cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
RODNet: Radar Object Detection using Cross-Modal Supervision

Radar is usually more robust than the camera in severe driving scenarios, e.g., weak/strong lighting and bad weather. However, unlike RGB images captured by a camera, the semantic information from the radar signals is noticeably difficult to extract. In this paper, we propose a deep radar object detection network (RODNet), to effectively detect objects purely from the carefully processed radar frequency data in the format of range-azimuth frequency heatmaps (RAMaps). Three different 3D autoencoder based architectures are introduced to predict object confidence distribution from each snippet of the input RAMaps. The final detection results are then calculated using our post-processing method, called location-based non-maximum suppression (L-NMS). Instead of using burdensome human-labeled ground truth, we train the RODNet using the annotations generated automatically by a novel 3D localization method using a camera-radar fusion (CRF) strategy. To train and evaluate our method, we build a new dataset – CRUW, containing synchronized videos and RAMaps in various driving scenarios. After intensive experiments, our RODNet shows favorable object detection performance without the presence of the camera.
The International and Domestic Law of Climate Change: A Binding International Agreement Without the Senate or Congress?

The perception of the United States as a laggard or malingerer on climate change is widespread. The reality, however, is largely underappreciated and considerably more nuanced, both in terms of the substance of U.S. domestic action and its engagement with international processes. Unusual if not unique attributes of the United States’ domestic political, legal, and constitutional structure have come together on the climate issue in a revealing manner – one that thrusts the United States’ difficulties in managing foreign affairs while maintaining the domestic rule of law on heavily regulatory issues such as environment into sharp relief. To that extent, the United States’ difficulties in reconciling international and domestic law and policy on this issue are emblematic of larger challenges confronting transnational law: the need simultaneously to grapple with a variety of municipal systems with diverse domestic constitutional processes and constraints.
Global Currency Hedging

Over the period 1975 to 2005, the U.S. dollar (particularly in relation to the Canadian dollar), the euro, and the Swiss franc (particularly in the second half of the period) moved against world equity markets. Thus, these currencies should be attractive to risk-minimizing global equity investors despite their low average returns. The risk-minimizing currency strategy for a global bond investor is close to a full currency hedge, with a modest long position in the U.S. dollar. There is little evidence that risk-minimizing investors should adjust their currency positions in response to movements in interest differentials.
Debt covenant renegotiations and creditor control rights

Abstract Using a large sample of private debt renegotiations from 1996 to 2011, we report that, even in the absence of any covenant violation, debt covenants are frequently renegotiated. These renegotiations primarily relax existing restrictions and result in economically large changes in existing limits. Renegotiations of specific covenants are a response to both the distance the covenant variable is from its contractual limit and the firm׳s specific operating conditions and prospects. Moreover, the borrower׳s post-renegotiation investment and financial policies are strongly associated with the covenant changes resulting from the renegotiation. Overall, the findings imply that, even outside of default states, creditors have strong control rights over the borrower׳s operating and financial policies, and they exercise these rights in a state contingent manner through covenant renegotiations.
Alone in a crowd of sheep: Asymmetric perceptions of conformity and their roots in an introspection illusion.

The results of 5 studies showed that people see others as more conforming than themselves. This asymmetry was found to occur in domains ranging from consumer purchases to political views. Participants claimed to be less susceptible than their average peers to broad descriptions of social influences, and they also claimed to be less susceptible than specific peers to specific instances of conformity. These studies further demonstrated that this asymmetry is not simply the result of social desirability, but it is also rooted in people's attention to introspective versus behavioral information when making conformity assessments. The participants displayed an introspection illusion, placing more weight on introspective evidence of conformity (relative to behavioral evidence) when judging their own susceptibility to social influence as opposed to someone else's. Implications for self-other asymmetries, implicit social influence, and interpersonal conflict are discussed.
The Use of USPTO "Continuation" Applications in the Patenting of Software: Implications for Free and Open Source *

This paper examines the role played by “continuations” (procedural revisions of patent applications) within software patenting and the implications that the use by patentees of continuations has for free and open-source software design. Our research analyzes data on continuations in software patenting 1987–99, providing information on the effects of changes made to the U.S. patent laws in 1995 intended to curb “submarine patenting.” Our analysis of all U.S. patents issued 1987–99 shows that the use of continuations grew steadily in overall U.S. patenting through 1995, with particularly rapid growth in continuations in software patenting. Sharp reversals in these growth rates after 1995 suggest that changes in the U.S. patent law were effective. We analyze the role of continuation patents in creating opportunities for patentees to engage in strategic “hold-up” of software adopters and follow-on software innovators, and extend the analysis to open-source software.
The Role of Target Termination Fees in REIT Mergers

Target termination fee provisions are widely used in merger agreements and require the target firm to pay the bidder a fixed cash fee in the event the target firm backs out of the agreement. We examine the determinants and consequences of target termination fee provisions in REIT mergers and test the competing agency and efficient contracting hypothesis. We find that target termination fee provisions are more likely in hard to value targets, that is, in deals involving large targets, targets with high leverage, and firms that were not targets of a takeover attempt in the recent past. Our results also suggest that target termination fee provisions are associated with higher offer premiums, announcement period returns, and higher deal completion rates. Collectively, our results indicate that termination fee provisions are used as effective contractual devices in REIT mergers to further target shareholder interests.
Time-Varying Performance of International Mutual Funds

Abstract We examine the ability of one- and two-factor regime switching models to describe US, developed, and emerging market mutual fund returns. We find that a two-factor fixed transition probability model adequately describes the multivariate series of mutual fund returns without the need to model time-varying transition probabilities. Mutual fund performance, as measured by a state dependent Jensen's alpha, varies with economic regimes that are defined according to the global equity market mean. Our primary two-factor fixed transition probability model shows that emerging market mutual fund alphas are often significantly positive in global bull regimes. Consideration of alternative second risk factors suggests that both the foreign exchange factor, or the recently proposed Hou, Karolyi and Kho (2011) value factor can improve series forecasts and out-of-sample portfolio performance.
The Role of Corporate Law in Preventing a Financial Crisis: Reflections on In re Citigroup Inc. Shareholder Derivative Litigation

This Article uses recent events and litigation involving Citigroup to ask whether corporate law as created and enforced by state legislatures and courts-such as the legislature and courts of the State of Delaware-is capable of reducing the possibility of a replay of the recent financial * Distinguished Professor and Scholar, University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law; Director, Pacific McGeorge Global Center for Business & Development. I want to express my appreciation to Charles Whitehead and Thomas Main for their helpful comments.
Trade protection and industry wage structure in Poland

The authors examine the impact of Poland's trade liberalization in 1994-2001 on the industry wage structure. The liberalization was undertaken in preparation for Poland's accession to the European Union and was more pronounced in industries with larger shares of unskilled labor. Their analysis indicates that a decrease in an industry tariff was associated with higher wages being earned by workers employed in the industry, controlling for worker characteristics and geographic variables. The result is robust to including year and industry fixed effects, controlling for industry-level exports, imports, concentration, stock of foreign direct investment, and capital accumulation. The finding is consistent with liberalization increasing competitive pressures, forcing firms to restructure and improve their productivity, which in turn translates into higher profits being shared with workers. It could also be potentially attributed to trade liberalization lowering the costs of imported inputs, which enhances firm profitability. The result holds when skilled workers are excluded from the sample, thus suggesting that reductions in trade barriers benefited the unskilled in terms of an increase in wages.
Vertical mergers in procurement markets

Abstract This paper uses computational methods that reveal ambiguous strategic effects of vertical mergers in a duopoly setting featuring incomplete information about sellers' costs, and differences in sellers' productive capabilities. First, vertical mergers can be jointly unprofitable. Second, the buyer's preferred merger partner is almost always the seller with lower expected costs, and is typically the larger seller. Third, vertical mergers always reduce the unintegrated seller's profits, sometimes dramatically. Finally, vertical mergers can increase total welfare. Some of the results contrast qualitatively with unambiguous findings from models with symmetric sellers, which suggests that caution should be used in drawing general inferences from those models.
Does large price discrimination imply great market power

Abstract A simple model demonstrates that there is no theoretical connection between the extent of price discrimination and the extent of market power.
A Centennial of Anti‐dumping Legislation and Implementation: Introduction and Overview

A century has passed since the Government of Canada adopted the first recorded anti-dumping law in 1904. The Canadian legislation was soon followed by similar legislation in most of the major trading nations in the industrialised world prior to and after World War I. Anti-dumping provisions were later incorporated into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) following World War II. Nowadays, virtually all of the industrialised and developing countries in the world economy have adopted anti-dumping legislation. In view of the long and increasingly widespread use of anti-dumping measures, we marked the centennial of Canada's 1904 legislation with a symposium at the University of Michigan on 12 March, 2004. The symposium papers document the experiences with anti-dumping and then ask whether and how anti-dumping can be reformed. Although we all would probably agree that the best solution would be to retract all anti-dumping legislation, this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. Anti-dumping laws serve a variety of purposes, and powerful political forces stand in the way of eliminating these laws. Anti-dumping provides a stronger and more focused means of safeguards protection against surges of imports than GATT-legal safeguards laws permit. Anti-dumping also formalises a meaning for ‘unfair trade’ that, though essentially meaningless from an economic standpoint, strikes a chord in public perception. And finally, in spite of its appearance of being constrained by objective administrative rules, anti-dumping in practice is a potent political tool that governments are able to manipulate in order to satisfy powerful constituents. With all this going for it, anti-dumping is unlikely ever to be relinquished as an economic policy tool by governments.
“Kill the Sea Turtles” and Other Things You Can’t Make the Government Say

In Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, the Supreme Court confirmed that there is no heckler’s veto under the government speech doctrine. When speaking, the government has the right to speak for itself and to select the views that it wants to express. But the Court acknowledged that sometimes it is difficult to determine whether the government is actually speaking. Specialty license plates have proven to be one of those difficult situations, raising novel and important First Amendment issues. Six circuits have reached four separate conclusions regarding the status of messages on specialty license plates. Three circuits have held that specialty plates are private speech, one that they are government speech, and another that specialty plates are hybrid speech. Yet another circuit has held that the issue is nonjusticiable under the Tax Injunction Act. And the uncertainty continues as North Carolina, Texas, and Oklahoma currently confront litigation over their license plates—litigation that will determine whether States or third parties have the right to select the messages on specialty license plates. This paper explores the Court’s “recently minted” government speech doctrine in the context of specialty plates. In particular, it analyzes the circumstances under which a State can adopt one message (Save the Sea Turtles) while refusing to authorize opposing viewpoints (Kill the Sea Turtles). To date, the majority of circuits has applied a literal speaker test, which looks to see if a reasonable observer would view specialty plates as government or private speech. Under that test, specialty plates are * [About the Authors]. private speech, and any restrictions on the content of such plates must be reasonable and viewpoint neutral, even if a State disagrees with that message. The paper contends that a careful review of Summum, which was decided after all but one of the circuit court decisions, shows that the majority interpretation is wrong. The literal speaker test is inconsistent with the “control” test set out in Summum and Johanns. Under the Court’s new test for government speech, many specialty license plate programs are government speech, and third parties cannot force States to promulgate messages with which they disagree. If a state has a “Save the Sea Turtles” plate to promote conservation and the protection of its wildlife, it cannot be forced to offer a “Kill the Sea Turtles.” And the same holds true for more controversial messages such as Choose Life in North Carolina as well as Texas’s ban on plates containing divisive images such as a Confederate flag. Thus, this paper concludes that Summum marks a significant development in the Court’s free speech jurisprudence, one that affirms the States’ ability to control the messages on their specialty license plates as well as their other expressive activity.
Incentive Fees and Mutual Funds

This paper examines the effect of incentive fees on the behavior of mutual fund managers. Funds with incentive fees exhibit positive stock selection ability, but a beta less than one results in funds not earning positive fees. From an investor's perspective, positive alphas plus lower expense ratios make incentive-fee funds attractive. However, incentive-fee funds take on more risk than non-incentive-fee funds, and they increase risk after a period of poor performance. Incentive fees are useful marketing tools, since more new cash flows go into incentive-fee funds than into non-incentive-fee funds, ceteris paribus. AN INCENTIVE FEE is a reward structure that makes management compensation a function of investment performance relative to some benchmark. Incentive fees are often used to compensate the manager of investment assets. For example, hedge funds typically charge investors a fixed fee plus an incentive fee equal to between five percent and 25 percent of the funds annual return. Limited liability partnerships, such as commodity partnerships, real estate partnerships, and oil and gas partnerships, often charge incentive fees in excess of 20 percent of profits. There are a number of reasons why incentive fees are considered desirable. Perhaps the most often cited is that incentive fees align manager interest with investor interests. Both groups do better when the investment does better. Thus, the argument goes, management effort should be higher for funds with incentive fees. Closely associated with this is the argument that the best managers will gravitate towards investment pools that have incentive fees since they can make more money by managing such pools. The argument continues that since investors realize that funds with incentive fees draw the best managers and elicit the most effort, the investors are willing to place more money in these funds.1 While financial economists can and have theorized about the impact of incentive fees, there has been very little empirical analysis of the impact of such fees. The major reason is that incentive fees exist almost exclusively in industries such as hedge funds that not only don't have audited data, but are not even required to
DISTANCE TO PROMOTION: EVIDENCE FROM MILITARY GRADUATE EDUCATION

Using a unique dataset of U.S. military officers enrolled in graduate programs at the Naval Postgraduate School, we find students enrolled in distance education programs are 19 percentage points less likely to graduate compared to students enrolled in comparable traditional resident programs. Interestingly, distance education students receive a larger proportion of As on their courses. But, they are also more likely to fail and withdraw from their courses compared to their resident counterparts. The negative effects of distance education are worse for students enrolled in more technical engineering programs compared to less technical business programs. Although distance students are more likely to separate from the military after completing their education compared to traditional students, there are no significant differences in job promotion within the military between the two groups. Our results highlight the challenges of designing effective distance education programs in technical fields. (JEL I20, I23)
Bargaining Before or After Communication

We ask how bargainers' incentives to communicate about more efficient widget designs depend on whether they negotiate price prior to, or after, fixing the traded design. We find three effects: (1) Since communication reveals information about preferences, bargainers with little power prefer to remain quiet prior to bargaining. (2) Later bargaining gives communicators a chance to share in joint gains from more efficient trades. (3) The revealed preference information enhances the efficiency of the bargaining process. The comparison might help explain why some contracts have more features left incomplete and throw some light on the nature of the employment relationship.
Deportation, Social Control, and Punishment: Some Thoughts about Why Hard Laws Make Bad Cases

From the Author's Introduction: We live in a time of unusual vigor, efficiency, and strictness in the deportation of long-term permanent resident aliens convicted of crimes. This situation is the result of some fifteen years of relatively sustained attention to this issue, which culminated in two exceptionally harsh laws: the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA). In many cases, these laws have brought about a rather complete convergence between the criminal justice and deportation systems. Deportation is now often a virtually automatic consequence of criminal conviction. This convergence, and the harshness of these laws - their retroactivity, their use of mandatory detention, the automatic and often disproportionate nature of the deportation sanction, and the lack of statues of limitation - raise two related questions: First, why are we doing this? Second, what could be the consequences of this approach for the constitutional legitimacy of deportation proceedings?
Charitable Insolvency and Corporate Governance in Bankruptcy Reorganization

Poor corporate governance is a pervasive problem in the charitable nonprofit sector. Prominent examples of mismanagement and abuse include instances of intentional misconduct, such as embezzlement and unauthorized self-dealing, and negligent conduct, such as failure to diversify the organization’s investment assets. In numerous cases, the lack of good corporate governance had led to the financial distress or failure of a charitable nonprofit firm. A rich literature on nonprofit law has considered the need for better corporate governance and enforcement of fiduciary duties, but the scholarship has yet to address the implications of financial distress and insolvency on corporate governance. This article, ‘Charitable Insolvency and Corporate Governance in Bankruptcy Reorganization,’ fills that void and argues that, when a charity encounters financial distress and approaches the point of insolvency, features and customs of nonprofit and bankruptcy law tend to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the corporate governance problem. Consequently, charitable insiders who breach their fiduciary duties are in a better position to entrench themselves and avoid termination than their for-profit counterparts. In the for-profit sector, three constraints tend to regulate corporate governance by helping to oust fiduciaries responsible for financial distress: bank monitoring of commercial loan covenants; absolute priority and the transfer of ownership in bankruptcy; and involuntary bankruptcy proceedings. In the nonprofit sector, however, those constraints are either less effective or do not apply. As a result, blameworthy charitable fiduciaries are better able to entrench themselves and, without new competent leadership, financially distressed charities are less likely to achieve a full and sustainable financial recovery. My article contains some nascent ideas for reform, including a suggestion that the law might better protect the public interest in charitable assets from waste and abuse by presumptively appointing bankruptcy examiners in all Chapter 11 reorganization proceedings involving substantial charitable assets. Once appointed, bankruptcy examiners would be tasked with identifying the cause of insolvency and individuals responsible for the charity’s financial distress.
WalkAway: Observational Data on 150 Erstwhile Democrats

#WalkAway signifies walking away from the Democratic Party. The movement was launched in June 2018 by Brandon Straka, when he uploaded what became the prototypical video of an individual telling his or her story about walking away. During 130 days, 150 erstwhile Democrats provided video testimonials at Straka’s official YouTube channel. Of the 150 erstwhile Democrats, 23% report catching a lot of grief, plus another 16% report catching some grief, for questioning or deviating from leftist opinions. Most importantly, 70% suggest a civility gap between the left and non-left. These are lower bounds, since the testimonials are spontaneous monologues, not replies to questions. Many other observed features are reported, to deepen our thinking about ideological migration. However, filters involved in the sample must be borne in mind. A linked Excel file contains complete data.
Tradeoffs in Corporate Governance: Evidence From Board Structures and Charter Provisions

We provide arguments and present evidence that corporate governance structures are composed of interrelated mechanisms, which are in turn endogenous responses to the costs and benefits firms face when they choose those mechanisms. Examining board structures and the use of corporate charter provisions in a sample of more than 2,300 firms over a four-year period, we find that firms cluster in their use of governance mechanisms. In particular, the set of charter provisions that firms use, as measured by the Gompers et al. (2003) G Index, is associated with board structure, with the laws of the state in which the firm is incorporated, and with firm and industry characteristics. We also find that some governance structures appear to serve as substitutes. Specifically, firms that have powerful boards (as measured by board independence) also have the greatest number of charter provisions, suggesting that the market for corporate control is less effective as a monitoring mechanism for these firms. In contrast, firms that have less powerful boards tend to have few charter provisions, suggesting that the market for corporate control plays a greater monitoring role at such firms. To address potential endogeneity issues, we employ three-stage least squares analysis to estimate these relationships within a system of equations. Our results from this analysis are consistent with the hypothesis that powerful boards serve as a substitute for the market for corporate control. Finally, our findings suggest that causality runs from the board to the choice of charter provisions, but not vice versa.
The Optimal Standard of Proof with Adjudication Avoidance

Actors, whether guilty or innocent, may invest in costly measures to reduce their likelihood of being audited. The value of these investments are increasing in the probability with which they expect to be found guilty conditional on being audited. Because strengthening the standard of proof reduces the probability of conviction, it also lowers the investments by actors to reduce their likelihood of being audited. Therefore, when balancing such avoidance costs and deterrence effects, it is optimal to employ a stronger standard than that which maximizes deterrence, namely stronger than preponderance of the evidence.
Is Openness Penalized? Stock Returns around Earnings Warnings

Prior research finds that firms warning investors of an earnings shortfall experience lower returns than non‐warning firms with similar risks and earnings news. Openness thus appears to be penalized by investors. Yet, this finding may be due to a self‐selection bias that occurs when firms with a larger amount of unfavorable non‐earnings news (“other bad news”) are more likely to warn. In this paper I use a Heckman selection model to infer the amount of other bad news and document that, on average, warning firms have a larger amount of other bad news than non‐warning firms. After controlling for this effect, I find that warning firms' returns remain lower than those of non‐warning firms in a short‐term window ending five days after earnings announcement. When this window is extended by three months, however, warning and non‐warning firms exhibit similar returns. My evidence suggests that openness is ultimately not penalized by investors.
Generating Creative Ideas Through Crowds: An experimental study of combination

The crowd is emerging as a new source of innovation, and here a new way of organizing the crowd to produce new ideas is discussed: an idea generation system using combination in which participants synthesize new designs from the efforts of their peers. A crowd generates designs; then another crowd combines the designs of the previous crowd. In an experiment with 540 participants, the combined designs are compared to the initial designs, and to a control condition in which fresh idea generation rather than combination is used. The results show that designs become more creative in later generations of the combination system, and the combination produces more creative ideas than the fresh idea generation. The model of crowdsourced idea generation discussed here may be used to instantiate systems that can be applied to a wide range of design problems. The work has pragmatic implications, and also theoretical implications: new forms of coordination are now possible, and, using the crowd, it is possible to build and test existing and emerging theories of coordination and design.
The Psychotherapist - Patient Privilege in Child Placement: A Relevancy Analysis

This article focuses on the statutorily-recognized psychotherapist-patient privilege, including a history of its evolution, a discussion of its use in child-placement cases, and a proposal for an appropriate analytical approach to the privilege issue based on logical relevancy. The latter part of the article examines the constitutional right to privacy as it applies to the privilege, including a review of pertinent judicial decisions and a discussion of a proposed analytical approach in the constitutional context.
Corporate governance of Japanese banks

We investigate external and internal corporate governance activity observed at Japanese banks over 1985–1996. External governance appears to be inactive, and even after the onset of the banking crisis of the 1990s there are few mergers, failures, and other changes in ownership and control. Prior to the banking crisis we do not find a relation between bank performance and executive turnover. In contrast, non-routine turnover of bank presidents is inversely related to both stock returns and profitability in the 1990s. Consequently, internal governance activity is observable following the onset of the Japanese banking crisis, a period otherwise characterized by inactive external governance and regulatory forbearance.
Nationalism and Economic Exchange: Evidence from Shocks to Sino-Japanese Relations

We study the impact of nationalism and interstate frictions on international economic relations by analyzing market reaction to adverse shocks to Sino-Japanese relations in 2005 and 2010. Japanese companies with high China exposure suffer relative declines during each event window; a symmetric effect is observed for Chinese companies with high Japanese exposure. The effect on Japanese companies is more pronounced for those operating in industries dominated by Chinese state-owned enterprises, whereas firms with high Chinese employment experience lower declines. These results emphasize the role of countries' economic and political institutions in mediating the impact of interstate frictions on firm-level outcomes.
Nearly Fuchsian surface subgroups of finite covolume Kleinian groups

Let Γ < PSL 2 ( C ) be discrete, of cofinite volume, and noncocompact. We prove that, for all K > 1, there is a subgroup H < Γ that is K-quasiconformally conjugate to a discrete cocompact subgroup of PSL 2 ( R ). Along with previous work of Kahn and Markovic, this proves that every finite covolume Kleinian group has a nearly Fuchsian surface subgroup.
Forecasting sales of new and existing products using consumer reviews: A random projections approach

We consider the problem of predicting sales of new and existing products using both the numeric and textual data contained in consumer reviews. Many of the extant approaches require considerable manual pre-processing of the textual data, making the methods prohibitively expensive to implement and difficult to scale. In contrast, our approach uses a bag-of-words method that requires minimal pre-processing and parsing, making it efficient and scalable. However, a key implementation challenge with the bag-of-words approach is that the number of predictors can quickly outstrip the number of degrees of freedom available. Furthermore, the method can require impracticably large computational resources. We propose a random projections approach for dealing with the curse-of-dimensionality issue that afflicts bag-of-words models. The random projections approach is computationally simple, flexible and fast, and has desirable statistical properties. We apply the proposed approach to the forecasting of sales at Amazon.com using consumer reviews with an attributes-based regression model. The model is applied to produce of one-week-ahead rolling horizon sales forecasts for existing and newly-introduced tablet computers. The results show that the predictive performance of the proposed approach for both tasks is strong and significantly better than those of either models that ignore the textual content of consumer reviews, or a support vector regression machine with the textual content. Furthermore, the approach is easy to repeat across product categories, and readily scalable to much larger datasets.
Poisson indices of segregation

Abstract Existing indices of residential segregation are based on a partition of the city in neighborhoods: given a spatial distribution of racial groups, the index measures different segregation levels for different partitions. I propose a spatial approach, which estimates segregation at the individual level and produces the entire spatial distribution of segregation. This method provides different rankings of cities in terms of segregation and new insights on the effect of segregation on socioeconomic outcomes. Using Census data and controlling for endogeneity using instrumental variables, I show that reduced form estimates of the impact of segregation on socioeconomic outcomes are not robust to the spatial approach.
The Dark Side of the Force: The Legacy of Justice Holmes for First Amendment Jurisprudence

ABSTRACT Modern First Amendment jurisprudence is deeply paradoxical. On one hand, freedom of speech is said to promote fundamental values such as individual self-fulfillment, democratic deliberation, and the search for truth. At the same time, however, many leading decisions protect speech that appears to undermine these values by attacking the dignity and personality of others or their status as full and equal members of the community. In this Article, I explore where this Jekyll-and-Hyde quality of First Amendment jurisprudence comes from. I argue that the American free speech tradition consists of two very different strands: a liberal humanist view that emphasizes the positive values promoted by free speech, and a darker vision that is rooted in the jurisprudence of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes understands free speech as part of a struggle for power between different social groups-a struggle that ultimately can be resolved only by force. After sketching the liberal humanist view, I trace the development of Holmes's position, which is grounded in his Darwinian understanding of human life and in his deeper view that all phenomena in the universe are governed by force. Next, I evaluate the Holmesian approach and discuss its implications for a wide range of contemporary issues, from hate speech and pornography to the Citizens United decision on electoral advertising by corporations. I conclude that Holmes's view does not provide an adequate rationale for free speech, and that it undermines the liberal humanist principles that should be regarded as central to the First Amendment. INTRODUCTION 663 I. THE LIBERAL HUMANIST APPROACH TO FREE EXPRESSION 665 A. Liberal Humanism and the Natural Rights Tradition 665 B. Liberal Humanism in Contemporary First Amendment Jurisprudence 669 II. HOLMES'S EARLY FREE SPEECH JURISPRUDENCE 673 A. Holmes 's Philosophy of Law 673 B. Holmes 's Early Views on Freedom of Speech 675 III. HOLMES'S LATER FREE SPEECH JURISPRUDENCE 679 A. The Transformation of Holmes 's Views on Free Speech 679 B. Idealism and the Logic of Persecution 683 C. Holmes 's Defense of Free Speech 685 1. The Negative Dimension of Holmes's Argument: A Skeptical View of the World 685 2. The Positive Dimension of Holmes's Argument 688 a. The Marketplace of Ideas 689 b. Holmes 's Darwinism and the Marketplace of Ideas ....... 690 c. Holmes 's Theory of Force 692 D. Summarizing Holmes 's Argument 693 IV. A LIBERAL HUMANIST CRITIQUE OF HOLMESIAN FREE SPEECH THEORY . . 695 A. The Inadequacy of Holmes 's Argument for Free Speech 695 B. Free Speech and Holmes 's Theory of Force 698 C. Expression That Causes Harm to Others 706 V. HOLMES AND CONTEMPORARY FIRST AMENDMENT DOCTRINE ........ 711 A. Political Speech 711 1. Corporate Political Speech 712 2. Political Hate Speech 714 B. Private and Artistic Expression 718 1. Freedom of Speech and Privacy 718 2. Artistic Expression 719 C. Speech by Public Employees 721 CONCLUSION 722 The constitutional right of free expression . …
Conditional conservatism and disaggregated bad news indicators in accrual models

Conditional conservatism is an integral but often unmodeled part of the normal accrual process. The standard economic determinants of accruals contain information about unrealized losses. We argue that accountants recognize these unrealized losses as disaggregated write-downs for small asset pools. Modeling disaggregated impairments yields new economic insights about accruals and improved accrual models. We predict that accrual conservatism manifests as a sum of asymmetries for a vector of news indicators, rather than as an asymmetry for a scalar aggregate news proxy. We argue that more detailed segment-level and quarterly indicators have an incremental effect on annual firm-level accruals. We also predict a dynamic effect of successive loss indicators because accountants look for consistent patterns in these variables. Empirical results for U.S. firms support our predictions. The asymmetries in accruals are consistent with conservatism in validation tests. We also document improved statistical power and type I error in earnings management tests.
The Design of Pension Pay Out Options When the Health Status during Retirement Is Uncertain

This paper examines the optimal design of pension plans when the health status during retirement is uncertain. Assuming that the health status affects both life expectancy and the marginal utility of consumption, choice between a lump-sum payment and an annuity can be welfare-enhancing if the health status is not observable by pension plan providers. This result holds if the marginal utility of consumption and life expectancy are negatively correlated. On equity grounds, a lump-sum option can be justified even if the marginal utility of consumption is independent of life expectancy.
Benford’s Law and Macroeconomic Data Quality

This paper examines the usefulness of testing the conformity of macroeconomic data with Benford's law as indicator of data quality. Most of the macroeconomic data series tested conform with Benford's law. However, questions emerge on the reliability of such tests as indicators of data quality once conformity with Benford's law is contrasted with the data quality ratings included in the data module of the Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes (data ROSCs). Furthermore, the analysis shows that rejection of Benford's law may be unrelated to the quality of statistics, and instead may result from marked structural shifts in the data series. Hence, nonconformity with Benford's law should not be interpreted as a reliable indication of poor quality in macroeconomic data.
Garbage in, garbage out? Some micro sources of macro errors

Many institutions, large or small, make their decisions through some process of deliberation. Nonetheless, deliberating institutions often fail, in the sense that they make judgments that are false or that fail to take advantage of the information that their members have. Micro mistakes can lead to macro blunders or even catastrophes. There are four such failures; all of them have implication for large-scale institutions as well as small ones. (1) Sometimes the predeliberation errors of an institution's members are amplified, not merely propagated, as a result of deliberation. (2) Institutions fall victim to cascade effects, as the initial speakers or actors are followed by their successors, who do not disclose what they know. Non-disclosure, on the part of those successors, may be a product of either informational or reputational cascades. (3) As a result of group polarization, deliberating institutions sometimes end up in a more extreme position in line with their predeliberation tendencies. Sometimes group polarization leads in desirable directions, but there is no assurance to this effect. (4) In deliberating institutions, shared information often dominates or crowds out unshared information, ensuring that institutions do not learn what their members know. Informational signals and reputational pressure help to explain all four errors. The results can be harmful to numerous institutions, including large ones, and to societies as a whole. Markets are able to correct some of these problems, but cascade effects occur there as well.
Repatriation of the Displaced Arabs of Palestine and the Meaning of Security Council Resolution 242

In its major prescriptive document for resolving the Middle East conflict, its Resolution 242 of 1967, the United Nation's Security Council calls for a just settlement of the refugee problem. Although the PLO and Israel agreed in 1993 to negotiate a settlement between them on the basis of Resolution 242, the PLO argues that the quoted phrase in Resolution 242 requires Israel to repatriate the Arabs displaced in 1948 from Palestine/Israel. Israel, to the contrary, argues that the phrase contemplates a variety of possible solutions for these refugees, in particular their resettlement in the states where they took refuge. This article examines the context in which the phrase was adopted and concludes that the Security Council understood it to require repatriation.
Revising Foucault: The history and critique of modernity

I offer a major reassessment of Foucault’s philosophico-historical account of the basic problems of modernity. I revise our understanding of Foucault by countering the influential misinterpretation...
Politics, Executive Dominance, and Transformative Law in the Culture of Judicial Independence

In the last two decades Latin America has experienced a significant resurgence of democracy, yet efforts to strengthen the independcnce of the judiciary, largely focused on institutional reforms of the judiciary itself, have been disappointing. It is apparently not enough to construct an appropriate judiciary. How can one keep the nation's politicians from trying to control the judges? Through a wide-ranging historical and comparative method. this article seeks to explore the culture of judicial independence by asking what the political and social logic in favor of and opposed to judicial independence is. This article seeks to contribute to the cultural approach, first by understanding the enduring strength of the opposing culture, the culture supporting political control over the courts, and second, by exploring the argument that a belief in law's ability to transform society characterizes cultures supporting reasonable levels of judicial independence. If belief in transformative law is an important feature of the culture of judicial independence, then perhaps that belief can be deployed against the perennial claims for political control. Strategies designed to strengthen belief in transformative law by improving the effectiveness of laws intended to be transformative, it is argued, could be promising ways of supplementing institutional reforms by increasing cultural support for judicial
Protecting Human Rights and Countering Terrorism: Australia's Contradictory Approaches to Implementing Its International Legal Obligations

Australia has consistently resisted adopting legislation that would directly and comprehensively implement its legal obligations pursuant to multilateral human rights treaties, maintaining that human rights are better protected by democratic legal processes than judicially interpreted bills of rights. This approach has left many human rights very poorly protected by Australian law. In contrast, Australia’s commitment to democratic discussion and deliberation did not impede the hasty adoption of comprehensive legislation implementing its international legal obligations pursuant to Security Council resolutions aimed at countering international terrorism. This legislation has further eroded the already fragile domestic framework for the protection of human rights. The justifications for these contradictory approaches to domestic implementation of international legal obligations are examined in this paper and it is suggested that they may foreshadow the demise of collaborative international law-making and, in its place, the rise of ‘hegemonic’ international law.
The Max‐Min‐Min Principle of Product Differentiation

We analyze two and three-dimensional variants of Hotelling's model of differentiated products. In our setup, consumers can place different importances on each product attribute; these are measured by weights on the disutility of distance in each dimension. Two firms play a two-stage game; they choose locations in stage 1 and prices in stage 2. We seek subgame-perfect equilibria. We find that all such equilibria have maximal differentiation in one dimension only; in all other dimensions they have minimum differentiation. An equilibrium with maximal differentiation in a certain dimension occurs when consumers place sufficient importance (weight) on that attribute. Thus, depending on the importance consumers place on each attribute, in two dimensions there is a max-min equilibrium, a min-max equilibrium, or both. In three dimensions, depending on the weights, there can be a max-min-min equilibrium, a min-max-min equilibrium, a min-min-max equilibrium, any two of these, or all three.
A Park For Everyone: The National Park Service in Urban America

This article examines the National Park Service’s past and future presence in urban America. Scholars, conservationists, and park administrators agree that urban park spaces and programming must be a focus of the National Park Service in its second century. This article explains the motivations behind the National Park Service’s first urban parks and describes the National Park Service’s recent emphasis on urban areas. From designations such as Pullman Park in Chicago, to initiatives like the Urban Agenda, the National Park Service is poised to engage urban America and create a new generation of park visitors.
The Irony of AT&T v. Concepcion

Irony is defined as “the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning.” 1 Though many other definitions of the word exist, in light of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in ATT quite the contrary, Congress inserted a savings clause that arbitration provisions, like any other contract, could be stricken “upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity . . . .” 3 It was upon this basis that the Ninth Circuit upheld a decision to strike down a clause in an agreement between AT&T and the Concepcions that required not only that the Concepcions submit all disputes to arbitration, but also forbade them from forming a class within that arbitration. The Ninth Circuit held that under California law, such clauses in take it or leave it contracts, as the one presented to the Concepcions, are unconscionable and unenforceable. 4
Does history repeat itself? Business cycle and industry returns

Abstract Industries with higher historical business cycle regime Sharpe ratios (RSR) have higher regime-dependent expected returns. Conditional on whether output gap is positive or negative, an out-of-sample long-high-RSR and short-low-RSR sector rotation strategy generates 14.02% annualized alpha in Fama-French five-factor model during 1985–2014. Industry momentum and related anomalies are unlikely to be the source of alpha. Firms in long portfolios have stronger fundamentals, more upward analyst forecast revisions, and more positive forecast errors. Our results suggest that investors don’t fully incorporate business cycle variation in cash flow growth and highlight the importance of business cycle on the cross-section of industry returns.