cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
THE GENEVA BOOMERANG: THE MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT OF 2006 AND U.S. COUNTERTERROR OPERATIONS

Over five years have passed since President George W. Bush issued the much-criticized order making an obscure device, military commissions, the primary tool for the United States to bring accused Qaeda terrorists to justice. Some legal scholars suggested in the wake of the issuance of that order that military commissions were the only practicable method available to address many of the problems presented by the trial of accused terrorists in civilian U.S. courts. True or not, it is clear that the decision to approach the problem of terrorists primarily in terms of war rather than crime continues to have far-reaching legal consequences. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that the military commissions designed by the Bush administration were inconsistent with the requirements of both the Uniform Code of Military Justice (U.C.M.J.) and the law of war as incorporated in that statute, the U.S. Congress attempted to fashion a compliant charter for these commissions through the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA).
Export Promotion Agencies : What Works and What Doesn’t

The number of national export promotion agencies (EPAs) has tripled over the past two decades. While more countries have made them part of their national export strategy, studies have criticized their efficiency in developing countries (Hogan, Keesing, and Singer 1991). Partly in reaction to these critiques, EPAs have been retooled (see International Trade Centre, ITC, 1998 or 2000, for example). This paper studies the impact of existing EPAs and their strategies based on a new data set covering 104 industrial and developing countries. Results suggest that on average they have a strong and statistically significant impact on exports. For each $1 of export promotion, the paper estimates a $40 increase in exports for the median EPA. However, there is heterogeneity across regions, levels of development, and types of instruments. Furthermore, there are strong diminishing returns, suggesting that as far as EPAs are concerned, small is beautiful.
Compliance Motivations: Perspectives of Farmers, Homebuilders, and Marine Facilities*

This paper addresses the role of differing regulatory contexts in shaping compliance motivations. These are examined for farmers and environmental regulation in Denmark, homebuilders and building safety in the United States, and marine facilities and water quality in the United States. The findings show that the influence of different regulatory practices and the relevance of normative and social considerations differ among these regulatory contexts. This calls attention to the need for more research on the interplay of regulatory arrangements and contexts in shaping motivations for regulatory compliance.
A New Look at Racial Profiling: Evidence from the Boston Police Department

This paper provides new evidence on the role of preference-based versus statistical discrimination in racial profiling using a unique data set that includes the race of both the motorist and the ocer. We build upon the model presented in Knowles, Persico and Todd (2001) and show that their test is not robust to alternative modelling assumptions. However, we also show that if statistical discrimination alone explains dierences in the rate at which the vehicles of drivers of dierent races are searched, then, all else equal, search decisions should be independent of ocer race. We then test this predic
Overcoming the Social and Psychological Barriers to Green Building

The green building movement has overcome formidable, technical, and economic hurdles in recent years, yet adoption of green building practices within the design and construction field remains low. Major corporations now offer products and services at a scale that is bringing costs down to competitive levels, but environmental sustainability in building design and delivery remains at the early stages of the adoption s-curve. This article argues that environmental progress in the building design and construction industry will continue to stall if the significant social and psychological barriers that remain are not addressed. After surveying the three levels of barriers—individual, organizational, and institutional—the article concludes with strategies for overcoming them. Seven specific strategies are elaborated, namely, issue framing, targeting the right demographic, education, structural and incentive change, indemnifying risk, green building standard improvements, and tax reform.
Adam Smith on reputation, commutative justice, and defamation laws

Abstract We interpret Adam Smith on reputation, commutative justice, and defamation laws. We address two major questions. The first question concerns whether Smith thought that “one's own” as covered by commutative justice included one's reputation. Several passages point to the affirmative. But reputation is left out of Smith's “most sacred laws” description of commutative justice. Most importantly, so much of reputation—e.g., “Steve's work stinks”—does not fit Smith's description of commutative justice's rules (precise and accurate). Our reading makes use of older terminology from Pufendorf, Carmichael, and Hutcheson distinguishing “simple” and “intensive” reputation, and suggests that the “reputation” that sometimes appears in Smith's characterizations of “one's own” is of a simple variety (“Steve steals horses”) that potentially incites invasion of commutative justice's three staples—person, property, promises due. On that reading the “reputation” that comes under commutative justice, though not a staple, belongs to the penumbra around the three staples, just as incitement and endangerment belong to that penumbra. We also recruit Hume, who nowhere even hinted at reputation being a constituent of commutative justice. The second question is: Did Smith favor defamation laws (libel, slander) that reached beyond simple reputation, so as to cover some intensive-reputation detraction? Were Smith to favor intensive-reputation defamation laws (against, say, “Steve's work stinks”), we would have to count that as another exception made to the liberty principle. Smith's remarks are mixed, but we think he was rather inclined against aggressive or extensive laws of such kind. (Also, we draw a parallel to patent and copyright.) We also suggest that if Smith thought that wantonly telling malicious lies like “Steve's work stinks” was not in violation of commutative justice and, moreover, is best left perfectly legal, those are judgments that the liberal project's great prophet would hardly want to make plain, because indifferent readers would misunderstand them and adversaries would misrepresent them.
Modal regression for fixed effects panel data

Most research on panel data focuses on mean or quantile regression, while there is not much research about regression methods based on the mode. In this paper, we propose a new model named fixed effects modal regression for panel data in which we model how the conditional mode of the response variable depends on the covariates and employ a kernel-based objective function to simplify the computation. The proposed modal regression can complement the mean and quantile regressions and provide better central tendency measure and prediction performance when the data are skewed. We present a linear dummy modal regression method and a pseudo-demodeing two-step method to estimate the proposed modal regression. The computations can be easily implemented using a modified modal–expectation–maximization algorithm. We investigate the asymptotic properties of the modal estimators under some mild regularity conditions when the number of individuals, N, and the number of time periods, T, go to infinity. The optimal bandwidths with order $$(NT)^{-1/7}$$ are obtained by minimizing the asymptotic weighted mean squared errors. Monte Carlo simulations and two real data analyses of a public capital productivity study and a carbon dioxide emissions study are presented to demonstrate the finite sample performance of the newly proposed modal regression.
Uncovering Race in 2008: Media, Politics and the Reporter's Eye

Without a doubt, the 2008 presidential election provided a reporting experience like no other for journalists. More than any other national election in recorded history, the 2008 political contest placed race front and center of sustained media attention. This article explores the ways in which race has been reflected in traditional news reporting frameworks, drawing upon insights from unpublished interviews with reporters and journalists. These, in turn, may illustrate patterns that influence the way we read the news and the way in which we view race.
Pet Custody: Distorting Language and the Law

Pets or companion animals are the property of those who own them. In this article, I shall show that pets that are the subject of disputes between divorcing spouses or separating unmarried couples should continue to be characterized as property under a rational legal system. Proposals in the law review literature and halting, early attempts by some courts to place pets in some category other than property, which flirted with a standard derived from the prevailing best-interest-of-the-child...
Below the Surface: Comparing Legislative History Usage by the House of Lords and the Supreme Court

In 1992, the Law Lords (the judicial arm of the House of Lords) overruled more than two centuries of precedent when it decided in Pepper v. Hart that courts could refer to and rely on legislative history to aid in construing enacted laws. The ensuing fourteen years have witnessed a robust debate among British judges and legal scholars as to the scope and propriety of Pepper. This article offers the first empirical and comparative analysis of how Britain’s highest court has used previously excluded legislative history materials in its judicial decisions.
Surrogate Parenthood: Between Genetics and Intent

INTRODUCTION In an era of stunning technological progress, the notion of ‘parentage’ has become increasingly contentious in the Western world. With leaps and bounds in the field of genetics and assisted reproduction technologies, parenthood as a concept drifts ever further from assumptions of biological gestational connection or genetic similarity.1 In Israel, a pro-natal and ‘child-centric’ society that very much values the idea of raising a family, the current legal landscape remains hostile to the use of third-party reproductive methods such as adoption and surrogacy by certain groups such as gay couples, single individuals, and people with disabilities. Under current law, prospective parents from these groups have no choice but to leave Israel in order to have their children; many go on ‘reproductive tours’ to developing countries and rely on systems of surrogacy there, withstanding tremendous financial, physical, and emotional stress. During the deadly earthquake in Nepal in April 2015, in fact, Israel sent official aircraft and assistance to the country to aid dozens of Israeli men, their newborn babies, and pregnant surrogates who were caught up in the disaster—stirring the old debate within Israeli legal and social circuits about the morality and legitimacy of surrogacy.2 Just a few weeks before the Nepal earthquake, the Israeli Supreme Court handed down its decision on the Ora Mor Yosef case. The case revolved around a disabled single woman, Ora Mor Yosef, who could not bear a child due to her impairment and
Bond Convenience Yields and Exchange Rate Dynamics

This paper proposes a new explanation for the failure of Uncovered Interest Parity (UIP) that rationalizes both the classic UIP puzzle and the evidence that the puzzle reverses direction at longer horizons. In the model, excess currency returns arise as compensation for endogenous fluctuations in bond convenience yield differentials. Due to the interaction of monetary and fiscal policy, the impulse response of the equilibrium convenience yield is nonmonotonic, which generates the reversal of the puzzle. The calibrated model fits exchange rate dynamics very well. I also find direct evidence linking convenience yields to excess currency returns.
When is play productive

Abstract Play at work is not a contradiction in terms. Rather, distinctions between work and play are becoming less clear, as more jobs involve expertise and microcomputers. This paper starts by describing play, its motives, and its consequences. Then the paper focuses on computer-based activities and suggests guidelines for activities and situations where play can enhance productivity. These guidelines should interest both software designers and those who choose software. The guidelines also generalize to work without computers.
Customer–Supplier Relationships and Abnormal Accruals

We investigate the relationship between customer and supplier firms’ abnormal accruals to examine whether the supply chain is an important transmission channel of abnormal accruals. We propose “ear...
Brown Shoe Versus the Horizontal Merger Guidelines

The new Horizontal Merger Guidelines, if treated by courts as a source of law, would reduce the discretion that is traditionally exercised by courts in defining relevant markets and market power in merger cases. This is an undesirable shift in the balance of power because courts have used the market power inquiry stage of merger analysis as a general checkpoint or weigh station for evaluating factors relevant to the welfare effects of a merger.
Awareness-dependent subjective expected utility

We develop awareness-dependent subjective expected utility by taking unawareness structures introduced in Heifetz et al. (J Econ Theory 130:78–94, 2006; Games Econ Behav 62:304–324, 2008; Unawareness, beliefs, and speculative trade. University of California, Davis, 2011a) as primitives in the Anscombe–Aumann approach to subjective expected utility. We observe that a decision maker is unaware of an event if and only if her choices reveal that the event is “null” and the negation of the event is “null”. Moreover, we characterize “impersonal” expected utility that is behaviorally indistinguishable from awareness-dependent subject expected utility and assigns probability zero to some subsets of states that are not necessarily events. We discuss in what sense probability zero can model unawareness.
Hedging options in the incomplete market with stochastic volatility

We show that it is possible to avoid the discrepancies of continuous path models for stock prices and still be able to hedge options if one models the stock price process as a birth and death process. One needs the stock and another market traded derivative to hedge an option in this setting. However, unlike in continuous models, the number of extra traded derivatives required for hedging does not increase when the intensity process is stochastic. We obtain parameter estimates using Generalized Method of Moments and describe the Monte Carlo algorithm to obtain option prices. We show that one needs to use filtering equations for inference in the stochastic intensity setting. We present real data applications to study the performance of our modeling and estimation techniques.
Occupying the Political: Occupy Wall Street, Collective Action, and the Rediscovery of Pragmatic Politics

In this paper we compare the institutional and strategic decision making structures of the civil rights movement with the Occupy movement with special emphasis on the role of self-expression as a political value versus strategic considerations. We argue that Occupy participants cast the values and form of the movement itself — how it operates and makes decisions — in terms that are synonymous with its very identity and survival. Occupy is the change that its members seek. There is both promise and peril in this approach. Occupy is finding it difficult to engage in institutional politics — which we argue is key to broad and durable societal transformations. We suggest that as Occupy goes home, and as it prepares to come back, it should renegotiate the tension between self-expression and strategic institutional action, and between movement itself as a goal and movement goals. In short, we argue that mistaking an anti-institutional style of participatory democracy and self-expression for both real democracy and radical capitalist critique undermines political power — and ultimately results in less progress towards participatory democracy as the movement becomes politically less relevant and less able to bring about societal change.
Cultural Communities in a Global Labor Market: Immigration Restrictions as Residential Segregation

Economists recognize that nations can gain from trade through not only the free movement of goods across national boundaries but also the free movement of services, capital, and labor across national boundaries. Despite the presumption that economic theory raises in favor of international labor mobility, the nations of the world maintain restrictions on immigration and show little inclination to liberalize these barriers significantly. Michael Walzer defends immigration restrictions as policies necessary to maintain distinct cultural communities and rejects the alternative of voluntary residential segregation at the local level. I argue that we should instead prefer voluntary segregation at the local level over segregation mandated by the government at the national level. Segregation at the local level allows individuals to enjoy the benefits of living in a community matching their preferences while still enjoying access to labor markets in other communities nearby. The type of segregation that Walzer defends, enforced at the national level through immigration restrictions, cuts workers off from valuable employment opportunities.
How Much More Does a Disadvantaged Student Cost

Abstract This paper provides a guide to statistically based methods for estimating the extra costs of educating disadvantaged students, shows how these methods are related, and compares state aid programs that account for these costs in different ways. We show how pupil weights, which are included in many state aid programs, can be estimated from an education cost equation, which many scholars use to obtain an education cost index. We also devise a method to estimate pupil weights directly. Using data from New York State, we show that the distribution of state aid is similar with either statistically based pupil weights or an educational cost index. Finally, we show that large, urban school districts with a high concentration of disadvantaged students would receive far more aid (and rich suburban districts would receive far less aid) if statistically based pupil weights were used instead of the ad hoc weights in existing state aid programs.
The relation between composability and splittability of permutation classes

Abstract A permutation class C is said to be splittable if there exist two proper subclasses A , B ⊊ C such that any σ ∈ C can be red–blue colored so that the red (respectively, blue) subsequence of σ is order isomorphic to an element of A (respectively, B ). The class C is said to be composable if there exists some number of proper subclasses A 1 , … , A k ⊊ C such that any σ ∈ C can be written as α 1 ∘ ⋯ ∘ α k for some α i ∈ A i . We answer a question of Karpilovskij by showing that there exists a composable permutation class that is not splittable. We also give a condition under which an infinite composable class must be splittable.
Lead Paint Is Not a Public Nuisance

Lead has proven to be a toxic substance for humans. Historians and archeologists argue about whether or not lead pipes contributed to the fall of Rome more than 1,500 years ago Hodge 1981 . In the early 1900s industrial nations began to recognize the danger of lead in paint. In 1910 the U.S. House of Representatives attempted to implement legislation that would have required the notation that lead pigments were poisonous and that they must display the skull and crossbones. The bill was not passed. Reminiscent of the global warming initiative adopted by the Kyoto Accords of 1992, in 1921, over 40 nations, excluding the United States, sent delegates to the International Labor Conference of the League of Nations in an attempt to agree on suitable warnings for lead-based paints Warren 1999 . It was not until 1977 that the United States federal government finally began prohibiting the use of lead-based paints in homes. However, between 1910 and 1977, it is estimated that over 4,000 tons of lead-based paints were used in U.S. homes and on U.S. products Warren 1999 . The majority of homes built before 1978 probably contain lead-based paint. Lead-based paints can be found on both exterior and interior finishes. Lead can be found in the soil outside of a house painted with lead-based paint. Lead can be found in drinking water, although because it is tasteless and odorless, it is difficult to detect. It can also be found in furniture, carpets, dust, and on interior surfaces U.S. EPA 2008 .
Financial Reporting and Supplemental Voluntary Disclosures

A standard result in the voluntary disclosure literature is that when the manager's private information is a signal correlated with the firm's liquidation value, mandatory disclosures substitute for voluntary disclosures. In this paper, we assume that the manager's private information complements the mandatory disclosure and show that the content and likelihood of a voluntary disclosure depend on whether the mandatory reports contain good or bad news. This different information asymmetry produces new, testable implications regarding the probability of and market reaction to voluntary disclosures. We also show that changes in mandatory disclosure regulations can have unintended consequences due to their effects on the manager's willingness to voluntarily provide supplemental disclosures.
Budgeting on Autopilot: Do Sequestration and the Independent Payment Advisory Board Lock-in Status Quo Majority Advantage?

Amid deeply polarized discourse over spending choices, Congress has resorted frequently to the particular device of binding “automatic” cuts, a form of Congressional precommitment whereby Congress takes steps at time one with the intention of changing the likelihood it will make certain choices at time two. I argue that these devices are disingenuous in two ways. First, legal analysis shows they do not actually bind Congress, even as they claim to. To the extent they have any traction, it is by appealing to our normative reluctance to flout pre-existing rules, which, in other words, means they work by invoking the ideology of “legalism.” Legalism, as defined by political theorist Judith Shklar, is the norm privileging rule-following, which is seen as “neutral,” over other forms of decision-making, which are “political.” However, in the realm of guns-or-butter spending choices, the invocation of legalism is disingenuous, since these decisions are deeply politically contested. Not only do they purport to bind when they don’t, these Congressional precommitments also purport to be neutral when they are politically purposive efforts to lock-in preferences. This article analyzes and debunks the three main methods of precommitment, and then applies those findings to sequestration and the Independent Payment Advisory Board from the health reform law, to show what happens when we try to make these kinds of political decisions by legalistic “automatic cuts” which deceptively purport to be a more rule-bound, “neutral” approach. I find that these precommitments amplify the advantages of status-quo majorities over minorities, while under-cutting the values of transparency and coherence.
Financial Fragility, Liquidity and Asset Prices

We define a financial system to be fragile if small shocks have disproportionately large effects. In a model of financial intermediation, we show that small shocks to the demand for liquidity cause either high asset-price volatility or bank defaults or both. Furthermore, as the liquidity shocks become vanishingly small, the asset-price volatility is bounded away from zero. In the limit economy, with no shocks, there are many equilibria; however, the only equilibria that are robust to the introduction of small liquidity shocks are those with non-trivial sunspot activity.
Double Your Major, Double Your Return?.

Abstract We use the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates to provide the first estimates of the effect on earnings of having a double major. Overall, double majoring increases earnings by 2.3% relative to having a single major among college graduates without graduate degrees. Most of the gains from having a double major come from choosing fields across two different major categories. Graduates who combine an arts, humanities or social science major with a major in business, engineering, science or math have returns 7–50% higher than graduates with a single major in arts, humanities or social science. But such double major combinations have returns no higher than single majors in business, engineering, science or math. Majors combining business and science or math have returns more than 50% greater than the returns to having a single major in these fields.
Sequential geophysical and flow inversion to characterize fracture networks in subsurface systems

Subsurface applications, including geothermal, geological carbon sequestration, and oil and gas, typically involve maximizing either the extraction of energy or the storage of fluids. Fractures form the main pathways for flow in these systems, and locating these fractures is critical for predicting flow. However, fracture characterization is a highly uncertain process, and data from multiple sources, such as flow and geophysical are needed to reduce this uncertainty. We present a nonintrusive, sequential inversion framework for integrating data from geophysical and flow sources to constrain fracture networks in the subsurface. In this framework, we first estimate bounds on the statistics for the fracture orientations using microseismic data. These bounds are estimated through a combination of a focal mechanism (physics-based approach) and clustering analysis (statistical approach) of seismic data. Then, the fracture lengths are constrained using flow data. The efficacy of this inversion is demonstrated through a representative example.
Signal or noise? Uncertainty and learning about whether other traders are informed

Abstract We develop a model where some investors are uncertain whether others are trading on informative signals or noise. Uncertainty about others leads to a nonlinear price that reacts asymmetrically to news. We incorporate this uncertainty into a dynamic setting where traders gradually learn about others and show that it generates empirically relevant return dynamics: expected returns are stochastic but predictable, and volatility exhibits clustering and the “leverage” effect. The model nests both the rational expectations (RE) and differences of opinions (DO) approaches and highlights a link between disagreement about fundamentals and uncertainty about other traders.
Liquidity biases in asset pricing tests.

Abstract Microstructure noise in security prices biases the results of empirical asset pricing specifications, particularly when security-level explanatory variables are cross-sectionally correlated with the amount of noise. We focus on tests of whether measures of illiquidity, which are likely to be correlated with the noise, are priced in the cross-section of stock returns, and show a significant upward bias in estimated return premiums for an array of illiquidity measures in Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) monthly return data. The upward bias is larger when illiquid securities are included in the sample, but persists even for NYSE/Amex stocks after decimalization. We introduce a methodological correction to eliminate the biases that simply involves weighted least squares (WLS) rather than ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation, and find evidence of smaller, but still significant, return premiums for illiquidity after implementing the correction.
Cross-sectional alpha dispersion and performance evaluation

Abstract Our paper explores the link between cross-sectional fund return dispersion and performance evaluation. The foundation of our model is the simple intuition that in periods of high return dispersion, which is associated with high levels of idiosyncratic risk for zero-alpha funds, unskilled managers can more easily disguise themselves as skilled. Rational investors should be more skeptical and apply larger discounts to reported performance in high dispersion environments. Our empirical results are consistent with this prediction. Using fund flow data, we show that a one standard deviation increase in cross-sectional return dispersion is associated with an 11% to 17% decline in flow-performance sensitivity. The effect is stronger for recent data and among outperforming funds.
The effect of Teach for America on the distribution of student achievement in primary school: Evidence from a randomized experiment

Abstract Using data from a randomized experiment and fixed effect quantile regression (FEQR), we examine the effects of having a TFA teacher on test scores across the entire achievement distribution of primary school students in disadvantaged neighborhoods. While we generally find that TFA teachers neither help nor hurt students in terms of reading test scores, we find positive and statistically significant effects of TFA across the math achievement distribution for the full sample and the effects are fairly uniform. We find a similar distributional effect of TFA within student gender, although the FEQR estimates for female students are two to three times larger than for male students. We also find that there is evidence of heterogeneity in the effects of TFA for Hispanic and black students and for students taught by novice teachers. Finally, we find that the effect of TFA is homogeneous across the math achievement distribution irrespective of certification type.
The Spend-Save Decision: An Analysis of How Charities Respond to Revenue Changes

SYNOPSIS: We study how charities adjust spending when revenues change. Understanding the decision to spend or save revenues provides insights into management behavior and resource allocations. Our results indicate that, on average, the marginal change in overall spending is substantially less than the marginal change in revenue, indicating that charities smooth spending. Charities save a substantial portion of additional revenues and appear to mitigate reductions in revenues by using past savings, especially amounts saved in the previous year. We also find evidence that charities anticipate revenue declines and save for that purpose. Charities with fewer constraints, such as those with larger net assets and those with revenues from sources less likely to impose revenue spending restrictions, do more smoothing by adjusting spending less. Data Availability: Data are publicly available.
Fair Use as a Matter of Law

Courts have recently abandoned the centuries-old practice of construing fair use as an issue of fact for the jury. Fair use now stands as an issue of law for the judge. This change is threatening traditional contours of copyright law that protect fair-use speech. Courts, then, must reform their current construction of fair use by returning to its origins — fair use as a factual matter for the jury. Yet even if courts do construe fair use as a matter of fact, the question remains whether courts should ever decide fair use as a matter of law. To answer this question, I examine whether appellate courts should ever review fair use under a de novo standard and whether trial courts should ever decide fair use on summary judgment. I conclude that both appellate and trial courts should decide fair use as a matter of law under specific circumstances: appellate courts should review constitutional findings under a de novo standard only where a bench trial occurs or where a jury verdict favors the copyright holder; trial courts should rule on summary judgment only in favor of fair users. In short, ruling as a matter of law must serve the speech-protective function of fair use. Fair use as a matter of law must favor fair users.
Spatial Distribution of Patents in China

SUN Y. (2000) Spatial distribution of patents in China, Reg. Studies 34 , 441-454. It is found that patents in China are highly clustered in two groups of provinces: one is the economically fast growing coastal provinces; and the other is inland provinces with large bases of populations, while the degree of spatial concentration of patents is declining over time. It is also revealed that export, together with 'technical infrastructure' including producer services and development of technology transfer market explains most of the provincial variation of patents. Furthermore, foreign ventures do not seem to be an important player in China's innovation system, while both state-owned and collective-owned industries contribute significantly to creations of new products in China. Finally, some commonly cited significant factors for innovations in western literature such as research and development (R&D) and agglomeration do not seem to explain the spatial distribution of patents in China. It is argued that such...
The Price Effects of a Large Merger of Manufacturers: A Case Study of Maytag-Whirlpool

Many experts speculate that US antitrust policy towards horizontal mergers has been too lenient. We estimate the price effects of Whirlpool’s acquisition of Maytag to provide new evidence on this debate. We compare price changes in appliance markets most affected by the merger to markets where concentration changed much less or not at all. We estimate price increases for dishwashers and relatively large price increases for clothes dryers, but no price effects for refrigerators or clothes washers. The combined firm’s market share fell across all four affected categories, and the number of distinct appliance products offered for sale fell. (JEL G34, K21, L11, L41, L68)
When Safe Proved Risky: Commercial Paper During the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009

Commercial paper is a short-term debt instrument issued by large corporations. The commercial paper market has long been viewed as a bastion of high liquidity and low risk. But twice during the financial crisis of 2007-2009, the commercial paper market nearly dried up and ceased being perceived as a safe haven. Major interventions by the Federal Reserve, including large outright purchases of commercial paper, were eventually used to support both issuers of and investors in commercial paper. We will offer an analysis of the commercial paper market during the financial crisis. First, we describe the institutional background of the commercial paper market. Second, we analyze the supply and demand sides of the market. Third, we examine the most important developments during the crisis of 2007-2009. Last, we discuss three explanations of the decline in the commercial paper market: substitution to alternative sources of financing by commercial paper issuers, adverse selection, and institutional constraints among money market funds.
The constitutionality of international courts: The forgotten precedent of slave-trade tribunals

Nor is the aggravation of the crime for the trial of which a tribunal may be instituted[] a cogent motive for assenting to the principle of subjecting American citizens . . . to the decision of foreign courts; for although Great Britain . . . may be willing to abandon those of her subjects who defy the laws and tarnish the character of their country[] by [committing human rights abuses], to the dispensation of justice even by foreign hands, the United States are bound to remember that the power which enables a court to try the guilty, authorizes them also to pronounce upon the fate of the innocent; and that the very question of guilt or innocence is that which the protecting care of their Constitution has reserved for the citizens of this Union, to the exclusive decision of their own countrymen.
Toward the “Best Practice” Model in a Globalizing Market: Recent Developments in Korean Corporate Governance

This article is a status report. This article briefly describes and analyses recent developments in Korean corporate governance by looking at the Korean economy's adaptation to global standards prevalent in a globalizing market. It illustrates, by using various empirical data made available in the recent years, 2000 and 2001, that the Korean corporate governance system successfully adapts to the “best practice” model accepted by global standards. It claims that the Korean efforts will ultimately enable its enterprises to efficiently compete in the global marketplace and freely access international financial markets as legitimate and credible partners. It also suggests that the Korean effort may provide a good model for other emerging economies of an economic and social development toward the establishment of the best practice by global standards, particularly because private sector development programs of international organizations have mandated the new system. Finally, this article tries to indicate tha...
What determines output losses after banking crises

Abstract We examine the output costs associated with 150 banking crises using cross country data for years after 1970. Many banking crises do not lead to contractions and most banking crises do not lead to large contractions, a result that holds for developed and developing economies. We examine which variables help to predict output changes after a banking crisis using Bayesian Model Averaging. For developed economies, we find that the output losses are positively related to prior economic conditions such as credit growth. For low-income economies, we find that other factors such as having a stock market and deposit insurance are more important.
Conflict of Economic Laws: From Sovereignty to Substance

This article examines how the globalization of economic markets, and attendant changes in international regulatory strategies, challenge the traditional framework of private international law. It examines a variety of developments in the areas of securities, antitrust, and bankruptcy law, analyzing the ways in which they undermine the conception of regulatory power as grounded in the territorial authority of sovereign states. Specifically, the article argues that these changes reflect a shift in conflicts jurisprudence away from the traditional jurisdiction-selecting model and toward a substance-based model, in which a state's economic policy interests can be protected simply through assurance that the substance of applicable law - whether foreign law, supranational law or lex mercatoria - is sufficiently similar to that of the state concerned. The article suggests that because such an approach does not view every conflict as a competition for regulatory authority among sovereigns, it can reduce the potential for friction in foreign relations. It also assesses the disadvantages of the substantivist approach, however, and concludes by suggesting some re-integration of territorial factors into private international law analysis.
Trade Disputes in the Commercial Aircraft Industry

T HE recent launch of Airbus’s new super jumbo, the A-380, has provoked yet another trade conflict between the United States and European Union (EU) in the aircraft industry. The industry has strained trade relationship between the US and the EU ever since the Airbus’s entry into the market in 1974. These tensions tapered with the signing of the 1992 US–EU agreement on trade in civil aircraft (the 1992 agreement). In fact, Boeing and Airbus shortly considered cooperating on the superjumbo project during the early 1990s, but the collaboration faltered because the two sides disagreed on the commercial viability of the aircraft. While Airbus forecasted that over the next 20 years, airlines would demand approximately 1,500 superjumbos, yielding around $345 billion in revenues, Boeing’s projections were much more reserved. It forecasted only 700 planes. Hence, Boeing doubted the project could break even (The Economist, 2001). As a result, Airbus proceeded with the development of the new aircraft on its own. Like in previous Airbus’s programmes, the EU will provide some direct financial support to Airbus to partially cover the A-380’s $12 billion launch costs. US trade officials question the legitimacy of this financial arrangement, especially since Boeing doubts the commercial viability of the project. Their objections are illustrated in the 2000 Foreign Trade Barriers Report of the US Trade Representative:
Entrepreneurial Learning, the IPO Decision, and the Post-IPO Drop in Firm Profitability

We develop a model of the optimal initial public offering (IPO) decision in the presence of learning about the average profitability of a private firm. The entrepreneur trades off diversification benefits of going public against benefits of private control. Going public is optimal when the firm's expected future profitability is sufficiently high. The model predicts that firm profitability should decline after the IPO, on average, and that this decline should be larger for firms with more volatile profitability and firms with less uncertain average profitability. These predictions are supported empirically in a sample of 7183 IPOs in the United States between 1975 and 2004. The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.
Yaffe on Attempts

Gideon Yaffe's Attempts is a masterfully executed philosophical investigation of what it means to attempt something. Yaffe is obviously motivated by the fact that the criminal law punishes attempted crimes, and he believes that his philosophical analysis can shed light on and be used to criticize the law's understanding of those crimes. I focus exclusively on the relevance of Yaffe's philosophical analysis of attempts to the criminal law of attempts. I assume that Yaffe's account of what it is to attempt something is basically correct and ask whether the criminal law uses “attempt” in the way Yaffe uses it, and whether it should use Yaffe's conception of an attempt. I conclude that a lot of criminal-law doctrine, including, very importantly, the influential Model Penal Code 's treatment of attempts, is inconsistent with Yaffe's conception of attempts. Because Yaffe is principally interested in what it means to attempt something rather than in the criminal law's treatment of attempts, I believe he misanalyzes the problem of factual versus legal impossibility. And Yaffe's chapter on inherently impossible attempts concludes by positing a quite paradoxical type of criminal attempt, one that is indeed an attempt but for which the defendant should not be convicted because the evidence of its commission is insufficient. I find Yaffe's argument to this effect opaque and therefore unconvincing.
Disarming Employees: How American Employers Are Using Mandatory Arbitration to Deprive Workers of Legal Protection

Employers’ imposition of mandatory arbitration constricts employees’ access to justice. The twenty percent of the American workforce covered by mandatory arbitration clauses file just 2,000 arbitration claims annually, a miniscule number even compared to the small number of employees who litigate claims individually or as part of a class action. Exploring how mandatory arbitration prevents employees from enforcing their rights the Article shows employees covered by mandatory arbitration clauses (1) win far less frequently and far less money than employees who litigate; (2) have a harder time obtaining legal representation; (3) are often precluded from participating in class, collective or sometimes even group claims; and (4) do not fare well pro se in arbitration. Noting employers’ use of mandatory arbitration is likely increasing, the Article urges Congress to pass the Arbitration Fairness Act both to protect individual employees and also to ensure employment laws are enforced.
Which Countries Become Tax Havens

Abstract This paper analyzes the factors influencing whether countries become tax havens. Roughly 15% of countries are tax havens; as has been widely observed, these countries tend to be small and affluent. This paper documents another robust empirical regularity: better-governed countries are much more likely than others to become tax havens. Controlling for other relevant factors, governance quality has a statistically significant and quantitatively large association with the probability of being a tax haven. For a typical country with a population under one million, the likelihood of a becoming a tax haven rises from 26% to 61% as governance quality improves from the level of Brazil to that of Portugal. Evidence from US firms suggests that low tax rates offer much more powerful inducements to foreign investment in well-governed countries than do low tax rates elsewhere. This may explain why poorly-governed countries do not generally attempt to become tax havens, and suggests that the range of sensible tax policy options is constrained by the quality of governance.
Measurement and the mental map

In order to test between subtractive and ratio theories of stimulus comparison, judges were asked to estimate “ratios” and “differences” of easterliness and westerliness of U.S. cities. “Difference” judgments fit the subtractive model, and “ratio” judgments fit the ratio model. However, “ratios” and “differences” were monotonically related, contrary to the theory that judges compute both relations on a common scale. Results are consistent with the theory that there is but one operation for both “ratios” and “differences.” To assume that the single operation is a ratio requires the complex interpretation that easterliness and westerliness are nonlinearly related. A simpler interpretation is provided by a subtractive theory, in which all four types of judgments are monotonically related to subjective differences on a single cognitive map.
Politico-Economic Causes of Labor Regulation in the United States: Rent Seeking, Alliances, Raising Rivals' Costs (Even Lowering One's Own?), and Interjurisdictional Competition

This paper offers an eclectic survey of the political economy of labor regulation in the United States at federal and state levels along the dimensions of occupational health and safety, unjust dismissal, right-to-work, workplace safety and workers’ compensation, living wages, and prevailing wages. We discuss rent seeking/predation, coalition formation, judicial review, and interjurisdictional competition as well as the implications of union decline. Our analysis should help dispel any notion that the U.S. labor market is unregulated while also indicating that the political process shows some sensitivity to benefits and costs.
The Fiscal Externalities of Charter Schools: Evidence from North Carolina

A significant criticism of the charter school movement is that funding for charter schools diverts money away from traditional public schools. The magnitude of such adverse fiscal externalities dep...
Hierarchical and Collegial Politics on the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Do hierarchical politics in the federal judiciary shape collegial politics on the U.S. Courts of Appeals and thus influence judicial voting and case outcomes? I develop a model in which the political control of the dual layer of hierarchy above three-judge panels—full circuits and the Supreme Court—affects the ability of a single Democratic or Republican judge on a three-judge panel to influence two colleagues from the opposing party. The theory predicts that panel majorities should be more strongly influenced by a single judge of the opposing party—a “counter-judge”—when that judge is aligned with the Supreme Court. Examining thousands of judicial votes in multiple issue areas, I show that the effect of adding a counter-judge to a panel is indeed asymmetric, and varies based on hierarchical alignment. The interaction of hierarchical and collegial politics increases the Supreme Court’s control of the judicial hierarchy and helps promote the rule of law.