cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Riding the merger wave: Uncertainty, reduced monitoring, and bad acquisitions

Abstract We show that acquisitions initiated during periods of high merger activity (“merger waves”) are accompanied by poorer quality of analysts' forecasts, greater uncertainty, and weaker CEO turnover-performance sensitivity. These conditions imply reduced monitoring and lower penalties for initiating inefficient mergers. Therefore, merger waves may foster agency-driven behavior, which, along with managerial herding, could lead to worse mergers. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that the average long-term performance of acquisitions initiated during merger waves is significantly worse. We also find that corporate governance of in-wave acquirers is weaker, suggesting that agency problems may be present in merger wave acquisitions.
Calculating the VIX in Excel

The VIX, based on a weighted average of S&P 500 Index options that straddle a 30-day maturity, has become a popular volatility index. This manner of calculating the VIX emerged in September of 2003 and is documented with an example by the CBOE. In this article, the calculation of the VIX is reproduced in a Microsoft Excel template to automate and to some degree simplify the calculation. Further, one can also apply other option series to calculate a VIX-type analysis for the underlying security, which is of great benefit because the calculation is independent of option-pricing model biases.
Private Information and Bargaining Power in Venture Capital Financing

We model the natural evolution of private information over the life of a venture capitalist financed project. In the early stages, the entrepreneur is better informed regarding the project, and when the project matures, the venture capitalist has an informational advantage over the entrepreneur. Within this framework, we examine how the venture capitalist's relative bargaining power affects cash flow rights and investment. When the bargaining advantage lies with the entrepreneur, the project may not be screened, and the venture capitalist may acquiesce to excessive initial investment but subsequently terminate the project. Increased venture capitalist bargaining power encourages project screening, attenuates the incentive to overinvest, and reduces the incidence of project termination subsequent to the initial investment. The payoff sensitivity of venture capitalist's financing contract also increases as his bargaining power improves.
Local Electoral Incentives and Decentralized Program Performance

Abstract This paper analyzes how electoral incentives affected the performance of a major decentralized conditional cash transfer program intended on reducing school dropout rates among children of poor households in Brazil. We show that while this federal program successfully reduced school dropout by 8 percentage points, the program's impact was 36% larger in municipalities governed by mayors who faced reelection possibilities compared to those with lame-duck mayors. First-term mayors with good program performance were much more likely to be reelected. These mayors adopted program implementation practices that were not only more transparent but also associated with better program outcomes.
Mirković–Vilonen polytopes and Khovanov–Lauda–Rouquier algebras

We describe how Mirkovic–Vilonen (MV) polytopes arise naturally from the categorification of Lie algebras using Khovanov–Lauda–Rouquier (KLR) algebras. This gives an explicit description of the unique crystal isomorphism between simple representations of KLR algebras and MV polytopes. MV polytopes, as defined from the geometry of the affine Grassmannian, only make sense in finite type. Our construction on the other hand gives a map from the infinity crystal to polytopes for all symmetrizable Kac–Moody algebras. However, to make the map injective and have well-defined crystal operators on the image, we must in general decorate the polytopes with some extra information. We suggest that the resulting ‘KLR polytopes’ are the general-type analogues of MV polytopes. We give a combinatorial description of the resulting decorated polytopes in all affine cases, and show that this recovers the affine MV polytopes recently defined by Baumann, Kamnitzer, and the first author in symmetric affine types. We also briefly discuss the situation beyond affine type.
Bringing a complaint under the NAFTA Environmental Side Accord: Difficult steps under a procedural paper tiger, but movement in the right direction

The NAFTA Environmental Side Accord provides for environmental disputes to be negotiated and litigated among the NAFTA partners (U.S., Canada, and Mexico). The process for dispute settlement is cumbersome and political, but cases are beginning to come forward and the system is being tested. The extent to which real environmental protection can be achieved via the means provided is questionable, but the public awareness raised through this process may prove significant enough to make a positive impact.
Individual differences in perceptions of service failure and recovery: the role of race and discriminatory bias

This article investigates the role of contextual cues in the evaluation of a service failure. Empirical data demonstrates that although discrimination is a factor in the evaluation of a service failure for black (vs. white) customers, contextual cues also play a role in the evaluation of the encounter. When a black customer experiences a service failure, the failure will be evaluated more severely when no other black customers are present. In addition, the context of the event differentially affects the negative emotions generated by the service failure and results in racially driven differences in the amount of remuneration perceived as necessary to successfully recover from the failure. The implication is that when serving customers, the race of both the customer and other customers can provide service providers with information relative to the appropriate service recovery effort to implement.
Managing Digital Piracy: Pricing and Protection

This paper analyzes the optimal choice of pricing schedules and technological deterrence levels in a market with digital piracy where sellers can influence the degree of piracy by implementing digital rights management (DRM) systems. It is shown that a monopolist's optimal pricing schedule can be characterized as a simple combination of the zero-piracy pricing schedule and a piracy-indifferent pricing schedule that makes all customers indifferent between legal usage and piracy. An increase in the quality of pirated goods, while lowering prices and profits, increases total surplus by expanding both the fraction of legal users and the volume of legal usage. In the absence of price discrimination, a seller's optimal level of technology-based protection against piracy is shown to be at the technologically maximal level, which maximizes the difference between the quality of the legal and pirated goods. However, when a seller can price discriminate, its optimal choice is always a strictly lower level of technology-based protection. These results are based on the following digital rights conjecture: that granting digital rights increases the incidence of digital piracy, and that managing digital rights therefore involves restricting the rights of usage that contribute to customer value. Moreover, if a digital rights management system weakens over time due to the underlying technology being progressively hacked, a seller's optimal strategic response may involve either increasing or decreasing its level of technology-based protection. This direction of change is related to whether the DRM technology implementing each marginal reduction in piracy is increasingly less or more vulnerable to hacking. Pricing and technology choice guidelines are presented, and some welfare implications are discussed.
OPENNESS, PRODUCTIVITY AND GROWTH: WHAT DO WE REALLY KNOW?*

Comparative data for 93 countries are used to analyse the robustness of the relationship between openness and total factor productivity growth. Nine indexes of trade policy are used to investigate whether the evidence supports the view that total factor productivity growth is faster in more open economies. The results are robust to the use of openness indicator, estimation technique, time period and functional form, and suggest that more open countries experienced faster productivity growth. Although the use of instrumental variables help dealing with endogeneity, issues related to causality remain somewhat open, and require time series analyses to be adequately addressed. Old controversies die slowly. For over a century social analysts have debated the connection between trade policy and economic performance. While according to liberal economists freer trade results in faster growth, some analysts have argued that protectionism may help economic performance. This controversy continues today, even as the world is experiencing an unprecedented period of trade liberalisation, and in spite of numerous empirical studies that claim to have found a positive effect of openness on growth. The most prominent trade liberalisation sceptics include Krugman (1994) and Rodrik (1995), who have argued that the effect of openness on growth is, at best, very tenuous, and at worst, doubtful. Two issues have been at the core of these controversies: first, until recently theoretical models had been unable to link trade policy to faster equilibrium growth. And second, the empirical literature on the subject has been affected by serious data problems.1 During the last decade, however, the 'new' theories of growth pioneered by Romer (1986) and Lucas (1988) have provided persuasive intellectual support for the proposition that openness affects growth positively. Romer (1992), Grossman and Helpman (1991) and Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1995), among others, have argued that countries that are more open to the rest of the world have a greater ability to absorb technological advances generated in leading nations. Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1995, Ch. 8), for example, consider a twocountries world (one advanced and one developing), differentiated inputs, and no capital mobility. Innovation takes place in the advanced (or leading) nation, while the poorer (or follower) country confines itself to imitating the new techniques. The equilibrium rate of growth in the poorer country depends on the cost of imitation, and on its initial stock of knowledge. If the costs of imitation are lower than the cost of innovation, the poorer country will
U.S. Farm Subsidies and the Expiration of the WTO's Peace Clause

The United States has received much of the blame for the impasse in the Doha Round of negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO) due to its reluctance to make significant cuts in trade-distorting agricultural subsidies. The suspension of the negotiations, in turn, has been widely interpreted as reducing the pressure for reform of subsidy programs in the 2007 Farm Bill. This perception, however, is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the status of farm subsidies under existing WTO commitments. Due to the expiration of the WTO's Peace Clause, all trade distorting farm subsidies are currently vulnerable to challenge under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement), including market loan program payments, counter-cyclical payments, and (to a lesser extent) direct payments. The WTO's Dispute Settlement Body has already ruled against U.S. subsidies for upland cotton in a case bought by Brazil, and similar challenges against supports for the other major U.S. commodities appear likely. Attempts by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to negotiate a new Peace Clause have been unsuccessful. Accordingly, the most viable strategy for the United States to pursue in order to avoid further trade disputes would be to shift funding from trade distorting commodity subsidies to a wide range of programs - including rural development, infrastructure, conservation, alternative energy and food programs - that are not vulnerable to challenge under the SCM Agreement. This approach would prevent further WTO disputes over U.S. agricultural subsidies while permitting Congress to maintain the current baseline of Farm Bill funding.
Structure, Politics, and Ethnonationalist Contention in Post-Franco Spain: An Integrated Model:

Previous models of nationalism have been unable to adequately account for variation in forms or levels of contentious nationalist activity. Building on the most important theoretical tools from the literatures on social movements and nationalism, an alternative model is proposed in which structure, politics, and action assume equal roles in an interdependent causal system. It is further proposed that violent and nonviolent contention, though conceptually distinct phenomena, are the products of a fundamentally similar set of factors. The model posits that sociostructural ‘root causes’ are vital to the development of ethnonationalist contentious politics, but indirectly via mobilization. The direct determinants of protest and rebellion are a conjunction of organizational mobilization and political opportunity structures. In particular, a shared identity gives groups of people the basis for organizational mobilization; mobilizational resources provide the means for such mobilization; grievances lend the reas...
A Dynamic Network Approach to Breakthrough Innovation

This paper outlines a framework for the study of innovation that treats discoveries as additions to evolving networks. As inventions enter they expand or limit the reach of the ideas they build on by influencing how successive discoveries use those ideas. The approach is grounded in novel measures of the extent to which an innovation amplifies or disrupts the status quo. Those measures index the effects inventions have on subsequent uses of prior discoveries. In so doing, they characterize a theoretically important but elusive feature of innovation. We validate our approach by showing it: (1) discriminates among innovations of similar impact in analyses of U.S. patents; (2) identifies discoveries that amplify and disrupt technology streams in select case studies; (3) implies disruptive patents decrease the use of their predecessors by 60% in difference-in-differences estimation; and, (4) yields novel findings in analyses of patenting at 110 U.S. universities.
Does atypical work help the jobless? Evidence from a CAEAS/CPS cohort analysis

Atypical employment, such as temporary, on-call and contract work, has been found disproportionately to attract the jobless. But there is no consensus in the literature as to the labour market consequences of such job choice by unemployed individuals. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we investigate the implications of the initial job-finding strategies pursued by the jobless for their short- and medium-term employment stability. At first sight, it appears that taking an offer of regular employment provides the greatest degree of employment continuity for the jobless. However, closer inspection indicates that the jobless who take up atypical employment are not only more likely to be employed 1 month and 1 year later than those who continue to search, but also to enjoy employment continuity that is not less favourable than that offered by regular, open-ended employment.
Auctions with Dynamic Costly Information Acquisition

We study the mechanism design problem for a seller of an indivisible good in a setting where privately informed buyers can acquire additional information and refine their valuations for the good at...
What Factors Affect Management Quality? State Infrastructure Management and the Government Performance Project

Whether the US$131 billion set aside for infrastructure projects under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 can make a lasting contribution to improving the nation’s public infrastruc...
Exchange asymmetries incorrectly interpreted as evidence of endowment effect theory and prospect theory

Systematic asymmetries in exchange behavior have been widely interpreted as support for "endowment effect theory," an application of prospect theory positing that loss aversion and utility function kinks set by entitlements explain observed asymmetries. We experimentally test an alternative explanation, namely, that asymmetries are explained by classical preference theories finding influence through the experimental procedures typically used. Contrary to the predictions of endowment effect theory, we observe no asymmetries when we modify procedures to remove the influence of classical preference theories. When we return to traditional-type procedures, however, the asymmetries reappear. The results support explanations based in classical preference theories and reject endowment effect theory.
CEO political ideology and mergers and acquisitions decisions

Abstract We examine the relation between CEOs political ideology and their firms' investment decisions, particularly their M&A decisions. Employing individual financial contributions data for the period from 1993 to 2006, we find that firm's investment decisions vary with CEO's political ideology. Our evidence indicates that Republican CEOs are less likely to engage in M&A activities. When they do undertake acquisitions, they are more likely to use cash as the method of payment, and their targets are more likely to be public firms and to be from the same industry. Further, Republican CEOs tend to avoid high information asymmetry acquisitions that involve the use of “earnout” clauses. Conditional on the merger, CEO political ideology appears to have a significantly impact on long-run firm valuation. However, we find no evidence that CEO political ideology creates value in the short-run. All our results are robust to controlling for CEO overconfidence.
International Human Rights Law and Security Detention

This article analyzes the grounds, procedures and conditions required by International Human Rights Law for preventive detention of suspected terrorists as threats to security. Such detention is generally permitted, provided it is based on grounds and procedures previously established by law; is not arbitrary, discriminatory or disproportionate; is publicly registered and subject to fair and effective judicial review; and the detainee is not mistreated and is compensated for any unlawful detention. In Europe, however, preventive detention for security purposes is generally not permitted. If allowed at all, it is permitted only when a State in time of national emergency formally derogates from the right to liberty under the European Convention on Human Rights. The Article concludes that if preventive detention for security purposes is to be allowed at all, its use must be kept to an absolute minimum, and the European model should be followed, allowing detention only by formal derogation during national emergency, and then only to the extent and for the time strictly required.
Facial Landmark Detection: A Literature Survey

The locations of the fiducial facial landmark points around facial components and facial contour capture the rigid and non-rigid facial deformations due to head movements and facial expressions. They are hence important for various facial analysis tasks. Many facial landmark detection algorithms have been developed to automatically detect those key points over the years, and in this paper, we perform an extensive review of them. We classify the facial landmark detection algorithms into three major categories: holistic methods, Constrained Local Model (CLM) methods, and the regression-based methods. They differ in the ways to utilize the facial appearance and shape information. The holistic methods explicitly build models to represent the global facial appearance and shape information. The CLMs explicitly leverage the global shape model but build the local appearance models. The regression based methods implicitly capture facial shape and appearance information. For algorithms within each category, we discuss their underlying theories as well as their differences. We also compare their performances on both controlled and in the wild benchmark datasets, under varying facial expressions, head poses, and occlusion. Based on the evaluations, we point out their respective strengths and weaknesses. There is also a separate section to review the latest deep learning based algorithms. The survey also includes a listing of the benchmark databases and existing software. Finally, we identify future research directions, including combining methods in different categories to leverage their respective strengths to solve landmark detection "in-the-wild".
Accounting Returns Revisited: Evidence of their Usefulness in Estimating Economic Returns

Accounting information is used for measuring firm performance in various financial applications—a practice supported by empirical studies demonstrating the value relevance of accounting numbers, but disputed by theoretical papers arguing that a firm's accounting rate of return (ARR) serves poorly as a proxy for its internal rate of return (IRR). We derive a new model of the ARR–IRR relation, and describe how the conservatism of GAAP constrains a firm's IRR to fall in a range bounded by its historical growth rate and ARR. Using cross-sectional data, we demonstrate that economic returns can be estimated from accounting numbers for many firms. We link empirical results to underlying economic theory, and thus contribute to understanding why accounting information is value relevant.
The Organization of Supply: a Vertical Equilibrium Analysis

In this paper I study how the make-or-buy decision of a firm depends on the organization of its peers. I consider a multi-firm framework in which firms choose whether to integrate into the supply of an intermediate input or to outsource its production, and choose the size of their supplier network if outsourcing. Firms find it optimal to share the same set of suppliers, as there are economies of scope in investment to suppliers taking multiple designs. These economies are due to spillovers of technical or operational know-how between projects and to savings in the setup costs on physical capital. The model admits multiple vertical equilibria that are Pareto-ranked, the one with the highest level of outsourcing being most efficient. Outsourcing is more likely in larger markets and when the economies of scope are stronger. The size of the optimal supplier network however typically decreases when the spillovers are stronger. These findings provide insight into the patterns of reorganization of vertical supply relations observed over the last two decades.
“Comply Or Explain”—A Flexible Mechanism to Countervail Behavioral Biases in M&A Transactions

Mergers and acquisitions (MA LL.M., Yale Law School, Ph.D. (Dr. iur.), EMBA, University of Muenster, Germany. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Gesa Beckhaus, Lennart Beckhaus, and Richard Brooks for their thoughtful and valuable comments.
Corporate Investment and Innovation in the Presence of Competitor Constraints

We study the relation between investment behavior and competitor financial constraints. Using interfirm patent citations and text-based product market similarities to identify intransitive competitor networks, we find that firms increase investment spending, patenting activity, and opportunistic hiring when competitor constraints become more binding. In addition, firms shift their investment composition (product market and patent portfolios) to compete more aggressively with relatively constrained competitors. To mitigate endogeneity concerns, we exploit the 2004 AJCA tax holiday and the 1989 junk bond crisis as exogenous shocks to competitor constraints, and we find similar effects. Received August 11, 2017; editorial decision November 6, 2018 by Editor David Denis. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.
Board quality and the cost of debt capital: The case of bank loans.

Abstract We analyze the relation between comprehensive measures of board quality and the cost as well as the non-price terms of bank loans. We show that firms that have higher quality boards with a greater advisory presence borrow at lower interest rates. This relation exists even after controlling for ownership structure, CEO compensation policy, and shareholder protection, as well as the size and financial characteristics of the borrower and of the loan. We also show evidence that board quality and other governance characteristics influence the likelihood that loans have covenant requirements, but the relations differ by covenant type. When we combine the direct and indirect costs of bank loans we find that firms with large, independent, experienced, and diverse boards and lower institutional ownership borrow more cheaply. Overall, the evidence indicates that board quality impacts the cost of bank debt.
Job Search Behavior over the Business Cycle

We create a novel measure of job search effort exploiting the American Time Use and Current Population Surveys. We examine the cyclicality of search effort using time-series, cross-state, and individual variation and find that it is countercyclical. We then set up a search and matching model with endogenous search effort and show that search effort does not amplify labor market fluctuations but rather dampens them. Lastly, we examine the role of search effort in driving recent unemployment dynamics and show that the unemployment rate would have been 0.5 to 1 percentage points higher in the 2008–2014 period had search effort not increased.
The Right to Remain Armed

The laws governing gun possession are changing rapidly. In the past two years, federal courts have wielded a revitalized Second Amendment to invalidate longstanding gun carrying restrictions in Chicago, the District of Columbia, and throughout California. Invoking similar Second Amendment themes, legislators across the country have steadily deregulated public gun carrying, preempting municipal gun control ordinances in cities like Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Cleveland. These changes to substantive gun laws reverberate through the constitutional criminal procedure framework. By making it lawful for citizens to carry guns even in crowded urban areas, enhanced Second Amendment rights trigger Fourth Amendment protections that could radically transform American policing. Evidence of handgun possession— whether from a tip or observation—is increasingly an inadequate justification for a Fourth Amendment stop; officers will struggle to articulate legal grounds for temporarily disarming citizens during face-toface encounters; and the promise of gun-detecting technology as an alternative to invasive investigative techniques, such as pretextual arrests and frisks, may be squelched. Whether observers view these implications as beneficial, disastrous, or something in between, one thing is clear: courts, policymakers, and academics must begin to address the dramatic Fourth Amendment implications of an expanding Second Amendment “right to remain armed.”  Professor, William & Mary Law School. I would like to thank Adam Gershowitz, Kay Levine, Joyce Malcolm, and Scott Sundby for comments on a draft of this Article. Washington University Open Scholarship 2 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [VOL. 93:1
Wealth Transfer Tax Planning for 2013 and Beyond

On January 1, 2013, Congress avoided the tax part of the so-called “fiscal cliff” when it passed the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA). Among its many impacts, ATRA prevented the application of a number of sunset provisions that would have dramatically altered the operation of the federal wealth transfer taxes. Instead, Congress made permanent two significant transfer tax provisions introduced as temporary measures in 2010: the $5,000,000 indexed basic exclusion amount and the deceased spousal unused exclusion amount. The latter provisions are sometimes referred to as the portability rules because, in effect, they allow one spouse’s estate tax exclusion to be passed to the other spouse. ATRA also introduced a new maximum transfer tax rate of 40%. Thus, the main transfer tax emphasis of the actions taken by Congress in ATRA was to stabilize the wealth transfer tax system while also permanently establishing a significant new planning tool, the deceased spousal unused exclusion amount. In this Article, we explain the operation of the federal wealth transfer taxes (the estate tax, the gift tax, and the generation skipping transfer tax) in the wake of ATRA and dissect the basic tax planning techniques for wealth transmission. In doing so, we offer a thorough analysis of the operation of the portability rules and explain their planning virtues and drawbacks. The overall design of this Article is to bring the reader into the current wealth transfer tax planning picture while providing references to more detailed treatments of particular topics within this broad field.
The depression of 1920–1921: a credit induced boom and a market based recovery?

This paper examines the American post-WW1 boom and bust. It argues that the Federal Reserve’s monetary easing from 1919 to 1920 created an Austrian Business Cycle (ABC), or an unsustainable credit boom. The collapse of the boom initiated the Depression of 1920–1921. The subsequent laissez faire policy promoted a swift recovery. In particular, the natural recovery began following a severe liquidation of firms, reallocation of resources, and wage cuts stimulated by fiscal and monetary contraction. Contrary to some other accounts, we find that significant recovery began before the Federal Reserve’s 1921–1922 monetary easing affected the economy. We also address other criticisms of the credit-cycle interpretation.
Want of Care: An Essay on Wayward Action

Philosophers have taken little heed of the fact that people often act contrary to their better judgment not because they suffer a volitional infirmity like weakness of will or compulsion but instead because they care too little about what they judge best (they are unconcerned) or they care too much about something else (they are compromised). Unconcerned and compromised action, being varieties of akratic action that do not involve volitional infirmity, are phenomena worth examining not only in their own right but also for what they reveal about the better known varieties of akratic action for which they might easily be mistaken, such as weak-willed action and action (or inaction) that stems from accidie. Unconcern and compromise also are worth examining for what they reveal about a topic beyond philosophical psychology, namely, moral and legal accountability. Forgiveness, resentment, and retributive punishment each may have less to do with what an offender (morally) believes than with what he cares about.
The Determinants of REIT Institutional Ownership: Tests of the CAPM

This study examines the determinants of institutional investment demand for REIT common stock. We estimate the demand function for financial institutions using the mean return and CAPM risk measures (beta and standard error) for REIT stocks. The objective is to determine whether institutional investment decisions are influenced by CAPM model attributes. In addition, we examine the predicatability of REIT institutional ownership based on the factors in our model. We employ conventional OLS forecasting techniques, as well as two neural network models in order to deal with possible nonlinearities in the relationships.
Kant and Sexual Perversion

In the first part (the "Doctrine of Right," the Rechtslehre) of his late, post-critical Metaphysics of Morals (1797), which part is devoted to the Law, Immanuel Kant tells us about a crime that is "deserving of death, with regard to which it still remains doubtful whether legislation is also authorized to impose the death penalty." This crime is "a mother's murder of her child."1 But Kant is not concerned with a Susan Smith, who drowned in an automobile submerged in a lake her properly, legally, conceived children. That it is "doubtful" that the law should be brought to bear against infanticide is reserved by Kant for a special case:
On the scarcity value of ecosystem services

Abstract In this exploratory paper, we first make a case for considering the scarcity value of ecosystem services in the analyses of jointly determined ecological–economic systems. Next, we point out that insight into the scarcity value of an ecosystem service can be gained generally by examining the manner in which the state of an ecosystem responds to changes in environmental conditions. Following this, we specialize our discussion to the case of eutrophication in lakes. This leads us to pose and analyze a stochastic control problem of lake management in which ecological thresholds are salient. Finally, we show that this stochastic control theoretic framework can be used to obtain a numerical value that is closely related to the scarcity value of an ecosystem service provided by lakes.
Turking Overtime: How Participant Characteristics and Behavior Vary Over Time and Day on Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Online experiments allow researchers to collect datasets at times not typical of laboratory studies. We recruit 2336 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk to examine if participant characteristics and behaviors differ depending on whether the experiment is conducted during the day versus night, and on weekdays versus weekends. Participants make incentivized decisions involving prosociality, punishment, and discounting, and complete a demographic and personality survey. We find no time or day differences in behavior, but do find that participants at nights and on weekends are less experienced with online studies; on weekends are less reflective; and at night are less conscientious and more neurotic. These results are largely robust to finer-grained measures of time and day. We also find that those who participated earlier in the course of the study are more experienced, reflective, and agreeable, but less charitable than later participants.
Shadow IT Use, Outcome Effects, and Subjective Performance Evaluation

Using shadow IT may be seen as either a form of organizational misbehavior or proactive and creative problem-solving. These perceptions have implications for the subjective evaluation of subordinate performance. In our experiment, participants choose whether to award a bonus to an employee when different IT systems are used across different outcome levels. We find that employees using shadow IT are less likely to receive the bonus in both high and low outcome conditions relative to employees using the normal IT system, suggesting that managers consider shadow IT usage an organizational misbehavior which casts a negative light on employee performance.
Rethinking the New Public Health

This article contributes to an emerging theoretical debate over the legitimate scope of public health law by linking it to a particular doctrinal debate that has arisen in the context of public nuisance litigation brought by state and local governments against industries that allegedly interfere with the public’s health. In response to evolving scientific understanding about the determinants of health, public health advocates are rapidly implementing new law and policy tools to alter our environments and behaviors in ways that improve health at the population level. These developments have prompted disagreement over the government’s legitimate role in ensuring access not just to health care, but to healthy living conditions and lifestyles. Critics of the “new public health” movement have sought to safeguard individual liberty by disconnecting the law and politics of public health from emerging science that highlights the crucial role of social, economic, and environmental factors in constraining individual behaviors and determining health outcomes. In the theoretical debate over the legitimate scope of public health law, critics are arguing that modern health threats like heart disease and diabetes are individual concerns not sufficiently public in nature to trigger doctrines that privilege state intervention over individual rights. In the doctrinal debate within public nuisance law, courts are struggling to define the meaning of “public rights,” interference with which is a key element of the public nuisance cause of action. In both debates, critics have rightly insisted that the public must be more than the mere aggregation of private interests. But the narrower conceptions of the public that they have put forth fail to account for the full scope of the state’s authority and responsibility for public health. This article stakes out a middle position that adopts the classically liberal view of public health law critics – that state interference with individual liberty requires robust justification – while also defining the public broadly so as to justify considerable state intervention under the banner of public health. Drawing on analysis of public nuisance litigation as a public health tool, I propose that epidemiological harms – which I define as those for which causation can be established at the population level, but not necessarily at the individual level – should be understood as public bads. This conception provides a more robust justification for new public health law that more firmly grounds it in the science of social epidemiology. 2 RETHINKING THE NEW PUBLIC HEALTH [14-Aug-11
La Révolte des Femmes: Economic Upheaval and the Gender of Political Authority in Lomé, Togo, 1931–33

In 1932 the governor of French Togoland announced an increase in taxes on Lome market women because of the economic downturn caused by the Depression. Both the indigenous city council and a clandestine resistance movement opposed this fiscal plan warning of social unrest. The strain triggered a protest by market women that spread beyond the colonial capital. This article offers a new explanation of the explosive tension by arguing that an organized male political campaign conjoined with a socioeconomic protest led by market women. It explores womens resistance as a performance of vodou ritual as a vehicle of shame and protest. Ultimately the violent culturally marked protests marked the gendered perimeters of political authority for both Ewe women and men and further defined Ewe market womens conception of an Ewe self and the emergence of conflicting and contested notions of "Eweness" as a prelude to the independence struggle. (authors)
The consequences of managerial indiscretions: Sex, lies, and firm value

Abstract Personal managerial indiscretions are separate from a firm's business activities but provide information about the manager's integrity. Consequently, they could affect counterparties’ trust in the firm and the firm's value and operations. We find that companies of accused executives experience significant wealth deterioration, reduced operating margins, and lost business partners. Indiscretions are also associated with an increased probability of unrelated shareholder-initiated lawsuits, Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations, and managed earnings. Further, chief executive officers and boards face labor market consequences, including forced turnover, pay cuts, and lower shareholder votes at re-election. Indiscretions occur more often at poorly governed firms where disciplinary turnover is less likely.
Risk taking in competition: Evidence from match play golf tournaments

Abstract We test hypotheses regarding risk taking behavior of competitors in settings characterized by one-on-one, single elimination tournaments. We draw data from 579 professional golf matches and over 18,000 holes from 2003 to 2013 in tournaments where match-play scoring is used rather than stroke-play. Because of the uniqueness of the data, we are able to provide clean empirical tests of how risk taking is affected by horizon effects (holes remaining), peer effects arising from heterogeneity in player abilities, match status (whether behind or ahead), and the difficulty of the task/project (hole). The findings are applicable to corporate settings where only a few rivals compete for a prize, such as a winning bid, a promotion, market share dominance, and patents. Other applications include litigation contests and political elections.
Aggregate Implications of Heterogeneous Households in a Sticky-Price Model

This paper analyzes the role of heterogeneous households in propagating shocks over the business cycle by generalizing a basic sticky-price model to allow for imperfect risk- sharing between households that dier in labor incomes. I show that imperfectly insured household consumption distorts household incentive to supply labor hours through an idiosyncratic income eect, which in turn generates strategic complementarities in price setting and thus ampli…es business cycle ‡uctuations. This mechanism diminishes the role of nominal rigidities and makes sticky-price models more consistent with microeco-
Regional development through place-based policies: Evidence from a spatial discontinuity

Abstract In 2002 the Indian government targeted the new state of Uttarakhand with massive improvements in infrastructure, a generous investment subsidy, and a complete exemption from corporate and excise taxes. I estimate the causal effect of this policy on economic development by exploiting the spatial discontinuity created by the new state border. Nighttime light emissions rise sharply in the targeted state, implying a 28 percent increase in output. Village public goods, farm employment, and proxies for household welfare rise in tandem. I rule out that the effect is driven by decentralization of policy, improvements in business regulations, or differential trends at the border.
In the Name of the Child: Race, Gender, and Economics in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court decided Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, holding that the Indian Child Welfare Act did not permit the Cherokee father in that case to object to termination of his parental rights. The case was ostensibly about a dispute between prospective adoptive parents and a biological father. But this Article demonstrates that it was about a lot more than that. It was a microcosm of anxieties about Indianness, race, and the changing nature of parenthood. While made in the name of the child, moreover, the decision supports practices and policies that do not forward and may even undermine children’s interests. Drawing on published and unpublished court records and testimony, this Article reveals that the Court’s portrayal of the facts of the case was wrong. Instead of a deadbeat dad acting as a spoiler in the adoption of the daughter he had abandoned, the birth father sought to parent his daughter from the moment he learned his fiancee was pregnant. He was initially prevented from learning of the adoption plan by the actions of the other parties and their attorneys. The decision distorted the law as well, doing violence to long-accepted interpretations of the statute at issue. Why did the Court mischaracterize the facts and the law? This Article examines the narratives of the interests of the child, racial color-blindness, and even women’s rights that surrounded the case to reveal that the decision in fact rested on racialization and colonialism of Indian people, condemnation of poor single mothers, economic interests of private adoption facilitators, and the class divides in modern paths to parenthood. INTRODUCTION 296 I. FIXING THE FACTS, EXPLAINING THE LAW 300 A. Facts 301 B. The Legal Battle 310 II. THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD? 319 * Thomas F. Gallivan Jr. Professor, University of Connecticut School of Law. Thanks to Jon Bauer, Kristen Carpenter, Paul Chill, Anne Dailey, Kathryn Fort, Alexandra Lahav, Solangel Maldonado, Hugh McGill, Chrissi Nimmo, James Stark, Gerald Torres, and Colette Routel; to participants at presentations at the American Association of Law Schools Annual Conference, the Stanford Law School Native American Law Students Association Conference, and the University of Connecticut School of Law; and to the Tribal Relations Committee of the Conference of Chief Justices of State Supreme Courts. 1 Berger: In the Name of the Child: Race, Gender, and Economics in Adop Published by UF Law Scholarship Repository, 2016 296 FLORIDA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 67 III. 3/256THS: DISTORTIONS OF RACE IN THE NAME OF EQUALITY 325 A. The Making of a Meme 326 B. Disputing the “Undisputed” 327 C. Settler Colonialism for a Modern Era 329 D. Equal Protection Evasions 333 IV. MARGINALIZING MOTHERS 336 A. The Rise and Fall of Constitutional Rights of Unmarried Fathers 336 B. Links Between Denigration of Unmarried Fathers and Condemnation of Poor Single Mothers 343 V. ECONOMICS 350 A. State Interests 350 B. Adoption Industry Interests 353 C. Class and Paths to Parenthood 356 CONCLUSION 360
What Makes Them Tick? Employee Motives and Firm Innovation

Economists studying innovation and technological change have made significant progress toward understanding firms' profit incentives as drivers of innovation. However, innovative performance in firms should also depend heavily on the pecuniary and nonpecuniary motives of the employees actually working in research and development. Using data on more than 1,700 Ph.D. scientists and engineers, we examine the relationships between individuals' motives (e.g., desire for intellectual challenge, income, or responsibility) and their innovative performance. We find that motives matter, but different motives have very different effects: Motives regarding intellectual challenge, independence, and money have a strong positive relationship with innovative output, whereas motives regarding job security and responsibility tend to have a negative relationship. We also explore possible mechanisms underlying the observed relationships between motives and performance. Although hours worked (quantity of effort) have a strong positive effect on performance, motives appear to affect innovative performance primarily via other dimensions of effort (character of effort). Finally, we find some evidence that the role of motives differs in upstream research versus downstream development.
Probably - Understanding Tax Law's Uncertainty

This Article analyzes the meaning of probability statements in tax law and in scholarship addressing civil tax penalties. Specifically, the Article draws on economics and the philosophy of mathematics to argue that because tax law is substantively uncertain, some probability statements in tax law are best understood as a reflection of the speaker's belief, rather than as a description of the number of times a given event will occur over the long run out of the number of times that it could occur. That is, these tax probability statements are best understood using a subjectivist interpretation of probability, rather than frequentist interpretation. Prior work in tax law scholarship in particular, and law and economics in general, has glossed over or misunderstood this crucial distinction. Understanding that probability statements in tax law should be given a subjectivist interpretation changes both the theory and the practice of tax compliance. First, because tax probabilities represent beliefs, different parties - for example, Congress (the penalty-setter) on the one hand, and taxpayers on the other - may have different perceptions of the chances that a given transaction is permissible, and economic models should reflect these possibly disparate beliefs. Second, a subjectivist interpretation of tax probabilities provides additional support for stringent and much-criticized laws that regulate the substance of tax advisors' written opinions, as these strict rules may actually help tax advisors arrive at more accurate, less biased estimates of the chance that a tax position would be upheld by a court. And finally, a subjectivist interpretation suggests that lawmakers should be cautious of reducing tax law's uncertainty. If, as empirical work suggests, some taxpayers have an aversion to uncertainty, the uncertainty associated with whether certain questionable transactions are permitted (aside from any penalties imposed if transactions do turn out to be forbidden) may itself reduce the number of taxpayers who engage in these transactions.