cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
War as Punishment

For more than a thousand years, just war theorists accepted that wars could be launched to punish or avenge wrongdoing, the war itself being an instrument of retribution. Today, this punishment theory of just cause has completely disappeared from international law, which recognizes only individual and collective self-defense as legitimate cause for war. But retributive emotions are as strong today as ever, and the punishment theory is still alive and well in the moral imaginations of modern societies, even if the diplomats and lawyers scrub it from their official pronouncements about the wars their nations fight. Furthermore, intuitions about enemy collective guilt underlie current debates over who counts as a direct participant in hostilities, how voluntary human shields should be treated, and how much risk soldiers must take to minimize casualties among enemy civilians. This paper addresses two principal questions: how we got from there to here - that is, from just war theories that embraced the punishment theory to its current erasure - and whether the punishment theory may nevertheless be right. In answer to the first question, the paper traces the punishment theory from its initial formulation in writings of St. Augustine (whose views it examines in detail) through its medieval and early modern defenses, to its rejection by Kant and Vattel. Defenders of the theory, notably Cajetan, viewed punitive war through the lens of criminal justice by which states punish miscreants; they argued that natural reason cannot accept notorious unpunished wrongdoing. Those who rejected the theory did so because it requires one state to judge the conduct of another. This objection raises two distinct issues: violation of sovereign equality, and biased judgment. The paper rejects the sovereignty objection, but elaborates the biased judgment objection by examining the distinction between retribution and revenge. These arguments lead to five objections to the punishment theory: (1) It places punishment in the hands of a biased judge, namely the aggrieved party, which (2) makes it more likely to be vengeance than retributive justice. (3) Vengeance does not follow the fundamental condition of just retribution, namely proportionality between punishment and offense. (4) Furthermore, punishment through warmaking is collective punishment that punishes the wrong people, and (5) it employs the wrong methods. Ultimately, Cajetan's concerns about unpunished wrongdoing argue for international criminal law, not punitive warfare.
Using a Simulated Case File to Teach Civil Procedure: The Ninety-Percent Solution

Introduction Civil procedure is tough.1 As civil procedure legend Jay Tidmarsh writes in Strategies and Techniques for Teaching Civil Procedure: “So you’ve just been assigned to teach Civil Procedure. Congratulations! You are now teaching the class that, for many of your (and my) students, is the most mystifying, frustrating, and difficult course in their first year of law school.”2 Two big sources of student frustration are (1) their inability to view the course materials in a context that makes them seem real, and (2) our failure to engage them through active learning. I believe we can solve (well, address) these problems by using a semester-long simulated case to help structure the course, while preserving the time needed to cover the core material of the course. In Part I of this article I briefly introduce my case file, Patt v. Donner,3 and explain why I think it is well-suited to teaching this difficult course. In Part II, I briefly review the literature on the reasons context and active learning matter
The Social Discount Rate

What discount rate should be applied to social investments? It is standard to use the market interest rate, thereby respecting private preferences. We show that application of this “revealed preference” criterion rests on faith, not on logic. It is justified only if preferences over all choices, including past choices, are time invariant. The conditions for this to be true are stringent. Under more reasonable conditions, policy makers should be more patient than private citizens, whose choices define the most short‐sighted Pareto optimum.
Law and Morality at War

Through a critical engagement with Jeremy Waldron’s work, as well as the work of other writers, I offer an account of the relative scope of the morality of war, the laws of war, and war crimes. I propose an instrumentalist account of the laws of war, according to which the laws of war should help soldiers conform to the morality of war. The instrumentalist account supports Waldron’s conclusion that the laws of war justifiably prohibit attacks on civilians even if it turns out that some civilians lack a moral right not to be killed. Importantly, the instrumentalist account also offers what Waldron thinks impossible: a non-consequentialist defense of the failure of the laws of war to prohibit the killing of nonthreatening combatants. Finally, I argue that new war crimes can be broader than the morality of war as well as established laws of war and that many of the arguments for defining war crimes more narrowly than either the morality of war or the laws of war are unconvincing. In all of these ways, I hope to carry forward Waldron’s project of exploring the relationship between law and morality in war.
Rien ne Va Plus? Distinguishing domestic regulation from market access in GATT and GATS

Depending on how one classifies market intervention, trade liberalization disciplines can be lenient or strict. Perhaps the most important distinction in this respect is that between government intervention labeled as a ‘market access restriction’ and that defined as ‘domestic regulation’. Both the GATT and the GATS declare market access restrictions (such as import quotas or limitations on the number of service suppliers) to be, in principle, prohibited. In contrast, domestic regulations (such as internal taxes, health standards, and safety requirements) are treated with much more deference. They are, in essence, only prohibited when discriminatory or more trade restrictive than necessary. Notwithstanding these major legal consequences, the distinction between market access and domestic regulation remains unclear. Based on a recent WTO dispute condemning the United States for banning online gambling, this article is an attempt to clarify the distinction. Starting from broad similarities, it finds crucial differences in this respect between GATT and GATS. For both, however, the paper's basic point is that a domestic regulation should not be regarded as a market access restriction simply because it has the effect of banning certain imports. To do otherwise risks seriously undermining the regulatory autonomy of WTO Members beyond anything imagined by the drafters of the WTO treaty.
Academic Success and the Transfer of Community College Credits in the Principles of Economics

A growing number of today's college students attend local 2-year community colleges. Many of these students will ultimately transfer to major universities in pursuit of the traditional Bachelors de...
Supply Chain Contract Design: Impact of Bounded Rationality and Individual Heterogeneity

In this article, we model various forms of non-optimizing behavior in a newsvendor setting, including biases such as recency, reinforcement, demand chasing, and anchoring, as well as unsystematic decision errors. We assume that a newsvendor may evaluate decisions by examining both past outcomes and future expected payoffs. Our model is motivated by laboratory observations under several types of supply chain contracts. Ordering decisions are found to follow multi-modal distributions that are dependent on contract structures and incentives. We differ from previous research by using statistics to determine which behavioral factors are applicable to each decision maker. A great deal of heterogeneity was discovered, indicating the importance of calibrating a contract to the individual. Our analysis also shows that the profit performance and the effectiveness of co-ordinating contracts can be affected by non-optimizing behaviors significantly. We conclude that, in addition to the aggregate order quantities, the decision distributions should be considered in designing contracts.
Relationship of saving motives to saving habits.

© 2012 Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education®. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 63 Introduction Household saving is important because it affects a family’s level of living, emergency reserves, and the ability to meet financial goals such as making purchases using cash rather than credit (Anong & Devaney, 2010; Hira, 1987; Lee, Park, & Montalto, 2000). Saving out of current income is necessary for retirement security, for helping renters become homeowners without excessive risks, and for dealing with emergency situations (Yuh & Hanna, 2010). Livingstone and Lunt (1993) found regular savers to have different psychological motivations than borrowers, viewing debt either as a failure or as a normal part of everyday life. Those who saved while simultaneously having debt felt more optimistic and in control of their lives than those with debt but no savings (Furnham, 1997). Aggregate personal and household saving also directly impacts the economy as a whole (Hira, 1987), and personal saving is increasingly necessary for retirement security as responsibility for this long-term savings goal shifts from employers and the government to individuals (Center for Retirement Research, 2005).
MASON RebeLand: An Agent-Based Model of Politics, Environment, and Insurgency

Funding for this study was provided by the Center for Social Complexity of George Mason University and by ONR MURI grant no. N00014-08-1-0921.
Is the First Amendment Obsolete

The First Amendment was a dead letter for much of American history. Unfortunately, there is reason to fear it is entering a new period of political irrelevance. We live in a golden age of efforts by governments and other actors to control speech, discredit and harass the press, and manipulate public debate. Yet as these efforts mount, and the expressive environment deteriorates, the First Amendment has been confined to a narrow and frequently irrelevant role. Hence the question — when it comes to political speech in the twenty-first century, is the First Amendment obsolete? The most important change in the expressive environment can be boiled down to one idea: it is no longer speech itself that is scarce, but the attention of listeners. Emerging threats to public discourse take advantage of this change. Instead of targeting speakers directly, it targets listeners or it undermines speakers indirectly. More precisely, emerging techniques of speech control depend on (1) a range of new punishments, like unleashing “troll armies” to abuse the press and other critics, and (2) “fooding” tactics (sometimes called “reverse censorship”) that distort or drown out disfavored speech through the creation and dissemination of fake news, the payment of fake commentators, and the deployment of propaganda robots.
The Efficiency of Labor Input in the Tree Nut Growers Industry: A Stochastic Frontier Production Approach Study in Butte County, California

This paper aims to examine the contribution of the labor input to agricultural production efficiency. If an increase in numbers of labor does not increase production efficiency, we should have reason to question the current quantity-oriented labor policies in terms of solving the labor shortage issue. In addition, we want to examine the marginal rate of technical substitution (MRTS) between the labor input and other inputs. The MRTS will provide a clear idea of how labor can be replaced with other inputs without losing total production. Finally, the influence of farm labor on economies of scale and economies of scope will also be discussed. We will investigate whether the scale and size of the farm has a significant role in determining production efficiency for our target farmers.
Recent changes in disclosure regulation: Description and evidence

Abstract Technology has dramatically reduced the cost of disclosing information to investors and created new conduits for securities' sales. The result is stock ownership, both direct and indirect, has never been more widely distributed. Equally important, changes have occurred in the institutional market for new offerings. Bought deals, Internet road shows, the preeminence of mutual funds and pension funds, and foreign investors and issuers have changed the market. In the wake of these changes, the SEC's disclosure policy has evolved. The evidence suggests we have moved from a world where information was released relatively infrequently and with significant lags to a world where information is released relatively rapidly on a continuous basis to as many investors as possible.
Liquidity and Market Crashes

In this paper, we develop an equilibrium model for stock market liquidity and its impact on asset prices when constant market presence is costly. We show that even when agents' trading needs are perfectly matched, costly market presence prevents them from synchronizing their trades and hence gives rise to endogenous order imbalances and the need for liquidity. Moreover, the endogenous liquidity need, when it occurs, is characterized by excessive selling of significant magnitudes. Such liquidity-driven selling leads to market crashes in the absence of any aggregate shocks. Finally, we show that illiquidity in the market leads to high expected returns, negative and asymmetric return serial correlation, and a positive relation between trading volume and future returns. We also propose new measures of liquidity based on its asymmetric impact on prices and demonstrate a negative relation between these measures and expected stock returns.
FTC v. Actavis, Inc.: When Is the Rule of Reason Not the Rule of Reason?

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in FTC v. Actavis, Inc.2 brings some resolution to the decade-long dispute over the level of antitrust scrutiny that is appropriate for evaluating the legality of “reverse payment” or “pay-for-delay” agreements settling pharmaceutical patent infringement litigation between brand-name and generic drug companies. I have written at length about this topic before and need not devote time and space to rehashing the facts or the arguments in favor of various proposed approaches.3 Suffice to say that in the past I argued against the Eleventh Circuit’s “scope-of-the-
Viewers vs. doers. The relationship between watching food television and BMI.

Abstract The objective of this study was to examine where nutritional gatekeepers obtain information about new foods, and whether information source is associated with Body Mass Index (BMI), as well as whether any association varied according to how often the participant cooked from scratch. A national panel survey of 501 females aged 20–35 assessed how participants obtained information on new recipes, and asked a series of questions about their cooking habits, their weight and height. Linear regressions were run to determine associations between information source, cooking from scratch, and BMI. Obtaining information from cooking shows was positively correlated with BMI (p
Bounded memory, overparameterized forecast rules, and instability

Abstract We consider an environment in which traders with finite memory update their forecast rules at random intervals by OLS. In this context, overparameterization of the forecast rules can destabilize the learning dynamics. This instability tends to be attenuated by greater memory and less frequent updating.
Unconventional Insights for Managing Stakeholder Trust

Initiatives to build and maintain trust with various stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers and investors, have risen to the top of the executive agenda at many organizations. But the problem is that most companies don't really understand how to manage stakeholder trust effectively. In fact, the authors' research suggests that many of the trust-building initiatives and approaches that organizations invest in may be of questionable value. Others might actually be counterproductive. One of the reasons managing stakeholder trust is difficult is because there are many different stakeholder groups, each with its own particular needs and perspective. That is, trust is multidimensional, and it's not obvious which dimension executives need to focus on when dealing with any particular constituency. What, for example, is more important for building trust with employees and customers: a reputation for kind-hearted benevolence or for fair-minded integrity? To answer such questions, the authors conducted a study of stakeholder trust in four different organizations. The research analyzed the relevance (if any) of various factors: benevolence, integrity, managerial competence, technical competence, transparency and value congruence. In essence, the study asked what matters � and to whom. Some of the results were unexpected, and a few were even counterintuitive, leading to the following key insights: Transparency is overrated; integrity is not enough; the right kind of competence matters; building trust with one group can destroy it with another; and value congruence matters across the board. The new framework challenges some existing beliefs and sheds light on a number of areas that companies would be wise not to ignore. Indeed, as the authors illustrate, fundamental misunderstandings about stakeholder trust have tripped up a number of corporations, including Coca-Cola, Google, Apple, Delta Air Lines, Mattel and Sprint. In the future, a deeper knowledge of stakeholder trust will help businesses become more adept at managing stakeholder trust so that they can reap the numerous benefits, including improved cooperation with suppliers, increased motivation and productivity among employees, enhanced loyalty from customers and higher levels of support from investors.
Symposium: Building the Arc of Justice: The Life and Legal Thought of Derrick Bell: Foreword

The four articles in this Symposium issue pay tribute to the work of Professor Derrick Bell by building on his challenges to the permanence of racial domination, to the potential limitations of good will inherent in the concept of interest convergence, and to the question of permanence not just of racism, but of other systemic biases since recognized, written on, and litigated. The articles range from the 19th century to the hegemonic war on terror; from Latin identity as a disruptive force, to recognition of subjugated identities allowing for the creation of coalitions to end oppression.
Simultaneous board and CEO diversity: does it increase firm value?

AbstractThere remain open questions regarding whether board of director ethnic and gender diversity increases or decreases firm value. Additionally, prior research has yet to examine the value effects of a diverse board in the presence of a gender/ethnic minority CEO. Using the KLD social ratings database, we examine 13 000 firm-years and provide robust evidence that board diversity increases firm value. However, we also show that any value added via board diversity is nullified when a diverse board operates in the presence of a female and/or minority CEO. Results suggest that a significant portion of the value in board diversity may come from gender/ethnic differences between the board members and the CEO. One implication of our study is that when hiring a CEO or electing directors relative gender/ethnic make-up is important.
A Short Note on Translating Thomas Hardy’s Biblical Allusions

In one of the many moving passages in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles , the heroine baptizes her dying child Sorrow. It is worth examining the following scene: “Her figure looked singularly tall and imposing as she stood in her long white nightgown, a thick cable of twisted dark hair hanging straight down her back to her waist. The kindly dimness of the weak candle abstracted from her form and features the little blemishes which sunlight might have revealed ─ the stubble scratches upon her wrists, and the weariness of her eyes ─ her high enthusiasm having a transfiguring effect upon the face which had been her undoing, showing it as a thing of immaculate beauty, with an impress of dignity which was almost regal. The little ones kneeling round, their sleepy eyes blinking and red, awaited her preparations full of a suspended wonder which their physical heaviness at that hour would not allow to become active” (my emphasis, 94).
The Dog that Didn't Bark: Stealth Procedures and the Erosion of Stare Decisis in the Federal Courts of Appeals

Informal en banc review is a procedural expedient that nine of the thirteen federal circuits use to circumvent the requirements of formal en banc review. Panels invoke informal en banc review to overrule prior panel precedent in contravention of the law of the circuit rule, as well as to take other actions normally reserved for the full court sitting en banc. The circuits that use informal en banc review say the procedure is to be used rarely. In practice, however, the frequency of informal en banc review is significant when compared with formal en banc review. Informal en banc review is a stealth procedure that is virtually beyond review because the federal appellate courts both authorize and implement it on their own. The procedure is difficult to track because the action triggering informal en banc review is often buried in footnotes. Informal en banc review is more efficient than formal en banc review, but the efficiency benefits come at a price. Informal en banc review is used arbitrarily. Courts should not hide changes to the law in footnotes because their actions should be transparent, and using footnotes to change the law makes legal research difficult. The procedure appears to be used disproportionately in criminal cases, and in all cases in which it is used, it deprives the parties of the opportunity to participate in the decisional process. The procedure can also damage judicial collegiality by depriving minority-view judges of opportunities to present their views. Informal en banc opinions inject uncertainty into the system of precedent because their precedential status is unclear. Further, informal en banc review can result in poor decision making when changes to the law are based on incomplete information. This Article explores informal en banc review in depth. It traces the history and use of informal en banc review by detailing the circumstances under which the procedure is used. It then analyzes the advantages and
Patent licensing and bargaining with innovative complements and substitutes

Abstract Inventors and producers bargain over royalties to license multiple patented inventions. In the first stage of the bargaining game, inventors offer licenses to producers and producers demand licenses. In the second stage of the game, inventors and producers engage in bilateral bargaining over licensing royalties. The analysis shows that there is a unique weakly dominant strategy equilibrium in license offers. The main result is that this bargaining procedure maximizes the joint profits of inventors and producers. Licensing royalties are less than bundled monopoly royalties. The efficiency of the bargaining outcome contrasts with the inefficiency of patent royalties in the Cournot posted prices model. The analysis explores the implications of the main results for antitrust policy concerns including Standard Essential Patent holdup, royalty stacking, patent thickets, the Tragedy of the Anticommons, and justification for patent pools. The discussion also considers how imperfect intellectual property rights affect bargaining over royalties.
Fee pressure and audit quality

Abstract This study investigates the association of audit fee pressure with an inverse measure of audit quality, misstatements in audited data, during the recent recession. Fee pressure in a year is measured as the difference between benchmark “normal” audit fees and actual audit fees. We find fee pressure is positively and significantly associated with accounting misstatements in 2008, the center of the recession. Our results suggest that auditors made fee concessions to some clients in 2008, and that fee pressure was associated with reduced audit quality in that year.
Terrorism, Spoiling, and the Resolution of Civil Wars

Civil war combatants use terrorism frequently, yet we understand little about terrorism’s effects on war resolution. It is assumed that the primary combatants to a war hold a veto over resolution, but less attention has been devoted to whether the use of terrorism can derail peace agreements. We contend that even terrorism, a generally low intensity form of violence, can make civil war peace processes less likely to conclude in a peaceful, durable resolution. Using a new and large geographically coded database of terrorism in civil wars, we find that the use of terrorism can spoil peace processes by prolonging the duration of a war hastening the time until recurrence. Our argument and results add to the literature on civil wars by explicating the process linking terrorism to war duration and outcome. More generally, the results underscore the importance of investigating different varieties of political violence during civil conflict.
Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant: On Markets, Duties, and Moral Sentiments

This note points out a neglected parallel between the philosophies of Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant related to their views on self-interest, morality, and society. First, I explain the distinction between Kant’s perfect and imperfect duties, and how they result from his moral philosophy. Next, I summarize Smith’s two major perspectives on human behavior, as presented in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, and discuss the apparent conflict between them. Finally, I use Kant’s two types of duties, along with his concept of the kingdom of ends, to explicate my interpretation of the relationship between Smith’s two strains of thought. By explaining these dual aspects of Kant’s ethical system in relation to Smith, I hope to give a new perspective on the apparent duality in Smith’s thought, as well as help bring out the oft-neglected social aspects of Kant’s.
Theories of the Firm–Market Boundary

A central role of the entrepreneur-manager is assembling a strategic bundle of complementary assets and activities, either existing or foreseen, which when combined create value for the firm. This ...
The Changing Process of International Law and the Role of the World Court

The U.S. withdrawal of its declaration accepting the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and its withdrawal from the ICJ proceedings in the Nicaragua v. U.S. case caused a crisis of confidence in the Court that continues today. The underlying premise of advocates of ICJ jurisdiction has been that increased participation in ICJ jurisdiction would help resolve disputes and promote respect for the Court and international law. A new declaration by the United States, however, would be a triumph of form over substance. The United States has never effectively accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court and the many proposals to re-accept it are similarly illusory. More importantly, the compulsory jurisdiction system assumes a level of agreement on both the substantive content of customary international law and on the process of norm creation that does not exist in the modern world. The little used and nearly powerless World Court is not the proper institution to resolve fundamental disagreements about the content of norms and how international law is made. The Court lacks both the authority to do so and the power to impose its decisions. Unlike a domestic supreme court, the World Court is not the final interpreter of international law. Its jurisdictional mandate is limited to disputes voluntarily referred to it either by an ad hoc agreement or by a prior acceptance of jurisdiction. There is, as yet, no common ethos of values, no constitution with vague natural law provisions such as due process, equal protection, or natural justice entrusted to the Court to interpret and impose on all states.
DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL IGNORANCE

Abstract Advocates of “deliberative democracy” want citizens to actively participate in serious dialogue over political issues, not merely go to the polls every few years. Unfortunately, these ideals don't take into account widespread political ignorance and irrationality. Most voters neither attain the level of knowledge needed to make deliberative democracy work, nor do they rationally evaluate the political information they do possess. The vast size and complexity of modern government make it unlikely that most citizens can ever reach the levels of knowledge and rationality required by deliberative democracy, even if they were better informed than they are at present.
Mutual Dependency in Child Welfare

The child welfare system is in need of fundamental reform. To the great detriment of parents and children, in the current system the state waits for a crisis in a family and then intervenes in a heavy-handed fashion. The state pays scant attention to the prevention of child abuse and neglect. This Article argues that the principle conceptual barrier to the adoption of a prevention-oriented approach to child welfare is the dominant conception of family autonomy, which venerates freedom from state control. This Article proposes a novel reconfiguration of family autonomy that encourages engagement with the state, rather than simply freedom from the state. An “engagement with” model of family-state relations is both a more apt description of the actual relationship between all families and the state and a better prescription for the well-being of families. This model recognizes the mutual dependency of families and the state: families need state support to function well, and the state needs well-functioning families. State support, however, must not come at the cost of familial selfdetermination, a principle nominally served by the “freedom from” conception of family autonomy. Therefore, this Article addresses how the state can both provide a more robust level of support for families while still
Moral Bias in Large Elections: Theory and Experimental Evidence

In this article, we provide evidence that voters in large elections tend to vote against their material self-interest and to vote for a morally or ethically appealing alternative. It may seem puzzling that voters might behave differently in small elections than they do in large ones. However, we show that such behavior is a logical consequence of voters having a conflict between obtaining a better material outcome and choosing a moral action. We develop a simple model of this conflict and show that decreasing the probability that a single vote is decisive (i.e., pivot probability) reduces the importance of outcomes relative to actions in voter decision making. Because pivot probability is generally small in large elections, alternatives that are understood by voters to be morally superior are more likely to win in large elections than in small ones. Thus, compared to the preferences of voters, election results will be biased in favor of moral alternatives. 1 The model produces a set of predictions that we test in a laboratory experiment. To clarify ideas, consider a situation in which two outcomes are possible: A and B. Assume that B gives
Graph universal cycles of combinatorial objects

Abstract A connected digraph in which the in-degree of any vertex equals its out-degree is Eulerian; this baseline result is used as the basis of existence proofs for universal cycles (also known as ucycles or generalized deBruijn cycles or U-cycles) of several combinatorial objects. The existence of ucycles is often dependent on the specific representation that we use for the combinatorial objects. For example, should we represent the subset { 2 , 5 } of { 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 } as “25” in a linear string? Is the representation “52” acceptable? Or is it tactically advantageous (and acceptable) to go with { 0 , 1 , 0 , 0 , 1 } ? In this paper, we represent combinatorial objects as graphs, as in [3] , and exhibit the flexibility and power of this representation to produce graph universal cycles, or Gucycles, for k-subsets of an n-set; permutations (and classes of permutations) of [ n ] = { 1 , 2 , … , n } , and partitions of an n-set, thus revisiting the classes first studied in [5] . Under this graphical scheme, we will represent { 2 , 5 } as the subgraph A of C 5 with edge set consisting of { 2 , 3 } and { 5 , 1 } , namely the “second” and “fifth” edges in C 5 . Permutations are represented via their permutation graphs, and set partitions through disjoint unions of complete graphs.
Do Investors Look Beyond Insured Triple–A Rating? An Analysis of Standard & Poor’s Underlying Ratings

This article demonstrates that for insured municipal bonds, revelation of underlying ratings can be an effective mechanism for further alleviating the information asymmetry problems found in the municipal bond market. Due to the prevalence of municipal bond insurance, investors are increasingly relying on the underlying ratings of insured bonds in gauging the relative riskiness of these bonds. For a sample of 697 municipal bonds issued in 1998, the results indicate that Standard & Poor’s underlying ratings are able to reduce borrowing cost by four basis points, due to the additional information provided through these ratings.
Hostility in Takeovers: In the Eyes of the Beholder?

This paper examines whether hostile takeovers can be distinguished from friendly takeovers, empirically, based on accounting and stock performance data. Much has been made of this distinction in both the popular and the academic literature, where gains from hostile takeovers result from replacing incumbent managers and gains from friendly takeovers result from strategic synergies. Alternatively, hostility could reflect strategic choices made by the bidder or the target. Empirical tests show that most deals described as hostile in the press are not distinguishable from friendly deals in economic terms, except that hostile transactions involve publicity as part of the bargaining process.
RELEVANCE OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT THEORY AND RESEARCH FOR SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

This article examines the relevance of several prominent theoretical perspectives in strategic management for supply chain management. The resource-based view of the firm, transaction cost economics, organization learning theory and social capital are reviewed for their applicability to important research questions in supply chain management. The work includes a discussion of some common strategic management research methods that can be useful in supply chain management research. The paper concludes that the research in strategic management and supply chain management are complementary and that both fields could benefit from more integration of the work from both.
Optimal Procurement Mechanisms for Assembly

This paper investigates mechanisms by which a powerful original equipment manufacturers procures multiple inputs for assembly from suppliers with privately informed costs, either simultaneously or ...
The Credible Executive

Legal and constitutional theory has focused chiefly on the risk that voters and legislators will trust an ill-motivated executive. This paper addresses the risk that voters and legislators will fail to trust a well-motivated executive. Absent some credible signal of benign motivations, voters will be unable to distinguish good from bad executives and will thus withhold discretion that they would have preferred to grant, making all concerned worse off. We suggest several mechanisms with which a well-motivated executive can credibly signal his type, including independent commissions within the executive branch; bipartisanship in appointments to the executive branch, or more broadly the creation of domestic coalitions of the willing; the related tactic of counter- partisanship, or choosing policies that run against the preferences of the president's own party; commitments to multilateral action in foreign policy; increasing the transparency of the executive's decisionmaking processes; and a regime of strict liability for executive abuses. We explain the conditions under which these mechanisms succeed or fail, with historical examples.
Strategic complementarities and search market equilibrium

Abstract In this paper, we apply supermodular game theory to the equilibrium search literature with sequential search. We identify necessary and sufficient conditions for the pricing game to exhibit strategic complementarities and prove existence of equilibrium. We then show that price dispersion is inherently incompatible with strategic complementarities in the sense that the Diamond Paradox obtains when firms are identical and is robust within the class of search cost densities that are small near zero and support strategic complementarities. We also show that a major criticism of the literature, that agents act as if they know the distribution of prices, can be justified in the sense of convergent best response dynamics.
Retaining Diversity in the Classroom: Strategies for Maximizing the Benefits that Flow from a Diverse Student Body

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the United States Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether diversity is a sufficiently compelling government interest to justify an affirmative action program that considered race and ethnicity in allocating law school admission offers. The Court determined that diversity was a compelling interest, resolving the conflict in the federal circuits on that issue. In this article, Goodman argues that the courts must examine the tightness of the fit between the goal of either achieving diversity or of realizing the benefits that flow from a diverse student body, and the means used to try to accomplish either of these particular goals. In Part II of this article, Goodman contends that diversity, and the benefits that flow from that diversity, are worth pursuing now that its stature as a compelling interest continues to hold a majority of the United States Supreme Court. Recognizing the critiques of the diversity rationale, as provided by other scholars, Part II also summarizes and responds to some of those critiques. Part III of this article presents concrete strategies for faculty to use in the classroom to help maximize the benefits of any existing diversity, to help retain that existing diversity, and to promote a higher appreciation of diversity within a law school community. Goodman concludes the article with a call to action to maximize these benefits of diversity before the doors to access shut further.
The political economy of fixed exchange rate regimes: The experience of post-communist countries

Abstract Exchange rate policy changes are not only a function of economic conditions, but are also fundamentally related to political processes. This paper analyzes the propensity of policy makers to relax fixed exchange rate regimes by performing regular realignments. The argument is that when information is scarce as in transition countries in the 1990s, adherence to visible exchange rate commitments gives left wing politicians, the former communists, a useful mechanism to improve their reputation. Empirically, the paper uses a duration model to analyze monthly realignment data from former communist countries from 1990 to 1999 and assesses how a broad range of political and economic factors influence the duration of government fixed rate commitments. In particular, one of the robust findings is that left wing governments are associated with a lower risk of fixed rate realignment.
E-BUYER BEWARE: WHY ONLINE AUCTION FRAUD SHOULD BE REGULATED

Well-settled principles of law, such as those encompassing fraud in its various forms, have long maintained their vitality, adapting to changes in the legal and business environments through judicial and legislative interpretation and intervention. Many of these changes have manifested themselves in the world of commerce. The creation and development of the Internet has resulted in significant changes in the way people engage in commerce. The increasing popularity of the Internet as a medium of commerce has generated an increase in Internet fraud, raising new and challenging legal issues in areas including online auctions. Under current law, a defrauded participant in an online auction transaction has no recourse against the online auction site that facilitated and controlled the auction transaction and claimed a percentage of the transaction price as its fee. Online auction sites can and do legally disclaim any responsibility for fraud occurring on their sites. Because of the lack of meaningful consumer protection with respect to online auctions in the form of consumer education efforts and appropriate regulation and effective enforcement thereof, the rising numbers of online auction fraud victims are left with no meaningful avenues of relief.The increased popularity of the Internet and the huge volume of e-commerce transactions have generated opportunities for cyber crimes and torts, including various forms of Internet fraud. The Internet offers low-cost communication, the capacity to reach a global audience, and a presumptive veneer of credibility stemming from the anonymity of cyberspace. Thus, Internet users may find it hard to distinguish genuine sources of information from fraudulent sources, creating a fertile environment for all kinds of Internet fraud. This article examines the most commonly reported form of Internet fraud, online auction fraud. Part I discusses fraud in the context of online auctions, highlighting the increasing numbers of reported cases and the most common forms of online auction fraud. Part II examines two prominent online auction fraud cases, and illustrates the critical need both to protect consumers from being victimized by online auction fraud and to provide opportunities for meaningful relief in the event that consumers are so victimized. Part III offers suggested areas for regulation to protect consumers from online auction fraud, and further provides an examination and evaluation of the responses to online auction fraud by various consumer and law enforcement groups. Part IV examines the response of online auction sites to online auction fraud. Part V is an examination of some forms of online alternative dispute resolution. Because of the lack of meaningful consumer protection stemming from the lack of appropriate regulation and effective enforcement thereof, and the dearth of consumer education with respect to online auction fraud, online alternative dispute resolution remains one of the only available avenues of relief for victims of online auction fraud.
The global distribution of trademarks - some stylized facts

Trademarks are words, signs, symbols, or combinations thereof that identify goods as manufactured by a particular person or a company, therefore allowing consumers to distinguish between goods originating in different sources. Trademarks belong to the wider family of intellectual property rights (IPRs), and once registered benefit from legal protection against unauthorized use by entities other than the legal owner. While some suggest that cross-border registrations of IPRs may be associated with welfare transfers from developing to industrial countries, surprisingly little is known about an important component of the global IPR system, namely, the worldwide distribution of trademark registrations. This study provides the first step in filling this gap in the literature. Its purpose is to present some new stylized facts which emerge from the analysis of a dataset compiled by the authors based on the statistical information published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Questions of interest include the distribution of trademarks between countries of different income levels, the share of trademark registrations accounted for by foreign residents and its variation across different income groups, the extent to which poor countries participate in the international trademark system, and the distribution of registrations across different sectors of the economy.
Creating Norms of Attorney Conduct in International Tribunals: A Case Study of the ICTY

Using the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) as a case study, this Article explores the merger of legal cultures at the ICTY. The ICTY was crafted in a high-stakes international environment and brings together lawyers and judges who have been trained and inculcated typically in a common law/adversarial system or a civil law/non-adversarial system. Lawyers and judges come to the ICTY not only with a distinct understanding of their roles within their home jurisdictions, but also with different skill sets. Merging the legal cultures has not always been smooth. By comparing how attorney-conduct norms are created in the United States—socialization, malpractice, market controls, regulatory processes, and procedural rules—with the practice at the ICTY, it becomes evident that the judges are the dominant source of norm creation in this international court. These norms are created, however, in an environment in which it appears that most of the substantive interaction between the judges, prosecutors, and defense counsel occurs in formal court settings. Future international courts would beneat from additional discussion among the judicial, prosecutorial, and defense functions as norms are created, including shared discussion about codes of conduct for judges, prosecutors, and defense counsel.
The duration vector: A continuous-time extension to default-free interest rate contingent claims

Abstract This paper presents a continuous-time contingent claims framework for the traditional duration vector models of Chambers et al. (Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (March 1988) 89–104), Prisman and Shores (Journal of Banking and Finance 12 (1988) 493–504), and others, by embedding these into the Merton (The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 4 (1973) 141–183) stochastic interest rate option pricing model. Using this framework, we analyze the interest rate risk characteristics of bond options and callable bonds. We derive duration measures that are significantly different from the ones reported previously in the literature by Garman (Journal of Financial Economics 14 (1985) 309–315), Jamshidian and Zhu (Advances in Futures and Options Research 3 (1988) 63–95) and others. The upper and lower bounds of the duration vectors of bond options and callable bonds are investigated. An empirical technique based on the implied volatility methodology is suggested for the computation of the duration vectors of bond options and callable bonds.