cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Long-Range Coupled Motions Underlie Ligand Recognition by a Chemokine Receptor.

Summary Chemokines are unusual class-A G protein-coupled receptor agonists because of their large size (∼10 kDa) and binding at two distinct receptor sites: N-terminal domain (Site-I, unique to chemokines) and a groove defined by extracellular loop/transmembrane helices (Site-II, shared with all small molecule class-A ligands). Structures and sequence analysis reveal that the receptor N-terminal domains (N-domains) are flexible and contain intrinsic disorder. Using a hybrid NMR-MD approach, we characterized the role of Site-I interactions for the CXCL8-CXCR1 pair. NMR data indicate that the CXCR1 N-domain becomes structured on binding and that the binding interface is extensive with 30% CXCL8 residues participating in this initial interaction. MD simulations indicate that CXCL8 bound at Site-I undergoes extensive reorganization on engaging Site-II with several residues initially engaged at Site-I also engaging at Site-II. We conclude that structural plasticity of Site-I interactions plays an active role in driving ligand recognition by a chemokine receptor.
Teach Me What You Want to Play: Learning Variants of Connect Four through Human-Robot Interaction

This paper investigates the use of game theoretic representations to represent and learn how to play interactive games such as Connect Four. We combine aspects of learning by demonstration, active learning, and game theory allowing a robot to leverage its developing representation of the game to conduct question/answer sessions with a person, thus filling in gaps in its knowledge. The paper demonstrates a method for teaching a robot the win conditions of the game Connect Four and its variants using a single demonstration and a few trial examples with a question and answer session led by the robot. Our results show that the robot can learn arbitrary win conditions for the game with little prior knowledge of the win conditions and then play the game with a human utilizing the learned win conditions. Our experiments also show that some questions are more important for learning the game’s win conditions. We believe that this method could be broadly applied to a variety of interactive learning scenarios. (A preliminary version of this paper was accepted at [5]).
Scaling up Differentially Private Deep Learning with Fast Per-Example Gradient Clipping

Recent work on Renyi Differential Privacy has shown the feasibility of applying differential privacy to deep learning tasks. Despite their promise, however, differentially private deep networks often lag far behind their non-private counterparts in accuracy, showing the need for more research in model architectures, optimizers, etc. One of the barriers to this expanded research is the training time -- often orders of magnitude larger than training non-private networks. The reason for this slowdown is a crucial privacy-related step called "per-example gradient clipping" whose naive implementation undoes the benefits of batch training with GPUs. By analyzing the back-propagation equations we derive new methods for per-example gradient clipping that are compatible with auto-differentiation (e.g., in PyTorch and TensorFlow) and provide better GPU utilization. Our implementation in PyTorch showed significant training speed-ups (by factors of 54x - 94x for training various models with batch sizes of 128). These techniques work for a variety of architectural choices including convolutional layers, recurrent networks, attention, residual blocks, etc.
Metal Free Amino‐Oxidation of Electron Rich Alkenes Mediated by an Oxoammonium Salt

4-Acetamido-2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-1-oxopiperidinium tetrafluoroborate (Bobbitt’s salt) effectively activates electron rich alkenes and promotes the addition of anilines. This transformation provides a direct, transition metal free method for amino-oxidation of alkenes under mild conditions. The relative stereochemistry of the amino-oxidation is influenced by solvent effects, with both the syn and anti amino-oxidation products being accessible from identical starting materials.
Field dependent conductivity and threshold switching in amorphous chalcogenides—Modeling and simulations of ovonic threshold switches and phase change memory devices

We model electrical conductivity in metastable amorphous Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) using independent contributions from temperature and electric field to simulate phase change memory devices and ovonic threshold switches. 3D, 2D-rotational, and 2D finite element simulations of pillar cells capture threshold switching and show filamentary conduction in the on-state. The model can be tuned to capture switching fields from ∼5 to 40 MV/m at room temperature using the temperature dependent electrical conductivity measured for metastable amorphous GST; lower and higher fields are obtainable using different temperature dependent electrical conductivities. We use a 2D fixed out-of-plane-depth simulation to simulate an ovonic threshold switch in series with a Ge2Sb2Te5 phase change memory cell to emulate a crossbar memory element. The simulation reproduces the pre-switching current and voltage characteristics found experimentally for the switch + memory cell, the isolated switch, and the isolated memory cell.
Characterization of a multi-etalon array for ultra-high resolution spectroscopy

The upcoming Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) are expected to have the collecting area required to detect potential biosignature gases in the atmosphere of rocky planets around nearby low-mass stars. Some efforts are currently focusing on searching for molecular oxygen (O2), since O2 is a known biosignature on Earth. One of the most promising methods to search for O2 is transmission spectroscopy in which high-resolution spectroscopy is combined with cross-correlation techniques. In this method, high spectral resolution is required both to resolve the exoplanet’s O2 lines and to separate them from foreground telluric absorption. While current astronomical spectrographs typically achieve a spectral resolution of 100,000, recent studies show that resolutions of 300,000 – 400,000 are optimal to detect O2 in the atmosphere of earth analogs with the ELTs. Fabry Perot Interferometer (FPI) arrays have been proposed as a relatively low-cost way to reach these resolutions. In this paper, we present performance results for our 2-FPI array lab prototype, which reaches a resolving power of 600,000. We further discuss the use of multi-cavity etalons (dualons) to be resolution boosters for existing spectrographs.
Responsive Safety in Reinforcement Learning by PID Lagrangian Methods

Lagrangian methods are widely used algorithms for constrained optimization problems, but their learning dynamics exhibit oscillations and overshoot which, when applied to safe reinforcement learning, leads to constraint-violating behavior during agent training. We address this shortcoming by proposing a novel Lagrange multiplier update method that utilizes derivatives of the constraint function. We take a controls perspective, wherein the traditional Lagrange multiplier update behaves as \emph{integral} control; our terms introduce \emph{proportional} and \emph{derivative} control, achieving favorable learning dynamics through damping and predictive measures. We apply our PID Lagrangian methods in deep RL, setting a new state of the art in Safety Gym, a safe RL benchmark. Lastly, we introduce a new method to ease controller tuning by providing invariance to the relative numerical scales of reward and cost. Our extensive experiments demonstrate improved performance and hyperparameter robustness, while our algorithms remain nearly as simple to derive and implement as the traditional Lagrangian approach.
Interplay Between Resilience and Accuracy in Resilient Vector Consensus in Multi-Agent Networks

In this paper, we study the relationship between resilience and accuracy in the resilient distributed multidimensional consensus problem. We consider a network of agents, each of which has a state in Rd. Some agents in the network are adversarial and can change their states arbitrarily. The normal (non-adversarial) agents interact locally and update their states to achieve consensus at some point in the convex hull $\mathcal{C}$ of their initial states. This objective is achievable if the number of adversaries in the neighborhood of normal agents is less than a specific value, which is a function of the local connectivity and the state dimension d. However, to be resilient against adversaries, especially in the case of large d, the desired local connectivity is large. We discuss that resilience against adversarial agents can be improved if normal agents are allowed to converge in a bounded region $\mathcal{B} \supseteq \mathcal{C}$, which means normal agents converge at some point close to but not necessarily inside $\mathcal{C}$ in the worst case. The accuracy of resilient consensus can be measured by the Hausdorff distance between $\mathcal{B}$ and $\mathcal{C}$. As a result, resilience can be improved at the cost of accuracy. We propose a resilient bounded consensus algorithm that exploits the trade-off between resilience and accuracy by projecting d-dimensional states into lower dimensions and then solving instances of resilient consensus in lower dimensions. We analyze the algorithm, present various resilience and accuracy bounds, and also numerically evaluate our results.
Perceptions of HIV/AIDS Testing Among Urban and Rural African American Church Members

Background: The prevalence of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) continues to affect African Americans (AA) disproportionately. The purpose of this mixed methods study, guided by the health belief model, was to examine associations linking church and ambient social environment with knowledge and perceptions of HIV/AIDS testing amongst urban and rural AA church members. Methods: Multiple regressions and t tests were used to compare perceptions of HIV/AIDS testing and knowledge of HIV/AIDS among 236 participants selected from two AA churches located in a large city (n = 122) and in a rural town (n = 114) in the Southern U.S. Results: The quantitative findings indicated that the urban participants reported significantly higher rates of testing than the rural participants, but the groups had equally high HIV knowledge and positive perceptions of HIV/AIDS testing. In-depth, individual interviews (24 urban; 24 rural) were conducted to gain a better understanding of the factors that contribute to perceptions of HIV/AIDS testing and knowledge of HIV/AIDS. Transcripts were axially coded for a priori themes and then analyzed for emergent categories of responses. These interviews indicated that the participant’s perceptions of HIV/AIDS testing were in general, not influenced by the church and that there were no noticeable distinctions regarding why HIV/AIDS testing was sought. The combined results of this study suggested that the churches surveyed were not promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and that the participants felt that the church should do more as it relates to HIV/AIDS. Conclusions: Since the AA church plays an important role in the lives of many AAs, it potentially can, particularly in rural areas, bring forth social change by advocating HIV/AIDS testing and prevention efforts in order to reduce the rate of HIV infections.
Quantifying the link between local structure and cellular rearrangements using information in models of biological tissues

Machine learning techniques have been used to quantify the relationship between local structural features and variations in local dynamical activity in disordered glass-forming materials. To date these methods have been applied to an array of standard (Arrhenius and super-Arrhenius) glass formers, where work on “soft spots” indicates a connection between the linear vibrational response of a configuration and the energy barriers to non-linear deformations. Here we study the Voronoi model, which takes its inspiration from dense epithelial monolayers and which displays anomalous, sub-Arrhenius scaling of its dynamical relaxation time with decreasing temperature. Despite these differences, we find that the likelihood of rearrangements can nevertheless vary by several orders of magnitude within the model tissue and extract a local structural quantity, “softness,” that accurately predicts the temperature dependence of the relaxation time. We use an information-theoretic measure to quantify the extent to which softness determines impending topological rearrangements; we find that softness captures nearly all of the information about rearrangements that is obtainable from structure, and that this information is large in the solid phase of the model and decreases rapidly as state variables are varied into the fluid phase.
Coherent perfect absorption in resonant materials

Coherent perfect absorption (CPA) is an interferometric effect that guarantees full absorption in a lossy layer independently of its intrinsic losses. To date, it has been observed only at a single wavelength or narrow bandwidths, whereupon wavelength-dependent absorption can be ignored. Here we produce CPA over a bandwidth of ~ 60 nm in a 2-um-thick polymer film with a low-doping concentration of an organic laser dye. A planar cavity is designed with a spectral `dip' to accommodate the dye resonant linewidth, and CPA is thus achieved even at its absorption edges. This approach allows realizing strong absorption in laser dyes - and resonant materials in general - independently of the intrinsic absorption levels, with a at spectral profile and without suffering absorption quenching due to high doping levels.
Metrics, Quantization and Registration in Varifold Spaces

This paper is concerned with the theory and applications of varifolds to the representation, approximation and diffeomorphic registration of shapes. One of its purpose is to synthesize and extend several prior works which, so far, have made use of this framework mainly in the context of submanifold comparison and matching. In this work, we instead consider deformation models acting on general varifold spaces, which allow to formulate and tackle diffeomorphic registration problems for a much wider class of geometric objects and lead to a more versatile algorithmic pipeline. We study in detail the construction of kernel metrics on varifold spaces and the resulting topological properties of those metrics and then propose a mathematical model for diffeomorphic registration of varifolds under a specific group action which we formulate in the framework of optimal control theory. A second important part of the paper focuses on the discrete aspects. Specifically, we address the problem of optimal finite approximations (quantization) for those metrics and show a $$\varGamma $$ -convergence property for the corresponding registration functionals. Finally, we develop numerical pipelines for quantization and registration before showing a few preliminary results for one- and two-dimensional varifolds.
Optimizing large on-demand transportation systems through stochastic conic programming

Abstract On-demand transportation systems (OTS) are increasingly popular worldwide. Prior literature has studied how to control vehicle fleet in queueing-networks to rebalance excess supply or demand in OTS. This aggregated setting models the stochastic demand process and decompose large-scale networks for which product-form equilibrium distributions exist. However, such an approach is unsatisfactory in terms of computational complexity for its dependence on vehicle numbers. This paper presents a stochastic conic programming approach that obtains the near-optimal vehicle repositioning controls with endogenous demand with mild computational complexity and high fidelity. This global framework covers most existing queueing-network-based OTS models in the literature. Leveraging this approach, we explore day-to-day vehicle repositioning problems for on-demand vehicle operations in New York City. These results support the potential for providing a more accessible and sustainable on-demand mobility service, which is of particular significance as multimodal transport continues to emerge.
Scheduling of Flexible Non-Preemptive Loads

A market consisting of a generator with thermal and renewable generation capability, a set of non-preemptive loads (i.e., loads which cannot be interrupted once started), and an independent system operator (ISO) is considered. Loads are characterized by durations, power demand rates and utility for receiving service, as well as disutility functions giving preferences for time slots in which service is preferred. Given this information, along with the generator’s thermal generation cost function and forecast renewable generation, the social planner solves a mixed integer program to determine a load activation schedule which maximizes social welfare. Assuming price taking behavior, we develop a competitive equilibrium concept based on a relaxed version of the social planner’s problem which includes prices for consumption and incentives for flexibility, and allows for probabilistic allocation of power to loads. Considering each load as representative of a population of identical loads with scaled characteristics, we demonstrate that the relaxed social planner’s problem gives an exact solution to the original mixed integer problem in the large population limit.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Approximation of Koopman Operators over Manifolds

This paper derives rates of convergence of certain approximations of the Koopman operators that are associated with discrete, deterministic, continuous semiflows on a complete metric space (X,d X ). Approximations are constructed in terms of reproducing kernel bases that are centered at samples taken along the system trajectory. It is proven that when the samples are dense in a certain type of smooth manifold M ⊆ X, the derived rates of convergence depend on the fill distance of samples along the trajectory in that manifold. Error bounds for projection-based and data-dependent approximations of the Koopman operator are derived in the paper. A discussion of how these bounds are realized in intrinsic and extrinsic approximation methods is given. Finally, a numerical example that illustrates qualitatively the convergence guarantees derived in the paper is given.
Earnings Comparability, Accounting Similarities, and Stock Returns: Evidence From Peer Firms’ Earnings Restatements

Using a sample of earnings restatements, we provide evidence that an empirical measure of the comparability in two firms’ earnings (“earnings comparability”) captures the extent to which a firm’s accounting choices and estimates are similar to those of its restating peer firm. We then document that investors appear to underreact to the implications of this earnings comparability signal. Additional analyses reveal that large traders and short sellers react in a timely manner, and their trades trigger an immediate negative price reaction to earnings comparability. Small traders appear to behave inattentively, and their herding-driven delayed trades contribute to a negative drift in prices.
Institutional stakeholdings and better-informed traders at earnings announcements

Abstract Utama and Cready [Utama, S., Cready, W.M., 1997. Institutional ownership, differential predisclosure precision and trading volume at announcement dates. Journal of Accounting and Economics 24, 129–150] use total institutional ownership to proxy for the proportion of better-informed traders, an important determinant of trading around earnings announcements. We argue that institutions holding small stakes cannot justify the fixed cost of developing private predisclosure information. Also, institutions with large stakes generally do not trade around earnings announcements since they are dedicated investors or face regulations that make informed trading difficult. However, institutions holding medium stakes have incentives to develop private predisclosure information and trade on it; we show that their ownership is a finer proxy for the proportion of better-informed traders at earnings announcements.
The Supreme Court's Controversial GVRs - And an Alternative

This Article addresses a relatively neglected portion of the United States Supreme Court's docket: the "GVR" - that is, the Court's procedure for summarily granting certiorari, vacating the decision below without finding error, and remanding the case for further consideration by the lower court. The purpose of the GVR device is to give the lower court the initial opportunity to consider the possible impact of a new development (such as a recently issued Supreme Court decision) and, if necessary, to revise its ruling in light of the changed circumstances. The Court may issue scores or even hundreds of these orders every year. This Article has two parts, one descriptive and one cautiously prescriptive. First, because we currently lack systematic data on GVRs, the Article begins by collecting and analyzing over a decade of data, with additional data on certain categories of GVRs that are sometimes considered controversial. Second, the Article uses the data to critically examine the GVR device. As we learn more about GVRs, we might come to regard the entire practice - not just a few particular sub-categories - as more problematic than previously recognized. This realization might lead us to consider whether there is a different approach that would better serve the interests of litigants, the Supreme Court, and the judicial system as a whole. Accordingly, the Article proposes an alternative to the current GVR practice that attempts to preserve the attractive features of the current practice while reducing the Court's role in overseeing the implementation of changes in law.
How can polycentric governance of spectrum work

Spectrum policy in the US (and throughout most of the world) consists generally of a set of nationally determined policies that apply uniformly to all localities. However, it is also true that there is considerable variation in the features (e.g., traffic demand or population density), requirements and constraints of spectrum use on a local basis. Global spectrum policies designed to resolve a situation in New York City could well be overly restrictive for communities in rural areas (such as central Wyoming). At the same time, it is necessary to ensure that more permissive policies of central Wyoming would not create problems for NYC (by ensuring, for example, that relocated radios adapt to local policies). Notions of polycentric governance that have been articulated by the late E. Ostrom [16] argue that greater good can be achieved by allowing for local autonomy in resource allocation. Shared access to spectrum is generally mediated through one of several technologies. As shown in [21], approaches mediated by geolocation databases are the most cost effective in today's technology. In the database oriented Spectrum Access System, or SAS, proposed by the FCC, users are granted (renewable) usage rights based on their location for a limited period of time. Because this system grants usage rights on a case-by-case basis, it may also allow for greater local autonomy while still maintaining global coordination. For example, it would be technically feasible for the database to include parameters such as transmit power, protocol, and bandwidth. Thus, they may provide the platform by which polycentric governance might come to spectrum management. In this paper, we explore, through some case examples, what polycentric governance of spectrum might look like and how this could be implemented in a database-driven spectrum management system. In many ways this paper is a complement to [20], which evaluted emerging SAS architectures using Ostrom's socioeconomic theory. This paper explores how a SAS-based system could be constructed that is consistent with Ostrom's polycentric governance ideas. Our approach is to address spectrum management as an emergent phenomenon rather than a top down system. This paper will describe the key details of this system and present some initial modeling results in comparison with the traditional global model of spectrum regulation. It will also discuss some of the concerns associated with this approach.
Age, Women, and Hiring An Experimental Study

As baby boomers reach retirement age, demographic pressures on public programs may cause policy makers to cut benefits and encourage employment at later ages. But how much demand exists for older workers? This paper reports on a field experiment to determine hiring conditions for older women in entry-level jobs in two cities. A younger worker is more than 40 percent more likely to be offered an interview than is an older worker. No evidence is found to support taste-based discrimination as a reason for this differential, and some suggestive evidence is found to support statistical discrimination.
Takeover Bidding and Shareholder Information

We study the role of shareholder information during the acquisition of widely held firms. When target shareholders share the same information about the post-takeover value, increasing the precision of information has no effect on the expected acquisition price. However, more precise information aggravates the free-rider problem, allowing shareholders to better discern when it is worthwhile to hold out rather than tender their shares. By contrast, when information is dispersed among shareholders, providing shareholders with superior information induces the raider to offer higher prices, thus increasing shareholder value. However, in this case, neither prices nor tendering decisions aggregate any information.
The Foreclosure–House Price Nexus: A Panel VAR Model for U.S. States, 1981–2009

Despite housing’s economic importance, little has been written on how foreclosures and home prices interact in a framework that includes macroeconomic and housing variables such as employment, permits or sales. Panel VAR results for quarterly state-level data indicate that price-foreclosure linkages run both ways. Foreclosures negatively impact home prices. The negative impact of prices on foreclosures, however, is much larger. These results suggest the low-frequency association observed between foreclosures and prices is mostly driven by the endogenous adjustment of foreclosures to prices via the strategic choices of homeowners and lenders, rather than through the effects of foreclosures on home prices.
Library Finances 101: Developing Workplace Financial Literacy in Your Staff and Institution

Workplace financial literacy educates the entire library staff on the financial and business aspects of the library. It is more than a budget workshop or vocabulary list. It is a vital part of the successful management of a modern library. Sharing financial information and developing an open culture encourages and enables staff to use financial and managerial information to improve the operations and functions of the library. The result is informed and engaged staff members who are fully vested in and take responsibility for the success of the library.
The financial crisis and sizable international reserves depletion: From "fear of floating" to the "fear of losing international reserves"?

This paper studies the degree to which Emerging Markets (EMs) adjusted to the global liquidity crisis by drawing down their international reserves (IR). Overall, we find a mixed and complex picture. Intriguingly, only about half of the EMs relied on depleting their international reserves as part of the adjustment mechanism. To gain further insight, we compare the pre-crisis demand for IR/GDP of countries that experienced sizable depletion of their IR, to that of courtiers that didn’t, and find different patterns between the two groups. Trade related factors (trade openness, primary goods export ratio, especially large oil export) seem to be much more significant in accounting for the pre-crisis IR/GDP level of countries that experienced a sizable depletion of their IR in the first phase of the crisis. These findings suggest that countries that internalized their large exposure to trade shocks before the crisis, used their IR as a buffer stock in the first phase of the crisis. Their reserves loses followed an inverted logistical curve – after a rapid initial depletion of reverses, they reached within 7 months a markedly declining rate of IR depletion, losing not more than one-third of their pre crisis IR. In contrast, for countries that refrained from a sizable depletion of their IR during the first crisis phase, financial factors account more than trade factors in explaining their initial level of IR/GDP. Our results indicate that the adjustment of Emerging Markets was constrained more by their fear of losing international reserves than by their fear of floating.
Paper Compliance: How China Implements WTO Decisions

China is frequently singled out for defying international law and disregarding international institutions. This paper examines one key stratum of China’s compliance: its implementation of World Trade Organization rulings. China shows a strong record of compliance, and has reformed its domestic legal system to accommodate the WTO. Ultimately, however, I argue these efforts amount to paper compliance. The mere phenomenon of legislative change does not guarantee compliance. First, China has not fully implemented several rulings, leaving in place many inconsistent regulations. Second, China’s political and legal systems permit various manners of non-compliance. Paper compliance captures the contradictions between stated behavior and demonstrated conduct, and shows that regulatory revision, even if impressive on paper, imperfectly reflects the broader context of compliance.
Sources, potentials and fields in Lorenz and Coulomb gauge: Cancellation of instantaneous interactions for moving point charges

Abstract We investigate the coupling of the electromagnetic sources (charge and current densities) to the scalar and vector potentials in classical electrodynamics, using Green function techniques. As is well known, the scalar potential shows an action-at-a-distance behavior in Coulomb gauge. The conundrum generated by the instantaneous interaction has intrigued physicists for a long time. Starting from the differential equations that couple the sources to the potentials, we here show in a concise derivation, using the retarded Green function, how the instantaneous interaction cancels in the calculation of the electric field. The time derivative of a specific additional term in the vector potential, present only in Coulomb gauge, yields a supplementary contribution to the electric field which cancels the gradient of the instantaneous Coulomb gauge scalar potential, as required by gauge invariance. This completely eliminates the contribution of the instantaneous interaction from the electric field. It turns out that a careful formulation of the retarded Green function, inspired by field theory, is required in order to correctly treat boundary terms in partial integrations. Finally, compact integral representations are derived for the Lienard–Wiechert potentials (scalar and vector) in Coulomb gauge which manifestly contain two compensating action-at-a-distance terms.
Income Inequality, Tax Policy, and Economic Growth

We investigate how the reduction of income inequality through tax policy affects economic growth. Taxation at different points of the income distribution has heterogeneous impacts on households’ incentives to work, invest, and consume. Using US state-level data and micro-level household tax returns over the last three decades, we find that reducing income inequality between low and median income households improves economic growth. However, reducing income inequality through taxation between median and high-income households reduces economic growth. These asymmetric economic growth effects are attributable both to supply-side factors (i.e. changes in small business activity and labour supply) and to consumption demand.
Estimation of cross-country differences in industry production functions

Abstract International trade economists typically assume that there are no cross-country differences in industry total factor productivity (TFP). In contrast, this paper finds large and persistent TFP differences across a group of industrialized countries in the 1980s. The paper calculates TFP indices, and statistically examines the sources of the observed large TFP differences across countries. Two hypotheses are examined to account for TFP differences: constant returns to scale production with country-specific technological differences, and industry-level scale economies with identical technology in each country. The data support the constant returns/different technology hypothesis over the increasing returns/same technology hypothesis.
Beyond Revealed Preference: Choice-Theoretic Foundations for Behavioral Welfare Economics

We propose a broad generalization of standard choice-theoretic welfare economics that encompasses a wide variety of nonstandard behavioral models. Our approach exploits the coherent aspects of choice that those positive models typically attempt to capture. It replaces the standard revealed preference relation with an unambiguous choice relation: roughly, x is (strictly) unambiguously chosen over y (written xP*y) iff y is never chosen when x is available. Under weak assumptions, P* is acyclic and therefore suitable for welfare analysis; it is also the most discerning welfare criterion that never overrules choice. The resulting framework generates natural counterparts for the standard tools of applied welfare economics and is easily applied in the context of specific behavioral theories, with novel implications. Though not universally discerning, it lends itself to principled refinements.
Time restrictions in natural resource management: A dynamic and stochastic analysis☆

Abstract This paper provides a theoretical analysis of time restrictions in the context of natural resource management in North America. The economic inefficiencies arising from the use of time restrictions to protect natural resources have been well documented by researchers. We first show that in the presence of uncertainty about the evolution of the resource stock, time restrictions can lead to the collapse of the resource that is sought to be protected. Given this finding, in the second part of the paper, we discuss an approach to natural resource management under uncertainty in which time restrictions are used to maximize the likelihood that a particular resource will not collapse in the long run.
Dynamics of Business Cycles in Asia: Differences and Similarities

The paper documents the extent of similarities and differences of business cycle characteristics of the Asian countries and compares the cyclical regularities in this region with those of the G-7 countries. The Asian economies are generally more volatile than the G-7 countries, but the amplitude of economic fluctuations in the Asian countries tends to decrease over time. Comovement and persistence properties of business cycles in the Asian countries are very similar to those of the G-7 economies. The authors find that while the patterns of business cycle fluctuations in the main macroeconomic aggregates display important similarities, the behavior of fiscal and monetary policy variables exhibits significant differences across the Asian countries. Moreover, there is a high degree of comovement between the individual country business cycles and different measures of the Asian business cycle, indicating that there is a regional business cycle specific to the Asian countries.
Reflections on Teaching Evidence with an Audience Response System

In Spring 2009, the author used an audience response system in his Evidence class. Students signalled their answers to questions using "clickers." The system promoted active participation and was popular with students.
Access Control and Innovation under the Emerging EU Electronic Commerce Framework

Recent legislative developments in the European Union and United States alike have sought to extend legal protection to access control technology. While the United States has chosen to legislate within the Copyright Act, the European Union, as part of its Electronic Commerce framework, has in part chosen to extend legal protection to access control mechanisms by a Directive having no connection with copyright law. This Article focuses on the Conditional Access Directive which extends legal protection to access control technology used in conjunction with certain services and argues that its legal recognition of interests in access control technology can affect the applicability of copyright law as a whole, or more importantly, it can affect the limitations and exceptions found under copyright law which are designed to promote creation and innovation. This Article argues that, given copyright law's promotion of innovation-driven competition, its applicability must be ensured. The Article reveals that the international community and the European Union have previously dealt with similar threats to the integrity of copyright law in several treaty instruments and EU Directives. To avoid placing the applicability of copyright law into question, particularly as applied in the digital environment, this Article recommends that the legal relationship between the Conditional Access Directive and copyright law be more clearly set forth.
Does Local Access to Finance Matter? Evidence from U.S. Oil and Natural Gas Shale Booms

I exploit exogenous changes in local credit supply from shale discoveries to identify where and when local access to finance is economically important for firms. I find that the real effects of a credit supply shock are linked to local lending market characteristics. Changes in local credit supply have significant real effects in lending markets dominated by small banks, while there is no effect in other markets. These results suggest that small banks, which do not benefit from deep internal capital markets, face economically meaningful frictions in accessing external interbank markets to fund loans. The effect in other markets, which have large multimarket banks, indicates that these markets are not as dependent on local funding sources for lending. These findings illustrate the important role that the internal capital markets of banks have on real outcomes. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2818. This paper was accepted by Amit Seru, finance.
Analysts' Incentives to Produce Industry-Level versus Firm-Specific Information

Using stock returns around recommendation changes to measure the information produced by analysts, I find that analysts produce more firm-specific than industry-level information. Analysts produce more firm-specific information on stocks with higher idiosyncratic return volatilities. The amount of industry information produced by analysts increases with the absolute value of the stock’s industry beta and decreases with the stock’s idiosyncratic volatility. Other stocks in the industry also respond to the recommendation change, and the magnitude of the response increases with the absolute value of the industry beta of the recommended stock and that of other stocks in the industry. I also offer results on how investors may use analyst research more effectively and potentially improve their investment performance.
A Topography of Civil Service Laws

ABSTRACT We offer a comparative study of the differences in civil service laws across countries in order to observe how these systems relate to one another. We compare the civil service laws of 26 countries from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and eight non-OECD countries from Central and Eastern Europe to identify how different configurations of civil service systems are revealed through their shared attributes. Our data are drawn from the contents of civil service legislation and the status of those civil servants covered by the civil service laws of these countries. We use cluster analysis to identify several groups of countries whose civil service systems share similar features. We find that the estimated topography, or similarity among systems, depends on both subjective decisions about the number of groups and the variables used to estimate the space. However, we draw key conclusions about the value of certain cases, like the United States, for learning about other ...
Inside the Black Box: The Credit Channel of Monetary Policy Transmission

The 'credit channel' theory of monetary policy transmission holds that informational frictions in credit markets worsen during tight- money periods. The resulting increase in the external finance premium--the difference in cost between internal and external funds-- enhances the effects of monetary policy on the real economy. We document the responses of GDP and its components to monetary policy shocks and describe how the credit channel helps explain the facts. We discuss two main components of this mechanism, the balance-sheet channel and the bank lending channel. We argue that forecasting exercises using credit aggregates are not valid tests of this theory.
Legislative Reallocation: How Compliance with Federal Legislative Initiatives Can Redistribute Water Resources

: Water allocation in the United States generally occurs through state administrative processes. Compliance with Federal legislative initiatives, however, can require the reallocation of water resources. Laws enacted to achieve protection of environmental, wildland and wildlife resources have increasingly played a role in the allocation of water, particularly in the West. This Article examines Washington's Methow Valley as a case study in which efforts to recover threatened and endangered aquatic species have achieved reallocations of water resources to protect environmental values. After a brief outline of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and its requirements, it examines how the ESA's consultation process requires private irrigators to limit water withdrawal to meet the biological and reproductive needs of ESA listed species. Constitutional constraints on legislative reallocation stemming from the U.S. Constitution's “Takings” clause are also discussed as an important limit on this power.
The Economic Effects of Living Wage Laws A Provisional Review

Nearly 100 cities and local governments in the United States passed living wage laws since the mid-1990s. The central goal of living wages is to reduce poverty, yet they may fail to do so because of disemployment effects. We summarize and critique the existing research on the effects of living wages on wages, employment, and family income, emphasizing common findings, points of disagreement, and important questions for future research. The evidence thus far points to wage increases as well as employment losses for the least skilled—although thereis disagreement about the employment effects—but, on net, some beneficial distributional effects. The evidence also points to efficiency wage–type effects of living wage laws that may offset some of the adverse impacts on employers.
Responsibility and vigilance

My primary target in this paper is a puzzle that emerges from the conjunction of several seemingly innocent assumptions in action theory and the metaphysics of moral responsibility. The puzzle I have in mind is this. On one widely held account of moral responsibility, an agent is morally responsible only for those actions or outcomes over which that agent exercises control. Recently, however, some have cited cases where agents appear to be morally responsible without exercising any control. This leads some to abandon the control-based account of responsibility and replace it with an alternative account. It leads others to deny the intuition that agents are responsible in these troublesome cases. After outlining the account of moral responsibility I have in mind, I look at some of the arguments made against the viability of this theory. I show that there are conceptual resources for salvaging the control account, focusing in particular on the nature of vigilance. I also argue that there is empirical data that supports the control account so conceived.
Epic Considerations: The Speech That the Supreme Court Would Not Hear in Snyder v. Phelps

In declining to consider the "epic" posted by the Westboro Baptist Church on its web site, the Supreme Court took most (but not quite all) of the good constitutional stuff out of Snyder v. Phelps. The Court may have sought to make this an easy case by considering only the contents of the church's picketing placards. For the Court, the placards highlighted such issues of public import as "the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, the fate of our nation, homosexuality in the military, and scandals involving the Catholic clergy." On grounds that we might charitably call dubious, the Court chose not to "hear" those parts of the church's speech that most clearly and most viciously attacked the Snyders - speech, that is, on matters of purely private concern. In deciding whether speech is on a matter of public or private concern, the Court is required 'to examine the "content, form, and context" of that speech, 'as revealed by the whole record.'" Having determined the "content, form, and context" of Westboro's speech without reference to half of the record, Justice Roberts was able to describe the church's speech as "fairly characterized as constituting speech on a matter of public concern" - speech, that is, worthy of special protection under the First Amendment. What the Court apparently did not want to do was to tackle the question left unaddressed in Hustler v. Falwell: whether speech on a matter of public concern directed at a private figure may be actionable. Part public, part private, Westboro's speech placed before the Court the difficult question of what protection to afford speakers who make a private party the unwilling instrument of their public message. The Court limited its holding to the facts of the case - the facts absent the epic; and on these facts the Court was content to characterize the church's speech, fairly or not, as a public concern, thus avoiding the hard work of constitutionally culling wheat from chaff. The Court's "central thrust" language effectively accommodates, for now, the concerns of those who, like Justice Breyer, worry that the Court's conflation of public and private speech "unreasonably limits liability for intentional infliction of emotional distress." Had the epic been before the Court, this accommodation may not have been possible. Snyder v. Phelps was not an easy case. When personal invective is delivered in the milieu of public discourse, it is no simple task to balance competing constitutional and common-law interests. No doubt, there is a point where speech purportedly on a matter of public concern is so personal in content and form that it loses public import, and if the personal attacks in Westboro's epic, which addressed the Snyder family directly, do not reach this point, it is hard to imagine what would. But like many important legal boundary lines, this one is more often than not going to be difficult to draw.
Company Training in the United States 1970-2000: What Have Been the Trends over Time?.

This study uses data from surveys of U.S. employees to determine whether any trends are apparent in the proportion who say they receive some form of training at work. Discussions of economic change in the U.S. and elsewhere have frequently asserted that work has become more intellectually demanding. This implies that training in workplaces should have become more prevalent. However, the survey data do not reveal any overall trend in the prevalence of workplace training between 1970 and 2000. There did appear to be a rising trend for women, evidently reflecting women's increased representation in professional and managerial occupations. Throughout this period, more highly educated workers are more likely to say they receive training at work.