cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Central bank independence and transparency: Evolution and effectiveness

Abstract Over the past two decades, the pace of central bank reforms in terms of institutional independence and transparency has been particularly brisk. This paper examines the current level of central bank independence (CBI) and transparency in a broad sample of countries using newly constructed measures, and looks at the evolution in both measures from an earlier time period. The legal independence of central banks has increased markedly since the 1980s, while the rise in transparency since the late 1990s has been less impressive. Exploiting the time dimension of our data to eliminate country fixed effects and using instrumental variable estimation to overcome endogeneity concerns, we present robust evidence that greater CBI is associated with lower inflation. We also find that enhanced transparency practices are associated with the private sector making greater use of information provided by the central bank.
Insufficiently Jurisdictional: The Case against Treating State Sovereign Immunity as an Article III Doctrine

Even as the Supreme Court has expanded the scope of state sovereign immunity and clarified many of its applications, it has left one fundamental and long-standing puzzle unresolved. The Court has failed to decide whether state sovereign immunity is a question of subject matter jurisdiction - in other words, a specific limitation on the federal judiciary's Article III powers to hear cases and controversies - or whether it is better conceived as a nonjurisdictional right, defense, or aspect of residual state power. This Comment argues that the Supreme Court's muddled and contradictory pronouncements on the jurisdictional status of sovereign immunity have undermined the doctrine's coherence and perceived legitimacy. This Comment first discusses the doctrinal and practical problems with both the jurisdictional view and the Court's inconsistent adherence to it, and then considers how the Court might formulate a more consistent and coherent view of state sovereign immunity. This Comment concludes that because subject matter jurisdiction is a fundamentally inappropriate way to understand the doctrine of sovereign immunity as the Supreme Court has developed it, the Court should clarify current doctrine by squarely holding that sovereign immunity is not a question of subject matter jurisdiction.
Wisdom or Madness? Comparing Crowds with Expert Evaluation in Funding the Arts

In fields as diverse as technology entrepreneurship and the arts, crowds of interested stakeholders are increasingly responsible for deciding which innovations to fund, a privilege that was previously reserved for a few experts, such as venture capitalists and grant-making bodies. Little is known about the degree to which the crowd differs from experts in judging which ideas to fund, and, indeed, whether the crowd is even rational in making funding decisions. Drawing on a panel of national experts and comprehensive data from the largest crowdfunding site, we examine funding decisions for proposed theater projects, a category where expert and crowd preferences might be expected to differ greatly. We instead find significant agreement between the funding decisions of crowds and experts. Where crowds and experts disagree, it is far more likely to be a case where the crowd is willing to fund projects that experts may not. Examining the outcomes of these projects, we find no quantitative or qualitative differe...
Big Data as a Governance Mechanism

This study empirically investigates two effects of alternative data availability: stock price informativeness and its disciplining effect on managers’ actions. Recent computing advancements have enabled technology companies to collect real-time, granular indicators of fundamentals to sell to investment professionals. These data include consumer transactions and satellite images. The introduction of these data increases price informativeness through decreased information acquisition costs, particularly in firms in which sophisticated investors have higher incentives to uncover information. I document two effects on managers. First, managers reduce their opportunistic trading. Second, investment efficiency increases, consistent with price informativeness improving managers’ incentives to invest and divest efficiently.Received June 1, 2017; editorial decision June 1, 2018 by Editor Wei Jiang. The Author has furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.
Political Liberalism and Religion: On Separation and Establishment*

THE question of the proper place of religion in the liberal state has gained increasing prominence in Rawlsian political philosophy. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls posited that religious liberty was the most basic of the basic liberties and, in Political Liberalism, he set out to show that sincere religious belief was not incompatible with principled commitment to the liberal state. Should, however, the liberal state be a state of separation (of state and religion) or of recognition and establishment (of religion by the state)? On this matter, political liberals disagree. This article seeks to explain the nature of this disagreement. I first show that political liberalism, as a theory of justice, is inconclusive about the public place of religion. Both separation and establishment (or, more plausibly, a combination of the two) can theoretically meet the demands of liberal justice. I then turn to the core issue of the separation-establishment debate, which asks whether the liberal state can legitimately attach itself to religious symbols. I suggest that (what I call) ‘orthodox’ political liberalism is indeterminate about the symbolic dimensions of the public place of religion. By contrast, a citizenship-centred, ‘republican’ conception of political liberalism decisively rules out symbolic establishment. Political liberal defences of the separation of church and state, such as Martha Nussbaum’s recent eulogy of US Establishment Clause jurisprudence, implicitly rely on such a republican, citizenship-centred conception of political liberalism. The article sets out such a conception, and highlights the role it plays in arguments about the public place of religion.
Women managers in Poland and the United States: a comparative analysis

This paper compares women managers in Poland and the United States in the context of their contrasting political and economic systems—the socialism of Central and Eastern Europe and the liberal democratic tradition of the West. We discuss the two political philosophies and their impact on gender roles and labour markets, and then compare this theory to the reality of Poland's transition. Finally, this background is used to analyse differences between Polish women managers and their American counterparts.
IDENTIFYING THE EFFECT OF OPEN ACCESS ON CITATIONS USING A PANEL OF SCIENCE JOURNALS

An open-access journal allows free online access to its articles, obtaining revenue from fees charged to submitting authors or from institutional support. Using panel data on science journals, we are able to circumvent problems plaguing previous studies of the impact of open access on citations. In contrast to the huge effects found in these previous studies, we find a more modest effect: moving from paid to open access increases cites by 8% on average in our sample. The benefit is concentrated among top-ranked journals. In fact, open access causes a statistically significant reduction in cites to the bottom-ranked journals in our sample, leading us to conjecture that open access may intensify competition among articles for readers' attention, generating losers as well as winners. (JEL L17, O33)
Asset fire sales (and purchases) in equity markets

Abstract This paper examines institutional price pressure in equity markets by studying mutual fund transactions caused by capital flows from 1980 to 2004. Funds experiencing large outflows tend to decrease existing positions, which creates price pressure in the securities held in common by distressed funds. Similarly, the tendency among funds experiencing large inflows to expand existing positions creates positive price pressure in overlapping holdings. Investors who trade against constrained mutual funds earn significant returns for providing liquidity. In addition, future flow-driven transactions are predictable, creating an incentive to front-run the anticipated forced trades by funds experiencing extreme capital flows.
The Midas Touch

In his celebrated 1959 lecture, "The Two Cultures," C.P. Snow excoriated the conflict between the scientific and literary cultures. That conflict still resonates in a society crippled by cultural divides over a wide range of scientifically sophisticated issues, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, childhood vaccination, embryonic stem cell research, abortion, and end-of-life decisionmaking. C.S. Holling, Lance Gunderson, and Donald Ludwig have responded to Snow's challenge by proposing an integrative theory of panarchy for organizing our understanding of the dynamics underlying complex economic, ecological, and institutional systems. Drawing lessons from the intertwined Greek myths of Midas, Hermes, and Pan, this essay concludes that the quest for truth in science and in law will favor those who, like the god of unpredictable change, have long heard and always will hear the music.
International Relations Theory, International Law, and the Regime Governing Atrocities in Internal Conflicts

Over the last ten years, international relations (IR) theory, a branch of political science, has animated some of the most exciting scholarship in international law.1 If a true joint discipline has not yet emerged,2 scholars in both fields have clearly established the value of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. Yet IR—like international law—comprises several distinct theoretical approaches or “methods.” While this complexity makes interactions between the disciplines especially rich, it also makes them difficult to explore concisely. This essay thus constitutes something of a minisymposium in itself: it summarizes the four principal schools of IR theory—conventionally identified as “realist,” “institutionalist,” “liberal” and “constructivist”—and then applies them to the norms and institutions governing serious violations of human dignity during internal conflicts (the “atrocities regime”).
Law and the Lodestar: Tunisian Civil Law and the Task of Ordering Plurality in the Aftermath of the Jasmine Revolution

In the wake of the Arab Spring, Tunisia is now emerging as a model for Arab Spring countries seeking a successful transition to democracy. Its recent success in completing its new, post-revolution constitution demonstrates its leading role in the region. As such, legal developments within Tunisia carry the potential for regional impact as other countries seek to emulate its successful transition.The purpose of this article, therefore, is to provide a close examination of Tunisian civil law – a critical aspect of the Tunisian legal system and one which has served as a major conflict dampener throughout modern Tunisian history. This article analyzes the domestic civil law in force in Tunisia and demonstrates that, for well over a century, Tunisia has maintained a “mixed” civil law system which incorporates elements of continental civil law (derived from European codes), Islamic law, and Tunisian custom. Tunisian civil law, thus, regulates the ordinary affairs of Tunisians in a manner that is consistent with both modern legal norms and the tenets of Islamic law. This fact takes on special significance in light of ongoing political debates centering around the role of Islamic law in Tunisian society, the new Tunisian constitution, and the contemporary debate on Islam and secularism. It is also worthy of note in light of extremist narratives that suggest the Tunisian government or contemporary Tunisian law is “unIslamic.”Notably, the article also highlights Tunisia's rich legal history and the story of David Santillana – a Tunisian jurist from a Jewish family of European ancestry – who became an expert in Islamic law and was the principal drafter of the Tunisian Code of Obligations and Contracts, a masterful piece of legislation which remains in force today as Tunisia’s primary civil law document.Lastly, because Tunisia is now emerging as a model for Arab Spring countries seeking a successful transition to democracy, the article posits that legal developments within Tunisia carry the potential for regional impact as other countries seek to emulate its successful transition. In that regard, the Tunisian code demonstrates how Islamic law can function in a modern context alongside continental civil law as part of a mixed jurisdiction in which domestic civil law is derived from a multiplicity of sources. Other countries in the region may, therefore, benefit from the Tunisian experience as they look to develop civil laws which are modern, yet compatible with their legal traditions, customs, and Islamic legal precepts.
Within-series momentum in hockey: No returns for running up the score

Drawing on data from 916 Division 1 men’s college hockey games played during a recent six-year period in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA), we find evidence that positive momentum within 458 two-game series does not exist when controlling for team quality. We find that neither victory nor the margin of victory in Game 1 of a two-game series is predictive of the outcome of Game 2. We suggest that loss aversion should be considered in relation to questions of momentum.
Beyond the Flash Crash:Systemic Risk, Reliability, and High Frequency Financial Markets

Extreme events in financial markets can arise from fundamental information, but they can also arise from latent hazards embedded in the market design. This concept is known as systemic risk, and someone must bear it. Extreme events add to risk, and their probability and severity must be accounted for by market participants. This article shows how this risk fits into the finance literature and that, from an engineering perspective, this risk in markets has never been lower. The industry is evolving to mitigate this risk. This article presents an overview of the complexity of the automated market network and describes how market participants interact through the exchange mechanism. It defines new terms and a new framework for understanding the risk of extreme market moves from a reliability and safety perspective.
Three LINERs under the Chandra X-ray microscope

We use observations of three galaxies hosting low-ionization nuclear emission-line regions (LINERs; NGC 404, NGC 4736, and NGC 4579) with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory to study their power sources. We find very diverse properties within this small group: NGC 404 has an X-ray faint nucleus with a soft, thermal spectrum; NGC 4736 harbors a plethora of discrete X-ray sources in and around its nucleus; and NGC 4579 has a dominant nuclear point source embedded in a very extended, diffuse nebulosity. From their multiwavelength properties we conclude the following about the power sources in these LINERs: the nucleus of NGC 404 is the site of a weak, compact starburst, whose X-ray emission is due to gas heated by stellar winds and supernovae; NGC 4736 appears to be in a recent or aging starburst phase, where the X-ray emission is dominated by a dense cluster of X-ray binaries; and NGC 4579 is powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole. We detect 39 discrete sources in NGC 4736 and 21 in NGC 4579, most with LX > 1037 ergs s-1. One source in the disk of NGC 4579 appears to be an ultraluminous X-ray binary with LX(2-10 keV) = 9 × 1039 ergs s-1, but it could also be a background quasar. The most luminous discrete sources have simple power-law spectra, which along with their luminosities suggest that these are X-ray binaries accreting near or above the Eddington rate for a neutron star. By comparing the luminosity functions of discrete X-ray sources in these and other galaxies, we find a potential connection between the age of the stellar population and the slope of the cumulative X-ray luminosity function: galaxies with primarily old stellar populations have steeper X-ray luminosity functions than starburst galaxies. We suggest that this difference results from the contribution of high-mass X-ray binaries from the young stellar population to the upper end of the luminosity function.
M & A Fiduciary Duties: Delaware's Murky Jurisprudence

The article deals with the fiduciary duties of corporate officials in mergers and acquisitions, particularly as they have been defined by the Delaware Courts. It focuses on judicial decisions over the last several decades and includes a discussion of some of the most recent significant ones.The article also describes how those duties may vary depending on the type of corporate event that is occurring and contains commentary on the nature of those obligations. Where corrupt activity is present or there is no showing that these transactions are in the public interest, they should not be permitted to go forward. If Delaware Courts are not willing to stop them, the article proposes a system of more meaningful review to accomplish that.
Nongovernmental Organizations and International Law

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have exerted a profound influence on the scope and dictates of international law. NGOs have fostered treaties, promoted the creation of new international organizations (IOs), and lobbied in national capitals to gain consent to stronger international rules. A decade ago, Antonio Donini, writing about the United Nations, declared that “the Temple of States would be a rather dull place without nongovernmental organisations.” His observation was apt and is suggestive of a more general thesis: had NGOs never existed, international law would have a less vital role in human progress.
Budget deficits and interest rates: a fresh perspective

We extend the literature on budget deficits and interest rates in three ways: we examine both advanced and emerging economies and for the first time a large emerging market panel; explore interactions to explain some of the heterogeneity in the literature; and apply system GMM. There is overall a highly significant positive effect of budget deficits on interest rates, but the effect depends on interaction terms and is only significant under one of several conditions: deficits are high, mostly domestically financed, or interact with high domestic debt; financial openness is low; interest rates are liberalized; or financial depth is low.
Trade, the damage from alien species, and the effects of protectionism under alternate market structures

Abstract We first construct three measures of the expected damage from the unintentional introduction of alien species into a country called Home. We then focus on four market structures. First, perfect competition prevails in both Home and Foreign, and Home is a small country. Second, the Home and the Foreign markets are both perfectly competitive, but Home is now a large country. Third, the exporter in Foreign is a monopolist and there are no import competing firms in Home. Finally, the Foreign exporter and the import competing firm in Home engage in Cournot competition. In all four scenarios, we analyze the impact of small and optimal Home tariffs on prices, exports, imports, the damage from alien species, and social welfare in Home. Inter alia , our analysis identifies conditions under which it makes sense to use trade policy (tariffs) to regulate invasive species and conditions under which it does not.
Mini-DOMAs as Political Process Failures: The Case for Heightened Scrutiny of State Anti-Gay Marriage Amendments

Lawsuits seeking gay and lesbian marriage equality are piling up— more than seventy separate cases in thirty-two jurisdictions as of this writing—and advocates are racing to the Supreme Court to see which case might settle the question for the whole nation. As these cases move up swiftly through the federal courts, it is becoming increasingly difficult to see how the Justices can avoid a final reckoning on the question of samesex marriage during their October 2014 term. Indeed, it does not seem an exaggeration to describe same-sex marriage advocates’ apparent strategy as one of “shock and awe.” Marriage equality is on a winning streak of more than a dozen cases since the Supreme Court’s decision last summer in United States v. Windsor, the primary authority on which lower courts have relied. Windsor invalidated the federal Defense of Marriage Act, but even more importantly, the Court spoke with warm empathy toward gay and lesbian Americans’ quest for equal marriage rights. Specifically, the majority wrote that the “equal dignity of same-sex marriages” may not be undermined by laws whose “principal purpose is to impose inequality.” Windsor was a breakthrough equal protection decision, but it arose within a framework of federalism: protecting the prerogatives of promarriage equality states against an overreaching and ill-intentioned Congress. As various commentators have suggested, Windsor’s thinly
Determinants of target capital structure: The case of dual debt and equity issues

Abstract We examine whether market and operating performance affect corporate financing behavior because they are related to target leverage. Our focus on firms that issue both debt and equity enhances our ability to draw inferences. Consistent with dynamic trade-off theories, dual issuers offset the deviation from the target resulting from accumulation of earnings and losses. Our results also imply that high market-to-book firms have low target debt ratios. On the other hand, consistent with market timing, high stock returns increase the probability of equity issuance but have no effect on target leverage.
The Provisional Arrest and Subsequent Release of Abu Daoud by French Authorities

On January 7, 1977, Abu Daoud entered France as a member of an official delegation sent to Paris by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). A day or so later, French police detained and then arrested him at the request of the West German and Israeli Governments. Offficials of both governments announced forthcoming requests for his extradition as a suspected organizer of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. This chain of events set the stage for the most recent case illustrating the political and legal obstacles which mitigate against the extradition and eventual prosecution and punishment of alleged transnational terrorists.
(When) are religious people nicer? Religious salience and the "Sunday Effect" on pro-social behavior

Prior research has found mixed evidence for the long-theorized link between religiosity and pro-social behavior. To help overcome this divergence, I hypothesize that pro-social behavior is linked not to religiosity per se, but rather to the salience of religion and religious norms. I report a field experiment that examined when auction participants will respond to an appeal to continue bidding for secular charitable causes. Religious individuals are more likely than non-religious individuals to respond to an appeal “for charity” only on days that they visit their place of worship; on other days of the week, religiosity has no effect. Notably, the result persists after controlling for a host of factors that may influence bidding, but disappears when the appeal “for charity” is replaced by an appeal to bid for other (i.e., competitive) reasons. Implications for the link between religion and pro-social behavior are discussed.
Retention Futility: Targeting High-Risk Customers Might be Ineffective:

AbstractCompanies in a variety of sectors are increasingly managing customer churn proactively, generally by detecting customers at the highest risk of churning and targeting retention efforts towards them. While there is a vast literature on developing churn prediction models that identify customers at the highest risk of churning, no research has investigated whether it is indeed optimal to target those individuals. Combining two field experiments with machine learning techniques, the author demonstrates that customers identified as having the highest risk of churning are not necessarily the best targets for proactive churn programs. This finding is not only contrary to common wisdom but also suggests that retention programs are sometimes futile not because firms offer the wrong incentives but because they do not apply the right targeting rules. Accordingly, firms should focus their modeling efforts on identifying the observed heterogeneity in response to the intervention and to target customers on the ...
Efficient Breach of International Law: Optimal Remedies, “Legalized Noncompliance,” and Related Issues

In much of the scholarly literature on international law, there is a tendency to condemn violations of the law and to leave it at that. If all violations of international law were indeed undesirable, this tendency would be unobjectionable. We argue in this paper, however, that a variety of circumstances arise under which violations of international law are desirable from an economic standpoint. The reasons why are much the same as the reasons why non‐performance of private contracts is sometimes desirable—the concept of “efficient breach,” familiar to modern students of contract law, has direct applicability to international law. As in the case of private contracts, it is important for international law to devise remedial or other mechanisms that encourage compliance where appropriate and facilitate noncompliance where appropriate. To this end, violators ideally should internalize the costs that violations impose on other nations, but should not be “punished” beyond this level. We show that the (limited) international law of remedies, both at a general level and in certain subfields of international law, can be understood to be consistent with this principle. We also consider other mechanisms that may serve to “legalize” efficient deviation from international rules, as well as the possibility that breach of international obligations may facilitate efficient evolution of the underlying substantive law. The topic of remedies is one of the most undeveloped areas of international law. No treaty regime governs remedies. The topic receives no more than a few pages in the standard treatises and texts.2 Very few international judicial or arbitration opinions outside trade and investment law address remedies,3 and other authoritative sources are equally scarce. Members of the International Law Commission (ILC) drafted a handful of articles addressing remedies—part of a 1 Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School, and James & Patricia Kowal Professor of Law, Stanford Law School. Thanks to Eyal Benvenisti, Oren Bar‐Gill, Yoram Margalioth, Ariel Porat, and participants at a workshop at Tel Aviv Law School, for helpful comments, and to James Kraehenbuehl and Greg Pesce for valuable research assistance. 2 See, e.g., L. Oppenheim, International Law: A Treatise 352–57 (H. Lauterpacht ed., 8th ed. 1955); Peter Malanczuk, Akehurst’s Modern Introduction to International Law 269–72 (7th ed. 1997); Lori Damrosch et al., International Law: Cases and Materials 713–32 (4th ed. 2001). A popular treatise, Mark Weston Janis, International Law (5th ed. 2008), has nothing on remedies. A collection of essays ostensibly about remedies focuses on dispute resolution; see Remedies in International Law: The Institutional Dilemma (Malcolm D. Evans ed., 1998). 3 See Malcolm Shaw, A Practical Look at the International Court of Justice, in Remedies in International Law, supra at 26 (the ICJ “has not as yet developed a clear pattern of applicable remedies”).
Why do firms both make and buy? An investigation of concurrent sourcing

Transaction cost economics, neoclassical economics, and the firm capabilities literatures propose theories of the firm that typically depict firm boundaries determined by a dichotomous choice: the make or buy decision. However, none of these theories presents a satisfying explanation as to why firms would concurrently source, i.e., simultaneously make and buy the same good. This study combines these organizational economics theories and compares when firms make, buy, and concurrently source through surveying small manufacturing firms. Support was shown for aspects of all three theories, with evidence indicating that concurrent sourcing is a distinctly different choice, rather existing along a make/buy continuum. Copyright  2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The architecture of transaction networks: a comparative analysis of hierarchy in two sectors

Many products are manufactured in networks of firms linked by transactions, but comparatively little is known about how or why such transaction networks differ. This article investigates the transaction networks of two large sectors in Japan at a single point in time. In characterizing these networks, our primary measure is "hierarchy," defined as the degree to which transactions flow in one direction, from "upstream" to "downstream." Our empirical results show that the electronics sector exhibits a much lower degree of hierarchy than the automotive sector because of the presence of numerous inter-firm transaction cycles. These cycles, in turn, reveal that a significant group of firms have two-way "vertically permeable boundaries": (i) they participate in multiple stages of an industry's value chain, hence are vertically integrated, but also (ii) they allow both downstream units to purchase intermediate inputs from and upstream units to sell intermediate goods to other sector firms. We demonstrate that the 10 largest electronics firms had two-way vertically permeable boundaries while almost no firms in the automotive sector had adopted that practice. Copyright 2012 The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.
Health Care Capital Financing Agencies: The Intergovernmental Roles of Quasi-Government Authorities and the Impact on the Cost of Capital

During the decade 1983-1992, approximately $1.4 trillion of municipal bonds were sold in 87,000 in separate issues, primarily to finance capital projects for education, electric power, transportation, health care, housing, and other public and private purpose activities. Approximately two-thirds of these financings were originated by financing authorities, quasi-government agencies which are the creation of state legislature. Despite the growing role played by quasi-public authorities in capital finance, their impacts have not been studied systematically. We first describe the issuers of tax-exempt debt in the health sector and then derive measures for describing the mix of issuers between state and local levels, and between both government and quasi-government sectors. We present abbreviated test results of the impact that different mixes have on the cost of capital. First, competition is good: using a Herfindahl index analysis we show that states with less concentrated issuers have a lower cost of capital than those with a more concentrated market, including state-level finance monopolies. On the other hand, we cannot assert unequivocally that market deconcentration, in and of itself, should be a goal. For instance, there are economies of scale in the health care finance industry that allow larger (often state-level) issuers to lower the cost of capital.
Kinetics of self-assembly of inclusions due to lipid membrane thickness interactions

Self-assembly of proteins on lipid membranes underlies many important processes in cell biology, such as, exo- and endo-cytosis, assembly of viruses, etc. An attractive force that can cause self-assembly is mediated by membrane thickness interactions between proteins. The free energy profile associated with this attractive force is a result of the overlap of thickness deformation fields around the proteins which can be calculated from the solution of a boundary value problem. Yet, the time scales over which two inclusions coalesce has not been explored, even though the evolution of particle concentrations on membranes has been modeled using phase-field approaches. In this paper we compute this time scale as a function of the initial distance between two inclusions by viewing their coalescence as a first passage time problem. The mean first passage time is computed using Langevin dynamics and a partial differential equation, and both methods are found to be in excellent agreement. Inclusions of three different shapes are studied and it is found that for two inclusions separated by about hundred nanometers the time to coalescence is hundreds of milliseconds irrespective of shape. An efficient computation of the interaction energy of inclusions is central to our work. We compute it using a finite difference technique and show that our results are in excellent agreement with those from a previously proposed semi-analytical method based on Fourier–Bessel series. The computational strategies described in this paper could potentially lead to efficient methods to explore the kinetics of self-assembly of proteins on lipid membranes.
What's the Use in Being Practical?

Drawing from sociological and psychoanalytic theories and personal experience, this essay reflects on the way in which the word "practical" is used in public administration. It suggests that the field has a narrow understanding of the term, one that obscures the complex ways in which ideas, theories, and techniques are perceived as practical. The word "interesting" better describes the reception of such theories and also hints at a different, perhaps more productive way of relating to one another.
Justice, democracy, and future generations

Proposals for how to redesign democracy so as to better secure the demands of intergenerational justice can be divided into three broad families: (1) representative proxies; (2) differential voting schemes; and (3) counter-majoritarian devices. However, these proposals suffer from a fundamental weakness: namely, they all assume that despite the fact that democracy is by its very nature ill-equipped to secure intergenerational justice, it is nevertheless possible to rely on democracy to solve this problem in the first place. But that, to put it colloquially, is like thinking that one can pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. This paper sketches the shape and contours of a solution to this problem that is better able than the alternatives to escape this objection. This solution draws upon the strategy of a so-called ‘non-reformist reform.’
Alternative methods of linear regression

This paper is a survey on traditional linear regression techniques using the @?"1-, @?"2-, and @?"~-norm. We derive the characterization of the respective regression estimates (including optimality and uniqueness criteria), as well as discuss some of their statistical properties.
Larry and Lawrence

This essay - penned as a tribute to Larry Tribe - argues that equality, not liberty, represents the most promising framework for future gay-rights litigation. The paper begins by arguing that the stylistic differences between the two opinions in Lawrence v. Texas signal something important about the shortcomings of the liberty paradigm. As Larry Tribe has written, a liberty claim is won or lost based on what level of generality a court uses to describe it. We thus see Justice Kennedy, with his penchant for abstract prose, describing the case at a high level of generality in vindicating Lawrence's challenge to Texas' sodomy law. But note that the opinion's fluid prose ends precisely when the opinion moves from the general to the specific. Kennedy's high-flown abstractions are ill-suited to addressing facts on the ground. If Justice Kennedy is too abstract in his prose, Justice Scalia is too concrete. Scalia's groundedness makes him the wittiest dissent in cases involving sex, for everything funny about sex lies in our discomfort with the gap between the particular and the abstract. But Scalia's insistence that the case is about nothing more than the right to engage in a particular type of sex act ensures that his opinion, too, misses something important about what is at stake in Lawrence. Having outlined the shortcomings of the two opinions, the remainder of the essay argues that equal protection, not liberty, is the right paradigm for future gay-rights litigation. Equal protection is pitched at the right level of generality; it captures what we are fighting about. Larry Tribe may find it easy to toggle between liberty and equality when writing about substantive due process. Like Justice Brandeis, he is "the master . . . of both microscope and telescope." In the parts of his work where he connects the Court's liberty decisions, he shows us constellations where the rest of us saw only a random collection of stars. In other parts of his work, he offers a granular view, describing the relationship between liberty and equality as a double helix. For everyday judges and lawyers, however, doctrinal analysis starts with doctrinal categories. It thus seems inevitable that Tribe's double helix will be split. And if courts must choose between these admittedly intertwined paths, we will get closer to the vistas Tribe describes if judges follow the path of equal protection, not liberty. That is because what is a stake in these debates is not whether all humans should enjoy a right, but whether gays and lesbians, in particular, should do so, and that is an idea better capture by the equal protection paradigm. Somewhere between Justice Kennedy's high-flown right to intimate relations and Justice Scalia's down-and-dirty discussion of sodomy is the status of the LGBT community. Equal protection begins with that issue while allowing the Court to write with a worthy tradition behind it.
Linking Task Conditions to Physiology and Judgment Errors in RM Systems

In models of optimal decision making, assumptions about managerial behavior are often made with the hope that the prescriptions offered by these models will be effective in practice, even if actual behavior occasionally strays from these assumptions. However, recent revenue management (RM) research has demonstrated what appear to be systematic deviations from normative models of decision making. These deviations can even be observed in relatively simple RM contexts. We suggest that technical errors in capacity allocation decisions are linked to issues such as arousal and stress associated with state conditions of RM tasks. Our study goes beyond existing findings by considering behavioral phenomena in concurrent task settings, where the decision maker is faced with managing decisions for more than one product or service. Physiological measures of eye dilation and blink rate are used as markers of arousal and stress in subjects engaged in RM tasks. Our analysis shows that physiological responses are indeed associated with both the state conditions of RM tasks and the number of capacity blocks managed concurrently by an individual. Deviations from modeled decision making appear to be significantly dependent upon these physiological responses. We conclude with a discussion of implications for further research and practice.
Time to Pick a Fight? Interest Group Decision Making to Enter the Hydropower Regulatory Process

Assuming that interest groups, like households, firms, or any other structured organization, have limited resources but broad objectives, how do they pick and choose which regulatory battles to fight? The issue of interest group battle choice has received little direct attention in the literature, in large part because defining the state space of total interest group activity is often difficult to do in practice. This paper is able to overcome such a difficulty by drawing on a unique data set regarding the hydroelectric dam relicensing process in the United States. In this context, there is evidence that what is most consistently significant in affecting the battle entry decision across the interest groups under study is strategic considerations — how many allies are expected to also get involved in a particular fight and, even more importantly, who the enemy is that you will be up against.
A Statistical Model for Multiparty Electoral Data

We propose an internally consistent and comprehensive statistical model for analyzing multiparty, district-level aggregate election data. This model can be used to explain or predict how the geographic distribution of electoral results depends upon economic conditions, neighborhood ethnic compositions, campaign spending, and other features of the election campaign or characteristics of the aggregate areas. We also provide several new graphical representations for help in data exploration, model evaluation, and substantive interpretation. Although the model applies more generally, we use it to help resolve an important controversy over the size of and trend in the electoral advantage of incumbency in Great Britain. Contrary to previous analyses, which are all based on measures now known to be biased, we demonstrate that the incumbency advantage is small but politically meaningful. We also find that it differs substantially across the parties, about half a percent for the Conservatives, 1% for the Labor Party, and 3% for the Liberal party and its successors. Also contrary to previous research, we show that these effects have not grown in recent years. Finally, we are able to estimate from which party each party's incumbency advantage is predominantly drawn.
Migration with a composite amenity: the role of rents.

An attempt is made to analyze the phenomenon of migration using rent as the single variable that could serve as a proxy for the many amenities that might affect migration patterns. A theoretical treatment of the implications of rent capitalization for migration is first outlined. Empirical results indicating the usefulness of this approach are then presented. The geographic focus of the study is on the United States. (ANNOTATION)
Bibliographical Essay: Women and the Legal Profession

"Paradox" and "double bind" are terms frequently used in the lit­erature regarding women and the legal profession. "Paradox" de scribes the contradiction between the socially defined images of "woman" and "lawyer,"whereas "double bind" looks at this same issue from the point of view of the woman attorney caught in this dilemma. Shall she model herself upon the stereotypically male image of an at­torney and risk being accused of inappropriate aggressiveness? Or shall she heed the advice given to Ann Hopkins -- to act more femininely, talk more femininely, walk more femininely -- and risk the judgment that she is passive and unsuited to the life of the court­ room? In one form or another, women lawyers have faced these dilemmas ever since Myra Bradwell was denied admission to the bar in 1869 on the grounds that "[t]he natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civillife." Women lawyers have been writing about these dilemmas at least since shortly after Myra Bradwell's case, analyzing what they were up against, strategizing about how to meet the common obstacles they faced, sharing experiences, and giv­ing as well as receiving support.
The Vietnam Draft Cases and the Pro-Religion Equality Project

There is currently unfolding among secularists and liberal religious believers an equality project that argues that secular commitments of conscience are as worthy of protection as are the commitments of traditional religion. This movement is symbolized by Brian Leiter’s recent book, "Why Tolerate Religion?" but it has many other adherents today as well. This movement seeks either to substitute conscience provisions for existing religious exemptions from law or at least to add conscience exemptions to them. As religious believers have pointed out, the likely consequence, and perhaps even the goal, of this effort is the weakening of exemptions for religion rather than the strengthening of conscience exemptions for all. That is why I call this movement the Anti-Religion Equality Project. The State is the ultimate beneficiary of the Anti-Religion Equality Project.This paper proposes an opposing equality project, the Pro-Religion Equality Project, which would expand the meaning of religion in existing religious exemptions to include many, and certainly the most passionately held, commitments of secular conscience. There is nothing new in this Pro-Religion Equality Project. The Supreme Court already expanded religious exemptions in the Vietnam draft cases, Seeger, Welsh, and Gillette, which held that conscience commitments occupying a place in the life of the nonbeliever parallel to the place of God for the traditional religious believer deserve exemption from law as religious. While Leiter aims to subsume religion under the mantle of conscience, the Pro-Religion Equality Project subsumes conscience under the rubric of religion.Expansively interpreting religion exemptions is a better path than creating conscience provisions for a number of reasons. Because conscience is so easily invoked, conscience protection can only be weakly enforced, thus undercutting liberty for all. That result not only fails to protect religious liberty, it understates the significance of conscience claims that share the depth and breadth of traditional religious commitments and are of equal significance. Such secular conscience claims should be robustly protected and including them in existing religious exemptions helps ensure that result. In contrast, conscience claims that are idiosyncratic and lightly held should be excluded from exemptions from general law altogether and the expansion of religion exemptions tends to accomplish that.As in the Vietnam era, nonreligious exemption claimants today will resist inclusion in religious exemptions because they do not consider themselves to be religious. But even this objection shows the advantage of the Pro-Religion Equality Project over its competitor. For conscience is understood to be an individual judgment and the promotion of conscience exemptions supports the view that deeply held moral commitments are personal and subjective. In contrast, religion sounds in truth and the expansion of religious exemptions will ignite a needed societal debate about religion, reason, relativism and nihilism.
Sequential Learning of Active Subspaces

In recent years, active subspace methods (ASMs) have become a popular means of performing subspace sensitivity analysis on black-box functions. Naively applied, however, ASMs require gradient evalu...
Political Theory Today: Results of a National Survey

This article reports the results of a 2008 national survey of political theorists. The results, based on 1,086 responses from professors at accredited, four-year colleges and universities in the United States, provide information about the demographic characteristics of political theorists, opinion data on the place of political theory within political science, the proportion of political theorists in political science departments, teaching loads, expectations for tenure, the experience of political theorists on the academic job market, and, finally, rankings of theorists, journals, publishers, professional organizations, and Ph.D. programs.