a compound perpetual Bermudan option. We work in an incomplete markets setting where market uncertainty is spanned by tradable assets and technical uncertainty is idiosyncratic to the firm. The value of the option to invest as well as the optimal exercise policy are solved by an approximate dynamic programming algorithm that relies on the independence of the state variables increments. We prove the convergence of our algorithm and derive a theoretical bound on how the errors compound as the number of stages of the pilot phase is increased. We implement the algorithm for a simplified version of the model where revenues are fixed, providing an economic interpretation of the effects of the main parameters driving the model. In particular, we explore how the value of the investment opportunity and the optimal investment threshold are affected by changes in market volatility, technical volatility, the learning coefficient, the drift rate of costs and the time to completion of a pilot stage.
Empirical Implications of Alternative Models of Firm Dynamics

Abstract This paper considers two models of firm behavior that allow for heterogeneity among firms, idiosyncratic (or firm-specific) sources of uncertainty, and discrete outcomes (exit and/or entry). Both the characteristics of firm level panel data sets and the nature of the questions we characteristically ask of them imply that models with these features are likely to underlie most detailed empirical work on microdata sets. The models we consider are a Bayesian learning model due to Jovanovic [20], and a model of research and exploration due to Ericson and Pakes [11]. The paper provides a simple set of empirical procedures to help determine which, if either, of these two models might be appropriate for alternative data sets. We conclude by checking for the implications of the two models on an eight-year panel of Wisconsin firms. The results indicate that one model is consistent with the data on manufacturing firms while the other is consistent with the data on retail trade. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C52, L60, L80.
Policing Protest in the Post-Fordist City

This article situates lower level court cases decided over the last ten years in the context of post-Fordist transformations to urban economies and geographies to address the urban fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Urban public spaces are governed in accordance with norms appropriate for shopping malls or Disney World to attract suburban visitors and tourists. Consequently, demonstrations are zoned away from sites of post-Fordist entertainment to contain their effects. These court decisions indicate the emergence of a neoliberal juridical regime that disarticulates the right of free speech from the practice of democracy
Applying Rules and Standards Accurately: Indeterminacy and Transfer Among Adult Learners

This article introduces the construct of indeterminacy and describes its effects on transfer in adult education. Indeterminacy is characterized as a type of stimulus-response relationship in which the stimulus evokes a response that requires secondary and/or ongoing judgments as opposed to evoking a concrete, predetermined response. Following a brief overview of research on transfer in which we highlight the neglect of a systematic study of the construct, we review extant literature from different disciplines in which indeterminacy has been recognized as playing an important role. During this process, we distinguish it from uncertainty and ambiguity. Based on the review, we hypothesize and provide empirical evidence suggesting that indeterminacy diminishes transfer. On this basis, we argue that understanding, measuring, and controlling indeterminacy is important for the study and design of effective adult education programs.
Bootstraps and Poverty Traps: Tax Treaties as Novel Tools for Development Finance

Current shortfalls in financing required for full achievement of the Millennium Development Goals have led to calls for consideration of novel means of development finance. This Article describes such a novel means of development finance based on a radical rethinking of the typical allocation of tax entitlements in bilateral income tax treaties. The central proposal is for a developing country to surrender, by tax treaty, a portion of its taxing authority in exchange for an upfront capital transfer from the developed country. The developed country would then recoup some portion of the upfront capital transfer through the exercise of the expanded authority secured under the treaty. The Article describes a number of ways in which the proposal represents an advance over existing forms of development finance, including for example, effects on administrative burdens, tax competition, and risk shifting. The Article also addresses a number of potential criticisms of the proposal, relating especially to issues of sovereignty and enforceability.
Staggered Contracts, Market Power and Welfare

I show that exclusive, staggered supply contracts can decrease industry competition when there are economies of scale: buyers pay a higher price to the incumbent seller and the expected value received by an entrant seller is lower when contracts are staggered. Moreover, under staggered contracts there may exist equilibria where an inefficient firm forecloses a more efficient one. Given that contracts are staggered, contract length further increases market power; however, increasing contract length may also eliminate the inefficient foreclosure equilibrium. Finally, I show that, allowing firms to choose contract structure endogenously, the resulting equilibrium path features staggered contracts.
Specialization and Variety in Repetitive Tasks: Evidence from a Japanese Bank

Sustaining operational productivity in the completion of repetitive tasks is critical to many organizations' success. Yet research points to two different work-design--related strategies for accomplishing this goal: specialization to capture the benefits of repetition and variety (i.e., working on different tasks) to keep workers motivated and provide them opportunities to learn. In this paper, we investigate how these two strategies may bring different productivity benefits over time. For our empirical analyses, we use two and a half years of transaction data from a Japanese bank's home loan application-processing line. We find that over the course of a single day, specialization, as compared to variety, is related to improved worker productivity. However, when we examine workers' experience across a number of days, we find that variety helps improve worker productivity. Additionally, we show that part of this benefit results from workers' cumulative experience with changeovers. Our results highlight the need for organizations to transform specialization and variety into mutually reinforcing strategies rather than treating them as mutually exclusive. Overall, our paper identifies new ways to improve operational performance through the effective allocation of work. This paper was accepted by Christian Terwiesch, operations management.
Search in the Labor Market under Imperfectly Insurable Income Risk

This paper develops a general equilibrium model with unemployment and noncooperative wage determination to analyze the importance of incomplete markets when risk-averse agents are subject to idiosyncratic employment shocks. A version of the model calibrated to the U.S. shows that market incompleteness affects individual behavior and aggregate conditions: it reduces wages and unemployment but increases vacancies. Additionally, the model explains the average level of unemployment insurance observed in the U.S. A key mechanism is the joint influence of imperfect insurance and risk aversion in the wage bargaining. The paper also proposes a novel solution to solve this heterogeneous-agent model.
Contract, Warranty, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

You can allay fears that your car transmission will fail by purchasing a 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty, but you cannot purchase a warranty against your surgeon botching your appendectomy—or even leaving a sponge in your body. Why? Imagine a world in which health care providers offered warranties, which would necessarily vary with condition complexity and physician skill. Doctors could offer minimal warranties for complex, difficult-to-treat conditions, i.e., “I’ll offer a warranty that you will receive this experimental drug for your chronic disease—but there’ll be no warranty offered for a cure.” The standard arm fracture would receive a more complete guarantee: “You’ll be fine in three weeks or you won’t have to pay me.” These warranties would ameliorate what economists call medicine’s information asymmetry—unlike purchasers of food in a supermarket, consumers cannot verify what health care treatment they need or if it was provided competently. Because doctors make more money by doing more tests, procedures, and exams—and
Disability and Employment: Reevaluating the Evidence in Light of Reporting Errors

Measurement error in health and disability status has been widely accepted as a central problem in social science research. Long-standing debates about the prevalence of disability, the role of health in labor market outcomes, and the influence of federal disability policy on declining employment rates have all emphasized issues regarding the reliability of self-reported disability. In addition to random error, inaccuracy in survey datasets may be produced by a host of economic, social, and psychological factors that can lead respondents to misreport work capacity. We develop a nonparametric foundation for assessing how assumptions on the reporting error process affect inferences on the employment gap between the disabled and nondisabled. Rather than imposing the strong assumptions required to obtain point identification, we derive sets of bounds that formalize the identifying power of primitive nonparametric assumptions that appear to share broad consensus in the literature. Within this framework, we int...
Who Should do the Math? Materiality Issues in Disclosures that Require Investors to Calculate the Bottom Line

Corporations sometimes tread a fine line by disclosing the data necessary to calculate the bottom line impact of a particular set of facts, while failing to disclose the bottom line itself. For example, in 2002, Merck & Co., Inc., disclosed that one of its subsidiaries had recognized as revenue co-payments it never actually received, but failed to disclose that the total amount so recognized was $5.54 billion for the year 2001. When plaintiffs challenge such incomplete disclosure, courts routinely dismiss their claims based upon what I call the Simple Math rule. The Simple Math rule states that, assuming a material bottom line, disclosing the data necessary to calculate the bottom line suffices to make failure to do the math for investors an immaterial omission as a matter of law. This is, in fact, what the Third Circuit concluded in the Merck case. I argue, however, that courts should apply what I call the Reasonably Available Data rule, which builds upon existing materiality doctrines to analyze each particular omission on its own facts. Specifically, I argue that when courts are presented with the question of whether failure to explicitly disclose the bottom line constitutes a material omission, they should ask: (1) whether all the relevant pieces of data necessary to calculate the bottom line were disclosed proximately to one another and the place where a reasonable investor would expect to find them; (2) whether the data was cross-referenced to; and (3) whether the import of the data was sufficiently highlighted to alert the reasonable investor. In addition, where the bottom line was omitted in a corrective disclosure, that fact should weigh in favor of finding materiality. Finally, a presumption of materiality should be applied where the bottom line is subsequently made public and the market reacts negatively to that disclosure. This proposed approach is consistent with the Supreme Court's admonition against the use of bright-line rules in the context of materiality determinations. Furthermore, it makes sense from a policy standpoint because it continues to serve the safety-valve function of the Simple Math rule by allowing courts to dismiss frivolous claims, while avoiding the erosion of a materiality standard that is so integral to our modern disclosure regime.