cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
What Should Tribes Expect from Federal Regulations? The Bureau of Land Management’s Fracking Rule and the Problems with Treating Indian and Federal Lands Identically

On March 26, 2015, the Bureau of Land management (BLM) published its Final Rule regarding Hydraulic Fracturing on Federal and Indian Lands (Final Rule). Work on the Rule had begun nearly four and a half years earlier as a way to update the agency’s outdated regulatory scheme to account for new fracking technology and growing public concern over the practice and potential safety concerns related to fracking. The Final Rule amassed a number of procedural and substantive requirements for fracking operations and proposed to apply these standards uniformly to both public lands and lands held in trust by the Federal government for the benefit of Indian tribes. According to the Final Rule, such uniformity was necessary to ensure tribal lands and communities “all receive the same level of protection as provided on public lands.” In response to concerns raised during the rule-making process that such a uniform rule ignored tribal sovereignty, tribal self-determination and the Federal government’s trust responsibility to Indian tribes, the BLM expressed its view that providing Indian lands with the same substantive protections as Federal public lands was consistent with the trust responsibility and that the rule promoted tribal sovereignty by “facilitating coordination.” Furthermore, the agency noted that the rule included a provision allowing a tribe to request variance but made clear that any such variance, if approved in the BLM’s discretion, would not “adopt tribal regulations as the Federal rule.” That approach was sufficient because, according to the BLM, “[b]y recognizing tribal regulations, [the Final Rule] accords with tribal self-determination to the extent that could be expected from a rule governing hydraulic fracturing operations.”Although the merits of the Final Rule remain to be litigated, the BLM’s rule-making process and the numerous challenges to the Final Rule highlight the myriad complexities of regulating fracking on a national basis. This article provides a much-needed complement to literature analyzing regulatory responses to fracking by providing a scholarly analysis of the Final Rule within the broader context of tribal sovereignty and federal Indian law. Analyzing the BLM’s actions in light of the federal government’s tribal consultation obligations, the agency’s statutory authority, and the broader federal trust responsibility, especially as that responsibility has evolved to promote tribal self-determination, demonstrates the need to re-visit this controversial regulatory action as it applies to Indian Country.
If the Judicial Confirmation Process Is Broken, Can a Statute Fix It?

Many observers believe that there is something seriously wrong with the current state of the judicial confirmation process, particularly that it features too much conflict and obstruction. This Article does not take sides on whether reform is necessary or desirable but instead examines the relatively neglected issue of the vehicle through which reform might take place - that is, the method of implementing whatever reform (if any) is thought appropriate. In particular, this Article will take up the question whether the confirmation process could be reformed not through the vehicles that are usually proposed - a constitutional amendment, a change to internal Senate rules, an informal deal or norm - but instead through the mechanism of a statute that would govern the Senate's procedures. The statute might, for example, purport to bar filibusters of judicial nominations. While employing a statute might at first seem peculiar, there is in fact a significant, growing, and interesting body of statutory law that governs internal rules of debate. Is a statute a permissible method of reform in this context? This Article canvasses various potential impediments to employing a statute and concludes that the Constitution would not permit a statute to override the Senate's ordinary power to control its rules of debate. The reason that such a statute could not formally bind is that it would violate a structural principle of cameral procedural autonomy that is critical to the constitutional design. The Article nonetheless suggests that a confirmations statute might still have practical political effect even if it cannot be legally binding.
No Longer Little Known but Now a Door Ajar: An Overview of the Evolving and Dangerous Role of the Alien Tort Statute in Human Rights and International Law Jurisprudence

Human rights’ and other international law activists have long worked to add teeth to their tasks. Their endeavors are increased in value to the extent enforcement options exist for alleged violations of international norms and rights. Documents generated to purport to establish international law gain in value in relation to their acceptance as authority in judicial decisions. Symbolic and aspirational efforts have a certain bite when employed on the ground or in public relations to advance human rights goals against allegedly “bad actors.” Persuasive statements and condemnations by “international” bodies can go a long way to influencing the actions of nation-states and corporations operating abroad – yet litigation options present an entirely different tool. The possibility of imposing legal, judicially enforceable liability standards for violations of such purported international norms may be a much more powerful tool for such activists than mere statements of desire. Thus, when courts or other tribunals begin to recognize causes of action and remedies for violations of these international norms and rights, then the power, persuasion, and influence of expansionist international law advocates become more potent. One of the most interesting avenues for such enforcement has been the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”).1 Old but little known2
Shedding Rights At The College Gate: How Suspicionless Mandatory Drug Testing Of College Students Violates The Fourth Amendment

The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that mandatory urinalysis drug tests are searches requiring the protections of the Fourth Amendment. While searches are usually accompanied by a requirement of at least some level of individualized suspicion, suspicionless drug testing has been upheld as constitutional in several contexts under the special needs doctrine. The special needs doctrine derives from a narrow string of cases where an important governmental interest other than the need for law enforcement outweighs an individual’s privacy interest in a warrant or individualized suspicion requirement. This article argues that dragnet drug screening programs geared towards college students, such as the one imposed by Linn State, are unconstitutional and cannot be saved by asserting the 'special needs' doctrine. Part II examines the Supreme Court precedent on suspicionless drug testing in detail. This part compares how the Supreme Court has analyzed suspicionless drug testing of adults with its analysis of suspicionless drug testing of schoolchildren in the public school context. Part III discusses the applicability of this precedent to the college setting as well as reviews the current case law on college-level drug testing. This part offers a framework with which to analyze college drug testing programs as potential special needs searches. Part IV discusses the current litigation surrounding Linn State’s drug screening program and applies the framework developed in Part III to Linn State’s drug testing program. Part V concludes that mandatory, suspicionless drug screening programs, like Linn State’s, violate college students’ Fourth Amendment rights. This part briefly discusses the implications of upholding such programs and what such a result would mean for the special needs doctrine and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.
Assessing the Construct Validity of Strategic and SIC-Based Measures of Corporate Diversification

Several new methods of measuring corporate diversification have been developed since Rumelt's (1974) seminal work. These methods use varying criteria but they have not been backed up by construct validity. The present study investigates the content, convergent, discriminant, unidimensionality, and predictive validity by comparing 54 Fortune 500 companies on Rumelt's classification (self-reported and calculated), entropy, Berry- Herfindahl index, and broad and mean narrow spectrum diversification measures. Results indicate only mild support for convergence, discriminant and predictive validity, and no evidence of unidimensionality amongst these measures. This raises problems in the measurement of diversification and subsequent relationships to performance linkages.
Distribution and Emergency

There is not enough international aid available to assist everyone whose governments have failed to protect them from serious harm or provide them with access to basic resources. How the aid that is available is distributed is therefore a matter of life and death for millions of people. Political theorists and philosophers have tended to focus on prior questions, such as what obligations wealthy individuals and groups have to assist distant others, and how international aid compares to other strategies for improving human welfare. Yet, especially when considered from the perspective of a person who is denied aid for a bad reason, how international aid is distributed is as weighty as these other concerns.
Is Distributed Cognition Group Level Cognition

This paper shows that recent arguments from group problem solving and task performance to emergent group level cognition that rest on the social parity and related principles are invalid or question begging. The paper shows that standard attributions of problem solving or task performance to groups require only multiple agents of the outcome, not a group agent over and above its members, whether or not any individual member of the group could have accomplished the task independently.
Which investments do firms protect? Liquidity management and real adjustments when access to finance falls sharply

Abstract We study how firms engaged in both R&D and fixed investment manage liquidity and adjust real investment during the recent financial crisis. Among firms with positive R&D expenditures, cuts to fixed investment in the crisis are typically far more severe than cuts to R&D. These firms allocate cash reserves to buffer R&D but do not use cash to protect fixed investment. Some firms appear to go so far as to allow the stock of fixed assets to fall to stabilize R&D. The use of cash holdings and fixed assets to protect R&D is particularly strong among firms most likely to face financing frictions at the start of the crisis. We only find evidence that firms use cash to buffer fixed investment when we expand the sample to include firms with no R&D spending to compete for funds. Our study provides direct evidence on the real effects of liquidity management, highlights a key benefit of precautionary cash reserves, and illustrates the adjustments firms make to navigate a financial crisis.
Regression vs. Volatility Tests of the Efficiency of Foreign Exchange Markets

Abstract Volatility tests are an alternative to regression tests for evaluating the joint null hypothesis of market efficiency and risk neutrality. By considering tests based on conditional volatility bounds, we show that if the alternative hypothesis is that one could ‘beat the market’ using a linear combination of observable variables, then regression tests are at least as powerful as the conditional volatility tests. If the application is to spot and forward markets for foreign exchange, then the most powerful conditional volatility test turns out to be equivalent to the analogous regression test in terms of asymptotic power.
Necessarily Hypocritical: The Legal Viability of EPA's Regulation of Stationary Source Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under the Clean Air Act

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA made clear that greenhouse gases fall within the realm of air pollutants the Clean Air Act was designed to regulate. The Court’s decision sparked a chain reaction forcing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under different provisions of the Act. The EPA’s decision to regulate drew fierce criticism, especially from industries that would be forced to reduce emissions. Opponents argue that greenhouse gases are not traditional pollutants and therefore the drafters of the Clean Air Act did not intend them to be regulated. Furthermore, they argue that the EPA over-stepped its authority in “tailoring” a new rule to incorporate greenhouse gases more appropriately into the Act’s framework. This Note defends the EPA’s decision to regulate greenhouse gases, as well as its Tailoring Rule. In light of the Clean Air Act’s explicit language and legislative intent, the EPA was not only legally justified in implements its decision, but it had no other choice.
Economic Analysis of Contract Law after Three Decades: Success or Failure?

С точки зрения Познера, направление право и экономика не смогло выдвинуть релевантную теорию, описывающую контрактные доктрины. В статье зафиксированы эти провалы и обсуждается предположение о том, что их причиной послужили методологические проблемы в определении трансакционных издержек.
TOLERANCE FOR FAILURE AND CORPORATE INNOVATION

Based on a sample of venture capital (VC)-backed IPO firms, we examine whether tolerance for failure spurs corporate innovation. We develop a novel measure of VC investors' failure tolerance by examining their willingness to continue investing in underperforming ventures. We find that IPO firms backed by more failure-tolerant VC investors are significantly more innovative and VC failure tolerance is particularly important for ventures that are subject to high failure risk. We show that these results are not driven by endogenous matching between failure-tolerant VC firms and start-ups with high ex ante innovative potential. We also examine the determinants of the cross-sectional heterogeneity in a VC firm's failure tolerance. We find that both capital constraints and career concerns can negatively distort a VC firm's failure tolerance. Less experienced VC firms are more exposed to these distortions, making them less failure tolerant than are more established VC firms.
Deposit Insurance Around the Globe: Where Does It Work?

Explicit deposit insurance has been spreading rapidly in recent years, even to countries not advanced in financial and institutional development. Economic theory indicates that deposit insurance design features interact--for good or ill--with country-specific elements of the financial and governmental contracting environment. The authors document the extent of cross-country differences in deposit insurance design and review empirical evidence on how design features affect private market discipline, banking stability, financial development, and the effectiveness of crisis resolution. This evidence challenges the wisdom of encouraging countries to adopt explicit deposit insurance without first addresing weaknesses in their informational and supervisory environments.
Fiscal Policy Effectiveness in Japan

The effectiveness of fiscal policy in Japan over the past decade has been a matter of great controversy. We investigate the effectiveness of Japanese fiscal policy over the 1976–1999 period using a structural VAR analysis of real GDP, tax revenues, and public expenditures. We find that expansionary fiscal policy, whether in the form of tax cuts or of public works spending, had significant stimulative effects. Using a new method of computing policy multipliers from structural VARs, we calculate that the multiplier on tax cuts is about 25% higher at a four-year horizon than that on public works spending, though both are well in excess of one. A historical decomposition reveals that Japanese fiscal policy was contractionary over much of the 1990s, and a significant proportion of the variation in growth can be attributed to fiscal policy shocks; accordingly, most of the run-up in public debt is attributable to declining tax revenues due to the recession. Examining savings behavior directly, we find limited evidence of Ricardian effects, insufficient to offset the short-term effects of discretionary fiscal policy. J. Japan. Int. Econ., December 2002, 16(4), pp. 536–558. Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York, and Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E62, E65, E21.
CORRECTIVE TAXATION VERSUS LIABILITY

have been emphasized as a means of control of activities that generate harm, especially in the domain of pollution, yet their use is in fact lim? ited (Robert N. Stavins 2003). In contrast, liabil? ity has great importance in reducing harm. Much of the vast terrain of accidents?from oil spills, to crane mishaps, to car collisions?is subject to liability but not to taxation. I here compare cor? rective taxation to liability in two versions of a model, with a view toward shedding light on the difference in their application.1 In the first version, the danger from an injurer's activity depends on factors that vary among injurers. For example, the probabil? ity and seriousness of an oil spill due to an oil tanker accident will depend on the strength of the tanker's hull and the vulnerability of fishing activity and tourism to a spill; and the expected harm from a crane accident will depend on char? acteristics of the crane and the exposure to risk of nearby buildings and passersby. I assume that it is impractical for the tax to be based on many such variables and for simplicity that the tax is a function only of an injurer's level of activity (amount of oil transported, number of uses of a crane). Hence, the tax will not induce injurers to choose their levels of activity optimally. Under liability, an injurer who is sued is pre? sumed to pay for the harm that occurs.2 Thus, if suit for harm were always brought, an injurer's expected liability would equal expected harm, so that injurers would choose optimal levels of activity. Further, this would occur without the state's needing information about the danger of activities; to impose liability requires only that the state determine the harm that eventuates (the state need not gauge the risk of an oil spill; it need only measure the harm from a spill that occurs). However, it is assumed that suit is not always brought, for harm may be hard to trace to its author, and it may be too low to make suit worthwhile. Consequently, expected liability will be less than expected harm3 and levels of activity will be excessive. It follows that an assessment of the tax versus liability depends on a comparison of the ineffi? ciency of the tax caused by variation in the dan? ger of activities with the inefficiency of liability caused by escape from suit. Joint use of taxation and liability is also considered. It is shown that liability should be imposed to the complete extent?injurers who are sued should pay for the entire harm?but, under a general condition, the tax should be less than expected harm. In essence, liability should be employed fully because it creates a more effi? cient incentive than taxation; the tax should be
Liquidity and Leverage

In anancial system where balance sheets are continuously marked to market, asset price changes show up immediately in changes in net worth, and elicit responses fromnancial intermediaries who adjust the size of their balance sheets. We document evidence that marked-to-market lever- age is strongly procyclical. Such behavior has aggregate consequences. Changes in aggregate balance sheets for intermediaries forecast changes in risk appetite innancial markets, as measured by the innovations in the VIX index. Aggregate liquidity can be seen as the rate of change of the aggregate balance sheet of thenancial intermediaries.
Service Quality Variability and Termination Behavior

We investigate the roles of the level and variability in quality in driving customer retention for a new service. We present model-free evidence that whereas high average quality helps in retaining customers, high variability leads to higher termination rates. Apart from these main effects, we use model-free evidence to document the presence of a an interaction effect between average service quality and its variability on termination rates, b customer learning about service quality over time, and c a slower rate of learning among households that experience high variability. We postulate a mechanism involving risk aversion and learning, which can induce this interaction effect, and test this against several alternative explanations. We show that it is important to consider variability in quality while inferring the impact of improvements to average quality-ignoring the interaction effect between average quality and variability leads to an 18%-64% 5%-31% overestimation underestimation of quality improvement elasticities among high-variability low-variability households. Given that responsiveness to quality decreases with variability, it is better for the firm to focus quality improvement efforts on customers experiencing low variability; increasing average quality by 1% lowers termination by 1.1% for low-variability households, but only by 0.41% for high-variability households. This paper was accepted by Gerard Cachon, marketing.
Momentum Effect as Part of a Market Equilibrium

Does the momentum effect arise naturally from the determination of asset prices in market equilibrium? We calibrate a standard endowment model of multiple assets under recursive preferences. The momentum effect partly comes from investors’ aversion to consumption risks. An unexpected dividend increase generates a positive return and increases the asset’s proportion of consumption, raising the correlation between its future dividend growth and consumption growth. This is compensated by a higher expected return, generating the momentum effect. The cross-sectional difference in expected returns is also a key contributor. The quantified model produces sizable momentum profits, often close to the observed profits.
Choosing Between Peace and War

Although most disputes between groups of people are settled peacefully, sometimes disputes result in war. This lecture uses historical examples to illustrate how the ability to negotiate a credible peaceful settlement of a dispute between sovereign states, typically a dispute over the control of territory or natural resources, depends on the divisibility of the outcome of the dispute, on the effectiveness of the fortifications and counterattacks with which an attacker would expect to have to contend, and on the permanence of the outcome of a potential war. The lecture also contrasts the possibilities for avoiding wars between sovereign states with the possibilities for avoiding civil wars.
Re-examining the law and economics of the business judgment rule: notes for its implementation in non-US jurisdictions

The business judgment rule, as it has been traditionally understood, seems to be based on three underlying assumptions that make this rule economically desirable. First, directors are subject to a ...
Hand, Posner, and the Myth of the "Hand Formula"

The legal literature generally assumes that an aggregate-risk-utility test is employed to determine whether conduct was reasonable or negligent. However, this test is infrequently mentioned by the courts and almost never explains their decisions. Instead, they apply, explicitly or implicitly, various justice-based standards that take into account the rights and relationships among the parties. This is true even for the two judges most closely identified with the aggregate-risk-utility test: Learned Hand and Richard Posner. During the five decades (1909-1961) that Hand served as a federal judge, he mentioned the test in only eleven opinions, between 1938 and 1949, and in none of those opinions did he actually apply the test to resolve the negligence issue. In his last reference to the test, in 1949, he essentially abandoned it. None of his fellow circuit judges ever mentioned the test. Posner claims that the Hand formula expresses an economic efficiency interpretation of negligence that has long been implicit in judicial opinions. However, Posner’s arguments are based on speculative and implausible assumptions, overbroad generalizations, selective quotations, and superficial descriptions of cases that misstate or ignore facts, language, rationales, and holdings that are inconsistent with his argument. The same flaws are apparent in Posner’s attempts to apply the Hand formula in his own judicial opinions. Neither he nor his like-minded colleague, Frank Easterbrook, has been able to employ the Hand formula to resolve the negligence issue in any case, and none of their fellow circuit judges has attempted to do so.
Tax and Subsidy Combinations for the Control of Car Pollution

Despite technological advances, an individual car's emissions still cannot be measured reliably enough to impose a Pigovian tax. This paper explores alternative market incentives that could be used instead. We solve for second-best combinations of uniform taxes on gasoline, engine size, and vehicle age. For 1,261 individuals and cars in the 1994 Consumer Expenditure Survey, we record the car's model, year, and number of cylinders. We then seek a corresponding car in data from the California Air Resources Board that shows the car's engine size, fuel efficiency, and emissions per mile. We calculate the welfare improvement from a zero-tax scenario to the ideal Pigovian tax, and we find that 71 percent of that gain can be achieved by the second-best combination of taxes on gas, size, and vintage. A gas tax alone attains 62 percent of that gain. These results are robust to variation in the elasticity of substitution among goods.
Can Operating Leverage Be the Cause of the Value Premium

Recent theoretical models (Carlson, Fisher, and Giammarino, 2004) predict an association between the book-to-market equity ratio (BE/ME) and operating leverage in the cross-section. Consistent with these models, we find a positive association between BE/ME and the degree of operating leverage (DOL), between DOL and stock returns, and between DOL and systematic risk. Overall, our findings provide support for a risk-based explanation for the value premium that is consistent with existing theoretical models. The evolution of systematic risk associated with firm-level investment activity, rather than financial distress, seems to be the main determinant of the value premium.
Toward an architecture of health law.

This article examines 3 questions: What is an academic field of law? Is health law such a field? If it is, how can or should it be described? The first question may have no answer; scholars and practicing lawyers have fashioned their owns spheres of expertise. Describing health law faces particular challenges, including the breadth of applicable doctrines and the decline of unique medically-oriented adaptations of general principles. The article offers a blueprint based on the health and human rights framework as a functional description of the eclectic and translegal field of health law. This approach can identify the principles worthy of consideration in analyzing legal issues affecting health, while allowing room for debating the normative values that might govern sub-specialties or doctrines.
Supply Chain Contracting Under Competition: Bilateral Bargaining vs. Stackelberg

We analyze contracting behaviors in a two-tier supply chain system consisting of competing manufacturers and competing retailers. We contrast the contracting outcome of a Stackelberg game, in which the manufacturers offer take-it-or-leave-it contracts to the retailers, with that of a bargaining game, in which the firms bilaterally negotiate contract terms via a process of alternating offers. The manufacturers in the Stackelberg game possess a Stackelberg-leader advantage in that the retailers are not entitled to make counteroffers. Our analysis suggests that whether this advantage would benefit the manufacturers depends on the contractual form. With simple contracts such as wholesale-price contracts, which generally do not allow one party to fully extract the trade surplus, the Stackelberg game replicates the boundary case of the bargaining game with the manufacturers possessing all the bargaining power. In contrast, with sophisticated contracts such as two-part tariffs, which enable full surplus extraction, the two games lead to distinct outcomes. We further show that the game structure being Stackelberg or bargaining critically affects firms' preferences over contract types and thus their equilibrium contract choices. These observations suggest that the Stackelberg game may not be a sufficient device to predict contracting behaviors in reality where bargaining is commonly observed.
What Makes the Family Special

It is tempting when considering an optimal admissions policy to focus on labor markets. After all, from the nation’s perspective, an optimal immigration system will facilitate underperforming labor markets without artificially depressing wages. But any institutional design approach to immigration law must also take account of the existence of family-based immigration. Indeed, the United States currently has one of the most generous approaches to family-based immigration in the world. In 2011, four out of five immigrants given green cards established their eligibility as family members of US citizens or lawful permanent residents.1 Scholars and policy analysts rarely think about familybased immigration as a potential gain for the nation.2 Those in
‘Interrogation-Related Regulatory Decline:’ Ego-Depletion, Failures of Self-Regulation and the Decision to Confess

As reflected in rulings ranging from trial courts to the U.S. Supreme Court, our judiciary commonly views as “voluntary,” and admits into evidence, interrogationinduced confessions obtained under conditions entailing stressors sufficient to severely compromise or eliminate the rational decision making capacities and self-regulation abilities necessary to justify such a view. Such decisions reflect, and sometimes explicitly state, assumptions soundly contradicted by science regarding the capacity of normal suspects lacking mental defect to withstand such stressors as severe fatigue, sleep deprivation, emotional distress—and aversive interrogation length, tactics and circumstances—and nevertheless resist the powerful pressures of the interrogation to self-incriminate. Notwithstanding excessive length and other severe interrogation-related stressors and tactics demonstrably associated with elicitation of false confessions, judges overwhelmingly admit confessions into evidence and juries overwhelmingly convict. In this review, we introduce the concept of “interrogation-related regulatory decline” (IRRD)—or decline in the self-regulation abilities necessary to resist the forces of influence inherent to interrogation. We review scientific evidence of the unexpected ease with which self-regulation abilities can be significantly compromised, with the hope that this evidence can (a) encourage more evidence-based objectivity, realism, clarity and specificity in the criteria for assessing voluntariness underlying admissibility decisions, (b) promote reforms aimed at prevention of interrogation practices entailing substantial risk of severe IRRD, and (c) encourage more scholarly research on acute sources of interrogative suggestibility.
The Lesbian De Facto Parent Standard in Holtzman v. Knott: Judicial Policy Innovation and Diffusion

Miller-Jenkins v. Miller-Jenkins, the subject of a story in the Feb. 4, 2007 issue of the Washington Post, illustrates the legal hazards that lesbian couples face when they have children, then separate. The couple in Miller-Jenkins had a civil union in Vermont, giving them some basis -- albeit disputed -- for adjudicating custody and visitation. Most lesbian couples have no such basis, making the de facto parent standard in Holtzman v. Knott a crucial option. Although this issue gets far less attention than same-sex marriage, same-sex couples are far more likely to face it for the foreseeable future precisely because they cannot marry. Holtzman is a 1995 decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court granting standing to petition for visitation to a lesbian who wished to sustain her relationship with the child whom her former partner conceived and bore while plaintiff and defendant were a couple. This decision was the first time a court ever recognized such rights in a lesbian relative to her former partner. Subsequently, seven other states (CO, MA, MD, NJ, PA, RI, WA) have rendered similar decisions, often with explicit reference to the four-part standard for determining a de facto parent from the Holtzman decision. I use demographic information for cities that have prohibited sexual-orientation discrimination to compare these eight states to states that significantly restrict the parenting rights of lesbians and gay men (e.g., FL's statutory prohibition on adoption by lesbians and gay men) in order to consider what characteristics appear to militate in favor of state courts recognizing de facto parent status in lesbian petitioners. I place my discussion into the political science literature on policy innovation and diffusion.
Disentangling the Trait and State Components of Professional Skepticism: Specifying a Process for State Scale Development

SUMMARY: In recent years, professional skepticism (PS) has drawn extensive attention from both regulators and academics. While prior research theorizes that both stable personality traits and temporary states influence PS (e.g., Hurtt 2010; Nelson 2009), this literature tends to focus on either trait PS or contextual factors that influence judgments and behavior without disentangling the trait and state components of PS. We propose that state PS is a distinct construct from trait PS and provide the first measure of state PS. We validate our process for measuring state PS using rigorous analyses, demonstrating convergent and divergent validity with data collected from both professional and student samples. Furthermore, we replicate the Hurtt (2010) trait PS scale, which forms the basis for our state PS measure. Future researchers can employ our measure or, alternatively, replicate our process for measuring state PS in various experimental contexts. Data Availability: Contact the corresponding author.
Do Accounting Firm Consulting Revenues Affect Audit Quality? Evidence from the Pre‐ and Post‐SOX Eras

The Big 4 accounting firms have experienced a steady increase in the proportion of their revenues generated by providing consulting services post-SOX, primarily to nonaudit clients. Regulators have expressed concerns about the potential implications of this increase for audit quality. In contrast, the accounting firms assert that the expertise developed by their consulting professionals helps them to provide better quality audits. We examine the relation between the proportion of accounting firm consulting revenue to total revenue and audit quality, measured using financial statement misstatements. Our results suggest that, on average, higher consulting revenues are not associated with impaired audit quality. However, higher consulting revenues are associated with reduced audit quality among clients with lower litigation risk. These results support the argument that a cultural shift associated with the provision of more consulting services, even to nonaudit clients, can adversely affect audit quality in some circumstances (e.g., when litigation risk-related incentives for high audit quality are weaker). In addition, although the effect of higher consulting revenues only impacts audit quality among low litigation risk clients, results of earnings response coefficient tests suggest that investors perceive a deterioration in audit quality when a higher proportion of accounting firm revenue is generated from consulting services regardless of the client’s level of litigation risk. These results suggest that regulator and investor concerns about the provision of consulting services (at least at the levels we observe) may be warranted, but only among clients where opposing incentives to provide high audit quality are weaker.
Politics and State Punitiveness in Black and White

Recent findings from the literature on imprisonment policy suggest that in addition to traditional social and economic variables, imprisonment rates are also strongly related to changes in the state political environment. In this study, we extend this literature by testing a theory of state punitiveness which posits that (1) the political environment of states influences the degree to which they incarcerate their citizens, and (2) the political determinants of state punitiveness may be conditional upon the racial subpopulation being incarcerated. Our results suggest that increases in state political conservatism in recent decades have contributed to increases in both the growth in black imprisonment rates and black imprisonment disparity (relative to whites), but that these effects are, to a degree, tempered by countervailing political conditions.
Medical Error and Patient Safety: Understanding Cultures in Conflict

Evidence documenting the high rate of medical errors to patients has taken a prominent place on the health care radar screen. The injuries and deaths associated with medical errors represent a major public health problem with significant economic costs and erosion of trust in the health care system. Between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths due to preventable medical errors are estimated to occur each year, making medical errors the eighth leading cause of death in the United States. However, the recent prominence of the issue of safety or error does not reflect a new phenomenon or sudden rift in the quality of health care (although it is a system fraying at the edges). Rather, the prominence of the issue reflects a radical change in the culture of health care, and in how relationships within the health care system are structured and perceived. In this paper, I discuss the multiple factors responsible for the change in the culture of health care. First, the culture has shifted from a clinician cantered system, in which decision making is one–sided, to a shared system of negotiated care between clinician and patient, and, often, between administrator or payer. Second, the nature of quality in health care has changed due to the geometric increase in the availability of technological and pharmaceutical enhancements to patient care. Third, the health care culture continues to rely on outdated models of conflict resolution. Finally, the regulatory structure of health system oversight was set in place when fee–for–service care governed physician–patient relationships and where few external technologies were available. In the current health care culture, that structure seems inadequate and diffuse, with multiple and overlapping federal and state regulatory structures that make implementation of patient safety systems difficult.
Political instability and economic growth

This paper investigates the relationship between political instability and per capita GDP growth in a sample of 113 countries for the period 1950 through 1982. We define political instability as the propensity of a government collapse, and we estimate a model in which such a measure of political instability and economic growth are jointly determined. The main result of this paper is that in countries and time periods with a high propensity of government collapse, growth is significantly lower than otherwise. We also discuss the effects of different types of government changes on growth.
A New Institutional Economics Approach to Contracts and Cooperatives

Abstract Our purpose in this paper is to highlight the role of organizational structure and incentives in the design of contracts between buyers and sellers of agricultural products. In particular, we consider how differences between investor-owned (IOF) and producer-oriented (POF) firms, and differences between alternate types of POFs, may affect the types of contract terms those respective organizations are likely to prefer in their contracts with agricultural producers. New institutional economics theories of contracting, agency and property rights allocation suggest that cooperative contractors may be able to design contracts that enhance economic efficiency that IOFs cannot easily replicate ? Sykuta is Assistant Professor of Agribusiness in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri -Columbia and co -Director of the Contracting and Organizations Research Institute (CORI). Cook is the R.D. Partridge Professor of Cooperative Leadership in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri -Columbia’s. This paper was prepared as an invited Principal Paper for the 2001 annual meeting of the American Agricultural Economics Association.
Institutional and Political Sources of Legislative Change: Explaining How Private Organizations Influence the Form and Content of Consumer Protection Legislation

This article explores how private organizations influence the content and meaning of consumer protection legislation. I examine why California forced consumers to use a private dispute resolution system that affords consumers fewer rights, while Vermont adopted a state-run disputing structure that affords consumers greater rights. Drawing from historical and new institutional theories, I analyze twenty-five years of legislative history, as well as interviews with drafters of the California and Vermont laws, to show how automobile manufacturers weakened the impact of a powerful California consumer warranty law by creating dispute resolution venues. As these structures became institutionalized in the lemon law field, manufacturers reshaped the meaning of legislation. Unlike California, the political alliances in Vermont and a different developmental path led to a state-run dispute resolution structure. I conclude that how social reform laws are designed and how businesses influence social reform legislation can increase or decrease the achievement of a statute’s social reform goals.
The costs of zoning regulations in retail chains: the case of the City Planning Act of 1968 in Japan

The deregulation of zoning restrictions on retailers has been at the forefront of urban policy debates in recent years. Despite the increasing attention, however, we know surprisingly little about how the zoning regulations, which impose a constraint on the supply of land for a particular use, affect retailers in urban areas. This paper examines the effect of the zoning regulations introduced in 1968 in Japan on entry of convenience-store outlets. The act specifies two zoning restrictions for retail outlets. First, the law prohibits building commercial outlets in specified residential and industrial areas (“type 1 zoning”). Second, the law requires a developer to obtain permission from the local government to develop an outlet in specified areas (“type 2 zoning”). To account for the spatial dependence in demand, costs, and zoning regulation status across markets, this paper employs an equilibrium model of store-network choice by multistore firms. Using the cross-sectional data of entry and zoning in Okinawa in 2002, the paper finds hypothetically eliminating the type 1 and type 2 regulations would increase the total number of convenience-store outlets by 10–14 and 2–3 %, respectively. Although the magnitude of the increase in store counts and sales are similar across two national chains in Okinawa, the geographical markets in which each firm increases its outlets after the deregulation differ across these two chains.
Waiting in Immigration Limbo: The Federal Court Split over Suits to Compel Action on Stalled Adjustment of Status Applications

This Note explores the conflict surrounding federal courts’ authority to hear injunctive suits from adjustment of status applicants demanding U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services action on significantly delayed applications. The conflict turns on whether the agency has a duty to adjudicate applications properly before it, whether it must do so in a reasonable time, and whether any statutes preclude jurisdiction. The Note argues that the agency has a duty to adjudicate applications properly before it in a reasonable time. When it violates that duty, applicants should have legal recourse in all jurisdictions.
Just part of the game? Arms races, rivalry, and war

In this study, we look at the relationship of arms races to war, with appropriate consideration of rivalries. Are arms races more common in rivalries than in lesser competitions? Are they merely a ...
Deconstructing the Mythology of Free Trade: Critical Reflections on Comparative Advantage

In September 2003, the Fifth Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Cancun, Mexico, collapsed abruptly as a consequence of bitter disputes between the wealthy, industrialized countries of the North and the less affluent countries of the South over agricultural subsidies. 1 Claiming that the $300 billion annual subsidies paid by the North to the world’s wealthiest farmers undermine the livelihoods of millions of poor farmers in the South, delegates from
Efficient exponential Runge–Kutta methods of high order: construction and implementation

Exponential Runge–Kutta methods have shown to be competitive for the time integration of stiff semilinear parabolic PDEs. The current construction of stiffly accurate exponential Runge–Kutta methods, however, relies on a convergence result that requires weakening many of the order conditions, resulting in schemes whose stages must be implemented in a sequential way. In this work, after showing a stronger convergence result, we are able to derive two new families of fourth- and fifth-order exponential Runge–Kutta methods, which, in contrast to the existing methods, have multiple stages that are independent of one another and share the same format, thereby allowing them to be implemented in parallel or simultaneously, and making the methods to behave like using with much less stages. Moreover, all of their stages involve only one linear combination of the product of $$\varphi $$ -functions (using the same argument) with vectors. Overall, these features make these new methods to be much more efficient to implement when compared to the existing methods of the same orders. Numerical experiments on a one-dimensional semilinear parabolic problem, a nonlinear Schrodinger equation, and a two-dimensional Gray–Scott model are given to confirm the accuracy and efficiency of the two newly constructed methods.
The Correction of Wrongful Convictions: A Comparative Perspective

This Article analyzes the different modes in which two facially similar adversarial systems remedy wrongful convictions. Part I briefly examines the origins of wrongful convictions in both England and the United States. Part II describes the appellate processes in the two countries for correcting wrongful convictions. Part III addresses the processes for correcting wrongful convictions after the appellate processes have been completed. Part IV critiques the English process and examines whether aspects of that process may be carried over to the United States.
Freedom of Memory Today

Emerging technologies raise the possibility that we may be able to treat trauma victims by pharmaceutically dampening factual or emotional aspects of their memories. Such technologies raise a panoply of legal and ethical issues. While many of these issues remain off in the distance, some have already arisen. In this brief commentary, I discuss a real-life case of memory erasure. The case reveals why the contours of our freedom of memory—our limited bundle of rights to control our memories and be free of outside control—already merit some attention.