cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Reference Wars: Encyclopædia Britannica's Decline and Encarta's Emergence

Research summary: The experience of Encyclopaedia Britannica provides the canonical example of the decline of an established firm at the outset of the digital age. Competition from Microsoft's Encarta in 1993 led to sharp declines in the sales of books, which led to the distressed sale of the firm in 1996. This article offers new source material about the actions at both Encarta and Britannica, and it offers a novel interpretation of events. Britannica's management did not misperceive the opportunities and threats, and Britannica did not lack technical prowess. This narrative stresses that Britannica's management faced organizational diseconomies of scope between supporting lines of business in the old and new markets, which generated internal conflicts. These conflicts hindered the commercialization of new technology and hastened its decline. Managerial summary: An established and leading firm, such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, would seem to have enormous advantages over its competitors in a new market. Why would a successful firm come to have severe difficulties organizing for a new market? Of particular importance for explaining Britannica's decline are theories that stress its inherited capabilities, especially inherited technological (in)abilities and inherited (mis)perceptions about the potential for new market opportunities. This article argues that Britannica's management did not misperceive the opportunities and threats, and Britannica did not lack technical prowess. This narrative stresses that Britannica's management faced organizational diseconomies of scope between supporting lines of business in the old and new markets, which generated internal conflicts. The narrative directs attention at managing commercialization activity around new products using new technologies. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Constitutional Challenges to Gender-Restrictive School Dress Codes in the Ninth Circuit

This Article examines three potential constitutional challenges to a school dress code that mandates traditional gender norms. The analysis focuses on the Ninth Circuit to illustrate the various hurdles potential student litigants face from case law that is not explicitly overruled. It is likely that despite these challenges, a student litigant will be able to successfully advance a constitutional claim against such a dress code in the Ninth Circuit.
Maritime trade, biological invasions, and the properties of alternate inspection regimes

We analyze the problem of preventing biological invasions caused by ships transporting internationally traded goods between countries and continents. Specifically, we ask the following question: should a port manager have a small number of inspectors inspect arriving ships less stringently or should this manager have a large number of inspectors inspect the same ships more stringently? We use a simple queuing-theoretic framework and show that if decreasing the economic cost of regulation is very important then it makes more sense for the port manager to choose the less stringent inspection regime. In contrast, if reducing the damage from biological invasions is more salient then the port manager ought to pick the more stringent inspection regime.
$100 Bills on the Sidewalk: Suboptimal Investment in 401(k) Plans

We identify employees at seven companies whose 401(k) investment choices are dominated because they are contributing less than the employer matching contribution threshold despite being vested in their match and being able to make penalty-free 401(k) withdrawals for any reason because they are older than 59½. At the average firm, 36% of match-eligible employees over 59½ forego arbitrage profits that average 1.6% of their annual pay, or $507. A survey educating employees about the free lunch they are foregoing raised contribution rates by a statistically insignificant 0.67 percent of income among those completing the survey.
The effects of exposure-order and market entry-information on brand preference: a dual process model

A dual process model is proposed that identifies the conditions under which two separate and additive effects on brand preference may obtain. The first is an exposure-order effect that can influence attribute-based processing. The second is the effect of market entry-information that can result in theory-driven processing. The model was tested and supported across two experiments, which demonstrate that the effects of market entry-information and exposure-order on brand preference depend on attribute-type and the time between attribute encoding and preference construction. In contrast to previous research, conditions are identified where market entry-information has no effect on preference and where the second-encountered brand is preferred to the first.
United States v. Jones: Big Brother and the "Common Good" Versus the Fourth Amendment and your Right to Privacy

This Article traces the evolution of Fourth Amendment law and what constitutes a “search” from English property law and trespass to the reasonable expectation of privacy under United States v. Katz to the latest Supreme Court decision in United States v. Jones. The Supreme Court’s recent reliance upon historical property law in Jones impacts law enforcement’s ability to use tracking devices, especially when exigent circumstances exist. The Jones decision may also subsequently impact law enforcement’s use of other investigatory tools, such as trash pulls, stationary cameras, open fields, and undercover agent or informant non-consensual recordings. The decision in Jones brings trespass back into the criminal context in a way that is similar to private trespassing claims against private investigators. What remains unclear is how the Court will react to other investigatory tools commonly used without a warrant and whether civil trespass and privacy causes of action will inform this dialogue. This Article argues that law enforcement and private entities such as private investigators should both be bound by the same constraints and legal limitations when it comes to their ability to utilize technical investigative techniques or third party data. Thus, civil law, which limits the actions of the private investigator, is examined to determine how it differs from criminal law which applies to government.
Fractured Territories and Abstracted Terrains: Human Rights Governance Regimes Within and Beyond the State

The problem of representation has become a central element for the development of human rights norms, not just within international organizations, but within states as well. The problem has been made acute by two significant changes in the organization of power that became visible after the 1950s. On one hand, the idea of the individual became more abstract. Mass democracy became symptomatic of a general trend toward the dissolution of the individual within a mass population, which was incarnated as the aggregation of its group characteristics, its statistics, and data. On the other hand, states were becoming less solid; the constitution of states, and of state power, formerly quite distinct in their forms and secure within their territories, gave way to a polycentric order in which national territory no longer defined and contained a compulsory and singular legal order sitting atop a hierarchy of governance. These two trends have had a noticeable impact, not just on law and governance generally, but more importantly, on the way that representation is understood and practiced. Today, the representation of individuals has become more problematic at the national level as it gives way to other bases of sovereign power derived from international norms. At the international level the individual loses representative capacity. The will of the consensus of states has supplanted that of the citizens of the state in ways that may undermine the legitimacy of governance systems. This paper considers the problem of representation within these intertwined phenomena. To that end, the paper considers the manifestation of these two macrotrends in the context of the governance of global business and human rights regulatory regimes. In the context of the first trend, the problem of who legitimately represents is considered within international organizations producing norms for transposition to the domestic legal orders of states. The specific context will be the public forums of the U.N. Working Group on Business and Human Rights. In the context of the second, the problem of what is the object of representation is considered at the national level, now the site of transposition of international norms. The specific context is the rise of multiple legal regimes each with a fidelity to a distinct representational community. The boundaries of statehood have been redefined and with them the nature and object of representation. Where states once existed, territories serve as “bowls” in which several national legal orders may operate through individuals and entities. Where international organizations once served the community of states, they now serve as vessels that contain mass interests re-incarnated as representative organizations that produce or negotiate formal law and societal norms for self-application. Within this context, simpleminded projects, and in particular the move toward a single comprehensive public law treaty on business and human rights, becomes an anachronistic exercise.
What Explains the Use of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs?

Following the clarification of advertising regulation in 1997, direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs has skyrocketed in the U.S., creating a controversy over the role of DTCA. Little is known, however, regarding what affects firms' advertising decisions and which drugs have been advertised to consumers. Using brand-level advertising data, I examine the determinants of DTCA of prescription drugs. I find that drugs that are new, of high quality, and for under-treated diseases are more frequently advertised. Furthermore, advertising outlays decrease with competition. These results complement the demand-side evidence that DTCA has a market-expanding effect but little business-stealing effect.
North-South trade: is Africa unusual?

We estimate a gravity model to address the question of whether Africa's bilateral trade with industrial countries is 'unusual' compared with other developing country regions. Our main finding is that the unusually low level of African trade is explained by economic size, geographical distance and population. This result holds after controlling for a country's access to the sea, composition of exports, linguistic ties with industrial countries and trade policies. If anything, the average African country tends to 'overtrade' compared with developing countries in other regions, although the degree to which Africa overtrades had steadily declined over the past two-and-one-half decades. Copyright 1999 by Oxford University Press.
Some Thoughts on the State of Women Lawyers and Why Title VII Has Not Worked for Them

This essay discusses why women lawyers have not been as successful in large firms in spite of graduating from law school in large numbers over the last twenty years. It begins by giving a snapshot of the state of women lawyers, including women lawyers of color. It includes stories and studies of women’s struggles at these firms. It also describes why Title VII has not worked to solve the problems associated with being a successful woman in a law firm. Finally, it suggests some potential solutions that may help women be more successful in these environments.
Taking Account of ARTs in Determining Parenthood: A Troubling Dispute in California

Although small in number, ARTs cases force us to think about what makes a family. In debating them, we reveal our attitudes about the body, biology and genetics, about psychology and environment, about human connection and responsibility, about the role of intentions and plans in our lives and in our law. To resolve ARTs disputes, some courts adopt intent-based approaches. Others continue to rely on family law statutes and judicial precedents that were written before new procreative techniques developed. For example, courts resolve ARTs cases based on analogies to unwed parents' rights, adoption or "baby-selling". Differences between traditional routes to parenthood and ARTs render these analogies inapposite. Situations giving rise to ARTs disputes have not, would not, and indeed sometimes could not have arisen before. Poor choices by courts can thrust individuals who have no previous sexual or social relationship, and no mutually bargained-for expectations, into decades of conflict over parental status and child-rearing. A recent California case, Robert B. v. Susan B., provides a heart-wrenching example of such a dispute. Both the trial and appellate courts in Susan's case claimed that they were following the plain meaning of statutes, simply declining to fill gaps left by the legislature. Certainly, legislatures should address these new types of disputes, but courts should understand that applying literal readings of outdated statutes, and relying on unpersuasive analogies to coital reproduction, are de facto exercises of judicial discretion that often create tragic results.
The Militarization of U.S. Domestic Policing

This paper develops the political economy of the militarization of domestic policing. We analyze the mechanisms through which the “protective state”—where the government utilizes its monopoly on force to protect citizens’ rights—devolves into a “predatory state” which undermines the rights of the populace. We apply our theory to the U.S., where we trace the (failed) historical attempts to establish constraints to separate the military functions and policing functions of government. In doing so we emphasize the role of crises in the form of perpetual wars—the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terror”—in the accelerated militarization of domestic policing.
On the Structure and Morphology of the “Diffuse Ionized Medium” in Star-forming Galaxies

Deep Hα images of a sample of nearby late-type spiral galaxies have been analyzed to characterize the morphology and energetic significance of the "diffuse ionized medium" (DIM). We find that the DIM properties can be reasonably unified as a function of relative surface brightness (Σ/, where is the mean Hα surface brightness within regions lying above a fixed, very faint isophotal level). We measured the images down to this common isophotal limit and constructed a fundamental dimensionless surface brightness distribution function that describes the dependence of the area (normalized to total area) occupied by gas with a given relative surface brightness (Σ/). This function determines both the flux and area contribution by the DIM to global values. The function is found to be almost the same at high surface brightness (Σ/1) and less similar for Σ/1. We show the universal distribution function at high surface brightness can be understood as a consequence of the general properties of H II regions, including their Hα luminosity function and exponential radial brightness profiles. We suggest that relative surface brightness (rather than an absolute value) is a more physically meaningful criterion to discriminate the DIM from H II regions. The use of the dimensionless distribution function to quantify the DIM is consistent with the fundamentally morphological definition of the DIM as being "diffuse." The difference in the distribution function from galaxy to galaxy at low surface brightness quantifies the different prominence of the DIM in the galaxies. This variation is found to be consistent with results from other complementary ways of determining the DIM's global importance. The variation of the DIM among the galaxies that is indicated by the distribution function is small enough to guarantee that the fractional contribution of the DIM to the global Hα luminosity in the galaxies is fairly constant, as has been observed. The continuous transition from H II regions to the DIM in the distribution function suggests that the ionizing energy for the DIM mainly comes from H II regions, consistent with the "leaky H II regions model."
The relationship between return fractality and bipower variation

This paper presents an intuitively simple asset pricing model designed to predict stock returns and volatilities, when stock prices may follow a fractal walk rather than a random walk. The model utilizes similarity ratio of the return fractals as the basis for forecasting. We argue that a collection of past returns such as moving average statistics can be "expanded" to generate future returns through the similarity ratios by trading time multiples. We also argue that stock returns with fractal dimensions in excess of 1.5, the norm for market efficiency, may be prone to frequent jumps and discontinuity. The paper builds an econometrically testable model to estimate fractal dimensions to offer an alternative way to forecast return volatilities without having to estimate separately the bipower variation and the jumps in existing studies. We argue that fractional Brownian motion may be a more suitable description than the standard Wiener process when describing stock return behaviors. The paper also demonstrates the application aspect of our asset pricing model to high frequency algorithmic trading.
Peer effects in employment: results from Mexico's poor rural communities.

Empirical evidence has shown that off-farm non-agricultural (OFNA) employment offers a major pathway from rural poverty. However, participation in OFNA employment is heterogeneous across categories...
Secession and Federalism in the United States: Tools for Managing Regional Conflict in a Pluralist Society

This chapter explores the use of federalism and secession as tools for managing regional conflict within pluralist governance, drawing on underappreciated features of the American experience. Epic struggles to balance autonomy with interdependence have taken on new urgency as dissatisfaction with globalization inspires political cataclysms unimaginable just a few years ago—including ‘Brexit’ from the European Union and American threats to leave NATO. The same impetus toward devolution also surfaces in heated intra-national conflicts. Recent calls for secession in Catalonia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Scotland, Quebec, South Sudan, and even from within the United States reveal multiple political contexts in which questions have been raised about how best to balance competing claims for autonomy, interdependence, political voice, and exit.
Think of the Hippopotamus: Rights Consciousness in the Fat Acceptance Movement

All the recent attention to the so-called obesity epidemic provides a fascinating context for understanding interactions between civil rights consciousness and the ordinary lives of fat people, who both deploy and resist the ideological formations that make up our most basic presumptions about who deserves rights protections. This study of fat acceptance advocates asks how stigmatized people who are excluded from legal protections muster descriptions of themselves as deserving inclusion in antidiscrimination laws. Analysis of in-depth interviews with fat acceptance advocates from around the United States reveals elaborate techniques for managing social life and enacting legality that coexist with more narrowly framed and contradictory arguments for rights. Culturally dominant logics for reasoning about what persons deserve prefigure what is possible to say in defense of fat people, in many ways even for fat advocates themselves. And yet in their struggles to overcome the limitations of the presumptions they are given, fat advocates reveal deep tensions in our antidiscrimination ethics and hint at a new way to think about difference.
An Extension of the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition Technique to Logit and Probit Models

The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique is widely used to identify and quantify the separate contributions of group differences in measurable characteristics, such as education, experience, marital status, and geographical differences to racial and gender gaps in outcomes. The technique cannot be used directly, however, if the outcome is binary and the coefficients are from a logit or probit model. I describe a relatively simple method of performing a decomposition that uses estimates from a logit or probit model. Expanding on the original application of the technique in Fairlie [3], I provide a more thorough discussion of how to apply the technique, an analysis of the sensitivity of the decomposition estimates to different parameters, and the calculation of standard errors. I also compare the estimates to Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition estimates and discuss an example of when the Blinder-Oaxaca technique may be problematic.
International Adoption: The Child's Story

Millions of infants and young children worldwide are desperately in need of nurturing homes. Many are living in institutions, and many on the streets, and almost all these children will either die in these situations, or if they survive, will emerge into adulthood so damaged by their childhood experience, and so deprived of parenting, educational and other essential childhood opportunities, that they will be unable to function in the worlds of family and work. International adoption could provide significant numbers of nurturing homes for these children. However current policy restricts international adoption, limiting its ability to provide such homes. Moreover most of the powerful organizations of the world that claim to represent children's rights and interests have joined with other forces opposing international adoption. This article argues that effective child advocacy is a challenge, given the fact that infants and young children are unable to voice their views or promote their interests, and the related risks that adults will use children to further various adult agendas. True empathy is required to imagine what children would want were they able to think rationally and make informed decisions. But if we were to imagine homeless children capable of making such decisions, then it seems obvious that they would choose international adoption given the horrors of institutional and street life, and the limited options for any kind of adequate home care in their countries of birth. Opposition to international adoption cannot be justified based on any best interest of the child principle, despite the claims of many children's rights organizations. Instead it is grounded in a group of commonly shared but deeply flawed ideas about children and the role of the state, and driven by adult agendas that are not truly informed by children's interests.
Inspiring and Informing Citizens Online: A Media Richness Analysis of Varied Civic Education Modalities

Public deliberation on the Internet is a promising but unproven practice. Online deliberation can engage large numbers of citizens at relatively low cost, but it is unclear whether such programs have substantial civic impact. One factor in determining their effectiveness may be the communicative features of the online setting in which they occur. Within a Media Richness Theory framework, we conducted a quasiexperiment to assess the civic outcomes of interventions executed online by nonprofit organizations prior to the 2012 U.S. presidential election. The results assess the impact of these interventions on issue knowledge and civic attitudes. Comparisons of the interventions illustrate the importance of considering media richness online, and our discussion considers the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
UNDERPRICING OF NEW EQUITY OFFERINGS BY PRIVATIZED FIRMS: AN INTERNATIONAL TEST

In this paper, we study a large sample of 507 privatization offerings from 39 countries over the period 1979–1996. Our objectives are twofold. First, we document the extent of short-run underpricing of these privatization offerings and measure their variation across countries, industries, and years, as well as drawing comparisons to private company IPOs. Second, we test alternative explanations of the determinants of short-run underpricing drawing on various models of maximizing behavior by underwriters, augmented by variables that proxy for national political objectives. Overall, we find support for elements of asymmetric information theory, investor sentiment theory and the reputation building hypothesis. With the exception of the Gini coefficient, our political proxy variables are typically not significant. Thus to a significant degree, the investment banking strategies believed to characterize IPOs of private companies in industrial countries may also play a role in the IPO strategies of state-owned-enterprises in both industrial and lesser developed economies.
Transitory shocks and birth weights: Evidence from a blackout in Zanzibar

Abstract Do transitory economic shocks affect neonatal outcomes? I show that an unexpected, month-long blackout in Tanzania caused a sharp but temporary drop in work hours and earnings for workers in electricity-dependent jobs. Using records from a maternity ward, I document a reduction in birth weights for children exposed in utero to the blackout, and an increase in the probability of low birth weight. The reduction is correlated with measures of maternal exposure to the blackout. The blackout also increased fertility for teenage and first-time mothers, but selection into pregnancy cannot fully explain the drop in weights.
A Replication of Four Quasi-Experiments and Three Facts from ‘The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis’ (Journal of Political Economy, 2007)

The influential piracy paper by Professors Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf, although mainly based on proprietary data, contained an 'important complement' to the main results, consisting of four 'quasi-experiments' using publicly available data. This replication examines all of these quasi-experiments by using identical data and statistical methods where possible, as well as sometimes extending or augmenting the data or methods. This study concludes that the quasi-experiments performed by OS each contain important errors, oversights or inconsistencies that most often, but not completely, overturn the results claimed in the original OS article.
Capitalization of capital gains taxes: evidence from stock price reactions to the 1997 rate reduction

Abstract We empirically document that stock prices moved inversely with dividend yields during the May, 1997 week when the White House and Congress agreed on a budget accord that included a reduction in the capital gains tax rate. The findings are consistent with equity prices capitalizing expected capital gains taxes. Two scenarios are possible. First, to the extent returns are expected to be taxed as capital gains, a reduction in the expected capital gains tax rate enhances market value. Second, to the extent individuals hold a stock, a reduction in the expected personal capital gains tax rate increases market value.
What Counts as Domestic Violence? A Conceptual Analysis

This article analyzes the conceptual structure of domestic violence and critiques various influential accounts of domestic violence operating in the criminal justice system, legal and sociological academia, and the domestic violence advocacy community. Part I presents a preliminary philosophical analysis of domestic violence with the goal of furthering our understanding of the correct use of * Lecturer in Law, University of Oxford (England), Worcester and Brasenose Colleges. LL.M. with distinction, London School of Economics (2003); J.D., University of Michigan (1996). The author would like to thank Andrew Ashworth, John Gardner, Carolyn Hoyle, Jonathan Herring, John Eekelaar, Robert Kahn, Donna Coker, and Deborah Tuerkheimer for their advice and comments on previous drafts, and to express her gratitude to Jennifer Hillman, Dana Michael Hollywood, and the other student editors at the William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law for their patience and professional assistance in preparing this article for publication. 302 WILLIAM AND MARY JOURNAL OF WOMEN AND THE LAW [Vol. 12:301 this concept. This analysis centers around three key elements of domestic violence: violence, domesticity, and structural inequality. Part II develops an explanatory model of domestic violence based upon these key elements. Part III examines and critiques four principal accounts of domestic violence, each of which reflects the conflicting ways in which the concept of domestic violence is used in the language and methodology of the criminal justice, academic, and advocacy communities. Finally this article endorses an account of domestic violence that roughly corresponds to the one employed in the recent work of sociologist Michael Johnson.
Measuring Outcomes: Post-Graduation Measures of Success in the U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings

The U.S. News & World Report annual rankings play a key role in ordering the market for legal education, and, by extension, the market for entry level lawyers. This Article explores the impact and evolution of placement and post-graduation data, which are important input variables that comprise twenty percent of the total rankings methodology. In general, we observe clear evidence that law schools are seeking to maximize each placement and post-graduation input variable. During the 1997 to 2006 time period, law schools in all four tiers posted large average gains in employment rates upon graduation and nine months, which appear to result from a combination of competition and gaming strategies. In addition, law schools in tiers 2, 3, and 4 have increased 1L academic attrition, which may be an attempt to increase the U.S. News bar passage score. We also use multivariate regression analysis to model the employed at graduation and employed at nine months input variables. We find that the following factors are associated with higher employed at graduation rates: (1) higher 25th percentile Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) scores, (2) more on-campus interviews (OCI), (3) higher percentage of part-time students, (4) location outside a Top 10 corporate law market, and (5) status as a historically black law school. All of these factors except LSAT and OCI activity vanish when examining the employed at nine months data. The U.S. News Lawyer/Judge reputation score is associated with higher employment at nine months. Further research on the Lawyer/Judge survey instrument is needed. After presenting our empirical results, we critique the specific measures of postgraduation success used in the U.S. News rankings and explain how each can be improved. We conclude that the best solution to law schools’ complaints about the impact of U.S. News rankings is greater data availability and transparency, particularly on post-graduation outcomes and other factors affecting students’ eventual employment prospects.
Effects of Worry on Physiological and Subjective Reactivity to Emotional Stimuli in Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Nonanxious Control Participants

The present study examined the effect of worry versus relaxation and neutral thought activity on both physiological and subjective responding to positive and negative emotional stimuli. Thirty-eight participants with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and 35 nonanxious control participants were randomly assigned to engage in worry, relaxation, or neutral inductions prior to sequential exposure to each of four emotion-inducing film clips. The clips were designed to elicit fear, sadness, happiness, and calm emotions. Self reported negative and positive affect was assessed following each induction and exposure, and vagal activity was measured throughout. Results indicate that worry (vs. relaxation) led to reduced vagal tone for the GAD group, as well as higher negative affect levels for both groups. Additionally, prior worry resulted in less physiological and subjective responding to the fearful film clip, and reduced negative affect in response to the sad clip. This suggests that worry may facilitate avoidance of processing negative emotions by way of preventing a negative emotional contrast. Implications for the role of worry in emotion avoidance are discussed.
Internet Privacy and the State

Berkeley Law Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository Faculty Scholarship Internet Privacy and the State Paul M. Schwartz Berkeley Law Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/facpubs Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Paul M. Schwartz, Internet Privacy and the State, 32 Conn. L. Rev. 815 (1999), Available at: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/facpubs/766 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact jcera@law.berkeley.edu.
Aggregate Implications of Corporate Debt Choices

This article studies the transmission of financial shocks in a model where corporate credit is intermediated via both banks and bond markets. In choosing between bank and bond financing, firms trade-off the greater flexibility of banks in case of financial distress against the lower marginal costs of large bond issuances. I find that, in response to a contraction in bank credit supply, aggregate bond issuance in the corporate sector increases, but not enough to avoid a decline in aggregate borrowing and investment. Keeping leverage constant while retiring bank debt would expose firms to a higher risk of financial distress; they offset this by reducing total borrowing. A calibration of the model to the Great Recession indicates that this precautionary mechanism can account for one-third of the total decline in investment by firms with access to bond markets.
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Lucrative Fandom: Recognizing the Economic Power of Fanworks and Reimagining Fair Use in Copyright

Fan culture, in the form of fan-created works like fanfiction, fanart, and fanvids, is often associated with the Internet. However, fandom has existed for as long as stories have been told. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories inspired a passionate fandom long before the age of the Internet. Despite their persistence, fanworks have long existed in a gray area of copyright law. Determining if any given fanwork is infringing requires a fair use analysis. Although these analyses pay lip service to a requirement of aesthetic neutrality, they tend to become bogged down by unarticulated artistic judgments that hinge on a court’s personal interpretations of the work in question. One outcome of this emphasis on aesthetic value has been a de-emphasis of the market harm factor of fair use, the examination of which has come to be subsumed by courts’ aesthetic judgments. This de-emphasis of the financial aspect of fair use has strong implications for the legality of fanworks. Mainstream culture has historically considered fanworks to have little aesthetic value, which can lead to knee-jerk findings of infringement in aesthetic-based fair use analyses. However, both old, venerable fandoms like Sherlock Holmes and new works funded by Kickstarter demonstrate that fanworks can actually enable further creativity by the copyright-holder and increase the value of the original work rather than detract from it. Shifting the focus of fair use analysis to a market-based approach would prioritize eco* Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Mississippi School of Law. Thanks to Michele Alexandre, William W. Berry III, John M. Czarnetzky, Jack Wade Nowlin, E. Farish Percy, Hans P. Sinha, the participants of the 2013 Junior Scholars Virtual Colloquium, and the University of Houston Law Center and Institute for Intellectual Property and Information Law for helpful comments.
Eminent Domain and the Psychology of Property Rights: Proposed Use, Subjective Attachment, and Taker Identity

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London , allowing governments to force the sale of private property to promote economic development, provoked bipartisan and widespread public outrage. Given that the decision in Kelo was rendered virtually inevitable by the Court’s earlier public use decisions, what accounts for the dread and dismay that the decision provoked among ordinary citizens? We conducted two experiments that represent an early effort at addressing a few of the many possible causes underlying the Kelo backlash. Together, these studies suggest that the constitutional focus on public purpose in Kelo does not fully, or even principally, explain the public outrage that followed it. Our experiments suggest that subjective attachment to property looms far larger in determining the perceived justice of a taking. We have only begun to map out the contours of this response, but these initial findings show promise in helping to build a more democratic model for the law and policies dealing with takings.
Pricing of Initial Audit Engagements by Large and Small Audit Firms

We investigate the extent to which auditors of U.S. companies reduce fees on initial audit engagements (“fee discounting”). We hypothesize that rivalries among sellers, in terms of client turnover and price competition, are more intense among small audit firms. The data support this hypothesis. New clients account for 34 percent of all clients for small audit firms, but only 9 percent of all clients for large audit firms. We theorize that differences in client turnover rates between large and small audit firms can be explained by the market structure of the audit industry, which consists of an oligopolistic segment dominated by a few large audit firms and an atomistic segment composed of many small audit firms. We further hypothesize and confirm that fee discounting is more extensive in the atomistic sector, and our results confirm this hypothesis. Our analysis of audit fee changes indicates that clients who switch auditors within the atomistic sector receive on average a discount of 24 percent over the prior auditor's fee. However, clients who switch auditors within the oligopolistic sector receive on average a discount of only 4 percent. Given that price competition is known to be less intense in oligopolistic markets than in atomistic markets, we believe that market structure theory can explain why fee discounting is lower when larger audit firms compete for clients.
Property Rights and Time Preference

This paper establishes a nexus between the established fields of constitutional political economy and macroeconomic capital theory. Constitutional political economy explores how legal and institutional structures emerge over time. The evolution of property rights has always been a central focus of this line of inquiry. Time preference is one of the most basic economic concepts. Theories of interest, term structure, and opportunity cost, are all dependent on time preference, which is also the basis for capital budgeting in modern finance. This paper establishes how and why the emergence of property rights supported a reduction of time preference, allowing for employment of capital in time-consuming means of production. This paper also argues that institutional imperatives inevitably lead to the systematic degradation of property rights, and a consequent increase in time preference.
Law and Discretion in Supreme Court Recusals: A Response to Professor Lubet

The Supreme Court needs to adopt a code of ethics and a better system for handling recusals. Above all, the Court needs to begin treating recusals seriously, as matters involving legal and constitutional rights, rather than as matters calling for the simple exercise of judicial discretion. The Justices need to articulate standards and give reasons for their decisions, if they are to act, and to be perceived as acting, in the way in which courts normally are thought and expected to act. And while I agree with Professor Lubet that the Justices of the Supreme Court, like all other judges, should be subject to an integrated code of conduct that details their ethical responsibilities with as much precision as the subject matter allows, this agreement raises substantial additional questions: what role, if any, should Congress have in solving these problems? For example, can or should Congress require the Court to adopt a specific code of conduct, as H.R. 862 purports to do, or should it simply require that the Court adopt some code of conduct of its choosing?I also agree that the Court should institute a more effective mechanism for handling recusals — meaning a mechanism that encourages greater deliberation, consistency, and transparency in decision-making, gives appropriate weight to constitutional values in adjudication, facilitates objectively reasonable results, and promotes public confidence in the administration of justice. And yet I have some question as to whether en banc consideration of recusal motions necessarily would provide the best solution to the problem. Given the Justices’ apparently longstanding reluctance to take the subject as seriously as it warrants, I question whether en banc consideration would necessarily lead to more deliberation or to better or more consistent results. Might not the requirement of en banc consideration simply produce recusal determinations that are formally styled as constituting decisions “by the Court,” while actually being determinations that have been left, more or less, to the discretion of an individual Justice? Might not this diffusion of responsibility result in even less accountability? In addition, en banc consideration might not be conducive to the development of that sense of individual responsibility that is essential to the proper disposition of those cases in which possible grounds for recusal exist, but no motion has been filed, either because the putative movant is not aware of the relevant facts or because he or his lawyer believes that the potential costs or possibly negative repercussions of filing such a motion are too great.
The Spectrum of the FeLoBAL Quasar FBQS 1214+2803: A Resonance-scattering Interpretation

The usual interpretation of the spectrum of a broad absorption line quasar (BALQSO) is that a broadband continuum from the central engine plus broad emission lines from a surrounding region emerge from near the center of the QSO and that broad absorption lines are superposed in a separate outlying region. For FBQS 1214+2803, designated as an FeLoBAL QSO because its spectrum contains numerous absorption features from excited states of Fe II, we explore an alternative interpretation based on resonance scattering. In this model, line emission and absorption occur in the same line-forming region. A resonance-scattering synthetic spectrum computed with the parameterized supernova synthetic-spectrum code SYNOW fits the spectrum of FBQS 1214+2803 rather well, so the resonance-scattering model merits further study. Some implications of the model and its possible applicability to other QSOs are briefly discussed.
The Effect of the JOBS Act on Underwriting Spreads

U.S. underwriting fees, or spreads, have somewhat inexplicably clustered around 7% for years, a phenomenon that some have suggested evidences implicit collusion. The goal of Title I the JOBS Act of 2012 was to make going public easier for smaller firms; certain provisions specifically should make the underwriters’ task less risky, and thus less expensive. Presuming these provisions are effective, then one would predict that underwriting spreads would decrease as the costs to the underwriter for a public offering declined. Admittedly the prior presumption is a big one: it may be that the JOBS Act reforms were largely ineffective, and thus could be expected to have little effect on underwriter cost. This article is the first to examine post-JOBS Act underwriting spreads to determine whether spreads have in fact declined. A finding that underwriting costs stayed constant might be evidence of either collusion or that the JOBS Act was ineffective at reducing the cost of going public. I find that one provision has lowering the spread, thus suggesting elasticity in the spread and offering at least some evidence of the Act’s effectiveness.
Foreign Direct Investors as Agents of Economic Transition: An Instrumental Variables Analysis

Foreign Direct Investors as Agents of Economic Transition: An Instrumental Variables Analysis
Investor Attention Strategy

ABSTRACTThis article documents the motivation, the construction, and the profitability of an investment strategy based on investor attention in the options market. Using the option volume after a 1-week dormant period as a proxy for investor attention, the author shows that heightened investor attention after the dormant period has rich investment implications. A portfolio constructed on the basis of volume spike events immediately after the dormant period generates an abnormal return of 68 basis points on a monthly basis (8.16% on an annualized basis). This abnormal return is robust to risk adjustment using standard asset pricing models. The author's findings constitute strong evidence that it is profitable for outside investors to mimic attentive investors in the options market and reap economically and statistically significant profits.
To disclose or not? An analysis of software user behavior

Abstract We address the ongoing debates over disclosing information about software vulnerabilities through an open public forum. A game-theoretic approach is used to show that full public disclosure can be an equilibrium strategy in a game played by rational loss-minimizing agents. We provide conditions under which full disclosure of vulnerabilities improves social welfare and analyze the effect of vendor and product characteristics, as well as the composition of the pool of software users on the decisions to disclose. We also provide conditions under which user threats to vendors to disclose after a grace period or users’ ability to develop fixes themselves further improve welfare. The likelihood that user-developed fixes improve welfare increases with user familiarity with the details of software, providing an argument for “open source” software.
Efficiency Effects on the U.S. Economy from Wireless Taxation

This paper measures for the first time the economic efficiency effects of the taxation of wireless services, which are taxed by federal, state, and local governments at relatively high rates in the range of 14-25 percent. The paper concludes such taxes are a much greater drain on the economy than their direct costs. The taxes identified in this paper cost the economy $2.56 billion more than the $4.79 billion they raise in tax revenues. These taxes are raised from wireless consumers and thereby suppress demand for service, imposing an efficiency loss on the economy of $0.53 for every $1 currently raised in taxes. Prospective taxes will impose an efficiency loss of $0.72-$1.14 per additional dollar of tax rev- enue raised.