cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
R&D and the patent premium ☆

Abstract We analyze the effect of patenting on R&D with a model linking a firm's R&D effort with its decision to patent, recognizing that R&D and patenting affect one another and are both driven by many of the same factors. Using survey data for the U.S. manufacturing sector, we estimate the increment to the value of an innovation realized by patenting it, and then analyze the effect on R&D of changing that premium. Although patent protection is found to provide a positive premium on average in only a few industries, our results also imply that the premium varies across industries and with firm size. Patent protection also stimulates R&D across all manufacturing industries, albeit with the magnitude of that effect varying substantially.
An Empirical Analysis of Seller Advertising Strategies in an Online Marketplace

Online marketplaces, such as Taobao, Amazon, and eBay, are increasingly adopting innovative business models such as paid advertising as an important revenue source. We study the effectiveness of tw...
Challenging Law: Presidential Signing Statements and the Maintenance of Executive Power

With increasing frequency, presidents have used the constitutional challenges in presidential signing statements to carve out pieces of legislation that they do not like. Few scholars have analyzed signing statements on the unit of analysis where constitutional challenges are operating – sections of legislation. What determines whether a section of law receives a challenge from the president? Using an original dataset coded from the first four divisions of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005 and the original text of signing statements, I show that the president is likely to issue constitutional challenges to sections of legislation in order to protect issue areas of traditional presidential influence (foreign policy and defense) and to combat various forms of congressional oversight. In addition, I find evidence to suggest that the president is less likely to challenge sections of legislation that expand the power of bureaucratic agencies compared to those sections that do not. These findings have...
What Regional Scientists Need to Know about Spatial Econometrics

Regional scientists frequently work with regression relationships involving sample data that is spatial in nature. For example, hedonic house-price regressions relate selling prices of houses located at points in space to characteristics of the homes as well as neighborhood characteristics. Migration, commodity, and transportation flow models relate the size of flows between origin and destination regions to the distance between origin and destination as well as characteristics of both origin and destination regions. Regional growth regressions relate growth rates of a region to past period own- and nearby-region resource inputs used in production. Spatial data typically violates the assumption that each observation is independent of other observations made by ordinary regression methods. This has econometric implications for the quality of estimates and inferences drawn from non-spatial regression models. Alternative methods for producing point estimates and drawing inferences for relationships involving spatial data samples is the broad topic covered by spatial econometrics. Like any sub-discipline, spatial econometrics has its quirks, many of which reflect influential past literature that has gained attention in both theoretical and applied work. This article asks the question: “What should regional scientists who wish to use regression relationships involving spatial data in an effort to shed light on questions of interest in regional science know about spatial econometric methods?”
Financial Market Efficiency Tests

This paper provides a selective survey of the voluminous literature on tests for market efficiency. The ideas discussed include standard autocorrelation tests, multi-period regression tests and volatility tests. The formulation and estimation of models for time-varying volatility are also considered. Dependence in second-order moments plays an important role in implementing and understanding tests for market efficiency. All of the reported test statistics and model estimates are calculated with monthly data on value-weighted NYSE stock prices and dividends. The distributions of the test statistics under various alternatives, including fads and bubbles, are illustrated through the use of Monte Carlo methods. In addition to the standard constant discount rate present value model, we postulate and simulate a new fundamental price relationship that accounts for the time-varying uncertainty in the monthly dividend growth rates. Allowing the discount rate to be a function of the time-varying uncertainty in the dividend process results in a simulated fundamental price series that is broadly consistent with most of the sample statistics of the actual data.
European Banking Distress and EMU: Institutional and Macroeconomic Risks

Financial stability in Europe has received renewed attention with the advent of EMU. This paper examines whether EU country banking systems are particularly vulnerable to systemic risk. Our approach is to explore episodes of banking sector distress for a large sample of countries, highlighting the experience of the EU. We estimate multivariate probit models linking the likelihood of banking problems to a set of macroeconomic variables and institutional characteristics such as aspects of bank supervision and regulation, restrictions on bank portfolios, and development of the banking system. Given these characteristics, the model predicts a low probability of banking sector distress in EMU countries.
POSSIBLE FUTURES OF FAIR USE

This Article celebrates the twenty-one-year majority status of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. Campbell has unquestionably had transformative impacts on the doctrine of fair use in U.S. copyright case law, making several significant contributions that go well beyond the Court's endorsement of the "transformative" nature of a use as tipping in favor of fairness. Several notable cases have built upon the analytical foundation established in Campbell. This Article also considers possible futures of fair use. What will fair use look like twenty-one years from now? Will it stay much as it is right now, or will it change, and if so, how? Some critics think that fair use has gone too far and are urging a return to a more restrictive scope for the doctrine. This Article considers and responds to various critiques of the present state of fair use law, including whether fair use is consistent with international treaty obligations. This Article concludes that fair use will survive these critiques and will continue to evolve to provide a useful mechanism for balancing the interests of authors and other rights holders, on the one hand, and subsequent authors and other users of copyrighted works, on the other hand. It discusses some new horizons that commentators have imagined for fair use to address certain problems that beset copyright law today. Of the possible futures of fair use, that which would preserve the status quo and expand fair use into new horizons is the one most likely to occur and most to be desired.
Collusive pricing patterns in the US airline industry

Abstract We formulate two empirical tests for collusive behavior based on the theoretical insights of Werden and Froeb (1994) and Athey, Bagwell, and Sanchirico (2004). The first predicts that colluding firms will reduce pair-wise differences in prices within a market if demand satisfies certain properties. The second predicts that colluding firms will sacrifice efficiency in production by increasing price rigidity to avoid informational costs. Using panel data from the US airline industry and fixed-effects estimation, we find that greater multimarket contact between carriers leads to pricing patterns consistent with both theoretical predictions, while code-share agreements are consistent with the second prediction.
Distinguishing Rational and Behavioral Models of Momentum

One of the many challenges facing financial economists is to distinguish the theories explaining momentum. Brav and Heaton (2002) show that it is very difficult to distinguish the "rational" models of structural uncertainty (SU) from "behavioral" models of conservatism (C). In this paper, I reexamine the SU model and the C model proposed by Brav and Heaton (2002) in explaining short-run momentum. Based on simulated data, I find that they differ from each other in the relation between agent's earnings forecast revision and the lagged earnings change. This relation is significantly negative for the SU model and significantly positive for the C model. Empirical evidence provides support for the SU model.
A Comment on "Legisprudence"

Legislation is a topic more or less ignored by jurisprudence. In this short commentary, which was offered at a conference on legislation at Boston University Law School, I discuss the project of "legisprudence" as presented by Professor Luc Wintgens of the University of Brussels. My commentary discusses some of the philosophical foundations of the idea of rational legislation. Prof Wintgens responded to my commentary in the same volume of BU Law Review (pp. 1795-1805).
Effects of SOX 404(b) implementation on audit fees by SEC filer size category

Abstract This study provides novel information about the consequences of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) by documenting differential audit fee shocks accompanying implementation of SOX 404(b) internal control tests and reports for clients in three size categories: large accelerated filers (LAFs), small accelerated filers (SAFs), and non-accelerated filers (NAFs). First, we find that although both LAFs and SAFs experience audit fee shocks attributable to 404(b), SAFs on average experience relatively greater fee shocks than LAFs (107.8% versus 84.6%; Table 6 ). Second, even though NAFs are not subject to 404(b) procedures, we document a 42.7% fee shock for NAFs. Our interpretation is that 404(b) generated an immediate increase in demand for audit services with no corresponding sudden increase in supply of experienced audit personnel, enabling audit firms to charge higher prices for all filers including NAFs. We find that audit fee shocks attributable to 404(b) are positively associated with audit offices’ bargaining power relative to clients, and that the effect of offices’ bargaining power is strongest for SAFs and weakest for NAFs. Although higher audit fees (with client characteristics held constant) are often considered an indicator of better audit quality, we find virtually no evidence that the massive fee increases in 2004 are accompanied by improvements in same-year or next-year audit quality, measured as decreases in discretionary accruals and a lower likelihood of subsequent restatements of audited financial reports.
The Evolution Of “FReD”: Family Responsibilities Discrimination And Developments In The Law Of Stereotyping And Implicit Bias

Introduction When Regina Sheehan announced that she was pregnant with her third child, her supervisor exclaimed, “Oh, my God, she’s pregnant again.” That month, Sheehan was the only employee in her department placed into a “performance matrix” program, in which her supervisor, alone, set goals for her that she was expected to meet. Three months later, her department head fired her, saying, “Hopefully this will give you some time to spend at home with your children.” While the department head said Sheehan was fired for being confrontational, he told her coworkers: “We felt that this would be a good time for Gina to spend some time with her family.” Chris Schultz found himself having to care for both a mother with congestive heart problems and severe diabetes, and a father with Alzheimer’s disease. To help manage his burden, he asked to take leave
Global Warming and Hyperbolic Discounting

The use of a constant discount rate to study long-lived environmental problems such as global warming has two disadvantages: the prescribed policy is sensitive to the discount rate, and with moderate discount rates, large future damages have almost no effect on current decisions. Time-consistent quasi-hyperbolic discounting alleviates both of these modeling problems, and is a plausible description of how people think about the future. We analyze the time-consistent Markov Perfect equilibrium in a general model with a stock pollutant. The solution to the linear-quadratic specialization illustrates the role of hyperbolic discounting in a model of global warming.
Lessons from Environmental Regulation for the Nonprofit Sector

As the third sector's economic and social impact grows worldwide, eiorts by governments to regulate the sector have focused on increasing compliance in tax-exempt organizations. This article turns to the environmental sector for guidance, summarizing key characteristics of environmental regulation and noting what strategies are likely to prove useful for application to regulation of nonpro¢t organizations. The article ¢nds some value in promotion of market-based enforcement schemes, but little value in promulgation of laws specifying governance structures and performance standards by a central authority. The most promising opportunity for improvement of the nonpro¢t regulatory process involves incorporation of ¢nancial incentives into monitoring schemes.
Virgo Early-Type Dwarfs in ALFALFA

Early-type dwarf galaxies dominate cluster populations, but their formation and evolutionary histories are poorly understood. The ALFALFA (Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA) survey has completed observations of the Virgo Cluster in the declination range of 6 – 16 degrees. Less than 2% of the early-type dwarf population is detected, a significantly lower fraction than reported in previous papers based on more limited samples. In contrast ~30% of the irregular/BCD dwarf population is detected. The detected early-type galaxies tend to be located in the outer regions of the cluster, with a concentration in the direction of the M Cloud. Many show evidence for ongoing/recent star formation. Galaxies such as these may be undergoing morphological transition due to cluster environmental effects.
Russia and anti-Western regimes in the Middle East

This article discusses how Moscow’s policy of cultivating anti-Western regimes in the Middle East can result in Russian firms obtaining trade and investment deals in these countries that they might not have gotten if they had had to compete for them with Western firms. But it also notes that the downfall of these anti-Western regimes in the Middle East—whether as a result of external intervention, internal opposition, or a combination of both—can lead to the loss of whatever advantages these Russian firms previously obtained.
Climate Engineering in Global Climate Governance: Implications for Participation and Linkage

The prospect of climate engineering (CE) – also known as geoengineering, referring to modification of the global environment to partly offset climate change and impacts from elevated atmospheric greenhouse gases – poses major, disruptive challenges to international policy and governance. If full global cooperation to manage climate change is not initially achievable, adding CE to the agenda has major effects on the challenges and risks associated with alternative configurations of participation – for example, variants of partial cooperation, unilateral action, and exclusion. Although the risks of unilateral CE by small states or non-state actors have been over-stated, some powerful states may be able to pursue CE unilaterally, risking international destabilization and conflict. These risks are not limited to future CE deployment, but may also be triggered by unilateral research and development (R&D), secrecy about intentions and capabilities, or assertion of legal rights of unilateral action. They may be reduced by early cooperative steps, such as international collaboration in R&D and open sharing of information. CE presents novel opportunities for explicit bargaining linkages within a complete climate response. Four CE-mitigation linkage scenarios suggest how CE may enhance mitigation incentives, and not weaken them as commonly assumed. Such synergy appears to be challenging if CE is treated only as a contingent response to a future climate crisis, but may be more achievable if CE is used earlier and at lower intensity, either to reduce peak near-term climate disruption in parallel with a programme of deep emission cuts or to target regional climate processes linked to acute global risks.
Equilibrium in scoring auctions

This paper studies multi-attribute auctions in which a buyer seeks to procure a complex good and evaluate offers using a quasi-linear scoring rule. Suppliers have private information about their costs, which is summarized by a multi-dimensional type. The scoring rule reduces the multidimensional bids submitted by each supplier to a single dimension, the score, which is used for deciding on the allocation and the resulting contractual obligation. We exploit this idea and obtain two kinds of results. First, we characterize the set of equilibria in quasi-linear scoring auctions with multi-dimensional types. In particular, we show that there exists a mapping between the class of equilibria in these scoring auctions and those in standard single object IPV auctions. Second, we prove a new expected utility equivalence theorem for quasi-linear scoring auctions.
A Weak Law for Moments of Pairwise-Stable Networks

Abstract This paper studies the dependence structure of sparse networks realized according to a strategic model of network formation with homophilous agents. We argue that equilibrium selection and chains of indirect dependence generated by strategic interactions are the main drivers of network dependence. Drawing on results in random-graph theory, we derive weak-dependence conditions under which a law of large numbers holds for a general class of network moments. A key condition restricts the strength of strategic interactions, which constitutes the network analog of conventional weak-dependence assumptions in time series and spatial econometrics that bound the magnitude of autoregressive parameters. We apply our result to estimating models of strategic network formation and treatment effects under network interference.
The Impact of Aggregate Mortality Risk on Defined Benefit Pension Plans

We calculate the risk faced by defined benefit plan providers arising from uncertain aggregate mortality – the risk that the average participant will live longer than expected. First, comparing the widely cited Lee–Carter model to industry benchmarks that are commonly employed by plan providers, we show that these benchmarks appear to substantially underestimate longevity. The resultant understatement of liabilities may reach 12.2% for typical male participants in defined benefit plans and may reach 22.4% for male workers aged 22. Next, we consider consequences for plan liabilities if aggregate mortality declines unexpectedly faster than is predicted by a putatively unbiased projection. There is a 5% chance that liabilities of a terminated plan would be 3.1% to 5.3% higher than what is expected, depending on the mix of workers covered.
Risk, Delay, and Convex Self-Control Costs

We develop a dual-self model of self-control that is compatible with modern dynamic macroeconomic theory and evidence. We show that a convex cost of self-control explains a wide range of behavioral anomalies concerning risk, including the Allais paradox, and also explains the observed interaction between risk and delay. We calibrate the model to obtain a quantitative fit. We find that most of the data can be explained with subjective interest rates in the range of 1-7 percent, short-run relative risk aversion of about two, and a time horizon of one day for the short-run self. (JEL D11, D44, D81)
North-South Imbalances in the International Trade Regime: Why the WTO Does Not Benefit Developing Countries as Much as it Could

Participation in international trade potentially brings huge benefits to developing countries. However, the design and setup of the international trade regime, most importantly the rules and regulations stipulated in the agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO), often make it difficult for developing countries to fully tap this potential. As will be argued in this paper using descriptive statistics, some of these agreements lead to imbalanced consequences for developing vs. developed countries. First, one of the key objectives of WTO agreements, namely to enhance member states access to other members markets, has so far been realized in a rather imbalanced fashion, to the detriment of developing countries. Second, various WTO stipulations contribute to reducing the “policy space” of developing countries, thereby hampering their ability to pursue national policies aimed at fostering economic development. A lot of this can be related to asymmetries in the governance structure of the WTO which help explain why international trade negotiations have preserved such imbalanced outcomes. Against this backdrop, this paper advocates for a pro-development international trade regime that facilitates a more sustainable integration of developing countries into the world economy and that supports their efforts to fully reap the benefits that participating in the international division of labor offers to them. Author’s Note Thomas Bernhardt is a second-year Ph.D. student in economics at the New School for Social Research, and a visiting student at Columbia Universitys School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). His areas of specialization are development economics and international economics.
A Comment on Choosing Among Tools for Assessing Unilateral Effects Analysis

In a recent paper, Gregory Werden and Luke Froeb present a general discussion of unilateral effects analysis with a particular focus on factors that limit the applicability of the Upward Pressure on Price (UPP) model. In one of our earlier papers, we had provided simple simulations showing that the application of UPP in the broad manner suggested by Farrell and Shapiro could be used to dramatically expand the universe of mergers subject to challenge. Werden and Froeb, in contrast to Farrell and Shapiro, see application of UPP screening as constrained by Bertrand competition, an assumption that implies our simulations over-estimate the potential for the UPP model to increase enforcement. Moreover, they posit that merger simulation is well suited for use in either screening or competitive effects’ analysis, a result, which if true, would marginalize the UPP model. We disagree with their observations, noting that the UPP methodology, as described by Farrell and Shapiro, is designed to be agnostic to the underlying competitive process, and potentially applicable in a range of situations in which simulation would be infeasible. As a result, our simulations do not over-estimate the extent to which a broad application of UPP could possibly expand merger enforcement. We also stress the importance of verifying the predictions of any theoretical model (including an UPP analysis generalized to predict actual price effects) with empirical evidence as an important tool to realistically limit the analysis. Successful substantiation would be necessary to allow the analysis to survive a Daubert challenge. Under Daubert, experts must move beyond theory that is generally accepted in their fields and present evidence to the court to show that the theory fits the facts at issue and is reliably predictive.
Moving Design from Metaphor to Management Practice

Despite the centrality of “design” to the field of organizational science, we argue that its use has remained at the level of metaphor rather than practice. Donald Schon’s concept of “reflection in action” addresses this gap by describing how managers can practice designing by generating problem frames as hypotheses, and then testing and refining those hypotheses in the situation. Much of management theory has focused on stable and predictable situations where problem framing is less important. As practitioners and scholars alike increasingly embrace the complexity and ambiguity of the global business environment, Schon’s ideas are starting to take hold. In this article, we explore Schon’s concept of the “reflective practitioner” and show how it can move beyond theory to implementation.
Portfolio Performance Evaluation

The multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) modeling framework provides a solid methodological basis to resolve the inherent multidimensional nature of the problem. It has the advantage of incorporating into the decision process,the preferences of any particular investor. Traditional theoretical approaches do not take the investor’s specialized individual goals into account sufficiently. The MCDM framework builds realistic models by assessing, in addition to the two basic criteria of return and risk, a number of other criteria.
Large-Sample Evidence on Firms' Year-over-Year MD&A Modifications

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has expressed concern about the informativeness of firms’ Management Discussion and Analysis (MDA the price reaction to MD&A modification scores has also weakened, suggesting a decline in MD&A usefulness.
The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas

Researchers have recently argued that utilitarianism is the appropriate framework by which to evaluate moral judgment, and that individuals who endorse non-utilitarian solutions to moral dilemmas (involving active vs. passive harm) are committing an error. We report a study in which participants responded to a battery of personality assessments and a set of dilemmas that pit utilitarian and non-utilitarian options against each other. Participants who indicated greater endorsement of utilitarian solutions had higher scores on measures of Psychopathy, machiavellianism, and life meaninglessness. These results question the widely-used methods by which lay moral judgments are evaluated, as these approaches lead to the counterintuitive conclusion that those individuals who are least prone to moral errors also possess a set of psychological characteristics that many would consider prototypically immoral.
Arbitration: Governance Benefits and Enforcement Costs

These remarks, presented at the 2004 AALS Annual Meeting panel on civil procedure, review the economic theory of arbitration and related empirical evidence. For parties who can choose between alternative legal regimes, the key determinants of that choice are the governance benefits and enforcement costs connected to the rules under each regime. The choice between arbitration and litigation should be made on the same basis. The empirical literature, though sparse, suggests that superior governance benefits provide a significant reason for arbitration agreements.
Selling Crops Early to Pay for School A Large-Scale Natural Experiment in Malawi

In 2010, primary school in Malawi began in September, three months earlier than in 2009. I show that this change forced households to sell crops early, when prices are low. The effect is limited to households with school children, increases with the number of children, and is present only for poor households. Households that financed school by selling early missed out on an expected 17.3–26.5 percent increase in output prices over three months. There is little evidence of improved schooling outcomes as a result of the change. I discuss the implications for policies that offer farmers commitment opportunities at harvest.
The Evolution of the "Patient": Shifts in Attitudes About Consent, Genetic Information, and Commercialization in Health Care

This paper considers the importation of the notion of autonomous individuality into the world of healthcare during the last half century; it also explores the related transformation of the patient into a consumer. These developments have many beneficial dimensions. However, this paper focuses on these developments gone awry so that the result is some sort of excess. The paper describes three such excesses. It refers to the first as the elaboration of autonomous individuality and illustrates it with reference to the involution of the informed consent doctrine. The second excess is referred to as the perversion of autonomous individuality; this is illustrated with reference to rules about genetic information. Finally, this paper describes the third excess as the generalization of autonomous individuality and illustrates it with reference to the creation of a market in infertility treatment.
Is online newspaper advertising cannibalizing print advertising

During the past decade, the newspaper industry experienced significant erosion of revenues, predominantly in print advertising. The concomitant increase in the less rewarding online advertising has been unable to make up for this loss. As a result, for every $1 increase in online advertising between 2005 and 2011, newspapers lost $22 in print advertising. While it is conceivable that the overall change in the advertising landscape (such as the growth of targeted search advertising), contributed to the decline in print advertising, it is not clear whether the growth in online newspaper advertising aggravated or alleviated this global trend. We investigate this concern by studying how advertisers reallocate their media budgets over time between the online and print media within a newspaper. We perform our empirical analysis using unique panel data on account-level advertising expenditures in a Top 50 US newspaper from 2005 through 2011. After accounting for cross-sectional heterogeneity among advertisers and some factors that possibly drove both print and online newspaper advertising, we find a negative relationship between the ad spending in these two media options. Therefore, advertisers exhibit a higher propensity to decrease print spending when they increase their online spending compared to the scenario when online spending either remains unchanged or even decreases. Since we do not rely on exclusion restrictions, we cannot rule out residual factors that drove both print and online advertising and thus contaminated this relationship. However, such potentially confounding factors (e.g., change in total media budget) are likely to have induced a positive correlation between print and online advertising. Therefore, the negative relationship that we recover is suggestive of advertisers perceiving print and online newspaper advertising as substitutes. This, in turn, implies that the growth in online newspaper advertising exacerbated the overall decline in print advertising. Overall, we attribute 7-17 % of the decline in print newspaper advertising revenues between 2005 and 2011 to the growth of online newspaper advertising. We conclude that cannibalization should be a credible consideration in the marketing decisions of the newspaper. However, since a large portion of print advertising revenue decline also occured for advertisers who never purchased online advertising from the newspaper, cannibalization within the newspaper is not solely responsible for the downward trajectory of print advertising.
Financial Intermediaries and Markets

A complex financial system comprises both financial markets and financial intermediaries. We distinguish financial intermediaries according to whether they issue complete contingent contracts or incomplete contracts. Intermediaries such as banks that issue incomplete contracts, e.g., demand deposits, are subject to runs, but this does not imply a market failure. A sophisticated financial system—a system with complete markets for aggregate risk and limited market participation—is incentive-efficient, if the intermediaries issue complete contingent contracts, or else constrained-efficient, if they issue incomplete contracts. We argue that there may be a role for regulating liquidity provision in an economy in which markets for aggregate risks are incomplete.
Trust, perceptions of corruption, and demand for regulation: Evidence from post-socialist countries

Abstract While the tradeoff between market failure and government failure has been explored both theoretically and in practical policy design, the question of whether this trade-off appears in the calculus of citizens’ demands for government regulation remains underexplored. We first clarify the channels through which concerns for market failure, as proxied by trust in market participants, and concerns for government failure, as proxied by perceptions of corruption, jointly affect individuals’ demand for government regulation. We then investigate these effects empirically, using data from post-socialist countries. Our analysis confirms the previously established result that trust has a negative effect on demand for regulation. Perceived corruption, however, affects demand for regulation primarily via a negative interaction effect with trust. Our findings suggest that, in post-socialist countries, both concerns for market failure and concerns for government failure are indeed in citizens’ minds and that concerns about the anticipated ‘grabbing-hand’ effect from government involvement are particularly salient.
Strategies for Network-Safe Load Control With a Third-Party Aggregator and a Distribution Operator

When providing bulk power system services, a third-party aggregator could inadvertently cause operational issues at the distribution level. We propose a coordination architecture in which an aggregator and distribution operator coordinate to avoid distribution network constraint violations, while preserving private information. The aggregator controls thermostatic loads to provide frequency regulation, while the distribution operator overrides the aggregator's control actions when necessary to ensure safe network operation. Using this architecture, we propose two control strategies, which differ in terms of measurement and communication requirements, as well as model complexity and scalability. The first uses an aggregate model and blocking controller, while the second uses individual load models and a mode-count controller. Both outperform a benchmark strategy in terms of tracking accuracy. Furthermore, the second strategy performs better than the first, with only 0.10% average RMS error (compared to 0.70%). The second is also able to maintain safe operation of the distribution network while overriding less than 1% of the aggregator's control actions (compared to approximately 15% by the first strategy). However, the second strategy has significantly more measurement, communication, and computational requirements, and therefore would be more complex and expensive to implement than the first strategy.
Relative Doubt: Familial Searches of DNA Databases

The continued growth of forensic DNA databases has brought about greater interest in a search method known as “familial” or “kinship” matching. Whereas a typical database search seeks the source of a crime-scene stain by making an exact match between a known person and the DNA sample, familial searching instead looks for partial matches in order to find potential relatives of the source. The use of a familial DNA search to identify the alleged “Grim Sleeper” killer in California brought national attention to the method, which has many proponents. In contrast, this Article argues against the practice of familial searching on a variety of grounds, including claims related to equality, accuracy, privacy, racial discrimination, and democratic accountability. It then addresses the legality of the method. Lastly, in the event that arguments to prohibit the practice prove unpersuasive, this Article sets forth recommendations for restrictions on familial searches that might ameliorate their possible iniquitous effects.
Legal Unification and Nation Building in the Post-colonial World: A Comparison of Israel and India

How do states consolidate their legal systems? Do all states follow the same trajectory of state-building and legal unification? And, particularly how do post-colonial states respond to legally pluralistic regimes that they inherit at the time of independence? These are some of the questions that this article will attempt to shed light upon by closely analyzing the Israeli and Indian states' responses to polycentric legal systems that they inherited at the time of their independence. Offering an alternative theory of state-building and legal unification, the present study will not only explain how leaders of these two countries responded to the challenges posed by polycentric jurisdictions but also contribute to our understanding of state, nation-building and legal consolidation in the post-colonial world by re-examining some of the theories and approaches that have long come to dominate the literature.
An Improved uvby-Metallicity Calibration for Metal-rich Stars

We present an improved uvby-metallicity relation calibrated for F, G, and early K dwarfs and an analogous uvby-Teff relation, both derived using a Levenberg-Marquardt minimization scheme. Our calibrations are based on 1533 stars that appear in both the Cayrel de Strobel metallicity compilation and in the Hauck-Mermilliod catalog of uvby photometry. We also examine the speculative possibility of using uvby photometry to produce a uvby-planeticity calibration. We conclude that while there is likely no strong photometric indicator of the presence or absence of short-period planets, the possibility of a spectroscopic indicator of planeticity is well worth examining.
Corporate Cyborgs and Technology Risks

The law has long treated corporations as persons with rights, and it continues to expand this treatment.1 In a similar vein, in technology contexts, the practical differentiation between human persons and corporate persons grows tenuous in many respects. Today’s corporations seem more enmeshed in our daily reality, more anthropomorphic and “friendly.” The local radio station wants to be your Facebook friend. The Twitter feed of your favorite coffee chain intermingles with feeds authored by your human friends. Internally, however, corporations are becoming progressively less “human”; they are relying less upon the particular human employees that fill the physical space of the corporate headquarters and relying more upon their information systems. This seeming contradiction of internal mechanization with external humanization calls to mind the metaphor of a “cyborg”—a hybrid creature that is part machine and part human. This shift in corporate identity toward a cyborg identity warrants new legal consideration: the shift has carried with it technology driven risks to both individual entities and the economy as a whole. This article argues that, as companies progressively shift to a blended human-machine identity, dangers lurk from overzealous technology adoption without strong audit mechanisms and oversight. Historical examples warn us that organizations sometimes adopt technology overzealously, prior to the consideration of the full implications of this adoption. Using the securities industry as a case study
MAGNA CARTA FOR THE WORLD? THE MERCHANTS’ CHAPTER AND FOREIGN CAPITAL IN THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC

This Article examines the early modern revival and subtle transformation in what is here called the merchants’ chapter of Magna Carta and then analyzes how lawyers, judges, and government officeholders invoked it in the new American federal courts and in debates over congressional power. In the U.S. Supreme Court in the early 1790s, a British creditor and an American State debated the meaning and applicability of the merchants’ chapter, which guaranteed two rights to foreign merchants: free entry and exit during peacetime, without being subjected to arbitrary taxes; and, in wartime, the promise that their persons and goods would not be harmed or confiscated, unless their own king attacked and confiscated English merchants. In other words, no harm to enemy aliens, except as retaliation. Tit for tat.The idea that reciprocity was a fundamental mechanism of international (and interpersonal) relations became something like a social science axiom in the early modern Enlightenment. Edward Coke claimed to find that mechanism in the merchants’ chapter and publicized it to lawyers throughout the emerging British Empire and beyond. Montesquieu lauded the English for protecting foreign commerce in their fundamental law, and Blackstone basked in that praise. American lawyers derived their understanding of the merchants’ chapter from these sources and then, in the early Republic, stretched the principle behind it to protect foreign capital, not just resident merchants. The vindication of old imperial debt contracts would signal to all international creditors that, in the United States, credit was safe. Federalists then invoked the chapter outside of the courts to resist Republican attempts to embargo commerce and sequester foreign credit. For Republicans, doux commerce had become the Achilles heel of the great Atlantic empires: their reliance on American trade could be used to gain diplomatic leverage without risking war. For Federalists, economic sanctions threatened not just their fiscal policy but their entire vision of an Atlantic world that increasingly insulated international capital from national politics. They all agreed, however, that the role of foreign capital in the American constitutional system was a central issue for the new and developing nation.
Passport Revocation As Proxy Denaturalization: Examining the Yemen Cases

This Article stems from cases handled at the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project and from mutually corroborating accounts from a number of CLEAR’s partner organizers and attorneys who are active in the Yemeni-American community in New York City and beyond. Collectively these cases and firsthand accounts paint a disturbing portrait of the U.S. Department of State attempting to circumvent the procedures and safeguards that normally must be respected in order to reach a result tantamount to the denaturalization and expatriation of a U.S. citizen. CLEAR forms part of the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law’s clinical arm, Main Street Legal Services, Inc.1 The project provides a range of legal services that aim to address the legal needs of Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and other communities in New York City and beyond, whose civil liberties and human rights are particularly affected by law enforcement counterterrorism policies and practices.2 Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, federal and local law enforcement agencies have engaged in aggressive counterterrorism, intelligence gathering, and demographic mapping practices.3 Authorities have also
Disaggregating the Court: A Methodological Survey of Research on the Supreme People’s Court of China

This article surveys recent academic literature on the Supreme People’s Court of China, sorting existing studies into three basic categories: those that study what the Court is allowed to do, those that study what it actually does, and those that study why it does those things. Moving from the first category to the second and third is, in many ways, a progression from a predominantly formalist method to more realist ones. The article argues that the field suffers from a lack of rigorous political economy modeling and that this affects not only the thoroughness of studies in the third category, but also those in the first and second categories. Remedying these problems will depend on whether future scholarship can successfully make use of the theoretical and empirical tools developed by political science and institutional economics. Most importantly, the field needs to develop a usable model of individual judge behavior, based on their material incentives, political aspirations, and ideological commitments, which can then provide the foundation for modeling of the Court as an institution. At the early stage, ethnography and bibliographical analysis may be more useful than quantitative analysis.
Thieves, thugs, and neighborhood poverty

Abstract This paper develops a model of crime analyzing how such behavior is associated with individual and neighborhood poverty. The model shows that even under relatively minimal assumptions, a connection between individual poverty and both property and violent crimes will arise, and moreover, “neighborhood” effects can develop, but will differ substantially in nature across crime types. A key implication is that greater economic segregation in a city should have no effect or a negative effect on property crime, but a positive effect on violent crime. Using IV methods, I show this implication to be consistent with the empirical evidence.
THE EVOLUTION OF TAXES AND HOURS WORKED IN AUSTRIA, 1970–2005

Aggregate hours worked per working-age person decreased in Austria by 25% from 1970 to 2005. During the same time period, taxes increased, particularly the effective marginal tax rate on labor income. Using a standard general equilibrium growth model with taxes, I quantitatively assess the role played by the evolution of taxes on the evolution of hours worked in Austria. The model accounts for 76% of the observed decrease in hours worked per working-age person. My results are in line with other studies, such as Prescott (2002), which find taxes play an important role in explaining aggregate hours worked.
The limits of liberalism: Good boundaries must be discovered

Determining good boundaries for governance jurisdictions is among the most difficult problems in political theory and political philosophy. But to whom the rules of a given jurisdiction applies is a problem that afflicts private as well as public governance. Clubs have boundaries no less than cities, states, or nations. This essay applies Hayek’s conception of competition as a discovery procedure to boundary problems, arguing that good jurisdictional boundaries are subject to a great deal of contingent variation according to particular the conditions of time and place. Philosophical speculation, therefore, cannot fully replace a trial and error process that facilitates social learning about where good boundaries fall. I outline the features of good boundaries that make them subject to such variation, then evaluate two criteria for evaluating whether existing jurisdictional boundaries are good: one that emphasizes ex ante consent to boundaries, and one that focuses on the ability of individuals to exit from jurisdictions ex post, arguing that the exit-focused approach is underappreciated.
Critique of U.S. House Bill 2454 on Climate Change

The U.S. House of Representatives, in June 2009, approved a bill to create a cap and trade system and a system of regulations and subsidies to address the problems of climate change. The U.S. Senate is now considering remedies for climate change. The approach of House Bill 2454 is ill-advised, and should be rejected by the Senate, because of the problems outlined below. I propose that these problems that would not be presented by a carbon tax, a simpler and more effective remedy for the risk of climate change.
Does Parenting Matter? U.S. Parents, Non-U.S. Parents, and Global Firm Taxes

In this paper we examine whether, under pre-2018 tax law, a global firm reported a lower income tax expense simply because its publicly traded parent was incorporated outside the United States. Our study considers loss years as well as profit years and isolates the effect of the incorporation location of the parent by considering only U.S. and non-U.S. multi-national companies (MNCs) with a significant U.S. presence. We find that, in profit years, U.S. firms show an effective tax rate that is greater by 5 percentage points compared to non-U.S. firms. Conversely, in loss years, which make up approximately 30% of our sample, U.S. firms have better tax results, which can be expressed as an effective tax rate advantage of 4 percentage points among firms that do not record a valuation allowance. Our study demonstrates that the relative tax cost of organizing as a U.S. firm is smaller than some have suggested, and reinforces the importance of considering loss year results when evaluating tax policies. The results also suggest that the reduction in the U.S. corporate income tax rate under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA, will provide smaller benefits to U.S.-parented corporations when loss years are also considered.