cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Least-squares approach to risk parity in portfolio selection

The risk parity portfolio selection problem aims to find such portfolios for which the contributions of risk from all assets are equally weighted. Portfolios constructed using the risk parity approach are a compromise between two well-known diversification techniques: minimum variance optimization and the equal weighting approach. In this paper, we discuss the problem of finding portfolios that satisfy risk parity over either individual assets or groups of assets. We describe the set of all risk parity solutions by using convex optimization techniques over orthants and we show that this set may contain an exponential number of solutions. We then propose an alternative non-convex least-squares model whose set of optimal solutions includes all risk parity solutions, and propose a modified formulation which aims at selecting the most desirable risk parity solution according to a given criterion. When general bounds are considered, a risk parity solution may not exist. In this case, the non-convex least-squar...
Turnout, Status, and Identity: Mobilizing Latinos to Vote with Group Appeals

The rise of micro-targeting in American elections raises new questions about the effects of identity-based mobilization strategies. In this article, we bring together theories of expressive voting with literature on racial and ethnic identification to argue that prior studies, which have found either weak or null effects of identity messages targeting minority groups, have missed a crucial moderating variable—identity strength—that varies across both individuals and communities. Identity appeals can have powerful effects on turnout, but only when they target politicized identities to which individuals hold strong prior attachments. Using two innovative GOTV field experiments that rely on publicly available data as a proxy for identity strength, we show that the effects of both ethnic and national identity appeals among Latinos in California and Texas are conditional on the strength of those identities in different communities and among different Latino subgroups.
Abstention: The Unexpected Power of Withholding Your Vote

id=1451131). 67 U.S. CONST. art. I, § 5. 6 See C6rte-Real & Pereira, supra note 66, 354 tbl.1; Aguiar-Conraria & Magalhles, supra note 66, at 2. 69 See C6rte-Real & Pereira, supra note 66, at 354-55, 354 tbl. 1; Aguiar-Conraria & Magalhffes, supra note 66, at 2. 600 [Vol. 43:585 THE UNEXPECTED POWER OF WITHHOLDING YOUR VOTE When used on either a small or large scale, such requirements are intended to ensure that outcomes are representative of the entire electorate. But they give rise to a version of the No-Show Paradox. In the presence of such quorum requirements, it is fairly easy to conjure up situations where voters are better off abstaining than showing up and casting a vote for their preferred alternative. If a voter is against the proposition, she gets what she wants if either the quorum requirement is met and a majority of "no" votes exists or the quorum requirement is not met. Thus, she faces a dilemma. She can show up and vote no, in which case she registers her preference but contributes toward the quorum requirement, or she can abstain, in which case she doesn't contribute toward the turnout requirement but fails to register her preference. In cases where she calculates that she is more likely to defeat the proposal with the latter strategy than the former, she abstains. Thus, this is another instance where a voter may be better off abstaining. This version of the paradox is significant for several reasons. First, unlike the earlier examples, it may occur in a non-sequential voting procedure applied to just two alternatives. Second, there is good evidence that this version of the paradox has occurred and has been acted upon (or, more aptly, not acted upon). In 2003, Texas Democrats in the state house and state senate fled to Oklahoma and New Mexico, respectively, in order to defeat quorum requirements in an attempt to prevent passage of a redistricting bill that would have favored Republicans.o On a larger scale, Italian voters were presented with a referendum in 2005 that would have liberalized the regulation of in vitro fertilization. 1 The Catholic Church opposed the measure, and Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech just four days before the vote asking, "What is the principle of wisdom, if not to abstain from all that is odious to God?" 72 Italian voters took the hint: even though ninety percent of people who actually voted supported the changes, turnout was well below the required majority participation quorum, leading to defeat of the measure.7 3 While these examples undercut the claim that this version of the No-Show Paradox sneaks up on more sophisticated political actors-indeed, quorum-busting is a well-known legislative technique-it does help reinforce just how many democratic decision-making procedures are vulnerable to it.
Accounting Standards Harmonization and Financial Statement Comparability: Evidence from Transnational Information Transfer

This paper investigates whether accounting standards harmonization enhances the comparability of financial information across countries. I hypothesize that a firm yet to announce earnings reacts more strongly to the earnings announcement of a foreign firm when both report under the same rather than different accounting standards. My analysis of abnormal price reactions for a global sample of firms supports the prediction. Next, in an attempt to control for the underlying economic comparability and the effects of changes in reporting quality, I use a difference-in-differences design around the mandatory introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards. I find that mandatory adopters experience a significant increase in market reactions to the release of earnings by voluntary adopters compared to the period preceding mandatory adoption. This increase is not observed for nonadopters. Taken together, the results show that accounting standards harmonization facilitates transnational information transfer and suggest financial statement comparability as a direct mechanism.
Discussion of "Taxable Income as a Performance Measure: The Effects of Tax Planning and Earnings Quality"*

Ayers, Jiang and Laplante (2008) provide evidence that the association between taxable income and market returns is a function of the level of noise in taxable income. Their study extends the nascent but growing literature which documents a correlation between taxable income and market returns - a result which holds up in multivariate analyses that properly control for book income (e.g., Hanlon, 2005; Hanlon, Laplante and Shevlin, 2005; Lev and Nissim, 2004; and Shevlin, 2002). Ayers et al. (2008) partition their sample firms based on the extent of tax planning and provide evidence that the noise introduced by this activity weakens the association between taxable income and returns. This result provides a useful contribution to the literature because it strengthens the body of evidence which suggests that taxable income incorporates elements of economic income. The paper also provides evidence which addresses whether the association between taxable income and market returns is a function of the noise in book income. This discussion will focus on three issues: (1) hypothesis development, (2) research design, and (3) directions for future research.
IPO Information Aggregation and Underwriter Quality

A key distinction between some models of IPO pricing (e.g., auctions and bookbuilding) and others (e.g., fixed-priced models) is whether price discovery occurs in the primary or secondary market. Higher investment bank reputation is associated with 1) more active filing price revisions and 2) reduced secondary market volatility, indicating greater resolution of uncertainty before trading begins. Revisions of nonreputable banks cluster on exactly zero dollars. Finally, the "partial adjustment" phenomenon -- often attributed to information aggregation -- is primarily due to the behavior of reputable underwriters. We conclude that theoretical models of primary market information aggregation are better suited for reputable underwriters. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.
Secularism in French Public Schools: Back to War? The French Statute of March 15, 2004

Through laicite, France exhibits a uniqueness which distinguishes it not only from countries that combine protection of religious pluralism and a state religion, but also from those which embrace separation of Church and State with an asserted sense of accommodation. The March 15, 2004 statute offers the latest illustration of this unique conceptualization of secularism in the context of a massive state-sponsored educational system. By prohibiting public school students from wearing conspicuous religious garb, it revives the era of confrontational secularism that had been largely derailed by the enactment of the law of 1905 coupled with the Conseil d'Etat's balanced interpretation. If examined from an Aristotelian standpoint, the new ban proves to allow indirect discrimination against students whose religions require conspicuous sartorial expression. In contradistinction, those who are not subjected to such a religious precept may comfortably avail themselves of the legality of discreet religious symbols. Thus, as religious pluralism is intensifying in France, the implications of this unique approach to secularism are compounded by a particularly universalistic construction of equality.
On Transfer Learning of Traditional Frequency and Time Domain Features in Turning

There has been an increasing interest in leveraging machine learning tools for chatter prediction and diagnosis in discrete manufacturing processes. Some of the most common features for studying chatter include traditional signal processing tools such as Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), Power Spectral Density (PSD), and the Auto-correlation Function (ACF). In this study, we use these tools in a supervised learning setting to identify chatter in accelerometer signals obtained from a turning experiment. The experiment is performed using four different tool overhang lengths with varying cutting speed and the depth of cut. We then examine the resulting signals and tag them as either chatter or chatter-free. The tagged signals are then used to train a classifier. The classification methods include the most common algorithms: Support Vector Machine (SVM), Logistic Regression (LR), Random Forest (RF), and Gradient Boost (GB). Our results show that features extracted from the Fourier spectrum are the most informative when training a classifier and testing on data from the same cutting configuration yielding accuracy as high as %96. However, the accuracy drops significantly when training and testing on two different configurations with different structural eigenfrequencies. Thus, we conclude that while these traditional features can be highly tuned to a certain process, their transfer learning ability is limited. We also compare our results against two other methods with rising popularity in the literature: Wavelet Packet Transform (WPT) and Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD). The latter two methods, especially EEMD, show better transfer learning capabilities for our dataset.
Harm to Competition Under the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines

In August, 2010, the Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission issued new Guidelines for assessing horizontal mergers under the antitrust laws. These Guidelines were long awaited not merely because of the lengthy interval between them and previous Guidelines but also because enforcement policy had drifted far from the standards articulated in the previous Guidelines. The 2010 Guidelines are distinctive manly for two things. One is briefer and less detailed treatment of market delineation. The other is an expanded set of theories of harm that justify preventing mergers or reversing mergers that have already occurred. The 2010 Guidelines reflect a growing belief that in markets where product differentiation is minimal competition tends to be robust and the structural presumptions stated in previous Guidelines were too harsh. By contrast, where product differentiation is substantial the Guidelines’ approach tended to define markets too broadly, overlooking significantly anticompetitive possibilities. Under the 2010 Guidelines unilateral effects analysis relevant markets can be very small, often limited to three or four firms, and excluding some obvious substitutes. Markets in merger analysis are not defined for their own sake, however, but rather to ascertain whether a particular alteration in market structure covered by the merger provisions will be likely to facilitate a price increase. The 2010 Guidelines address four substantive merger concerns: exclusion, restraints on innovation, unilateral effects, and coordinated effects. The Guidelines have a separate section on mergers limiting “innovation and product variety,” treated mainly in the category of unilateral effects. The 2010 Guidelines are more flexible than previous Guidelines and also more catholic about the types of harms that mergers might cause and the techniques that can be used to assess them. Older Guidelines were excessively wed to methodologies that were at the forefront of applied merger analysis when they were drafted, but that tended to make the Guidelines obsolete as new methodologies became available. Not only do methodologies change, they are also specific to the situation. Further, they tend to be well developed in the literature and accessible to experts consulted by those defending a merger as well as to the government economists who employ them. To be sure, there is a tradeoff between flexibility and guidance. Often we can have more of one only by giving up some of the other, and that tradeoff is clearly present in the 2010 Guidelines.
Don't Ask Us to Explain Ourselves, Don't Tell Us What to Do: The Boy Scouts' Exclusion of Gay Members and the Necessity of Independent Judicial Review

In Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, the U.S. Supreme Court held by a five to four majority that the Boy Scouts of America is entitled to ban gay persons from membership despite New Jersey's prohibition against sexual orientation discrimination. The Dale majority sharply departed from the Court's long line of expressive association cases, in which it has rejected the claims of private clubs that application of civil rights laws to their membership policies violates their associational rights. This Author argues that by "reading" the plaintiff in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale as a cipher for gay sex, and by accepting the Scouts' claim of conflict without further inquiry, the Supreme Court takes the model of a judiciary neutral with respect to the marketplace of ideas and distorts it into a judiciary powerless to accord sufficient weight to a state's interest in protecting civil rights. The Author reviews evidence of the Boy Scouts' moral expression and demonstrates that there are ample grounds to support the New Jersey Supreme Court's conclusion that the Scouts' exclusionary policy conflicts so directly with the organization's expressed views that the ban is explainable only by animus. The Author concludes with a concern for future civil rights litigation: that a state's nondiscrimination protections -- particularly for groups not afforded heightened constitutional scrutiny -- effectively may be eviscerated with nothing more than a potential excluder's say-so.
Fear of service outsourcing: is it justified?

Is it justified? The recent media and political attention on service outsourcing from developed to developing countries gives the impression that outsourcing is exploding. As a result, workers in industrial countries are anxious about job losses. This paper aims to establish what are the hypes and what are the facts. The results show that although service outsourcing has been steadily increasing it is still very low, and that in the United States and many other industrial countries ‘insourcing’ of services is greater than outsourcing. Using the United Kingdom as a case study, we find that job growth at a sectoral level is not negatively related to service outsourcing. — Mary Amiti and Shang-Jin Wei
Health Care Competition Law in the Shadow of State Action: Minimizing MACs

How should we go about reconciling competition and consumer protection in health care, given the long shadow cast by the state action doctrine? We consider that issue, using a case study drawn from an obscure corner of the pharmaceutical reimbursement market to motivate and inform our analysis. We show how the balance between competition and consumer protection has been distorted by the political economy of health care regulation – compounded by the extension of the state action doctrine far past its defensible borders. If anything, considerations of political economy argue for much greater skepticism about the utility of regulation – and of the state action doctrine -in the health care space. * Hyman is H. Ross and Helen Workman Chair in Law and Professor of Medicine at the University of Illinois. Beginning January, 2017, he will be a Professor of Law at Georgetown University. From 2001-2004, he served as Special Counsel at the Federal
Recursive Modeling of Nonlinear Dynamics in UK Stock Returns

This paper presents results from recursive modeling of nonlinear dynamics in UK stock returns. A specification search suggests a two-state model and we demonstrate the ability of this model to capture time-varying volatility, skew and kurtosis in UK stock returns. An out-of-sample forecasting experiment confirms the strong statistical evidence of nonlinearity and shows that accounting for regimes leads to improved forecasting performance.
Do financial market developments influence accounting practices? Credit default swaps and borrowers׳ reporting conservatism

This paper investigates whether the initiation of trading in credit default swaps (CDSs) on a borrowing firm׳s outstanding debt is associated with a decline in that firm׳s reporting conservatism. CDS investments can modify lenders׳ payoffs on their loan portfolios by providing insurance on negative credit outcomes. The onset of CDS trading reduces lenders׳ incentives to continuously monitor borrowers and also their demand that borrowers report conservatively. Additionally, borrowers expect CDS-insured lenders to be more intransigent in renegotiations triggered by defaults and covenant violations. Since conservatism can trigger earlier covenant violations, borrowers have heightened incentives to report less conservatively in the post-CDS period. Using a differences-in-differences research design, we observe a decline in borrowing firms׳ reporting conservatism after CDS trade initiation. This effect is more pronounced when reputation costs lenders face from reducing monitoring are lower, when debt contracts outstanding at the time of CDS trade initiation have more financial covenants, and when lenders who monitor borrowers more regularly in the pre-CDS period enter into CDS contracts to hedge their credit exposures.
The Mystery of Old Bailey Counsel

This article proffers a hypothesis about a persistent historical mystery: Why did the use of defence lawyers in felony trials at the Old Bailey increase so noticeably in the last quarter of the eighteenth century?
Coordinating Effort under Team-Based and Individual Incentives: An Experimental Analysis*

This paper explores the behavior of workers in an environment where it is efficient to engage in the mutual exchange of help. Experimental data show that output and workers' payoffs are greater under team-based incentives than under individual incentives in an environment where coordination is difficult. However, when the environment is more conducive to coordination (that is, a setting where agents interact repeatedly), output and payoffs are greater under individual incentives. Manipulation of the amount of mutually observable information provides evidence that team-based incentives, relative to individual incentives, create a more difficult coordination problem for workers and that cooperation requires a richer informational environment.
Investor sophistication and disclosure clienteles

This paper explores the idea of disclosure clienteles. Disclosure clienteles refer to the ability of different types of disclosure activities to differentially benefit investors with varying levels of sophistication. Disclosure clienteles exist because variation in investor sophistication affects investors’ ability to utilize disclosed information and thus their preferences for distinct disclosure activities. I use cross-sectional variation in inefficient exercise activity in the options market to identify variation in sophistication (e.g., investors’ attention, knowledge, and expertise) and then present empirical evidence consistent with disclosure clienteles. The results show that sophisticated investors concentrate their trading in firms that regularly issue earnings guidance. This relation is stronger before RegFD, when sophisticated investors’ preferences for forecasting firms are predicted to be greater. Alternatively, less sophisticated investors are more prevalent in firms with increased levels of press-dissemination and superior investor relations (e.g., better access to information on the corporate website). These results suggest investors’ demand for disclosure is partially driven by their ability to use disclosed information.
How Does the Strength of the Financial Regulatory Regime Influence Auditors' Judgments to Constrain Aggressive Reporting in a Principles-Based Versus Rules-Based Accounting Environment?

SYNOPSIS: With the movement toward adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) worldwide, a question arises as to whether the adoption of a principles-based approach, such as IFRS, will ultimately result in higher-quality financial reporting. This issue is particularly relevant because, even though for now the SEC is not adopting IFRS, the securities markets and the SEC still need to ponder the implications of a decision that may lead to the ultimate adoption of, or at least some degree of convergence with, IFRS in the U.S. To examine this issue, we employ an experiment with 97 experienced auditors as participants. Using a case setting involving the classification of a lease (operating versus capital), we manipulate the accounting standard type as rules-based or principles-based, and the regulatory regime as stronger or weaker. The lease setting is one where there are indications of management's incentives to leave the debt off of the balance sheet and, hence, engage in aggressive repor...
After the Reasonable Man: Getting Over the Subjectivity/Objectivity Question

This article challenges the conventional notion of the "reasonable man." It argues that we make a category mistake when we adopt the metaphor of a human being as the starting point for analysis of the criminal law and instead offers an alternate approach based on heuristic theory, reconceiving the reasonable man as a heuristic that serves as the site for debate over majoritarian norms. The article posits that the debate over having a purely subjective standard and a purely objective standard obscures the commonsense necessity of having a hybrid standard, one which takes into account the characteristics of a particular defendant at the same time that it provides normative guidance. The analysis then proceeds to examine what happens when this hybrid standard is applied to the problem of the reasonable woman. The article concludes by arguing that equality would be better served by a normative analysis rather than one mired in the subjectivity/objectivity debate.
The Effect of High-Quality Information Technology on Corporate Tax Avoidance and Tax Risk

ABSTRACT We examine the effect of high-quality information technology (IT) on corporate tax outcomes. Using a measure of IT quality constructed from rankings in InformationWeek magazine, we find that firms with high-quality IT are able to achieve both lower and less volatile cash effective tax rates than are other firms. These results suggest that firms with high-quality IT are able to avoid more taxes while simultaneously incurring less tax risk compared to firms with lesser IT systems. We also perform mediation analyses to investigate the channels through which high-quality IT enables effective tax planning. Results of these tests suggest that the most important driver of our findings is timely, reliable information facilitated by high-quality IT. Our study contributes to both the IT and tax literatures by identifying and quantifying the returns to investments in IT in terms of more favorable corporate tax outcomes.
Toward a Fourth Generation of Revolutionary Theory

Third-generation theories of revolution pointed to the structural vulnerabilities of regimes as the basic causes of revolutions. In the last decade, critics of structural theories have argued for the need to incorporate leadership, ideology, and processes of identification with revolutionary movements as key elements in the production of revolution. Analyses of revolutions in developing countries and in communist regimes have further argued for incorporating these factors and for the inadequacy of structural theories to account for these events. Rather than try to develop a list of the “causes” of revolutions, it may be more fruitful for the fourth generation of revolutionary theory to treat revolutions as emergent phenomena, and to start by focusing on factors that cement regime stability. Weakness in those factors then opens the way for revolutionary leadership, ideology, and identification, along with structural factors such as international pressure and elite conflicts, to create revolutions.
Empirical Capital Structure: A Review

1 Introduction. 2 Econometric and Specification Issues. 3 The First Ingredient: Determinants of Target Leverage. 4 The Second Ingredient: Deviations from Target Leverage Ratios. 5. Capital Structure Changes. 6 Stakeholders, Competitive Strategy, and Investment. 7. Conclusion. References.
What Is an Index

Technological advances in telecommunications, securities exchanges, and algorithmic trading have facilitated a host of new investment products that resemble theme-based passive indexes, but depart from traditional market-cap-weighted portfolios. In this article, the author proposes broadening the definition of an index using a functional perspective. Any portfolio strategy that satisfies three properties should be considered an index: (1) it is completely transparent, (2) it is investable, and (3) it is systematic (i.e., it is entirely rules-based and involves no judgment or unique investment skill). Portfolios satisfying these properties that are not market-cap-weighted are given a new name: dynamic indices. This functional definition widens the universe of possibilities and, most importantly, decouples risk management from alpha generation. Passive strategies can and should be actively risk managed, and the author provides a simple example of how this can be achieved. Dynamic indices also create new challenges; the most significant of these is backtest bias, and the author concludes with a proposal for managing this risk.
The Curious Case of Directors' and Officers' Liability for Supervision and Management: Exploring the Intersection of Corporate and Tort Law

Introduction 1662 I. An Overview of Tort Liability for Directors and Officers 1666 A. Focus on Participation 1668 B. Focus on Duty 1670 C. Veil Piercing 1672 D. Statutory Liability 1673 II. Directors’ and Officers’ Tort Liability for Supervision and Management 1675 A. Common Law Negligence Claims 1676 B. Statutory Claims 1681 III. Problems Associated with Tort-Based Liability for Supervision and Management 1683 A. Distinguishing Between Internal and External Duties 1683 1. Internal versus external duties 1683 2. The corporation as exclusive bearer of duties 1689 B. Failure to Align Corporate Law and Tort Law Liability Standards 1693 C. The Neglect of the Corporate Shield 1695 1. The corporation as a separate legal personality 1697
Free Exercise in the "Lobbying Nineties"

For lawyers who specialize in the law of religious liberty, the years from 1990 to 2000 were the "Lobbying Nineties"-a decade of legislative battles over free exercise of religion. With bookends on April 17, 1990 (the date of the Supreme Court's decision in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith), and September 22, 2000 (the day on which President Clinton signed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act ("RLUIPA") into law), the 1990s saw a dramatic series of federal and state legislative battles to restore some of the legal protection for religious practice that the Supreme Court had taken away. The politics were fascinating, with unexpected alliances creating some of history's strangest political bedfellows. With RLUIPA's passage in the summer of 2000, a long-forgotten calm settled over the sea of church-state advocacy. At least pending the Supreme Court's next foray, there appear to be no new federal legislative battles to fight. Has all been done that could be done? Or are there, perhaps, other possible ways that Congress could act to promote religious freedom? This Article presents a simple analytical framework for thinking about free exercise doctrine, and a brief summary of the Supreme Court's free exercise case law.
REIT Ownership and Property Performance: Evidence from the Lodging Industry

Prior research on the impact of real estate investment trust (REIT) ownership on property performance is very limited and provides inconclusive empirical evidence. Whether REITs add value at the mi...
Lending booms, reserves, and the sustainability of short-term debt - inferences from the pricing of syndicated bank loans

Academics pay little attention to international bank lending, focusing instead on rapidly growing market segments such as the international bond market and derivative credit instruments. The authors argue for paying more attention to international bank lending. Why? Three reasons. First, the syndicated bank loan is one of the workhorses of international capital markets. Second, international bank lending is especially important for private-sector borrowers, whose participation in international capital markets will grow as capital markets are liberalized and state enterprises privatized. Sovereigns and other governmental borrowers rely more on the bond market, while private borrowers are disproportionately important to the market in international bank loans. Private-sector borrowers establish long-term relationships with banks to resolve information problems. The authors find that international banks provide more credit to smaller borrowers (about whom information is least complete) than bond markets do. Bank finance dominates that segment of international financial markets with the greatest information asymmetry. Third, spreads on syndicated bank loans show much less variation than spreads on international bonds. Are bank lenders properly pricing country and credit risk? Does spread compression on syndicated bank loans suggest excessive moral hazard in international bank lending? The authors warn against over-dependence on high levels of domestic debt. While growth in domestic debt reflects improved inter-mediation between savers and investors, rapid increases to high levels are viewed as unsustainable and raise the cost of international borrowing. They find evidence of growing bullishness among bank lenders to East Asia in the first half of the 1990s, which could reflect moral hazard, but the jury is still out on that issue. High external short-term debt can coexist with rapid growth for extended periods but is likely to unravel if perceptions of sustainability shift.
Numerical Simulations of Galaxy Formation

The current status of numerical simulations of galaxy formation is reviewed. After a short description of the main numerical simulation techniques, three sample applications illustrate how numerical simulations have provided deeper insight in the galaxy formation process and how they have illuminated success and failure of the hierarchical galaxy formation paradigm: N-body simulations demonstrate that the density profiles of dark matter halos that form in hierarchical clustering scenarios follow a characteristic law. A comparison with the kinematics of disk galaxies however unravels that these density profiles are too concentrated. Hydrodynamical simulation show that the highly irregular velocity field of merging subclumps at redshift z≈ 3 can easily account for the observed asymmetry in the absorption profiles of low ionization species in damped Ly-αabsorption systems. The built-up of galaxies due to mergers is however also cause for one of the major inconsistencies of hierarchical structure formation models, the failure to reproduce the sizes of the present day disk galaxies due to excessive transport of angular momentum from the baryonic to the dark matter component. Hydrodynamical simulations that include star formation show that scaling laws like the Tully–Fisher relation can readily be reproduced in hierarchical scenarios, however the high concentration of dark matter halos results in a zero-point of the simulated Tully–Fisher relation that is incompatible with observations.
Saving Patient Ryan—Can Advanced Electronic Medical Records Make Patient Care Safer?

The risk of patient harm resulting from medical care affects hundreds of thousands of patients and costs tens of billions of dollars every year. Advanced electronic medical records (EMRs) are expec...
On the Balance Sheet-Based Model of Financial Reporting

SYNOPSIS: FASB adopted a balance sheet-based model of financial reporting about 30 years ago, and this model has been gradually expanded and solidified to become the required norm around the world. This article argues that the balance sheet orientation of accounting standard-setting is flawed for the following reasons. First, accounting is supposed to reflect business reality, and thus the essential features of the financial reporting model need to reflect the essential features of the underlying business model. However, the balance sheet orientation of financial reporting is at odds with the economic process of advancing expenses to earn revenues, which governs how most businesses create value, and which represents how managers and investors view most firms. Second, the adoption of the balance sheet approach was driven by conceptual considerations; standard-setters argued that the concept of assets is more fundamental and logically prior to the concept of income. However, this article argues that the con...
Economic analysis of poorly sited septic systems: a hedonic pricing approach

Proper design and quality of soil play an important role in the functioning of soil-based septic systems. Septic systems with traditional leach fields are not suitable for treatment of domestic wastewater in Ohio due to shallow soils. Along with other adverse health effects, untreated or partially treated wastewater could lead to a loss of property valuation. The assessed value of 549 randomly selected properties in Licking County, Ohio was analysed using hedonic pricing method to isolate the effect of poor site selection on the value of the properties. Results indicate that properties sited on soils that are deemed optimal for wastewater treatment are valued 6.2% to 6.8% higher than those sited on sub-optimal soils. The results from this study can help the property owners in making better private decisions regarding installation of septic systems, but can also guide policy decisions that affect public health and common waters.
The Liberal Commons

Must we choose between the benefits of cooperative use of scarce resources and our liberal commitments to autonomy and exit? No. Well-tailored law can mediate between community and liberty, between commons and private property. Our theory of the liberal commons provides a framework to reconcile these seemingly-contradictory moral imperatives and analytic categories. In our definition, an institution succeeds as a liberal commons when it enables a limited group of people to capture the economic and social benefits from cooperation, while also ensuring autonomy to individuals through a secure right to exit. This Article shows how current theories and categories obscure the most difficult tradeoffs in managing commons resources; then details our liberal commons model comprising the decision-making spheres of individual dominion, democratic self-governance, and cooperation-enhancing exit; and finally presents a case study to show how our approach can enrich legal and social inquiry. THE LIBERAL COMMONS Hanoch Dagan & Michael A. Heller
Does Presenting Investment Results Asset by Asset Lower Risk Taking

We examine how the presentation of investment results affects risk taking using an experiment in which participants view results either asset by asset or aggregated into a portfolio result. Our experiment examines the investment choices of a nationwide sample of 249 participants in a simulation of investing for retirement. Segregating investment results by asset decreases subsequent risk taking. Those presented segregated results lower their equity proportion by 4.21% and their portfolio volatility by 0.88%. Both decreases are 8% of the mean levels of risk taking, 50.59% and 10.85%, respectively. At the beginning of the simulation, we present historical results of the investment options either asset by asset or aggregated into portfolios. Among the small number of participants who spend a significant amount of time studying these historic results, segregating results lowers their equity proportion by 9.81%. Our results are a challenge to fully rational theories of investment choice but are consistent with...
A for Effort: Evaluating Recent State Education Reform in Response to Judicial Demands for Equity and Adequacy

In this Note, the Author examines measures recently enacted by New Hampshire and Vermont in response to judicial mandates for education reform. By implementing district reform measures in demographically similar environments, the reform efforts of these two states provide a valuable perspective from which to examine the education finance reform. Evaluating the experiences of these two New England states, as well as those of other states committed to education finance reform, the author contends that successful reform measures must incorporate elements of both equity and adequacy. Specifically, the Author proposes that both states' implementation of a statewide property tax is a progressive step toward equality in education and fairness in taxation. The Author concludes that a state committed to school finance reforms that are both fair and effective should expand revenue sources in order to arrive at per-pupil expenditures that will ensure equity and adequacy.
Past the Pillars of Hercules: Francis Bacon and the Science of Rulemaking

* “[S]ailing past the Pillars of Hercules and ignoring the ancient warnings ‘non ultra!’” DANIEL R. COQUILLETTE, FRANCIS BACON 258 (William Twining & Neil MacCormick eds., 1992). The above frontispiece of Francis Bacon’s NOVUM ORGANUM (1620) (from GIBSON, infra note 1, at 87) shows the Pillars of Hercules and a small, brave ship passing beyond them. See also FRANCIS BACON, SYLVA SYLVARUM, frontispiece (1626); R. W. GIBSON, FRANCIS BACON: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HIS WORKS AND OF BACONIANA TO THE YEAR 1750 87, 147, 157 (1950). This Article obviously reflects the private views of the author, not of the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure or the Judicial Conference of the United States. Special thanks are due to Charles Riordan, the invaluable editorial assistant to the Monan Chair. ** Reporter, Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Judicial Conference of the United States, 1985 to present; J. Donald Monan, S. J. University Professor, Boston College; Charles Warren Visiting Professor of American Legal History, Harvard Law School.
The Effect of Nonprofit Governance on Donations: Evidence from the Revised Form 990

ABSTRACT: We examine whether donors reward nonprofit organizations that report better governance. From a sample of 10,846 organizations from 2008 to 2010, we first identify seven nonprofit governa...
Constituting children's bodily integrity.

Children have a constitutional right to bodily integrity. Courts do not hesitate to vindicate that right when children are abused by state actors. Moreover, in at least some cases, a child's right to bodily integrity applies within the family, giving the child the right to avoid unwanted physical intrusions regardless of the parents' wishes. Nonetheless, the scope of this right vis-a-vis the parents is unclear; the extent to which it applies beyond the narrow context of abortion and contraception has been almost entirely unexplored and untheorized. This Article is the first in the legal literature to analyze the constitutional right of minors to bodily integrity within the family by spanning traditionally disparate doctrinal categories such as abortion rights; corporal punishment; medical decisionmaking; and nontherapeutic physical interventions such as tattooing, piercing, and circumcision. However, the constitutional right of minors to bodily integrity raises complex philosophical questions concerning the proper relationship between family and state, as well as difficult doctrinal and theoretical issues concerning the ever-murky idea of state action. This Article canvasses those issues with the ultimate goal of delineating a constitutional right of bodily security and autonomy for children.
After the Meltdown

The financial meltdown that occurred in fall, 2008 was precipitated by egregious frauds that were committed in the sale of various asset backed securities. The article discusses those and proposes a regulatory response in line with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010.
Relational Governance and the Formation of a New Economic Space: The Case of Teheran Valley, Seoul, Korea

This article articulates the relational capacity of the nation-state, and its role in thegrowth of information and communication technology (ICT) entrepreneurs and industrycluster formation. In particular, it emphasizes the state’s strategic coupling with theprivate sector and social groups as the main forces that facilitated the rise of ICTentrepreneurs and the high-technology industry cluster in Teheran Valley (TV) in Seoul,Korea, during the post-1997 financial-crisis downturn. Historical analysis shows thatthe seemingly serendipitous rise of TV is an outcome of the dynamic interplay betweenthe state, ICT entrepreneurs and other social forces in the post-industrial restructuringprocess. Importantly, while the Korean state still maintained its role as a reformer ofindustry structure, it continuously and flexibly revised its mode of governing in responseto technological change and social demands, forming a governance system that I term‘relational governance’. During the industrial upgrading period from 1980 to the early2000s, the governance system for the ICT sector shifted from centralized planning toselective deregulation through close partnership with ICT entrepreneurs, and then laterto a more flexible mode of governance whereby the state re-centralized ICT policymakingfunctions while devising indirect ways of supporting emerging small and medium ICTenterprises.
Creating Laws of Evidence for International Criminal Law: The ICTY and the Principle of Flexibility

The Rules of Procedure and Evidence of the ICTY are the first coherent body of principles governing the prosecution of violations of international humanitarian law, or indeed international law, to be constructed. The Rules and the practice of the ICTY in their creation and application reveal a profoundly ambitious exercise: the moulding of rules of evidence and procedure which encapsulate fundamental principles specific to the trying of international crimes. The need for expedition in the trying of enormously complex cases and the requirements of fairness and strict adherence to human rights principles compete inside a framework devoid of the history and structure of rules and procedures developed in domestic criminal law jurisdictions. While the framework of the International Tribunal is ostensibly adversarial, the Rules encapsulate concepts borrowed from the continental and common law systems of criminal law. To achieve this, the ICTY has pursued a level of flexibility in the process of creating, amending and interpreting its Rules with a frequency unknown to any other jurisdiction before it. This article will first examine the human rights guarantees enshrined in the Statute of the ICTY and how they have been interpreted given the sometimes competing need to expedite proceedings. Secondly, the unique rules governing the presentation and admissibility of evidence, and in particular Rule 89 and relevant jurisprudence, will be considered. Thirdly, it will discuss some of the case management innovations which have been implemented to increase the flexibility in pre-trial and trial procedures in an attempt to expedite trials. In particular, the procedures implemented in the Kordic case, the longest and most complex trial tried before the International Tribunal, are studied. The article concludes with an analysis of some recent amendments to the Rules. In doing so, the ICTY approach will occasionally be compared with that taken in the Statute and Rules of Procedure and Evidence of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The tension in the ICTY between the expedition of trials and the protection of the rights of the accused will be revealed. The increasing move toward flexibility in the rules of admissibility of evidence reveals such a tension, for instance, with the right of an accused to cross-examine witnesses.
Why Are Put Options So Expensive

This paper studies the "overpriced puts puzzle" — the finding that historical prices of the S&P 500 put options have been too high and incompatible with the canonical asset-pricing models. To investigate whether put returns could be rationalized by another, possibly non-standard equilibrium model, we implement the model-free methodology of Bondarenko [2003a, Statistical Arbitrage and Securities Prices, Review of Financial Studies 16, 875–919]. The methodology requires no parametric assumptions on investors' preferences. Furthermore, it can be applied even when the sample is affected by certain selection biases (such as the Peso problem) and when investors' beliefs are incorrect. The main finding of the paper is that no model within a studied class of models can possibly explain the put anomaly.
Relative Price Volatility Under Sudden Stops: The Relevance of Balance Sheet Effects

Abstract Sudden Stops are associated with increased volatility in relative prices. We introduce a model based on information acquisition to rationalize this increased volatility. An empirical analysis of the conditional variance of the wholesale price to consumer price ratio using panel ARCH techniques confirms the relevance of Sudden Stops and potential balance sheet effects as key determinants of relative price volatility, where balance sheet effects are captured by the interaction of a proxy for potential changes in the real exchange rate (linked to the degree of external leverage of the absorption of tradable goods) and a measure of domestic liability dollarization.
Maximum quasi-likelihood estimation for the near(2) model

Abstract. Maximum quasi-likelihood estimation is investigated for the NEAR(2) model, an autoregressive time series model with marginal exponential distributions. In certain regions of the parameter space, simulations indicate that maximum quasi-likelihood estimators perform better than two-stage conditional least squares estimators in terms of the per cent of estimates falling in the parameter space. The problem of out-of-range estimates is shown to be caused by the lack of information in the data rather than the characteristics of the method of estimation.