cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Imaging of bi-anisotropic periodic structures from electromagnetic near-field data

This paper is concerned with the inverse scattering problem for the three-dimensional Maxwell's equations in bi-anisotropic periodic structures. The inverse scattering problem aims to determine the shape of bi-anisotropic periodic scatterers from electromagnetic near field data at a fixed frequency. The Factorization method is studied as an analytical and numerical tool for solving the inverse problem. We provide a rigorous justification of the Factorization method which results in the unique determination and a fast imaging algorithm for the periodic scatterer. Numerical examples for imaging three-dimensional periodic structures are presented to examine the efficiency of the method.
Schubert varieties and finite free resolutions of length three

In this paper we describe the relationship between the finite free resolutions of perfect ideals in split format (for Dynkin formats) and certain intersections of opposite Schubert varieties with the big cell for homogeneous spaces $G/P$ where $P$ is a maximal parabolic subgroup.
From Modular to Distributed Open Architectures: A Unified Decision Framework

This paper introduces a conceptual, yet quantifiable, architecture framework by extending the notion of system modularity in its broadest sense. Acknowledging that modularity is not a binary feature and comes in various types and levels, the proposed framework introduces higher levels of modularity that naturally incorporate decentralized architecture on the one hand and autonomy in agents and subsystems on the other. This makes the framework suitable for modularity decisions in Systems of Systems and for analyzing the impact of modularity on broader surrounding ecosystems. The stages of modularity in the proposed framework are naturally aligned with the level of variations and uncertainty in the system and its environment, a relationship that is central to the benefits of modularity. The conceptual framework is complemented with a decision layer that makes it suitable to be used as a computational architecture decision tool to determine the appropriate stage and level of modularity of a system, for a given profile of variations and uncertainties in its environment. We further argue that the fundamental systemic driving forces and trade-offs of moving from monolithic to distributed architecture are essentially similar to those for moving from integral to modular architectures. The spectrum, in conjunction with the decision layer, could guide system architects when selecting appropriate parameters and building a system-specific computational tool from a combination of existing tools and techniques. To demonstrate the applicability of the framework, a case for fractionated satellite systems based on a simplified demo of the DARPA F6 program is presented where the value of transition from a monolithic architecture to a fractionated architecture, as two consecutive levels of modularity in the proposed spectrum, is calculated and ranges of parameters where fractionation increases systems value are determined.
A global method to identify trees outside of closed-canopy forests with medium-resolution satellite imagery

Scattered trees outside of dense, closed-canopy forests are very important for carbon sequestration, supporting livelihoods, maintaining ecosystem integrity, and climate change adaptation and mitig...
Accountable Off-Policy Evaluation With Kernel Bellman Statistics

We consider off-policy evaluation (OPE), which evaluates the performance of a new policy from observed data collected from previous experiments, without requiring the execution of the new policy. This finds important applications in areas with high execution cost or safety concerns, such as medical diagnosis, recommendation systems and robotics. In practice, due to the limited information from off-policy data, it is highly desirable to construct rigorous confidence intervals, not just point estimation, for the policy performance. In this work, we propose a new variational framework which reduces the problem of calculating tight confidence bounds in OPE into an optimization problem on a feasible set that catches the true state-action value function with high probability. The feasible set is constructed by leveraging statistical properties of a recently proposed kernel Bellman loss (Feng et al., 2019). We design an efficient computational approach for calculating our bounds, and extend it to perform post-hoc diagnosis and correction for existing estimators. Empirical results show that our method yields tight confidence intervals in different settings.
InstaHide: Instance-hiding Schemes for Private Distributed Learning

How can multiple distributed entities collaboratively train a shared deep net on their private data while preserving privacy? This paper introduces InstaHide, a simple encryption of training images, which can be plugged into existing distributed deep learning pipelines. The encryption is efficient and applying it during training has minor effect on test accuracy. InstaHide encrypts each training image with a "one-time secret key" which consists of mixing a number of randomly chosen images and applying a random pixel-wise mask. Other contributions of this paper include: (a) Using a large public dataset (e.g. ImageNet) for mixing during its encryption, which improves security. (b) Experimental results to show effectiveness in preserving privacy against known attacks with only minor effects on accuracy. (c) Theoretical analysis showing that successfully attacking privacy requires attackers to solve a difficult computational problem. (d) Demonstrating that use of the pixel-wise mask is important for security, since Mixup alone is shown to be insecure to some some efficient attacks. (e) Release of a challenge dataset this https URL Our code is available at this https URL
Beyond Procrustes: Balancing-Free Gradient Descent for Asymmetric Low-Rank Matrix Sensing

Low-rank matrix estimation plays a central role in various applications across science and engineering. Recently, nonconvex formulations based on matrix factorization are provably solved by simple gradient descent algorithms with strong computational and statistical guarantees. However, when the low-rank matrices are asymmetric, existing approaches rely on adding a regularization term to balance the scale of the two matrix factors which in practice can be removed safely without hurting the performance when initialized via the spectral method. In this paper, we provide a theoretical justification to this for the matrix sensing problem, which aims to recover a low-rank matrix from a small number of linear measurements. As long as the measurement ensemble satisfies the restricted isometry property, gradient descent—in conjunction with spectral initialization—converges linearly without the need of explicitly promoting balancedness of the factors; in fact, the factors stay balanced automatically throughout the execution of the algorithm. Our analysis is based on analyzing the evolution of a new distance metric that directly accounts for the ambiguity due to invertible transforms, and might be of independent interest.
Loss of Age-Restricted Status and Property Values: Youngtown Arizona

This study finds evidence of a large premium in Youngtown Arizona house prices that persisted over time and could be attributed to the town's age-restricted status. Age restrictions may act as a signal that the community provides facilities and services that meet the needs of the senior population and the assurance that those facilities and services will be available in the future. This assurance reduces uncertainty for future owners and it is the reduced uncertainty that is capitalized into house prices. The loss of the age restriction resulted in the elimination of the premium over approximately twelve to eighteen months.
Data Science, Predictive Analytics, and Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform Supply Chain Design and Management

We illuminate the myriad of opportunities for research where supply chain management (SCM) intersects with data science, predictive analytics, and big data, collectively referred to as DPB. We show that these terms are not only becoming popular but are also relevant to supply chain research and education. Data science requires both domain knowledge and a broad set of quantitative skills, but there is a dearth of literature on the topic and many questions. We call for research on skills that are needed by SCM data scientists and discuss how such skills and domain knowledge affect the effectiveness of an SCM data scientist. Such knowledge is crucial to develop future supply chain leaders. We propose definitions of data science and predictive analytics as applied to SCM. We examine possible applications of DPB in practice and provide examples of research questions from these applications, as well as examples of research questions employing DPB that stem from management theories. Finally, we propose specific steps interested researchers can take to respond to our call for research on the intersection of SCM and DPB.
The effect of changes in the U.S. wage structure on recent immigrants' earnings

Abstract Since recent immigrants tend to earn less than natives, their relative earnings have been adversely affected by an increase in the return to labor market skills over the past three decades. Using longitudinal Social Security records matched to cross-sections of the SIPP and CPS, I estimate the return to skills rose by 41% between 1980 and 1997. This reduced the relative earnings of immigrants who arrived in the 1980s and early 1990s by 10 to 15 percentage points. Examining solely the earnings of recent immigrants may lead to an overly pessimistic picture of their actual labor market skills.
Using Proxies for the Short Rate: When are Three Months Like an Instant?

The dynamics of the unobservable short rate are frequently estimated directly using a proxy. We examine the biases resulting from this practice (the 'proxy problem'). Analytic results show that the proxy problem is not economically significant for single-factor affine models. In the two-factor affine model of Longstaff and Schwartz (1992), the proxy problem is only economically significant for pricing discount bonds with maturities of more than five years. We also describe two different numerical procedures for assessing the magnitude of the proxy problem in a general interest rate model. When applied to a nonlinear single-factor model, they suggest that the proxy problem can be economically significant. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.
Management Matters: A Leverage Point for Health Systems Strengthening in Global Health.

Despite a renewed focus in the field of global health on strengthening health systems, inadequate attention has been directed to a key ingredient of high-performing health systems: management. We aimed to develop the argument that management – defined here as the process of achieving predetermined objectives through human, financial, and technical resources – is a cross-cutting function necessary for success in all World Health Organization (WHO) building blocks of health systems strengthening. Management within health systems is particularly critical in low-income settings where the efficient use of scarce resources is paramount to attaining health goals. More generally, investments in management capacity may be viewed as a key leverage point in grand strategy, as strong management enables the achievement of large ends with limited means. We also sought to delineate a set of core competencies and identify key roles to be targeted for management capacity building efforts. Several effective examples of management interventions have been described in the research literature. Together, the existing evidence underscores the importance of country ownership of management capacity building efforts, which often challenge the status quo and thus need country leadership to sustain despite inevitable friction. The literature also recognizes that management capacity efforts, as a key ingredient of effective systems change, take time to embed, as new protocols and ways of working become habitual and integrated as standard operating procedures. Despite these challenges, the field of health management as part of global health system strengthening efforts holds promise as a fundamental leverage point for achieving health system performance goals with existing human, technical, and financial resources. The evidence base consistently supports the role of management in performance improvement but would benefit from additional research with improved methodological rigor and longer-time horizon investigations. Meanwhile, greater emphasis on management as a critical element of global health efforts may open new and sustainable avenues for advancing health systems performance.
The diplomacy of universal jurisdiction: the political branches and the transnational prosecution of international crimes

Applying a theoretical framework based on the incentives and disincentives for political branches to exercise universal jurisdiction to prosecute core international crimes, this article undertakes a global survey of contemporary universal jurisdiction cases and qualitative case studies of five states to analyze the current state of universal jurisdiction, predict its likely future evolution, and suggest a starting point for a realistic normative assessment of universal jurisdiction and for the institutional design of the universal jurisdiction regime.
Money as a Thumb on the Constitutional Scale: Weighing Speech Against Publicity Rights

When courts in right of publicity cases deal with claims against defendants arising outside the context of commercial advertising but involving what judges nonetheless deem to be commercial uses, the typical approach is to “balance” a defendant’s right of free speech (that is, her right to use information legitimately in her possession) against a plaintiff’s exclusive right to control commercial uses of her persona. Considerable variation exists among the tests used to determine when a use is “commercial” rather than purely expressive, but if the defendant has crossed the line drawn by a given jurisdiction, then her constitutional liberty interest is quite likely to be treated as inferior to the property interest in her persona claimed by the plaintiff. This Article takes the position that balancing economic interests against constitutionally protected speech rights, while not always forbidden, is generally impermissible and cannot be justified, consistent with the Supreme Court’s free speech jurisprudence.
Competitive equilibrium with debt

This paper studies the interaction among financing, entry, and exit decisions of firms in a competitive industry subject to aggregate uncertainty. In contrast to Fries, Miller, and Per raudin (1997), I do not assume that a firm in default leaves the industry immediately. The implications on the optimal leverage ratios and equilibrium credit spreads are discussed. By incorporating the effect of competition, I show that the model results in significantly higher credit spreads than those predicted by traditional single firm models. Dynamic cap ital structure strategies in a competitive industry are also examined. The model renders a number of empirical predictions regarding leverage ratios and credit spreads of firms in a competitive industry.
Inherit the Cloud: The Role of Private Contracts in Distributing or Deleting Digital Assets at Death

We live in a world permeated with technology. Through our online accounts we write emails, we store pictures, videos, and documents, we pay bills and conduct financial transactions, we buy digital books and music, and we manage loyalty programs. Digital assets have quickly replaced physical letters, pictures, books, compact discs, and documents stored in filing cabinets and shoeboxes. The emergence of digital assets raises pressing questions regarding the treatment of digital assets at an account holder's death. Unlike digital assets' physical counterparts, an account holder does not control the ultimate fate of digital assets. Instead, digital assets are controlled by a private contract entered into by an account holder and a company that provides services or digital products. This Article explores the growing conflict between traditional succession practices and digital asset succession, which is controlled by digital asset contracts. It begins by tracing the development of private contracts as a method of transferring assets at death and shows that although contracts are regularly used to transfer assets at death, digital asset contracts have taken an unprecedented step of prohibiting or severely limiting the transfer of assets at death. This Article next explores the prevalence of digital assets and explains how service providers address digital asset inheritance in private contracts. It argues that digital asset contracts that deny inheritance may be validly formed but should be void as a matter of public policy because they transfer decision-making power about assets from an individual account holder to corporations. As our control over the ultimate fate of our digital assets diminishes, the nature of our property interests in digital assets also shifts away from our traditional understanding of ownership of personal property. It argues that we should take a conscious approach to reforming succession law based on time-honored principles of American succession law that benefit society as a whole and not allow private contracts controlling digital assets to hijack our system of inheritance. This Article concludes by offering suggestions for reform and action before the ability to transfer and preserve digital assets falls beyond our reach.
Sex Discrimination in the Labor Market

1. Introduction. 2. Background on labor force participation, earnings, and occupation 3. Measuring pay disparities 4. Occupational segregation 5. Turnover 6. Children and housework 7. Compensating differentials 8. Differences in content of education 9. Evidence on discrimination based on observed productivity or stock market response 10. Concluding comments
How Critical Race Theory Marginalizes the African American Christian Tradition

This Article offers the first comprehensive account of the marginalization of the African American Christian tradition in the movement of race and law scholarship known as critical race theory. While committed to grounding itself in the perspectives of communities of color, critical race theory has virtually ignored the significance of the fact that the civil rights movement came out of the Black church and that today more than eighty percent of African Americans self-identify as Christian. In practical terms, critical race theory’s neglect of the Christian tradition has meant that arguments developed in race and law scholarship are sometimes incompatible with the deeply religious normative frameworks that many Black Americans bring to bear on issues of law and justice. As a result, there is a significant disconnect between race and law scholarship and the comprehensive normative commitments of the community whose concerns that scholarship seeks to address. By offering the first comprehensive account of this disconnect, this Article supplies an important foundation for scholars who wish to close the gap between race and law scholarship and the larger African American community.
Firm Heterogeneity and the Long-run Effects of Dividend Tax Reform

What is the long-run efiect of dividend taxation on aggregate capital accumulation? To address this question, we build a dynamic general equilibrium model in which there is a continuum of flrms subject to idiosyncratic productivity shocks. This flrm heterogeneity generates a cross-sectional distribution of flrms, with some flrms behaving according to the traditional view of dividend taxation and other flrms behaving according to the new view of dividend taxation. Speciflcally, at any point in time, a flrm may lie in one of three flnance regimes: dividend distribution regime, liquidity constrained regime, and equity issuance regime. These flnance regimes may change over time in response to idiosyncratic productivity shocks. Firms in difierent flnance regimes respond to dividend taxation in difierent ways. Our model simulations show that when both dividend and capital gains tax rates are cut from 25 and 20 percent, respectively, to the same 15 percent level permanently, the aggregate long-run capital stock increases by about 3 percent.
Collective Representation and Employee Voice in the U.S. Public Sector Workplace: Looking North for Solutions?

Legislation enacted in many states following the 2010 elections in the United States strengthened unilateral public employer control and weakened employee voice. This rebalancing of power occurred in the context of state public employee labour relations acts modeled on the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), but with a narrower scope of bargaining than in the private sector. This narrow scope channels unions’ voice away from the quality of public services and towards protecting members from the effects of decisions unilaterally imposed by management. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that the freedom of association guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms includes a right to collective bargaining, but that this right need not be modelled on the NLRA. This article explores the evolving Canadian jurisprudence decoupling the right to a voice at work from an NLRA-style model as an alternative approach for US public sector labour law reform.
Preemption of State Spam Laws by the Federal CAN-SPAM Act

Unsolicited bulk commercial electronic mail is increasingly a problem on the internet. More than thirteen billion spam' messages are sent per day.2 One study estimates that spam costs $10 billion annually in worker productivity in the United States.3 In 2003, spam for the first time surpassed 50 percent of all email sent on the internet.4 That same year AOL, the world's largest internet service provider (ISP), blocked 500 billion spam messages sent to its users5--about fifteen thousand per user, or more than forty per user per day. The total amount of spam received is even greater: millions more make it through filters to their recipients.
Occupational Choice of High Skilled Immigrants in the United States

This paper explores the impact of English language proficiency and country of origin on the occupational choice of high-skilled immigrants in the U.S. using the 2000 Census. The findings reveal that high-skilled immigrants with limited proficiency in English, or whose mother tongue is linguistically distant from English, are more likely to be in occupations in which English communication skills are not very important, such as computer and engineering occupations. Moreover, the degree of exposure to English prior to immigration is found to have little influence on selecting occupations in the U.S. The paper also shows that immigrants from some origins with little exposure to English and whose native language is far from English tend to be in some “speaking-intensive” occupations, in particular social services occupations. These occupations may not require workers to be fluent in English if they mostly provide services to immigrants from their same linguistic background.
How did retail investors respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? The effect of Robinhood brokerage customers on market quality

Abstract Using data on stocks held by individual investors at retail brokerage firm Robinhood, we document that these investors are actively engaged in both momentum and contrarian trading strategies. In response to the increased volatility and uncertainty in financial markets due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, we find that retail investors reduce momentum trading and increase contrarian trading activity during the initial phase of this crisis. We also find that the impact of Robinhood investors on several measures of market quality varied depending on market conditions, coinciding with better market quality during less-stressful periods and worse market quality during the early weeks of the pandemic in the U.S.
A Production-Inventory System With Both Patient and Impatient Demand Classes

We consider a production-inventory system with two customer classes, one patient and one impatient. Orders from the patient class can be backordered if needed, while orders from the impatient class must be rejected if they cannot be fulfilled from on-hand inventory. Orders backordered incur a backorder cost, while orders rejected incur a lost sales cost. The objective is to minimize the sum of inventory holding cost and the costs of backorders and lost sales. We formulate the problem as a Markov decision process and use this formulation to characterize the structure of the optimal policy. We show that the optimal policy can be described by two threshold functions that depend on the level of backorders from the patient class. These threshold functions specify: 1) when it is optimal to produce; 2) how to allocate units produced to either increase inventory or reduce backorder; and 3) when to fulfill orders from on-hand inventory and when to backorder (in the case of the patient class) and when to reject them (in the case of the impatient class). We show that the priority in inventory allocation among the two classes is not static and instead depends on the backorder level from the class of patient customers. In particular, it is possible to start out fulfilling orders from the impatient class and backordering orders from the patient class and then to switch to fulfilling orders from the patient class and rejecting orders from the impatient class. In addition to characterizing the structure of the optimal policy, we also describe an effective heuristic that retains the essential features of the optimal policy but is significantly simpler to implement. This heuristic performs nearly as well as the optimal policy and significantly outperforms other plausible heuristics.
Dining in the dark: How uncertainty influences food acceptance in the absence of light

Abstract Sensory cues such as the visual appearance of foods can have a significant effect on food acceptance and food intake. Yet there are many situations – such as those involving deployed soldiers, night workers, and nighttime snackers – where such cues are masked by darkness. This study examines how and why darkness negatively influences food acceptance and future intake and what can be done to mitigate any potential problem. The results show that ambiguous foods eaten in the dark conditions have a low level of acceptance, which may be mediated by one’s uncertainty about the food. Using clear product information (through packaging and labeling, for instance) can reduce this uncertainty and increase acceptance as well as future intake. Interpretations of these findings are discussed and their implications are underscored for those situations where individuals often eat in darkness.
The econometrics of ultra-high-frequency data

Ultra-high-frequency data is defined to be a full record of transactions and their associated characteristics. The transaction arrival times and accompanying measures can be analyzed as marked point processes. The ACD point process developed by Engle and Russell (1998) is applied to IBM transactions arrival times to develop semiparametric hazard estimates and conditional intensities. Combining these intensities with a GARCH model of prices produces ultra-high-frequency measures of volatility. Both returns and variances are found to be negatively influenced by long durations as suggested by asymmetric information models of market micro-structure.
Robustness of Spatial Autocorrelation Specifications: Some Monte Carlo Evidence

This paper examines the robustness of various models of spatial auto- correlation through a series of Monte Carlo experiments in which each model takes a turn at the data generator. The generated data are then used to estimate all of the models. The estimated models are evaluated primarily on their predictive power.
The effects of probabilistic innovations on Schumpeterian economic growth in a creative region

We analyze the impact that stochastically occurring innovations have on Schumpeterian economic growth in a region that is creative in the sense of Richard Florida. Our analysis leads to four findings. First, we delineate the so called balanced growth path (BGP) equilibrium and then compute the BGP growth rate in our creative region. Second, we discuss why the lower limit of the support of the random variable that describes the outcome of innovation quality improvements, takes the value that it does. Third, we solve the social planner's problem and derive the Pareto optimal growth rate in our creative region. Finally, we compare the BGP and the Pareto optimal growth rates, we discuss when there is either too much or too little innovation, and we conclude by commenting on the implications of our findings for future research on Schumpeterian economic growth in creative regions.
Estimating the returns to schooling: Implications from a dynamic discrete choice model☆

Abstract This paper assesses the applicability of a dynamic discrete choice model in accounting for the observed ordinary least squares (OLS) and instrumental variable (IV) estimates of the Mincer equation parameter on returns to schooling. A dynamic model of schooling and employment choices is estimated and used to simulate educational attainment, employment history, and wages. Estimations of the Mincer wage equation using simulated data appear to validate the model. Ability selection is found to be the major source of bias in the OLS estimates of schooling returns. Although the IV estimates lie within the support of true returns to schooling if a strong and strictly exogenous instrument is used and if dynamic employment selection is controlled, these conditions may be easily violated in practice.
Dynamic Pricing in the Presence of Antidumping Policy: Theory and Evidence

Antidumping (AD) duties are calculated as the difference between the foreign firm's product price in the export market and some definition of "normal" or "fair" value, often the foreign firm's product price in its own market. Additionally, AD laws allow for recalculation of these AD duties over time in what are known as an administrative review process. This paper examines for the first time the resulting dynamic pricing problem of a foreign firm that faces such an AD trade protection policy in its export market. When AD duties are certain for any dumping that occurs, we obtain the surprising result that dumping and AD duties should increase over time toward a stationary equilibrium value. Adding uncertainties prevalent in AD enforcement into our analysis changes these conclusions substantially and leads to more realistic testable implications. Firms with ex ante expectations that the probability of AD enforcement is low, or with expectations that the probability of a termination/VER (instead of AD duties) is high, will decrease their dumping and AD duties over time in the administrative review process once they face AD duties. Using detailed data from U.S. AD investigations filed from 1980- 1995, we find evidence consistent with these hypotheses stemming from our analysis with uncertain AD enforcement and provides empirical evidence consistent with James Anderson's domino dumping hypothesis.
Harnessing Individual Behavior to Address Climate Change: Options for Congress

This article attempts to answer a question about the design of national climate change legislation that has not received significant attention: How should Congress engage individuals in the effort to address climate change? The comprehensive climate change bills introduced in Congress focus primarily on large emitting entities. While this focus needs to be a key element, individuals also need to be engaged. Individuals outside of their work are responsible for one-third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and the U.S. has a higher per capita energy consumption rate than virtually any other country. Individuals can play at least two complementary and mutually reinforcing roles - as citizens participating in the implementation process and as consumers. Although each of the bills contains pieces of an individual engagement strategy, none reflect a comprehensive approach. The article recommends a broad range of provisions, including public participation, targets and timetables, numerous forms of public information, and a variety of incentives and pathways for individual action. The purpose of such provisions is to complement, not substitute for, provisions addressing major emitters. For example, allowances or proceeds from the sale of allowances should be distributed to individuals who engage in energy efficient or carbon-reducing activities. A congressional effort to engage individuals would take advantage of some of the nation's key strengths - individual initiative, engaged citizenship, and collective sense of purpose. Such legislation would more likely be at least equal to the challenge in front of us.
The Influence of Rising Commodity Prices on the Conservation Reserve Program

This report considers how increased commodity prices might influence enrollment in and benefits from the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) using two complementary models: a likely-to-bid model that uses National Resources Inventory data to simulate offers to the general signup portion of the CRP and an opt-out model that simulates retention of current CRP contracts. Under several higher crop price scenarios, including one that incorporates 15 billion gallons of crop-based biofuels production, maintaining the CRP as currently configured will lead to significant expenditure increases. If constraints are placed on increasing rental rates, it might be possible to meet enrollment goals with moderate increases in CRP rental rates-but this will mean accepting lower average Environmental Benefits Index scores as landowners with profitable but environmentally sensitive lands choose not to enroll.
Altruistic punishment in elections

Abstract Altruistic punishment is a fundamental driver for cooperation in human interactions. In this paper, we expand our understanding of this form of pro-social behavior to help explain a puzzle of voting: why do individuals who are indifferent between two potential policy outcomes of an election participate when voting is costly? Using a simple voting experiment, we provide robust evidence that many voters are willing to engage in voting as a form of punishment, even when voting is costly and the voter has no monetary stake in the election outcome. In our sample, and in a robustness check through Monte Carlo simulation, we show that at least fourteen percent of individuals are willing to incur a cost to vote against candidates who broke their electoral promises, even when they have no pecuniary interest in the election outcome.
Is there a daily discount rate? Evidence from the food stamp nutrition cycle

Abstract Quasi-hyperbolic discounting predicts impatience over short-run tradeoffs. I present a direct non-laboratory test of this implication using data on the nutritional intake of food stamp recipients. Caloric intake declines by 10 to 15 percent over the food stamp month, implying a significant preference for immediate consumption. These findings constitute a rejection of the permanent income hypothesis and are extremely difficult to reconcile with exponential discounting. The data support an explanation based on time preference and reject several alternative explanations, including highly elastic intertemporal substitution. I explore implications for the optimal timing of transfer payments under alternative assumptions about preferences.
Firm responses to targeted consumer incentives: Evidence from reference pricing for surgical services.

Abstract This paper examines how health care providers respond to a reference pricing insurance program that increases consumer cost sharing when consumers choose high-priced surgical providers. We use geographic variation in the population covered by the program to estimate supply-side responses. We find limited evidence of market segmentation and price reductions for providers with baseline prices above the reference price. Finally, approximately 75% of the reduction in provider prices is in the form of a positive externality that benefits a population not subject to the program.
Sampling Exactly from the Normal Distribution

An algorithm for sampling exactly from the normal distribution is given. The algorithm reads some number of uniformly distributed random digits in a given base and generates an initial portion of the representation of a normal deviate in the same base. Thereafter, uniform random digits are copied directly into the representation of the normal deviate. Thus, in contrast to existing methods, it is possible to generate normal deviates exactly rounded to any precision with a mean cost that scales linearly in the precision. The method performs no extended precision arithmetic, calls no transcendental functions, and uses no floating point arithmetic whatsoever; it uses only simple integer operations. It can easily be adapted to sample exactly from the discrete normal distribution whose parameters are rational numbers.
WHY DO CONSUMER PRICES REACT LESS THAN IMPORT PRICES TO EXCHANGE RATES

Тот факт, что потребительские цены реагируют на изменение номинального курса в меньшей степени, чем цены импорта имеет несколько объяснений в экономической теории. Одно из них базируется на допущении, что издержки распространения занимают существенную долю в цене. Данная статья предлагает другое объяснение, которое является дополнением к уже существующим. В работе рассматривается модель, в которой фирмы импортируют товары промежуточного потребления и создают из них товары конечного пользования. Если эти фирмы начинают конкурировать между собой на внутреннем рынке, их оптимальная стратегия – устанавливать цены в национальной валюте, в то время как поставщикам промежуточных товаров оптимальней устанавливать цены в своей валюте. В этом случае изменение номинального курса полностью отражается на динамике цен импорта и никак не влияет на потребительские цены.
Reliability-Performance Trade-offs in Neuromorphic Computing

Neuromorphic architectures built with Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) can significantly improve the energy efficiency of machine learning tasks designed with Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs). A major source of voltage drop in a crossbar of these architectures are the parasitic components on the crossbar's bitlines and wordlines, which are deliberately made longer to achieve lower cost-per-bit. We observe that the parasitic voltage drops create a significant asymmetry in programming speed and reliability of NVM cells in a crossbar. Specifically, NVM cells that are on shorter current paths are faster to program but have lower endurance than those on longer current paths, and vice versa. This asymmetry in neuromorphic architectures create reliability-performance trade-offs, which can be exploited efficiently using SNN mapping techniques. In this work, we demonstrate such trade-offs using a previously-proposed SNN mapping technique with 10 workloads from contemporary machine learning tasks for a state-of-the art neuromoorphic hardware.
U.S. Congressional Campaign Communications in an Internet Age

AbstractNew technologies – with perhaps the most notable being radio and television – often change the face of political campaigns. The Internet, and particularly campaign websites with their concomitant technologies (e.g. interactive and multimedia features), has evolved at a faster rate than any other prior innovation. This raises a critical question: have website technologies altered how congressional candidates campaign? We address this question with a novel dataset from 2008. Not only do we chart technological change on sites over the course of the campaign but we also explore how and when candidates use certain technologies. We discover two critical and, to our knowledge, novel points. First, congressional candidates use these technologies to a much lesser extent than one may suspect. Second, their scant usage is driven by how certain technologies limit control of the candidate's message, the candidate's status in the race and other key variables such as the employment of campaign consultants. In su...
Interest Rates and Investment: Evidence from Commercial Real Estate

Interest rates in the U.S. have been at historical lows since the financial crisis in 2007 for almost a decade, which are partly meant to stimulate investments. However, a theory by Chetty (2007) suggests that, at low rates, decreasing the interest rate has little effect on investments due to the low cost of delaying investment. This paper estimates constant-quality commercial real estate pricing indices for U.S. metro areas and empirically studies how interest rates affect capital expenditures of more than 12,000 properties across time (from 1997 to 2014) and metros. The identification comes from different responses of property capital expenses across metros to the same interest rate. Results show that decreasing the interest rate has weaker stimulating effects on investments when rates are low and where property prices are high.
Talk changes things: The implications of McCloskey's Bourgeois Dignity for historical inquiry

Abstract In The Bourgeois Dignity , Deidre McCloskey asserts that although there were many reasons that have been posited for the rise of the bourgeois class and the tremendous increase in the world's standard of living that occurred during the Industrial Revolution, including the enlightenment and the Protestant ethic, something else was required. For her, that something else was a change in the esteem that was afforded to the bourgeois, to capitalists and to capitalism. The talk changed and a change in the talk was what ultimately changed things. In this article, we briefly explore and defend McCloskey's (2010) claim that a change in talk was at the root of the Industrial Revolution. Further, contrary to much of the literature on the relationship between discourse and social change which tends to focus on discourse as an artifact rather than a driver of change, we argue using examples from outside of economics and economic history that a change in talk not only tends to accompany but often precedes dramatic social transformation.
Re-Membering Law in the Internationalizing World

This article addresses the current unprecedented intermingling of laws and legal norms in our internationalizing world. It examines in particular the meeting of the common and civil law in the European Union as an indication of the often unseen and misunderstood issues that lurk beneath the surface where law joins different communities, and where it meets within them. These issues are of still greater magnitude when transposed to a global level. They involve contexts of origin that produce different understandings of legal standards allegedly shared across legal cultures, and conflicting approaches to future orientations of law that derive from unspoken, incompatible ideas about the nature of law and the needs of legal orders. Comparative analysis is of urgent importance to clarify the ongoing debates. It is needed not just among different legal communities, but also within each, as our world evolves both through new encounters of laws and legal norms throughout the world, and by transitions within national legal systems that require continuing recollection and examination of history. The “re-membering” of law that this article hopes to shed light on deals with (1) recompositions of law as it increasingly ignores old borders and categories; and (2) the ongoing need to remember law’s past
Informational Robustness in Intertemporal Pricing

We introduce a robust approach to study dynamic monopoly pricing of a durable good in the face of buyer learning. A buyer receives information about her willingness-to-pay for the seller’s product over time, and decides when to make a one-time purchase. The seller does not know how the buyer learns but commits to a pricing strategy to maximize profits against the worst-case information arrival process. We show that a constant price path delivers the robustly optimal profit, with profit and price both lower than under known values. Thus, under the robust objective, intertemporal incentives do not arise at the optimum, despite the possibility for information arrival to influence the timing of purchases. We delineate whether constant prices remain optimal (or not) when the seller seeks robustness against a subset of information arrival processes. As part of the analysis, we develop new techniques to study dynamic Bayesian persuasion.
Does mortgage deregulation increase foreclosures? Evidence from Cleveland ☆

Abstract This paper examines how relaxing a local anti-predatory lending law for mortgages affects foreclosures. The empirical evidence is drawn from a quasi experiment in Cleveland, Ohio, where the State Supreme Court repealed an ordinance that imposed lending restrictions on home mortgages of high annual percentage rates (APRs). Empirical evidence shows that observable loan and borrower characteristics were not affected by the repeal, nor did the overall originations appear to increase; yet the APRs were 20% more likely to exceed the regulatory thresholds that were nullified. Moreover, the foreclosure rate increased by six percentage points to 20%.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Thinking about Expert Evidence as Expert Testimony

Taking stock more than a decade after Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, this paper argues that legal scholars, including the author, have perhaps focused too much on the validity of expert evidence and not enough on the propriety of expert testimony. It argues that legal scholars who disagree about many aspects of expert evidence nonetheless agree that "fit" between the testimonial claim and the empirical support for that claim is a crucial issue. The paper then suggests that much of the recent controversies over forensic evidence may be attributed to what Professor Friedman has called "over-claiming," the exaggeration of the probative value of the evidence during expert testimony. The paper concludes by presenting some empirical data from a study of actual expert testimony about latent print analysis. The testimonial claims vary significantly from case to case, but fall into several broad categories. Although the testimonial claims are not always logical on their face, the paper argues that these testimonial claims make juries comfortable with conviction. The paper concludes by calling for more scholarly attention to expert evidence as expert testimony.