cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act and the Commerce Clause

In 2006, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act ("SORNA") created a new federal crime of "failure to register" which is punishable by up to ten years imprisonment. Since that time, sex offenders across the country have been prosecuted even though the offenders had no prior connection to the federal criminal justice system. For almost all of the prosecutions under SORNA, the argued jurisdictional basis for federal prosecution has been that the sex offender travelled across state lines. Based upon this travel, which is an element of the crime of failure to register, the government has argued that the new registration crime is justified under Commerce Clause authority. An overwhelming majority of courts that have addressed Commerce Clause challenges have accepted the government's argument that interstate travel is a sufficient jurisdictional hook. However, a careful examination of existing Commerce Clause law demonstrates that these courts are mistaken. For the Commerce Clause to have any meaning and for the decisions in Lopez and Morrison to make sense, the alleged interstate travel must be connected to the underlying offense in fact and time. Despite the limitations of prior Supreme Court precedent, courts have enabled the government to prosecute sex offenders who crossed state lines years before SORNA was even enacted. Further, courts have not required any showing that the travel had any connection to the alleged offense of failing to register. While some have argued that the decision in Raich effectively ended the federalism revolution, SORNA expands federal jurisdiction into entirely new territory. As a result, this article concludes that courts should dismiss most indictments under SORNA based upon a lack of federal jurisdiction and/or Congress should amend SORNA to properly reflect the jurisdiction authorized under existing precedent.
Incentives for Banking Megamergers: What Motives Might Regulators Infer from Event-Study Evidence?

Methodologically, this paper frames the opportunity cost of any merger as the value of the alternative deals it precludes or defers. This challenges the standard event-study hypothesis that stock markets benchmark the value of a merger deal by the profits the partners would have earned in stand-alone activity. Substantively, the paper finds that megamergers in banking show two size-related exceptions to the prototypical result that acquirer stock value tends to be unaffected or to fall when a merger is announced. Giant U.S. banking organizations gain value from becoming more gigantic and gain additional value when they absorb an in-state competitor. FINANCIAL INSTITUTION MERGERS and acquisitions are dramatically remolding at least five dimensions of l:J.S. and global banking competition. Dimensions changing most markedly include the number of leading players, their product lines, their front-office and back-office technologies, their geographic reach, and their average size. In the United States, the Bank Holding Company Act assigns central banlers the duty of assessing the private and societal benefits that derive from combinations of very large financial institutions. To fulfill this duty, staff economists seek to identify the motives of each would-be acquirer (Amel 1997). Unfortunately, merger partners often have good reason to hide their true motives from government officials. Virtually every merger application projects improvements in efficiency or portfolio diversification. Authorities must routinely doublecheck the plausibility of these projections. They must also search for private benefits that may flow from increases in monopoly power, managerial entrenchment, or political clout. To evaluate a given merger, regulators must solve three problems. First, they must decide which of the eight possible reasons for merging listed in Table 1 actually apply. Next, they must estimate whether each proposed combination promises
Publishing without betrayal: Critical scholarship meets mainstream journals

Summary In this paper, I discuss challenges critical scholars face with respect to publishing qualitative research in ‘top tier’ mainstream journal outlets. Relying on ideas and insights from postcolonial and feminist thinking, I discuss how these theoretical positions inform reading, writing, and reflexivity in the production of critical management scholarship. To this end, I use examples from reviewers’ comments on work I’ve submitted to the Academy of Management Journal as well as conferences to demonstrate specifically the problematic assumptions that guide qualitative research expectations particularly in ‘top tier’ management outlets. Adopting a reflexive stance that recognizes the limits of individual agency, I suggest that engaging in interdisciplinarity across social science disciplines may promote critical and socially engaged scholarship as legitimate business knowledge.
Black Swans, Ostriches, and Ponzi Schemes

This essay discusses the relative culpability of the people who invested in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme as well as some of the legal opinions in the case.
International Evidence on Institutional Trading Behavior and Price Impact

This study characterizes institutional trading in international stocks from 37 countries during 1997 to 1998 and 2001. We find that the underlying market condition is a major determinant of the price impact and, more importantly, of the asymmetry between price impacts of institutional buy and sell orders. In bullish markets, institutional purchases have a bigger price impact than sells; however, in the bearish markets, sells have a higher price impact. This differs from previous findings on price impact asymmetry. Our study further suggests that price impact varies depending on order characteristics, firm-specific factors, and cross-country differences. CROSS-BORDER INVESTMENT has increased dramatically during the past 20 years and has become a crucial element in modern portfolios of investors worldwide. While individual investors typically diversify their portfolios through mutual funds and American Depository Receipts, large institutional investors such as mutual funds and pension funds often transact directly in international markets for their portfolio needs. Investing directly in international stocks involves unique risks, challenges, and costs.1 Whereas the tradeoffs between these unique risks and returns from international investments have been widely studied, the transaction costs, particularly price impact costs, can potentially be another critical component of a successful international portfolio strategy. This is especially important for active institutional investors who frequently transact in foreign stocks. Understanding the determinants of price impact can be helpful in designing trading strategies that lower transaction costs and maximize net returns from an institutional portfolio. Despite the significant impact of transaction costs on portfolio performance and successful international diversification, only a few studies have examined the trading costs across different countries. The notable papers are Perold
Scientific Auditing Firms

The “crisis of reproducibility” has been a significant source of controversy, heated debate, and calls for reform to institutional science in recent years. As a long-term solution to address both the present crisis and future obstacles, I propose the creation of a new form of research organization whose purpose would be to conduct random audits of the scientific literature. I suggest that data analytics of a digitized scientific corpus may play a critical role in allowing broadly educated scientists to identify linchpin results to investigate in further detail across all disciplines. I argue that a simple “mock” trial run of a simplified auditing firm consisting of several researchers over a short time period would provide valuable insight into the feasibility of this proposal.
Too smart to be selfish? Measures of cognitive ability, social preferences, and consistency

Although there is an increasing interest in examining the relationship between cognitive ability and economic behavior, less is known about the relationship between cognitive ability and social preferences. We investigate the relationship between consequential measures of cognitive ability and measures of social preferences. We have data on a series of small-stakes dictator-type decisions, known as Social Value Orientation (SVO), in addition to choices in a larger-stakes dictator game. We also have access to the grade point averages (GPA) and SAT (formerly referred to as the Scholastic Aptitude Test) outcomes of our subjects. We find that subjects who perform better on the Math portion of the SAT are more generous in both the dictator game and the SVO measure. By contrast we find that subjects with a higher GPA are more selfish in the dictator game and more generous according to the SVO. We also find some evidence that the subjects with higher GPA and higher SAT outcomes offer more consistent responses. Our results involving GPA and social preferences complement previous work which employ measures of cognitive ability which are sensitive to the intrinsic motivation of the subject. Our results involving SAT scores are without precedent in the literature and suggest that measures of cognitive ability, which are less sensitive to the intrinsic motivation of the subject, are positively related to generosity.
Time as a Trade Barrier

International trade occurs in physical space and moving goods requires time. This paper examines the importance of time as a trade barrier, estimates the magnitude of time costs, and relates these to patterns of trade and the international organization of production. Estimates indicate that each additional day spent in transport reduces the probability that the US will source from that country by 1 – 1.5 percent. Conditional on exporting country, estimates directly identify a willingness-to-pay for time savings using variation across exporters and commodities in the relative price / speed tradeoff for air and ocean shipping. Each day saved in shipping time is worth 0.8 percent ad-valorem for manufactured goods. Relative declines over time in air shipping prices make time-savings less expensive, providing a compelling explanation for aggregate trade growth, compositional effects in trade growth, as well as growth in time-intensive forms of integration such as vertical specialization. Specifically, the advent of fast transport (air shipping and faster ocean vessels) is equivalent to reducing tariffs on manufactured goods from 32% to 9% between 1950-1998.
Emission-Line Imaging of QSOs with High Resolution

We report the first detection of emission-line gas within the host galaxies of high-redshift quasi-stellar objects (QSOs). This was done using narrowband imaging at the redshifted wavelengths of [O III] and Hα, using the PUEO adaptive optics camera of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The QSOs are all radio-quiet or very compact radio sources. In all five observed QSOs, which have redshifts 0.9 to 2.4, we find extended line emission that lies within 05 (a few kiloparsecs) of the nucleus. The emission (redshifted) equivalent widths range from 35 to 300 A. Where there is radio structure, the line emission is aligned with it. We also report on continuum fluxes and possible companions. Two of the QSOs are very red and have high resolved continuum flux.
What Goes Around Comes Around: The Impact of Marketing Alliances on Firm Risk and the Moderating Role of Network Density

Although the value gained from partnership formation (through alliances) or through the firm's position in a network has received significant research attention, little is known about the risks that can accompany this increasing reliance on partners. The authors investigate the change in firm idiosyncratic and systematic risks after the announcement of marketing alliances and analyze whether the density of the firm's network of alliance partners moderates the risk exposure, demonstrated through investors' expectations of a firm's risk or the equity risk of a firm. The results indicate that marketing alliances reduce firm risk, so long as the alliance is a novel connection between the partnering firms. Furthermore, at high levels, the interconnectedness of partners or density of a firm's network can cause idiosyncratic risk to increase, and the density of a partner's network can also result in increases in systematic risk of a firm after alliance formation.
Long‐Run Performance following Private Placements of Equity

Public firms that place equity privately experience positive announcements effects, with negative post-announcement stock-price performance. This finding is inconsistent with the underreaction hypothesis. Instead, it suggests that investors are overoptimistic about the prospects of firms issuing equity, regardless of the method of issuance. Further, in contrast to public offerings, private issues follow periods of relatively poor operating performance. Thus, investor overoptimism at the time of private issues is not due to the behavioral tendency to overweight recent experience at the expense of long-term averages.
Physicians under the Influence: Social Psychology and Industry Marketing Strategies

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end. – Leonardo da Vinci Physicians often believe that a conscious commitment to ethical behavior and professionalism will protect them from industry influence. Despite increasing concern over the extent of physician-industry relationships, physicians usually fail to recognize the nature and impact of subconscious and unintentional biases on therapeutic decision-making. Pharmaceutical and medical device companies, however, routinely demonstrate their knowledge of social psychology processes on behavior and apply these principles to their marketing. To illustrate how pharmaceutical marketing strategies use psychological techniques to promote targeted therapies, we draw on the relevant social psychology literature on conflicts of interest and on the six principles of influence articulated by the eminent social psychologist Robert Cialdini. Hospitals, professional organizations, medical educators, and other stakeholders must also draw on social psychology to respond effectively to commercial activities that compromise good medical practice.
The cause and cure of China's widening income disparity

China's income disparity has been widening during the reform period, as the Gini coefficient of China rose from a low level of 0.33 in 1980 to 0.46 in 2000. Will this trend of widening income gap continue? This article makes the following arguments: First, China's income disparity is alarmingly high but the main reason for this disparity is the rural-urban income gap. Secondly, there is no secular trend of the income disparity. The disparity may either increase or decrease in near future. Finally, although the disparity may not further grow, it is likely to remain at a high level in coming years. There is no effective way to reduce the Gini coefficient or other measures for income inequality per se. The cure for this problem is to accelerate urbanization in the short-run and to promote the growth of the modern urban sector in the long run. Yet these policies in the short-run may further widen the measured income gap.
Functional Form and Heterogeneity in Models for Count Data

This study presents several extensions of the most familiar models for count data, the Poisson and negative binomial models. We develop an encompassing model for two well known variants of the negative binomial model (the NB1 and NB2 forms). We then propose some alternative approaches to the standard log gamma model for introducing heterogeneity into the loglinear conditional means for these models. The lognormal model provides a versatile alternative specification that is more flexible (and more natural) than the log gamma form, and provides a platform for several “two part” extensions, including zero inflation, hurdle and sample selection models. We also resolve some features in Hausman, Hall and Griliches’s (1984) widely used panel data treatments for the Poisson and negative binomial models that appear to conflict with more familiar models of fixed and random effects. Finally, we consider a bivariate Poisson model that is also based on the lognormal heterogeneity model. Two recent applications have used this model. We suggest that the correlation estimated in their model frameworks is an ambiguous measure of the correlation of the variables of interest, and may substantially overstate it. We conclude with a detailed application of the proposed methods using the data employed in one of the two aforementioned bivariate Poisson studies.
Some Statistical Properties of a Damage Random Variable in Invasive Species Management

Recently, Batabyal and Beladi (2009) have constructed a metric of the expected total monetary damage from the unintentional introduction of invasive species into a country called Home. In this note, we extend this line of inquiry by analyzing the statistical properties of this total monetary damage random variable. By “statistical properties,” we mean the variance and the covariance. Specifically, we first compute the variance of the total monetary damage at time t. Next, we derive a closed-form expression for the covariance of the total monetary damage at time t and at time t s, where s>0. Finally, we discuss three practical implications of our findings for the management of invasive species.
Black Protectionism as a Civil Rights Strategy

This Article has identified and outlined the parameters of Black protectionism, a practice used by African-Americans to protect prominent community members who have been charged with criminal or unethical activity. This practice took root during slavery-during a time when a false or minor charge against one African-American could result in death or great bodily harm to him and scores of other African-Americans. History has cultivated a culture of Black mistrust of Whites in particular and mainstream society in general. This suspicion is reinforced with the continued disparate treatment of African-Americans within the criminal justice system. History and contemporary conditions explain why Black protectionism - akin to a vote of confidence - has been available to prominent Blacks without limitation (e.g., political affiliation). As practiced, Black protectionism is a community statement of protest against an oppressive justice system. An analysis of how it works, however, reveals that its overbreadth renders it ineffective as a strategy for Black racial justice.
Market Discipline in Property/Casualty Insurance: Evidence from Premium Growth Surrounding Changes in Financial Strength Ratings

Analysis of abnormal premium growth surrounding changes in financial strength ratings for a large panel of property/casualty insurers generally indicates significant premium declines in the year of and the year following rating downgrades. Consistent with greater risk sensitivity of demand, premium declines were concentrated among commercial insurance, which has narrower guaranty fund protection than personal insurance. Premium declines were greater for firms with low pre-downgrade ratings, and especially pronounced for firms falling below an A- rating. There is no evidence of moral hazard in the form of rapid commercial or personal lines premium growth following downgrades of A- or low-rated insurers.
The Role of Venture Capital Syndication in Value Creation for Entrepreneurial Firms

This paper provides evidence that venture capital (VC) syndication creates value for en- trepreneurial firms in two dimensions. First, VC syndication creates product market value for their portfolio firms. Specifically, VC syndicates invest significant amounts in younger firms, in earlier financing rounds, and in early stage firms. Further, VC syndicates nurture innovation of their portfolio firms and help them achieve better post-initial public offering operating performance. Second, VC syndication creates financial market value for their portfolio firms. Specifically, VC syndicate-backed firms are more likely to have as uccessful exit, enjoy a lower initial public offering (IPO) under- pricing, and receive a higher IPO market valuation. The findings are robust to a variety of alter- native syndication measures, subsamples, econometric models, and controlling for endogeneity in VC syndication.
Effectiveness of Monetary Incentives: Mail Surveys to Members of Multinational Professional Groups

Abstract Members of professional groups were much more likely to respond to a mail survey than nonmembers who were also experts in the area (43.7% versus 13.7%). A one-dollar (U.S.) prepaid monetary incentive increased the response rates, and it was as effective for members as for nonmembers (gains of 18.6% and 15.3%, respectively). Surprisingly, the U.S. dollar monetary incentive had a greater effect on foreign than U.S. response rates (gains of 32.6% and 12.9%, respectively).
Designing model homes for the changing medical neighborhood: a multi-payer pilot offers lessons for ACO and PCMH construction.

Washington State is in the midst of a multi-payer model home test with implications for the nascent national effort to construct new health care payment and delivery systems. The model homes are redesigned primary care medical practices. Their structural supports include additional upfront payments, potential shared savings, and other elements reflective of “accountable care.” Accountable care, in its basic blueprint, requires an affiliated group of health care providers to accept responsibility for the overall costs and quality of care for a defined population. Accountable care requires a solid primary care foundation. And that foundation might well be a Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH). Indeed, in some formulations, a PCMH is a necessary part of any well-functioning Accountable Care Organization (ACO). The
Momentum in Imperial Russia

Abstract Some of the leading theories of momentum have different empirical predictions that depend on market composition and structure. The institutional theory predicts lower momentum profits in markets with less agency. Behavioral theories predict lower profits in markets with more sophisticated investors. In this paper, we use a dataset from a major 19th century equity market to test these predictions. We find no evidence to support the institutional theory due to the lack of delegated management. We exploit a regulatory change in the middle of our sample period to test behavioral theories. We find evidence consistent with overreaction theories of momentum.
Measuring systemic risk-adjusted liquidity (SRL)—A model approach

Abstract Little progress has been made so far in addressing—in a comprehensive way—the negative externalities caused by excessive maturity transformation and the implications for effective liquidity regulation of banks. The SRL model combines option pricing theory with market information and balance sheet data to generate probabilistic measure of systemic liquidity risk. It enhances price-based liquidity regulation by linking a bank’s maturity mismatch impacting the stability of its funding with those characteristics of other banks, subject to individual changes in risk profiles and common changes in market conditions impacting funding and market liquidity risk. This approach can then be used (i) to quantify an individual institution’s time-varying contribution to expected losses from system-wide liquidity shortfalls and (ii) to price insurance premia that provide incentives for banks to internalize the social cost of their individual funding decisions.
Extraterritorial Corporate Criminal Liability: A Remedy for Human Rights Violations?

Examines the extraterritorial application of U.S. criminal law in the context of corporations.
Out-of-Sample Performance of Mutual Fund Predictors

We analyze the out-of-sample performance of variables shown to forecast future mutual fund alphas. The degree of predictability, as measured by alpha spreads from quintile sorts or cross-sectional regression slopes, falls by at least half post-sample. These declines appear to be primarily the result of changes in the level of arbitrage activity in the market, with mutual fund competition appearing to play a secondary role. We find no evidence that the declines are the result of data snooping or learning by investors or fund managers. Finally, we show that corporate bond fund performance exhibits similar dependence on measures of bond market arbitrage activity.
Weighing the Constitutionality of State Immigration Verification Laws in the Wake of Arizona v. United States

In the wake of Arizona v. United States, it is settled that state immigration verification laws like Section 2(B) are facially constitutional. At the same time, the Supreme Court did not foreclose that Section 2(B) could be preempted in terms of its application, nor did the Court shield the law from subsequent civil rights litigation. Thus, the question moving forward is under what circumstances, if any, can Section 2(B) be held unconstitutional moving forward? The question is important not only for unlawful immigration impacted states like Arizona, but to a number of states that have enacted similar laws.
The Coherence of Compensation-Deterrence Theory in Tort Law

Courts and commentators regularly analyze tort law in the functional terms of compensation and deterrence, despite the apparent shortcomings of doing so. Why is the function of compensation only furthered in cases of negligence? Why not compensate a larger number of injured plaintiffs under a rule of strict liability? Is the function of compensation instead somehow tied to the function of deterrence? If so, what determines the relation between these two functions? What is the social policy that courts rely on to answer these questions in a principled manner? As these questions suggest, the functions of compensation and deterrence do not obviously cohere into a viable theory of tort law, making the approach incoherent and unprincipled in application according to numerous critics. In contrast to this line of criticism, this article argues that the functions of injury compensation and deterrence can be unified by an abstract tort norm of compensation, one that does not limit liability to violations of conventional morality or customary practices in the community. For historical and other reasons, compensation plausibly provides the norm by which tort law defines the obligation running between dutyholders and rightholders. When risky interactions threaten the irreparable injury of physical harm, the compensatory damage remedy does not adequately protect the rightholder’s interest in physical security. Consequently, the compensatory tort norm redirects the dutyholder’s compensatory obligation from the payment of compensatory damages to the exercise of reasonable care, yielding a default rule of negligence liability that is formulated to deter the irreparable injury of physical harm without imposing undue hardship on the dutyholder. A compensatory tort norm justifies the manner in which negligence liability furthers the function of deterrence, unifying compensation and deterrence within a coherent rationale for tort liability.
Does Systemic Risk in the Financial Sector Predict Future Economic Downturns

We derive a measure of aggregate systemic risk, designated CATFIN, that complements bank-specific systemic risk measures by forecasting macroeconomic downturns six months into the future using out-of-sample tests conducted with U.S., European, and Asian bank data. Consistent with bank "specialness," the CATFIN of both large and small banks forecasts macroeconomic declines, whereas a similarly defined measure for both nonfinancial firms and simulated "fake banks" has no marginal predictive ability. High levels of systemic risk in the banking sector impact the macroeconomy through aggregate lending activity. A conditional asset pricing model shows that CATFIN is priced for financial and nonfinancial firms. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.
Carbon Forestry and Sociospatial Difference: An Examination of Two Carbon Offset Projects among Indigenous Smallholders in Costa Rica

This article examines why some kinds of households are positioned to take advantage of carbon offset projects that target secondary forest fallow. It does so by assessing the results of two offset projects targeting this land use in the Cabecar Indigenous Reserve, Costa Rica. For one project, it finds that a small group of male landowners have most of the land in fallow; however, the presence of this land use is subsidized by the productivity of female land in cash-crop production. In the second project, payments were targeted toward land in the area's fertile floodplain, and resulted in an exclusion of some households from the area's dominant livelihood activity: cash-crop production. These results demonstrate the difficult trade-offs involved in designing equitable and attractive offset projects.
Temporal Profitability and Pricing of Long‐Term Care Insurance

Equilibrium models of dynamic insurance markets can be bifurcated according to underlying assumptions about whether or not insurers commit to long-term contracts. The difference is substantial in that commitment models imply price highballing over time while no-commitment models indicate price lowballing. Extant empirical studies provide mixed evidence, however. We use long-term care (LTC) insurance data, which allow us both to better control for heterogeneous, observable risk, to examine dynamic profitability and pricing in a relatively young, innovative insurance market. Our tests generally indicate temporal price lowballing, thereby providing support for the no-commitment models.
Now, Later, or Never: Applying Asymmetric Discount Rates in Nuisance Remedies and Federal Regulations

* J.D. candidate, May 2008. I dedicate this Note to Professor Clopper Almon and Mrs. Joan Almon, whose wisdom, integrity, and devotion I greatly admire and whose generosity I deeply appreciate. I am grateful to Professor James E. Krier for introducing me to law and economics and advising me on this Note. Many thanks to Ilya Shulman, Jeremy Suhr, Krista Caner, Jeanne Long, and Joel Flaxman for helpful suggestions on previous drafts of this Note. Financial support from the John M. Olin Center for Law and Economics at the University of Michigan Law School is also gratefully acknowledged.
COMMENT ON¿THE DISTRIBUTION OF MONEY BALANCES AND THE NONNEUTRALITY OF MONEY,¿ BY ALEKSANDER BERENTSEN, GABRIELE CAMERA, AND CHRISTOPHER WALLER

An example is constructed to illustrate some points about the Berentsen-Camera-Waller article, followed by some comments.
Tradable Credit Markets for Intensity Standards

Abstract Many environmental standards are expressed in terms of intensity rather than absolute levels. In some cases, intensity standards are associated with tradable credit markets to help reduce firms' compliance costs. I develop a jurisdictional model of credit trading under an intensity standard, framed in terms of a Renewable Portfolio Standard for electric utilities. I find that regulators of firms with low compliance costs always allow for inter-jurisdictional credit trade. Regulators of firms with high costs of compliance allow for credit trade under the condition that extra-jurisdictional credits count less towards compliance compared to credits generated within the jurisdiction. Counter-intuitively, increasing the stringency of the intensity standard when credit trading is possible can have the opposite of the intended effect and actually decrease renewable electricity generation. Using numerical simulations, I show that heterogeneity in terms of renewable costs or externalities across jurisdictions are not sufficient for inter-jurisdictional credit trading to be a stable equilibrium outcome.
Corporation and Contract

Publicly traded corporations rarely use the nearly absolute freedom afforded them to draft charters that deviate from the default terms of state corporation law. Conventional explanations for this phenomenon are unconvincing. A more promising explanation lies in the lack of any feasible amendment mechanism that will assure efficient adaptation of charter terms as changing circumstances dictate during the long expected lifetime of a public corporation. In effect, by adopting state law default terms, corporations delegate to the state the process of amending charter provisions over time.
The Economics of Class Actions and Class Action Waivers

Class action litigation has generated a series of recent Supreme Court decisions imposing greater federal court supervision over the prosecution of collective injury claims. This group of cases raises the question whether class action waivers should be permitted on policy grounds. I examine the economics of class actions and waivers in this paper. I distinguish between the standard one-on-one litigation environment and the class action environment. In the standard environment, waivers between informed agents enhance society’s welfare. In the class action environment, in contrast, not all waivers are likely to enhance society’s welfare.
ENTREPRENEURIAL EXIT STRATEGIES: THE IMPACT OF HUMAN CAPITAL

ABSTRACT Although researchers in such diverse fields as economics and organizational sociology have explored firm exit, little research has explored entrepreneurial exit–the decision by the majority-owner founders of privately-held firms to harvest their profits and remove themselves from the primary ownership and decision-making structure of the firm. Yet, all entrepreneurs in one way or another will leave the firm they created. Using theories of goal-setting and human capital we explore two specific questions: (1) why do some entrepreneurs consider an exit strategy while others do not, and (2) under what conditions are entrepreneurs most likely to utilize a specific strategy. INTRODUCTION ―Finally, remember one inviolate truth: Eventually, every owner leaves his business. The question is, will you leave feet first on a stretcher or will you sip champagne in celebration of your victory?‖ (Minor, 2003: xvii) Researchers in such diverse fields as economics (e.g. Dunne, Roberts, & Samuelson, 1988), finance (e.g. Prisciotta & Weber, 2005), strategic management (e.g. Gimeno, Folta, Cooper, & Woo, 1997), organizational psychology (e.g. Kleppera & Simons, 2005), and organizational sociology (e.g. Carroll, 1984) have explored the topic of firm exit. This research has included such topics as industry shakeout, market exit, corporate restructuring, firm exit, and CEO succession. This extant research has primarily explored exit at the firm or industry level of analysis, effectively answering the questions, ―What impact does the exit of a line of business have on the multibusiness firm or the industry?‖ and ―What impact does CEO succession have on the performance of the firm?‖ The dependent variables in this literature have been predominantly the rate of industry change, the rate of firm change, and firm performance—ROI, stock price, sales, and market share after exit (Dunne, Roberts, & Samuelson, 1988; Zhang & Rajagopalan, 2004). In contrast, ―Entrepreneurial exit is a strategic decision by the majority-owner founders of a privately held firm to harvest their profits thereby removing themselves from the primary ownership and decision-making structure of the firm‖ (DeTienne, 2005: 5). Unlike the extant exit research this perspective suggests that there is value in understanding the exit decisions of individual entrepreneurs. Some entrepreneurship scholars have called for a new focus upon the entrepreneur as a designer of the organization. For example, Sarasvathy (2004: 713) states ―If we are to develop real content in entrepreneurship, we need to focus our attention on understanding it from the point of view of the
A Million Little Takings

I. IOLTA 5 A. Introduction and History 5 B. Opposition to IOLTA 11 C. The Litigation 13 D. Lingering Problems with Brown 16 II. POST-KELO REFORMS: TEN PROBLEMATIC STATES 18 A. Texas 20 B. Idaho 22 C. Kansas 23 D. Louisiana 25 E. Nevada 26 F. New Hampshire 27 G. North Dakota 28 H. Arizona, Washington, and Wyoming 29 III. TAKINGS OF NON-REAL PROPERTY AND PROCEDURAL ISSUES 31 A. Eminent Domain and Administrative Law 32 B. Takings of Non-Real Property 33 C. Administrative Procedural Concerns and Takings 35 IV. INHERENT TENSIONS WITH STATE FUNDING FOR LEGAL SERVICES 37 A. Crowding Out Effects 37 1. Crowding Out by IOLTA 41 2. Proposals to Offset the Negative Impact of Crowding Out 42 B. Monopolies and Monopsony 45 1. Monopolies 45 2. Monopsony 47 3. Some Proposed Reforms 49 V. CONCLUSION 50
The National Association of Honest Lawyers: An Essay on Honesty, "Lawyer Honesty" and Public Trust in the Legal System

Lawyers representing criminal defendants have a duty to press the client's cause diligently ("zealously"), but they also have duty to keep client information confidential. In interpreting these two duties together, most lawyers conclude it is perfectly all right to zealously urge some of the material facts of a case while hiding behind the duty of confidentiality to withhold other facts, even when the overall effect is seriously misleading to jurors and others. This subtle mis-coupling of two salutary rules has led criminal defense lawyers to assume that they are entitled and, indeed, required to defend their clients by means of systematic disinformation in the form of half-truths, tacit deceptions and even deliberately fostered misconceptions--so long as they avoid using outright lies. The legal profession's low reputation for honesty is one of the immediate consequences. The growing public disquiet about lawyer ethics is not mainly because people think lawyers neglect or abuse their professional standards. Rather, the main problem is the ethical duties themselves, at least as widely interpreted. The mis-coupling of the ethical duties of diligence and confidentiality has produced an inevitable tendency towards a kind of partial-truth advocacy in which lawyers knowingly distract from truths they do not doubt, create false impressions and discredit testimony they should reasonably know to be factual. As a result, people feel they cannot trust lawyers to be straight. Despite the assumption that these advocacy styles are essential to provide criminal defendants with "effective" counsel, it is not obvious that criminal defendants are, on the whole, better off with them. This particularly so if, as appears to be the case, the public reaction to these tactics is so negative that defendants end up being represented by what amounts to a self-discredited and largely distrusted profession. The distrust of lawyers is therefore not just an image problem of an insular profession. Our basic civic order relies on the legal system and public respect for it. If the public cannot trust the lawyers who are entrusted with the legal system, there is a problem that casts a shadow on the integrity of the very concept of rule of law. This essay addresses these issues and proposes one possible solution. Particular attention is given to the application of these problems for lawyers in the criminal justice system. The objective is to provide a base for thinking about how, concretely, criminal and other lawyers can move from the present stage of lawyer ethics to a more advanced stage in which the legal profession will become a truly forthright and credible social institution.
Mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries

We examine the determinants and effects of M&A activity in the pharmaceutical/biotechnology industry using SDC data on 383 firms from 1988 to 2001. For large firms, mergers are a response to expected excess capacity due to patent expirations and gaps in a firm's product pipeline. For small firms, mergers are primarily an exit strategy in response to financial trouble (low Tobin's q, few marketed products, low cash–sales ratios). In estimating effects of mergers, we use a propensity score to control for selection based on observed characteristics. Controlling for merger propensity, large firms that merged experienced a similar change in enterprise value, sales, employees, and R&D, and had slower growth in operating profit, compared with similar firms that did not merge. Thus mergers may be a response to trouble, but they are not a solution. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
For Cause: Rethinking Racial Exclusion and the American Jury

Peremptory strikes, and criticism of the permissive constitutional framework regulating them, have dominated the scholarship on race and the jury for the past several decades. But we have overlooked another important way in which the American jury reflects and reproduces racial hierarchies: massive racial disparities also pervade the use of challenges for cause. This Article examines challenges for cause and race in nearly 400 trials and, based on original archival research, presents a revisionist account of the Supreme Court’s three most recent Batson cases. It establishes that challenges for cause, no less than peremptory strikes, are an important—and unrecognized—vehicle of racial exclusion in criminal adjudication. Challenges for cause are racially skewed, in part, because the Supreme Court has insulated the challenge-for-cause process from meaningful review. Scholars frequently write that jury selection was “constitutionalized” in the 1970s and 1980s, but this doctrinal account is incomplete. In the interstices of the Court’s fair-cross-section, equal protection, and due process jurisprudence, there is a “missing” law of challenges for cause. By overlooking challenges for cause, scholars have failed to notice the important ways in which jury selection remains free from constitutional regulation. Challenges for cause as they exist today—effectively standardless, insulated from meaningful review, and racially skewed—do more harm than good. They hinder, more than help, the jury in its central roles: (1) protecting the individual against governmental overreach; (2) allowing the community a democratic voice in articulating public values; (3) finding facts; (4) bolstering the perceived legitimacy and fairness of criminal verdicts; and (5) educating jurors as citizens. We need to rethink who is qualified to serve as a juror and how we select them.
Economic Takeoffs in a Dynamic Process of Globalization

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium framework to illustrate that trade liberalization may speed up the process of globalization and industrialization by enabling a small open economy to reallocate production factors to modern export sectors where increasing returns to experience are present. We emphasize the role of knowledge in service activities related to the export of modern sector goods, which has the form of a public good that can be utilized in exporting of other modern sector goods. As a consequence of this knowledge accumulation, the economy begins to take off and exhibits more rapid rates of wage and output growth. The accumulation of knowledge also shifts comparative advantage in the modern sector to more service-intensive goods, so the accumulation of knowledge also leads to a natural evolution of comparative advantage. Our results lend theoretical support to the very different development experiences in the 1960s between East Asia (where export promotion and trade liberalization have been emphasized by the government planner) and Latin America (where a protective trade policy has been adopted to spur import substitution).
Building Productivity in Virtual Project Teams

The steady increase in project failure rates is leaving businesses searching for better integration techniques to virtualize their project environments. Through virtualization, organizations may have positive impacts on communities across geographical boundaries and resource constraints. The focus of this phenomenological study was to explore, via the experiences of successful project management practitioners, best practice strategies for integrating virtual project teams through data analysis. The conceptual framework included von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory, decomposition model of business process and project management frameworks, and the recomposition approach. Twenty-two senior project managers with more than 5 years of experience managing virtual project environments participated in semistructured telephone interviews. The van Kaam process employing normalization and bracketing approaches in data analysis resulted in the emergence of 34 thematic categories. The 10 most common themes culminated in the identification of strategies relevant for virtual project teams. The major themes pertained to 3 broad areas: (a) structure that accommodates skills and technology for virtual team success, (b) governance leading to efficient virtual project team management, and (c) collaboration practices across diverse environments. This study involved the exploration of the experiences of the participants. Using the van Kaam method for normalization of the data and clustering like experiences into thematic statements, the study provided a plethora of new information concentrated on 10 themes that emerged.
Fluid Turbulence and Eddy Viscosity in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

The eddy viscosity for a turbulent compressible fluid with a relativistic equation of state is derived. Compressibility allows for sound modes, but the eddy viscosity in the shear mode is found to be the same as for incompressible fluids. For two space dimensions (which is the relevant case for the dynamics of relativistic heavy-ion collisions) the eddy viscosity in the shear mode is negative, reducing the effective viscosity below its microscopic value. This could explain the tiny viscosity found at RHIC. Implications for the experimentally accessible elliptic flow coefficient at the LHC are speculated on.
Normativity For Naturalists

Normativity is thought to be a problem for naturalists because the explanatory modalities of the empirical sciences do not make any reference to deontic or normative properties related to reasons, as distinct from nomic or descriptive ones. Naturalistic explanations operate in the idiom of causes, not norms, and casual mention of norms in such explanations are always shorthand for causal explanations that are norm-free. Thus, for the naturalist, what we call normativity is simply an artifact of the psychological properties of certain biological organisms, i.e., what they feel or believe or desire (or are disposed to feel, believe, or desire). I consider and respond to three objections to this naturalistic view of normativity. First, naturalism is self-refuting, since the naturalistic outlook itself presupposes epistemic norms whose status is not naturalistically vindicated. Second, naturalism imposes domain-specific standards on domains of thought where they do not belong. Third, naturalism fails to do justice to the real, practical nature of normativity: it can explain what we call normativity, but it can not explain real normativity. I argue that none of these objections succeed.
How Sudden Censorship Can Increase Access to Information

Conventional wisdom assumes that increased censorship will strictly decrease access to information. We delineate circumstances when increases in censorship expand access to information for a substantial subset of the population. When governments suddenly impose censorship on previously uncensored information, citizens accustomed to acquiring this information will be incentivized to learn methods of censorship evasion. These evasion tools provide continued access to the newly blocked information—and also extend users’ ability to access information that has long been censored. We illustrate this phenomenon using millions of individual-level actions of social media users in China before and after the block of Instagram. We show that the block inspired millions of Chinese users to acquire virtual private networks, and that these users subsequently joined censored websites like Twitter and Facebook. Despite initially being apolitical, these new users began browsing blocked political pages on Wikipedia, following Chinese political activists on Twitter, and discussing highly politicized topics such as opposition protests in Hong Kong.