cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Peering at the Past Century's Corporate Strategy Through the Looking Glass of Time‐Series Analysis: Extrapolating from Chandler's Classic Mid‐Century American Firms?

This study has a dual thrust. Substantively, it revisits Chandler's pragmatic fit-performance directive (Chandler's ‘efficiency thesis’) or his assertion that firms whose structure matches their strategy become more effective than mismatched firms. It is important to revisit the empirical origin of this result in view of its gradual international extrapolation beyond the time and place in which it originated. By gathering the financial data relevant to the firms cited as examples by Chandler, we identify whether the change to the multidivisional structure did indeed lead to improved financial performance in the mid-twentieth century American firms he described. Methodologically, it explores a novel approach to the empirical validation of basic theories. Using historical replication, it undertakes a longitudinal, time-series analysis of a classic theory based on twentieth-century data, and thus investigates the testing of classic data with a modern tool. We undertake multiple replications. Three separate longitudinal studies are performed, consisting of two forecasting methods applied to 11 individual time series, and a comparison technique applied to the same. These are used with the three most common measures of performance at the time of Chandler's writing. All three methods reveal that the differences predicted by his theory are not borne out by the longitudinal analysis of a core group of Chandler's own exemplary firms. The three sets of longitudinal analyses we present raise some substantive questions regarding this cornerstone of classical theory, and carry positive methodological portents regarding the use of historical replication as a stepping-stone for twenty-first-century research.
The Bias Against New Innovations in Health Care:Value Uncertainty and Willingness to Pay

This paper offers a model for the bias found in willingness-to-pay valuations against new treatments. For example, this bias provides an explanation for patient preferences that make it difficult for formularies to take treatments off their lists, even when newer treatments would appear to be clearly preferable. The appeal of the model, which is based on imperfect information, is that it is consistent with rational preferences and rational behavior by patients, which are necessary for standard models and methods related to decision theory, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency.
Warming Up to User-Generated Content

Conventional views of copyright law almost always operate from the “top down.” Copyrights are understood as static and fixed by the Copyright Act. Under this view, copyright holders are at the center of the copyright universe and exercise considerable control over their exclusive rights, with the expectation that others seek prior permission for all uses of copyrighted works outside of a fair use. Though pervasive, this conventional view of copyright is wrong. The Copyright Act is riddled with gray areas and gaps, many of which persist over time, because so few copyright cases are ever filed and the majority of those filed are not resolved through judgment. In these gray areas, a “top-down” approach simply does not work. Instead, informal copyright practices effectively serve as important gap fillers in our copyright system, operating from the bottom up. The tremendous growth of user-generated content on the Web provides a compelling example of this widespread phenomenon. The informal practices associated with user-generated content make manifest three significant features of our copyright system that have escaped the attention of legal scholars: (i) our copyright system could not function without informal copyright practices; (ii) collectively, users wield far more power in influencing the shape of copyright law than is commonly perceived; and (iii) uncertainty in formal copyright law can lead to the phenomenon of “warming,” in which—unlike chilling—users are emboldened to make unauthorized uses of copyrighted works based on seeing what appears to be an increasingly accepted practice. Although the warming phenomenon has been completely ignored in prior copyright scholarship, warming serves as a
Managerial Opportunism and Foreign Listing: Some Direct Evidence

To what extent do private interests of managers, controlling shareholders, and other insiders affect corporate actions and the structure of the legal system? This Article presents evidence that such interests (hereinafter “managerial opportunism,” for brevity) have a significant effect on both aspects in the growingly important context of foreign listing. Modern analyses of the corporate form invariably revolve around the agency problem,1 and “corporate governance” is widely understood today to constitute the means for coping with this problem.2 Shleifer and Vishny, for instance, provide a thorough review of the theoretical and empirical literature on the relations between corporate governance and the agency problem.3 In particular, they discuss the interplay between legal rules and shareholding structures as alternative means for curbing adverse
Punishing the Parent: Corporate Criminal Complicity in Human Rights Abuses

The nature of corporate involvement in human rights abuses, coupled with the difficulty of securing prosecutions in the host jurisdiction, has focused attention on the potential liability of the parent corporation under the domestic laws of the home jurisdiction. Focusing on the common law jurisdictions of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this Article analyzes the application of domestic principles of complicity to extraterritorial conduct by corporations. In the context of MNCs, liability for the failure resides with the parent itself, rather than in the complex web of its subsidiaries. For example, the International Criminal Court Act of 2001 (U.K.) imposes liability for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, and applies extraterritorially to acts committed outside the jurisdiction by U.K. nationals or residents. Anvil NL became a wholly owned subsidiary of Anvil Mining Ltd., and its shares of Anvil NL were delisted from the Australian and Berlin Stock Exchanges. Prior to 1998, it appears that FCPA prosecutions primarily involved U.S. corporations operating directly in foreign countries. Such liability is justified not only because of the difficulty of pursuing offenders in the host jurisdiction, but because of the culpability of the parent corporation itself.
Overlooked in the Tort Reform Debate: The Growth of Erroneous Removal

Disputes over forum often center on whether a case should proceed in state or federal court. Removal to federal court can trigger a costly forum struggle. When a state case is removed to federal court only to be sent back to state court, the time and resources incurred in the detour are a toll on the judicial system and waste parties’ resources. We find erroneous removal to be an increasing problem. From 1993 to 2002, a period when state tort filings noticeably decreased, the number of removed diversity tort cases increased by about 10 percent to about 8,900 per year. By 2003, removed cases comprised over 30 percent of the federal diversity docket. The percentage of removals ultimately remanded to state court increased significantly to about 20 percent in 2003, with the remand rate exceeding 50 percent in some districts. Thus, as more cases purporting to satisfy diversity jurisdiction were being removed to federal court, and just as removals were occupying an increasing part of the federal docket, removed cases were being remanded to state court at increasing rates. Erroneous removal is a growing phenomenon that should be addressed as part of serious consideration of tort reform.
Deleting misconduct: The expungement of BrokerCheck records

Abstract We examine a controversial process, known as expungement, which allows brokers to remove evidence of financial misconduct from public records. From 2007 to 2016, we identify 6660 expungement requests, suggesting that brokers attempt to expunge 12% of the allegations of misconduct reported by customers and firms. When these requests are adjudicated on the merits, arbitrators approve expungement 84% of the time. We show that expungements significantly predict future misconduct; brokers with prior expungements are 3.3 times as likely to engage in new misconduct as the average broker. Further, using an instrumental variable based on the random assignment of arbitrators, we present evidence that brokers who receive expungement are more likely to reoffend than brokers who are denied expungement. We also show that successful expungements improve long-term career prospects.
The Holmesian Bad Man’s First Critic

Holmes’s “bad man” view of the common law and his effort to capture contractual liability as option to perform or pay damages grew out of a debate he was having with another legal scholar in an exchange of letters that has largely been forgotten. Holmes’s opponent in this debate — Edward Avery Harriman — was in many respects a kindred spirit, someone who, like Holmes, was a positivist trying to fashion an objective account of the law of contract. Their disagreement was not so much about the role that morals and ethics ought to play in the law of contract, but rather about whether Harriman’s own theory — one that distinguished between primary and secondary obligations — provided the best explanation of the law of contract. The essay recaptures the contours of the debate and reassesses Harriman’s alternative theory of contract.
Assisted reproductive technologies and the pregnancy process: developing an equality model to protect reproductive liberties.

The world of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) has forced our society to confront scenarios that were unimaginable a mere quarter century ago. The birth of Louise Brown in 1978, the first child conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF), introduced to the world the notion of asexual reproduction. The bitter battle over the parental status of Baby M., a baby born by a surrogate mother in the early 1980s, engendered a public debate over the interaction between contract law, family law and reproductive liberties that still rages today. In 1992, the highly publicized divorce of Junior and Mary Sue Davis focused national attention on the issue of proper disposition of frozen embryos. This case highlighted the fact that conception and pregnancy could be separated by a significant amount of time as a result of cryopreservation. While each of these events marked a step forward in the march toward total technological mastery of human reproduction, they also suggest that future struggles involving ART will grow increasingly fierce and complicated as our fund of knowledge increased. This Article suggests that current disputes over the disposition of frozen embryos are emblematic of that struggle.
POLYAMORY AS A SEXUAL ORIENTATION

This Article examines, from a theoretical standpoint, the possibility of expanding the definition of “sexual orientation” in employment discrimination statutes to include other disfavored sexual preferences, specifically polyamory. First, it examines the current, very narrow definition of sexual orientation, which is limited to orientations that are based on the sex of those to whom one is attracted, and explores some of the conceptual and functional problems with the current definition. Next the Article looks at the possibility of adding polyamory to current statutory definitions of sexual orientation, examining whether polyamory is a sufficiently embedded identity to be considered a sexual orientation and the degree of discrimination that polyamorists face. After concluding that such an expansion would be reasonable, the Article briefly outlines some issues for further investigation, including potential policy implications and the conflicting evidence as to whether polyamorists want specific legal protections.
Systematic Movements in Real Exchange Rates in the G-5: Evidence on theIntegration of Internal and External Markets

Abstract Many recent studies have documented the random behavior of real exchange rates. This paper shows that real exchange rates defined for different sectors of an economy move closely together with one another even though each of the sectoral real exchange rates taken alone has a large random component. The sectoral real exchange rates are tied together by internal price links due to factor mobility within each national economy. Any differences between real exchange rates which develop, moreover, can be explained almost entirely by productivity differentials, at least in the long run. This paper contrasts the strong ties which bind together prices from different sectors internally with ties that bind the prices of goods from the same sector internationally. Prices are shown to be much more highly correlated internally than externally because flexible exchange rates disrupt normal pricing relationships between goods from different countries.
The Impact of Fundamentals on IPO Valuation

We examine how initial public offering (IPO) valuation has changed over time by focusing on three time periods: 1986-1990, January 1997 to March 2000 (designated as the boom period), and April 2000 to December 2001 (designated as the crash period). Using a sample of 1,655 IPOs, we find that firms with more negative earnings have higher valuations than do firms with less negative earnings and firms with more positive earnings have higher valuations than firms with less positive earnings. Our results suggest that negative earnings are a proxy for growth opportunities for Internet firms and that such growth options are a significant component of IPO firm value.
A simple approach to international monetary policy coordination

This paper analyzes the strategic interaction between the monetary policies of two countries, in an intertemporal general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities and imperfect competition. It offers an excursus on non-cooperative towards cooperative solutions. All the results can be read by comparing the strength of the two biases: the monopolistic distortions and the terms of trade externalities. In the best feasible allocation, the larger country retains some monopolistic distortions while the smaller country reaches the competitive level.
Immigration Law's Organizing Principles

Immigration law and scholarship are pervasively organized around the principle that rules for selecting immigrants are (and should be) fundamentally different from rules that regulate the lives of immigrants outside the selection context. Both courts and commentators generally conclude that the government should have considerably more leeway to adopt whatever selection rules it sees fit. Consequently, the selection/regulation dichotomy shapes the central debates in immigration law - including debates about the legality and legitimacy of guest worker programs, America's criminal deportation system, and restrictions on immigrant access to public benefits. This Article argues that this central organizing principle is misguided: legal rules cannot be classified as concerning either selection or regulation because every rule concerns both. Every rule that imposes duties on noncitizens imposes both selection pressure, potentially influencing noncitizens' decisions about whether to enter or depart the United States, and regulatory pressure, potentially influencing the way in which noncitizens who choose to stay live their lives. Moreover, even if it were possible to overcome a century of radical disagreement about which rules are "really" about selection rather than regulation, there would still be little reason to ascribe constitutional or moral significance to the distinction between the two. As the Article shows, selection and regulation are simply two alternative mechanisms that a state may use to achieve a particular end. There is no a priori reason to prefer one mechanism over the other. These central conclusions have a number of important implications for immigration law and institutional design.
A New Paradigm: A Joint Test of Structural and Correlation Parameters in Instrumental Variables Regression When Perfect Exogeneity is Violated

The instrumental variables strategy is commonly employed in empirical research. For correct inference using this econometric technique, the instruments must be perfectly exogenous and relevant. In fact, the standard t-ratio test statistic used in this context yields unreliable and often inaccurate results even when there is only a slight violation of the exclusion restriction. It is crucial to realize that to make reliable inferences on the structural parameters we need to know the true correlation between the structural error and the instruments. The main innovation in this paper is to identify an appropriate test in this context: a joint null hypothesis of the structural parameters with the correlation between the instruments and the structural error term. Since correlation cannot be estimated, we propose a test statistic involving a grid search over correlation values. To address inference under violations of exogeneity, significant contributions have been made in the recent literature by assuming some degree of non-exogeneity. We introduce a new approach by deriving a modified t-statistic that corrects for the bias associated with non-exogeneity of the instrument. A key advantage of our approach over that of the previous literature is that we do not need to make any assumptions about the degree of violation of exogeneity either as possible values or prior distributions. In particular, our method is not a form of sensitivity analysis. Since our modified test statistic is continuous and monotonic in correlation it is easy to conduct inference by a simple grid search. Even though the joint null may seem to be limiting in interpreting rejection, we can still make accurate inferences on the structural parameters because of a feature of the grid search over correlation values. The procedure for calculating the modified coefficients and statistics is illustrated with two empirical examples.
To Err Is Human

This essay reviews Allan Farnsworth's final book, Alleviating Mistakes: Reversal and Forgiveness for Flawed Perceptions (Oxford U. Press 2004). There are many kinds of mistakes. One kind - a rational, well-intended decision or act that results in unanticipated, negative consequences - was the principal subject of Allan Farnsworth's previous foray into the realm of contractual angst: Changing Your Mind: The Law of Regretted Decisions (Yale U. Press 1998). Another kind - the subject of this book - is a mistake caused by an inaccurate, incomplete, or incompetent mental state at the time of an act or decision that results in unanticipated, negative consequences. Interweaving literary and operatic illustrations with discussions of cases, statutes, doctrinal and theoretical scholarship, the Model Penal Code, the Restatements of Contracts, Property, Restitution and Unjust Enrichment, and Torts, and insights from psychology and philosophy, Farnsworth's exploration of alleviating and inculpating mistakes (both involve the same mechanism, the difference is the legal consequence that follows) delves into how contract, criminal, and tort law, and equity deal with factual and legal mistakes, the rationale for each substantive body of law's similar or dissimilar treatment of various types of mistakes, and how judicial and jurisprudential attitudes toward mistakes have evolved over time.
A model of trade between creative regions in the presence of sector specific learning by doing

We analyze a model of trade between two heterogeneous regions that are creative in the sense of Richard Florida. One region is larger than the other region in terms of its endowment of creative capital. Each region produces a single final good with inputs 1 and 2 that are traded. There is learning by doing only in the sector producing input 1. Our primary objective is to study the impacts of this sector specific learning by doing and trade on the economies of the two regions under consideration. Our analysis leads to two salient results. First, when a specific condition holds, the smaller region specializes completely in the production of input 1 but there is incomplete specialization in the larger region. In particular, at time t = 0, not all creative capital in the larger region is employed in sector 2 and there is some learning by doing in this larger region as well. Second, in the long run, the smaller region continues to specialize completely in the production of input 1 but the larger region specializes completely in the production of input 2.
The Abscam Investigation: Use and Abuse of Entrapment and Due Process Defenses

From 1977 through 1980 the Federal Bureau of Investigation devised an elaborate scheme designed to provide opportunities for illegal conduct by public officials who were predisposed to political corruption. The scheme involved the creation of a fictitious corporation named "Abdul Enterprises," purportedly headed by Sheik Yassir Habib of Abu Dhabi, whose desire it was to invest in and immigrate to the United States. The FBI named this operation "ABSCAM" after the first two letters of "Abdul" and the word "scam." Following the investigation, grand juries handed down indictments involving twenty-six defendants. Despite both distinguishable fact patterns and varied legal strategies, every ABSCAM defendant asserted either the defense of entrapment or a violation of due process or both. None of these defenses proved successful. This note details ABSCAM's inherent improprieties as they relate to the defenses of entrapment and violation of due process and explore how similar investigations in the future should be conducted so as to protect innocent individuals from these improprieties. It is submitted that the convictions which resulted from the ABSCAM investigation may have been due not only to the guilt of the defendants, but also to the current state of the iaw of entrapment and due process and to the particular structure of the ABSCAM investigation.
Sources of law and the institutional design of lawmaking

The enlightened conception of separation of powers holds that law should be made by the legislature, interpreted by the judiciary, and enforced by the executive branch of government. Public choice theory provides a solid foundation for the appraisal of this traditional formula. The findings of public choice theory, while supporting much of the traditional wisdom, pose several challenges to the theoretical foundations of these constitutional principles. In the following pages, I shall revisit these important questions considering the issue of institutional design through the lens of public choice theory.
Agglomeration, product heterogeneity and firm entry

This paper investigates the interaction between product heterogeneity and geographic agglomeration. Using data for nearly the entire population of U.S. hotels, we examine patterns of entry into different regions among establishments delineated by product segment. We find that to the extent that hotels agglomerate, they are sensitive to the composition and size distribution of other hotels in an area. Our results are consistent with countervailing competition and agglomeration effects that vary in strength across differentiated firms.
Law in Civil Society, Good Society, and the Prescriptive State

Two recent reports call attention to the fact that the American society faces two "crises" rather than one. These studies are the National Commission On Civic Renewal's A Nation of Spectators: How Civic Disengagement Weakens America and What We Can Do About It (from here on A Nation of Spectators), and the Institute for American Values' A Call to Civil Society: Why Democracy Needs Moral Truths (from here on A Call to Civil Society). The first malaise results from the deterioration of the civil society reflected in declines in voter turnout, people interested in public affairs, and participation in voluntary associations, among other developments. The second results from the deterioration of society's moral fiber reflected in and further fueled by a decline in focus on the family, high rates of teen pregnancy and out of wedlock births, and a rise in the vile and violent elements of the mass culture, among other developments.
Exiled, Executed, Exalted: Louis Riel, Homo Sacer and the Production of Canadian Sovereignty

Abstract. In this article, I argue that Louis Riel is a necessary invention for the production of Canadian sovereignty. The argument builds on the work of Giorgio Agamben. I see Riel as a Canadian version of homo sacer, “who may be killed but not sacrificed,” and thereby serves as the exception that proves the rule of Canadian sovereignty. I carry out this argument in three stages, focusing first on Riel's exile in 1870 after the Red River Rebellion. I then bring Agamben's insights into an examination of the tensions between French and English Canada over Riel's execution in 1885. Finally, I look at the contemporary exaltation of Riel, focusing on the two statues that have occupied the legislative grounds in Winnipeg, which, when considered in tandem, serve as a metaphor for the relationship between liberal and colonial dynamics in Canada political history. The liberal–colonial relationship is key to Riel's ambivalent standing in contemporary Canadian political life.Resume. Dans cet article, je tente de demontrer, en m'appuyant sur le travail de Giorgio Agamben, que Louis Riel est une invention qui fut necessaire a la creation de la souverainete canadienne. Pour moi, Riel est un homo sacer version canadienne, quelqu'un qui peut etre elimine mais non sacrifie et qui, par consequent, represente l'exception qui confirme la regle de la souverainete canadienne. Mon argumentaire se developpe en trois etapes, mettant d'abord l'emphase sur l'exil de Louis Riel en 1870, a la suite de la rebellion de la Riviere-Rouge. En tenant compte du point de vue d'Agamben, j'analyse ensuite les tensions entre francophones et anglophones exacerbees par l'execution de Louis Riel en 1885. Enfin, je jette un regard sur la rehabilitation de Riel dans le Canada contemporain en comparant les deux statues qui ont tour a tour orne le Palais legislatif a Winnipeg. On ne peut s'empecher d'y voir une metaphore de la relation entre les dynamiques liberale et coloniale a travers l'histoire de la politique canadienne, cette relation etant un element cle pour comprendre le statut ambivalent de Riel dans la politique canadienne contemporaine.
HOW DO CFOs MAKE CAPITAL BUDGETING AND CAPITAL STRUCTURE DECISIONS

This paper summarizes the findings of the authors' recent survey of 392 CFOs about the current practice of corporate finance, with main focus on the areas of capital budgeting and capital structure. The findings of the survey are predictable in some respects but surprising in others. For example, although the discounted cash flow method taught in our business schools is much more widely used as a project evaluation method than it was ten or 20 years ago, the popularity of the payback method continues despite shortcomings that have been pointed out for years. In setting capital structure policy, CFOs appear to place less emphasis on formal leverage targets that reflect the trade-off between the costs and benefits of debt than on “informal” criteria such as credit ratings and financial flexibility. And despite the efforts of academics to demonstrate that EPS dilution per se should be irrelevant to stock valuation, avoiding dilution of EPS was the most cited reason for companies reluctance to issue equity. But despite such apparent contradictions between theory and practice, finance theory does seem to be gaining ground. For example, large companies were much more likely than their smaller counterparts to use DCF and NPV techniques, while small firms still tended to rely heavily on the payback criterion. And a majority of the CFOs of the large companies said they had “strict” or “somewhat strict” target debt ratios, whereas only a third of small firms claimed to have such targets. What does the future hold? On the one hand, the authors suggest that we are likely to see greater corporate acceptance of certain aspects of financial theory, including the use of real options techniques for evaluating corporate investments. But we are also likely to see further modifications and refinements of the theory, particularly with respect to smaller companies that have limited access to capital markets.
The Challenge of Motive in the Criminal Law

† Assistant Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law, Jamaica, New York, 2004. To borrow a sentence from the esteemed Professor Greenawalt, “[t]his piece explores a good deal more than it resolves, even to the author’s satisfaction.” Greenawalt, infra note 271, at 928. I wish to thank my colleagues for their time and thoughts: Dean Joseph Bellacosa, Charles Bobis, Christopher Borgen, Paul Kirgis, Michael Perino, Michael Simons, Brian Tamanaha, Robert Vischer, and Timothy Zick. I also thank the following participants at a workshop at the Northeast People of Color Conference in March 2004 at the University of Connecticut for their insights and encouragement: Alafair Burke, Lenese Herbert, Sanjay Chhablani, and Darren Hutchinson. I am also indebted to the assistance of my student research assistants: Jeffrey Glassman, Shannon Black, and Diana Neyman. Finally, all errors are solely mine.
Kosovo War Powers and the Multilateral Future

This Article discusses the constitutional implications of the Clinton administration's war power activities.
The Structure and Conduct of Corporate Lobbying: How Firms Lobby the Federal Communications Commission

This paper examines the amount and organization (individual vs. collective) of lobbying by firms in administrative agencies. It explores the power and limitations of the collective action theories and transaction cost theories in explaining lobbying. It introduces a dataset of over 900 lobbying contacts covering 101 issues at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in early 1998. It finds that the structure and conduct of large firm lobbying at the FCC is consistent with the predictions of theories of transaction costs and the main results of theories of collective action. Small firms show little sensitivity to collective action issues or transaction cost issues in the organization of their lobbying, but they do lobby less when having to reveal proprietary information. In sum, large firms behave in a manner largely consistent with theoretical predictions, while small firms do not.
Designing websites to learn user profiles quickly

Personalization and recommendation systems require knowledge about the users (user profiles), in order to be able to target products, promotions and advertisements. The faster the profiles are learnt, the sooner the site can start benefiting from these systems. We study how a site can learn the profile of a user as quickly as possible as the user traverses the site.
Solving the Due Process Problem with Military Commissions

This Comment's principal goal is to explore the interplay between two adjudicatory bodies created within the Department of Defense in recent years: military commissions and combatant status review tribunals (CSRTs). A plethora of law review articles have dealt with military commissions, and the CSRTs have been covered at length in the press. There has been almost no effort, however, to analyze how the two institutions fit together or how the lessons of one could be used to solve the potential constitutional problems of the other. This Comment seeks to fill that gap. In particular, it argues that there is a serious constitutional flaw in the military commissions' procedure for establishing personal jurisdiction and that, in an ironic twist, this flaw can be mended through a modest broadening of the scope of the CSRTs' fact-finding powers.
Taxes and Valuation: Evidence from Dividend Change Announcements

Under the U.S. tax system, dividends are historically taxed at a higher rate than capital gains and thus incur a tax‐related penalty. I provide evidence that the dividend tax penalty partially offsets the positive signaling and agency cost effects of dividends for fully taxable individual investors. The level of institutional ownership and the frequency of institutional trading, which proxy for the likelihood that the marginal investor is not a fully taxable individual, mitigate the negative dividend tax effect. My results support the notion that taxes impact equity valuation. I contribute to the literature by isolating dividends' negative tax effect from their positive signaling and agency cost effects.
Economic Migration Gone Wrong: Trafficking in Persons Through the Lens of Gender, Labor, and Globalization

The last decade brought much needed attention to the global plight of human trafficking, as numerous members of vulnerable populations are trafficked all over the world to be enslaved in a broad range of industries including, but far from limited to, commercial sex. Yet, the global community’s efforts to successfully mitigate trafficking and protect those most likely to fall victim to it continue to fall short. This Article argues that the lack of success in fighting human trafficking is to a large extent the result of framing the existing discourse of human trafficking as primarily a matter of criminal law and human rights of women and children rather than addressing the economic and global market conditions within which human trafficking thrives. It is, as Jonathan Todres puts it, a design failure rather than an implementation failure.2 This Article further suggests that the almost exclusive focus on criminal and human rights discourse developed in response to the paradigmatic story of human trafficking—young women or children being duped and kidnapped for exploitation—in the illegal commercial sex industry. However, that focus continues to marginalize the impact on the role of women, children, and migrant workers from developing nations in the global economy. We will not be able to mitigate human trafficking or to achieve economic and social equality around the world without acknowledging the gendered and class underpinnings of human trafficking discourse.
Group Buying: A New Mechanism for Selling Through Social Interactions

This paper examines a unique selling strategy, Group Buying, under which consumers enjoy a discounted group price if they are willing and able to achieve a required group size and coordinate their transaction time. We argue that Group Buying allows a seller to gain from facilitating consumer social interaction, i.e., using a group discount to motivate informed customers to work as “sales agents” to acquire less-informed customers through interpersonal information/knowledge sharing. We formally model such an information-sharing effect and examine if and when Group Buying is more profitable than (1) traditional individual-selling strategies, and (2) another popular social interaction scheme, Referral Rewards programs. We show that Group Buying dominates traditional individual-selling strategies when the information/knowledge gap between expert and novice consumers is neither too high nor too low (e.g., for products in the midstage of their life cycle) and when interpersonal information sharing is very efficient (e.g., in cultures that emphasize trust and group conformity, or when implemented through existing online social networks). We also show that, unlike Referral Rewards programs, Group Buying requires information sharing before any transaction takes place, thereby increasing the scale of social interaction but also incurring a higher cost. As a result, Group Buying is optimal when interpersonal communication is very efficient or when the product valuation of the less-informed consumer segment is high. This paper was accepted by Preyas Desai, marketing.
Financial Globalization and Banking Crises in Emerging Markets

The incidence of bank crises increased in the post-Bretton Woods era, and these events have been particularly costly in emerging economies. This paper investigates the impact of financial integration on the incidence, duration and output costs of systemic bank crises in 20 emerging markets over the years 1976-2002 using measures of de facto and de jure financial openness. An increase in foreign direct investment within a country contributes to a decrease in the number of crises, while foreign debt liabilities have the opposite effect. A more liberal de jure capital regime lowers the incidence of banking crises. FDI also lowers the duration of banking crises, but a less regulated capital regime is associated with crises of greater duration. Financial globalization does not seem to be directly associated with the costs of the crises, but currency crises are linked to higher costs.
Do Hedge Funds Possess Private Information about IPO Stocks? Evidence from Post-IPO Holdings

Using hedge funds’ holdings of IPO stocks, we find that stocks with abnormally high hedge fund holdings, based on stock and deal characteristics, yield abnormal returns. Moreover, hedge funds are able to sell IPO stocks in a timely fashion before long-run underperforming periods start, suggesting that hedge funds possess information advantages in IPO stocks. Finally, we address the question of where hedge funds may have obtained their information advantages. Hedge funds earn higher abnormal returns in “connected” stocks when their prime brokers also serve as IPO underwriters, indicating that such connections enable hedge funds to make more informed investment decisions in IPO stocks.Received December 31, 2014; editorial decision May 27, 2017 by Editor Wayne Ferson.
CREDIT FRICTIONS AND OPTIMAL LABOR-INCOME TAXATION

This paper studies optimal labor-income taxation in a simple model with credit constraints on firms. The labor-income tax rate and the shadow value on the credit constraint induce a wedge between the marginal product of labor and the marginal rate of substitution between labor and consumption. It is found that optimal policy prescribes a volatile path for the labor-income tax rate even in the presence of state-contingent debt and capital. In this respect, credit frictions are akin to a form of market incompleteness. Credit frictions break the equivalence between tax smoothing and wedge smoothing; therefore, as the tightness of the credit constraint varies over the business cycle, tax volatility is needed in order to counter this variation and, as a result, allow for wedge smoothing.
The Evolution of Shareholder Activism in the United States

In the early 1900's American financial institutions were active participants in U.S. corporate governance but the enactment of securities laws in the 1930's limited the power of financial intermediaries and thus their governance role. The consequence of such laws and regulations was a progressive widening of the gap between ownership and control in large U.S. public companies. In 1942, SEC rule changes allowed shareholders to submit proposals for inclusion on corporate ballots. Since that time, shareholder activists have used the proxy process, and other approaches, to pressure corporate boards and managers for change. In particular, during the mid-1980s, the involvement of large institutional shareholders increased dramatically with the advent of public pension fund activism. At the heart of shareholder activism is the quest for value, yet the empirical evidence suggests that effects of such activism are mixed. We review the evidence on activism and, while some studies have found positive short-term market reactions to announcements of certain kinds of activism, there is little evidence of improvement in the long-term operating or stock-market performance of the targeted companies. A recent increase in hedge fund activism appears to be associated with dramatic corporate change, however, the research in this area is still somewhat nascent and the long-term effects are still unknown.
The Law of Group Polarization

In a striking empirical regularity, deliberation tends to move groups, and the individuals who compose them, toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by their own predeliberation judgments. For example, people who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion, to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm; people who believe that global warming is a serious problem are likely, after discussion, to insist on severe measures to prevent global warming. This general phenomenon -group polarization -has many implications for economic, political, and legal institutions. It helps to explain extremism, “radicalization,” cultural shifts, and the behavior of political parties and religious organizations; it is closely connected to current concerns about the consequences of the Internet; it also helps account for feuds, ethnic antagonism, and tribalism. Group polarization bears on the conduct of government institutions, including juries, legislatures, courts, and regulatory commissions. There are interesting relationships between group polarization and social cascades, both informational and reputational. Normative implications are discussed, with special attention to political and legal institutions. “The differences of opinion, and the jarrings of parties in [the legislative] department of the government . . . often promote deliberation and circumspection; and serve to check the excesses of the majority.”
Assisted Migration: Redefining Nature and Natural Resource Law Under Climate Change

To avoid extinctions and other harms to ecological health from escalating climatic change, scientists, resource managers, and activists are considering and even engaging in “assisted migration” - the intentional movement of an organism to an area in which its species has never existed. This Article explores the profound implications of climate change for American natural resource management through the lens of this controversial adaptation strategy. It details arguments regarding the scientific viability and legality of assisted migration under the thicket of laws that govern natural resources in the United States. The Article asserts, however, that the fundamental tensions raised by this strategy are ethical: to protect endangered species or conserve native biota; to manage ecological systems actively or leave nature wild and uncontrolled; and to preserve resources or manage them to promote their fitness under future conditions. The Article explains why contemporary natural resource law’s fidelity to historic baselines, protecting preexisting biota, and shielding nature from human activity is increasingly untenable, particularly in light of climate change. Active, anticipatory strategies such as assisted migration may not only be permissible but even necessary to avert substantial irreversible harm to ecological systems. Scientists and resource managers should focus on developing scientific data to aid analyses of the risks and benefits of assisted migration in particular circumstances. To help develop such data while minimizing ecological harm, the Article proposes provisionally limiting experimental translocations to situations where translocation is technically and economically feasible, and where the species is endangered, ecologically valuable, and compatible with the proposed site. More broadly, assisted migration illustrates how the institutions and goals of natural resource law must be changed to better reflect a dynamic, integrated world. Climate change forces a radical reconsideration of the aims, foci, and standards of natural resource management. Accordingly, the crucial project of natural resource law must be improving governance by cultivating agency accountability and learning to better manage uncertainty, promoting opportunities for inter-jurisdictional collaboration, and fostering public information and deliberation over the tradeoffs of strategies like assisted migration and the resource values that matter.
Early Warning Signals Regarding Environmental Suitability in the Drosophila Antenna

The olfactory system is uniquely positioned to warn an organism of environmental threats. Whether and how it encodes such information is not understood. Here, we examined this issue in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. We found that intensity-dependent repulsion to chemicals safeguarded flies from harmful, high-intensity vapor exposures. To understand how sensory input changed as the odor valence switched from innocuous to threatening, we recorded from olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) in the fly antenna. Primarily, we observed two response nonlinearities: recruitment of non-active ORNs at higher intensities, and abrupt transitions in neural excitability from regular spiking to high-firing oscillatory regime. Although non-linearities observed in any single ORN was not a good indicator, a simple linear combination of firing events from multiple neurons provided robust recognition of threating/repulsive olfactory stimuli. In sum, our results reveal how information necessary to avoid environmental threats may also be encoded in the insect antenna.
Measuring the Performance of Fiscal Policy in Russia

This paper evaluates the performance of fiscal policy since the 1998 crisis, along several dimensions and using a variety of indicators. Russia has progressed tremendously in recent years on public debt sustainability largely because the real interest rates on public debt have been negative and growth has been high. However, the constant oil-price balance shows a progressive worsening starting in 2001 with a modest reversal in 2004. As to optimal fiscal policy in a country endowed with exhaustible resources, analysis of the nonoil fiscal balance shows that Russian fiscal policy has had a mixed record. It has spent part of the windfall before introducing the oil stabilization fund, but has saved most of the oil revenues in the last two years. The standard fiscal impulse shows that budget policy has not contributed to the increase in aggregate demand since 2003. However, the fiscal position was not tight enough to contain the inflationary effect of the exceptional oil windfalls for the economy as a whole.
Monroe G. McKay and American Indian Law: In Honor of Judge McKay’s Tenth Anniversary on the Federal Bench

This essay, written in honor of Judge Monroe G. McKay's tenth anniversary as a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, considers the difficulty of justifying a separatist policy for the American Indian; examines the opinions authored by Judge McKay in American Indian law cases; and discusses the McKay opinions and the issue of separation.
Is managed care good for what ails you? Ruminations on race, age and class.

Today, a utilitarian view of ethics is the dominating political approach in health care decision-making, disregarding the concerns of individuals and particular groups. This is an unwise approach as the benefits and burdens of particular health plans, such as with managed care or FFS, vary significantly with the age, racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and health status of individuals. Instead, legislators and courts should give appropriate weight to factors such as race, age, and class when evaluating the reasonableness or desirability of practices and polices adopted by managed care companies. This article proposes we should not undertake a policy which forces all Medicare recipients to enroll in managed care plans; in fact, managed care does not seem to provide many elderly people with due treatment of respect and dignity as they make negotiations in today’s health care system. Next, the article proposes the tort system as a critical tool particularly for the protection of senior citizens and people of color against lower standards of medical care. Finally, the article contends that only when we advance a policy that protects and enhances human dignity can managed care realize its potential in improving the availability of health care to people of color, the elderly, and the poor.