cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Disarming the dangerous: preventing extraordinary and ordinary violence

Mass shootings at Navy Yard, Newtown, Aurora, and elsewhere have jolted Congress and the states into considering gun violence prevention. More than 1500 gun-related bills have been introduced since 2013, after the slaughter in Newtown of twenty elementary-school children and six adults. Legislation and debates are shaped by the specter of a heavily armed, mentally ill individual hunting in public places such as schools, businesses, and workplaces. In the states, the most successful type of legislation involves firearms restrictions for the mentally ill. In Congress, the legislation that garnered the most debate was a ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. While the national attention to firearms violence prevention is salutary, for law and policy to tackle the core of the problem it is important to address two empirical questions: Who are the dangerous individuals committing most firearms homicides, and why do the law's current screens miss them? This Article draws on data from the National Violent Death Reporting System to answer the crucial foundational questions of who poses a danger and why the dangerous slip through existing legal screens. Presenting data on the most prevalent place of shooting, the victim-shooter relationship, and the shooter's prior history, this Article shows that prevention of extraordinarily devastating firearms violence calls for attention to how the nation addresses "ordinary" violence. By ordinary violence, this Article means violence that is often viewed as mundane, such as altercations between family members, friends, and intimates in the home. Many perpetrators of firearms homicide have a history of such prior events yet a substantially smaller proportion of these violent episodes have been adjudicated, thereby slipping through existing screens for firearms restrictions. Based on these findings, the Article discusses how executive action steering scene-of-assault procedure and discretion in dealing with ordinary violence can improve detection of the dangerous regardless of whether proposed firearms restrictions survive the gauntlet that besets new gun laws. Language: en
A Proposed National Health Information Network Architecture and Complementary Federal Preemption of State Health Information Privacy Laws

The U.S. is currently experiencing a healthcare crisis including problems of quality and affordability. A national health information network (NHIN) holds great potential for reducing these problems by linking healthcare-related entities and patients to provide real-time information flow. The current evolutionary strategy for NHIN development is resulting in an unaffordable delay. NHIN architecture and patient privacy laws are interdependent, and information flow is impeded by disparate state privacy laws layered onto federal law. We propose a revolutionary NHIN architecture and a complementary framework for preemptive federal law that will allow a true NHIN to develop much faster.
Exploring the role Delaware plays as a domestic tax haven.

Abstract We examine whether Delaware is a domestic tax haven. We find that taxes play an economically important role in determining whether U.S. firms locate subsidiaries in Delaware and that a Delaware-based state tax avoidance strategy lowers state effective tax rates by between 0.7 and 1.1 percentage points, on average. The tax savings represent a 15–24% decrease in the state income tax burden and translate to an increase in net income of 1.04–1.47%. However, we find that the tax benefits of Delaware tax strategies are diminishing over time in response to initiatives by state governments to limit multistate tax avoidance.
The Impact of Exchange Rate Volatility on US Direct Investment

In this paper we examine the impact of the level of the exchange rate, volatility in the exchange rate and exchange rate expectations on outward US foreign direct investment in 12 developed countries and inward foreign direct investment to the USA from those countries for the period from 1983 to 1995. In our empirical analysis we find no evidence for an effect of exchange rate variation on either US outward investment or inward investment in the USA. This result is robust to a number of different estimation procedures. As regards the level of the exchange rate we find a positive relationship between US outward investment and appreciation in the host country currency while there is a negative relationship between US inward investment and appreciation in the dollar.
The Policy Sciences of Social Media

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are increasingly touted as platforms not merely for networks of friends and for private diversion, but as vehicles that allow ordinary people to enter and influence the many arenas of public life. On the surface, the disparate and shapeless population of “i-reporters,” policy “tweeters,” and anonymous news web site “commentators” would appear to challenge the comparatively well-defined cast of professional diplomats, journalists, and propagandists that Harold D. Lasswell identified as policy-oriented communicators. However, to illuminate the roles and impacts of social media in politics and policymaking, insights from Lasswell's “science of communication” must be embedded in Lasswell's broader lessons on value assets and outcomes. A closer look at the so-called democratizing functions of social media in politics reveals the influence of powerful intermediaries who filter and shape electronic communications. Lasswell's insights on the likelihood of increased collaboration among political elites and skilled, “modernizing intellectuals” anticipates contemporary instances of state actors who recruit skilled creators and users of social media—collaborations that may or may not advance experiments in democracy. Lasswell's decision process concept is deployed to discover social media's strengths and weaknesses for the practicing policy scientist.
Uncertainty and Expectation Revisions after Earnings Announcements

Bayesian theory predicts an increase in market participants' reliance on reported current earnings to revise their expectations of future earnings when the uncertainty in future earnings is higher. Prior studies focus on price reactions and find negative associations between measures of earnings uncertainty and investors' reliance on reported current earnings. This study examines analysts' forecast revisions (of future earnings) around the announcements of current period earnings and finds positive associations between measures of earnings uncertainty and analysts' reliance on reported current earnings. The findings suggest that uncertainty measures and discount rates are correlated, and cross-sectional differences in the discount rate taint the interpretation of price reactions as evidence of expectation revisions under uncertainty. This study sheds additional light on the complex relationships among earnings uncertainty measures, price reactions to earnings surprise, and cost of capital.
A Bad Time for Disaster: Economic Stress and Disaster Resilience

Local governments face a tightening economic bind while struggling to balance obligations to protect their communities. As populations change and hazards expand, they confront a mounting number of threats while trying to maintain basic services. This article examines demands and constraints that are placed on government agencies in providing public safety and public health services. The authors recommend building interagency cooperation to maximize the utility of existing staff and resources. These distributed systems increase the flexibility and resilience of the community as well as the cooperating organizations. It is a paradigm shift from organization-centric thinking toward a coordinated effort to build resilience for the whole community.
CSR and Assurance Services: A Research Agenda

SUMMARY: This paper describes the current environment for assurance services for corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. It then discusses opportunities for research, and highlights areas that are evolving as significant research opportunities and areas of significance that have been under-researched in the past. Finally, the paper reviews the five papers in the forum and highlights how multiple methodologies may be appropriate to examine different aspects of assuring CSR reporting from both internal and external assurance perspectives.
Bringing the Frame Into Focus: The Influence of Regulatory Fit on Processing Fluency and Persuasion.

This research demonstrates that people's goals associated with regulatory focus moderate the effect of message framing on persuasion. The results of 6 experiments show that appeals presented in gain frames are more persuasive when the message is promotion focused, whereas loss-framed appeals are more persuasive when the message is prevention focused. These regulatory focus effects suggesting heightened vigilance against negative outcomes and heightened eagerness toward positive outcomes are replicated when perceived risk is manipulated. Enhanced processing fluency leading to more favorable evaluations in conditions of compatibility appears to underlie these effects. The findings underscore the regulatory fit principle that accounts for the persuasiveness of message framing effects and highlight how processing fluency may contribute to the "feeling right" experience when the strategy of goal pursuit matches one's goal.
Making Only America Great? Non-U.S. Market Reactions to U.S. Tax Reform

We study the foreign externalities of the recent U.S. tax reform, commonly known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Specifically, we examine foreign firms’ stock returns around key tax reform eve...
The Legal Status of the Doha Declarations

This Article evaluates the uncertain legal status of two ministerial declarations approved at the Doha Conference. The Article proceeds by explaining the broad meaning and purpose of ministerial declarations, as well as the specific implications of the Doha Declarations. I conclude that the Doha Declarations may be considered either (1) the political statements or moral commitments of trade ministers or (2) as part of the constitutive process of decision-making by the WTO organization. Under the first view, the WTO Declarations are analogous to G-7 Declarations or the Malmo Declaration of environmental ministers. Under the second view, the Ministerial Conference can exercise its constitutional authority to set WTO policy, or perhaps to enact secondary law.
CONTRACTING FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICES: THEORY AND EVIDENCE FROM U.S. CITIES*

Local governments can provide services with their own employees or by contracting with private or public sector providers. We develop a model of this ‘make-or-buy’ choice that highlights the trade-off between productive efficiency and the costs of contract administration. We construct a dataset of service provision choices by U.S. cities and identify a range of service and city characteristics as significant determinants of contracting decisions. Our analysis suggests an important role for economic efficiency concerns, as well as politics, in contracting for government services.
The Treatment of Uncertainty in EPA's Analysis of Air Pollution Rules: A Status Report

An understanding of the uncertainty in benefit and cost estimates is a critical part of a benefit– cost analysis. Without a quantitative treatment of uncertainty, it is difficult to know how much confidence to place in these estimates. In 2002, an NRC report recommended that EPA move toward conducting probabilistic, multiple-source uncertainty analyses in its RIAs with the specification of probability distributions for major sources of uncertainty in the benefit estimates. In 2006, reports by GAO and RFF found that EPA had begun to address the NRC recommendations, but that much remained to be done to meet the NRC concerns. This paper provides a further review of EPA’s progress in developing a quantitative assessment of the uncertainties in its health benefits analyses for the RIAs for four recent NAAQS rulemakings. In conclusion, EPA’s recent RIAs present the results of its uncertainty analyses in piecemeal fashion rather than providing an overall, comprehensive statement of the uncertainty in its estimates. In addition, its recent RIAs continue to focus on the concentration-response relationship and largely fail to address the uncertainty associated with the other key elements of the benefits analysis.
The Macroeconomic Consequences of Financing Health Insurance

Employer-financed health insurance systems like those used in the United States distort firms’ labor demand and adversely affect the economy. Since such costs vary with employment rather than hours worked, firms have an incentive to increase output by increasing worker hours rather than employment. Given that the returns to employment exceed the returns to hours worked, this results in lower levels of employment and output. In this paper, we construct a heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model where individuals differ with respect to their productivity and employment opportunities. Calibrating the model to the U.S. economy, we generate steady state results for several alternative models for financing health insurance: one in which health insurance is financed primarily through employer contributions that vary with employment, a second where insurance is funded through a non-distortionary, lump-sum tax, and a third where insurance is funded by a payroll tax. We measure the effects of each of the alternatives on output, employment, hours worked, and wages.
The Impact of Service Operations Failures on Customer Satisfaction: Evidence on How Failures and Their Source Affect What Matters to Customers

Research in consumer psychology shows that customers seek reasons for service failures and that attributions of blame moderate the effects of failure on the level of customer satisfaction. This paper extends research on service operations failures by hypothesizing that attributions of blame also affect what matters to the customer during service failures. Specifically, we hypothesize that the relative weights that customers assign to key service elements in reaching an overall assessment of customer satisfaction are affected by customer attributions of blame for service failures. We use the U.S. airline industry as a quasi-experimental research setting to investigate the components of customer satisfaction for three samples of customers who experience (1) routine service, (2) flight delays of external (i.e., weather) origin, and (3) flight delays of internal origin. Although the level of customer satisfaction is lower for all service failures, we find that the key components of satisfaction differ between delayed and routine flights only when customers blame the service provider for the failure. Specifically, when delays are of external origin satisfaction is lower than for routine flights, but there is virtually no difference in the weight that customers assign to the components of customer satisfaction (including employee interactions). In contrast, when delays are of internal origin, satisfaction is lower than for either routine flights or flights delayed by external factors, and employee interactions have a significantly diminished role in customer satisfaction evaluations. Contrary to the popular view that employee interactions take on a greater role in determining customer satisfaction during service failures, we find that the opposite is true if the customer attributes blame to the service provider. Our findings highlight the important role of customer attributions during service failures and present more nuanced evidence on the role of employee-customer interactions in mitigating the effects of service failures on customer satisfaction.
Pathos and Patina: The Failure and Promise of Constitutionalism in the European Imagination

Legal studies react to the Union's social legitimacy deficit either by funnelling the problem to empirical sociology (accompanied by the familiar call for more transparency and democracy), or by ignoring it altogether. This article argues that the crisis in social acceptance can be traced back to the texture of EU law. Law is more than a body of rules: it is a social practice, a structure of meaning, and a system of beliefs. In this light, national law has a richly textured fabric of cultural resources to rely on, which makes it ‘ours’. In contrast, EU law embodies the fluid surface of consumer identity and appears less ‘ours’. The Union's counter–measures—adding pathos and patina to neutralise our distrust—have proven unsuccessful. Neither will a new written Constitution be particularly helpful. The way out, rather, is coming to terms with the market citizen, rather than believing in, and forcing upon the consumer, stories of shared values and historically situated commonality.
Corruption: The good, the bad, and the uncertain

This paper argues that the relationship between corruption and economic growth is dependent upon the uncertainty involved. Employing data on a cross-section of countries, this paper uses an interaction between the frequency of bribery payments and the uncertainty regarding the delivery of the service in exchange for these bribes to show that corruption has a negative association with growth unless the uncertainty is minimal. Furthermore, the negative association becomes larger in magnitude with higher levels of uncertainty. At extremely high levels of uncertainty a relatively small increase in corruption, equivalent to moving from Sweden to the United States for example, is associated with economically large decreases in economic growth.
Dynamic Mechanism Design for Online Commerce

This paper is a mechanism design study for a monopolist selling multiple identical items to potential buyers arriving over time. Participants in our model are time sensitive, with the same discount factor; potential buyers have unit demand and arrive sequentially according to a renewal process; and valuations are drawn independently from the same regular distribution. Invoking the revelation principle, we restrict our attention to direct dynamic mechanisms taking a sequence of valuations and arrival epochs as input. We define two properties (discreteness and stability), and prove under further distributional assumptions that we may at no cost of generality consider only mechanisms satisfying them. This effectively reduces the mechanism input to a sequence of valuations and leads to formulate the problem as a dynamic program (DP). As this DP is equivalent to a well-known infinite-horizon asset-selling problem, we finally characterize the optimal mechanism as a sequence of posted prices increasing with each sale. Remarkably, this result rationalizes somewhat the frequent restriction to dynamic pricing policies and impatient buyers assumption. Our numerical study indicates that, under various valuation distributions, the benefit of dynamic pricing over a fixed posted price may be small. Besides, posted prices are preferable to online auctions for a large number of items or high interest rate, but in other cases auctions are close to optimal and significantly more robust.
Examining the Causality Loop between Online Reviews and Consumer Acquisition – a Granger Causality Study from YouTube

People rely on online reviews to guide their purchasing behavior. According to industry research reports, a big proportion of consumers claim that their purchasing decision is largely influenced by online reviews (Deloitte 2007). In addition, consumers share these reviews with their family, friends or colleagues to make sense of their shopping experiences and deepen social connections (Peters and Kashima 2007). As a result, research increases significantly in size to address the impact of online reviews on consumer acquisition. Rather, this literature generates mixed results. For example, some studies showed that online review valence (from negative to positive) increases sales (e.g., Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006; Dellarocas, et al. 2007), while others showed that the driver of sales is the volume of online reviews, not the valence (e.g., Chen et al 2004; Liu 2006).
To start or not to start: Outcome and ability expectations in the decision to start a new venture

Abstract This study seeks to better understand why some individuals decide to start new businesses and others do not, particularly in light of high base rates of failure. In addressing the question of “Why do some individuals choose to start new ventures?” a common perspective is that potential entrepreneurs with high levels of confidence in potential outcomes are likely to start new ventures. Alternatively, it also may be that firm creation decisions are based largely on individual expectations of one's ability. Hypotheses examining these perspectives are tested using a sample of 316 nascent entrepreneurs with the start-up decision tracked longitudinally. The results indicate that confidence in one's ability to perform tasks relevant to entrepreneurship is a robust predictor of start-up while outcome expectancies appear to play a marginal role. Theoretical and practical implications stemming from these results are discussed.
The Effect of Social Security on Saving

Saving rates differ very substantially among industrial nations. For the 15 year period from 1960 through 1974, gross saving accounted for an average of 25 percent of gross domestic product among the 21 O.E.C.D. countries for which data are available. But this gross saving rate ranged from a high of 37.2 percent in Japan to lows of 18.4 percent and 18.6 percent for the U.K. and the U.S. The pattern of high and low saving rate countries has remained quite stable over this period. The correlation between the average saving rate in a country in the 1960-64 period and the 1965-69 period is 0.97. For 1965-69 and 1970-74, the correlation is 0.93 (Feldstein and Horioka, 1979).
Securitization of Aberrant Contract Receivables

Originators of traditional receivables, such as automobile loans, use securitization and structured finance debt transactions to obtain financing at lower net costs than traditional secured financing. The typical securitization or structured finance debt transaction combines (i) a sale of receivables to a separate, bankruptcy remote, special purpose legal entity (an “SPE”) and (ii) a loan to the SPE secured by the receivables. This combination produces lower net financing costs because the SPE’s lender can obtain repayment of its loan from the receivables while avoiding the costs that the Bankruptcy Code imposes on direct secured lenders to originators that could become debtors in bankruptcy for reasons unrelated to the receivables. The viability of this financing technique, however, depends upon receivables that produce reliable cash flows with minimal reliance on an operating company. This article analyzes the reasons for the net costs savings of securitization and structured finance debt transactions and the structural features necessary to achieve those savings. This analysis provides a framework for assessing the feasibility of a securitization or structured finance debt transaction for any type of aberrant contract receivable.
Stare Decisis and the Constitution: Four Questions and Answers

This Article joins the growing debate about the relationship between stare decisis and the Constitution by addressing four important questions that have recently been raised: (1) Is stare decisis constitutionally required; (2) Is stare decisis constitutionally prohibited? (3) Can Congress abrogate stare decisis? (4) Should courts defer to the judgments of elected officials when deciding whether to adhere to precedent? My answers to these questions (with some qualifications) are no, no, no, and sometimes. First, as I and several other writers have demonstrated, history does not support the claim that stare decisis is dictated by the framers' understanding of "judicial power." Second, stare decisis does not conflict with the Supremacy Clause because the Constitution does not preclude judges from deferring to the reasonable constitutional interpretations of other governmental actors, which is what stare decisis amounts to. Third, Congress cannot abrogate stare decisis because doing so would interfere with the power of courts to choose the methodology by which they determine what the law is, which in turn would undermine their ability to justify their decisions as legitimate. And fourth, courts should defer to the views of elected officials when deciding whether a prior decision has induced significant reliance or rests on outdated facts, but only where those views are based on the superior fact-finding capabilities of the other branches. Courts should also give serious weight to the thoughtful and considered judgment of elected officials that a prior decision was egregiously wrong. But courts should not defer to the views of elected officials when deciding whether a prior decision is practically unworkable or a remnant of abandoned doctrine because these are quintessentially legal questions that judges are best equipped to answer.
Quantifying Uncertainty in Infectious Disease Mechanistic Models.

This primer describes the statistical uncertainty in mechanistic models and provides R code to quantify it. We begin with an overview of mechanistic models for infectious disease, and then describe the sources of statistical uncertainty in the context of a case study on severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We describe the statistical uncertainty as belonging to 3 categories: data uncertainty, stochastic uncertainty, and structural uncertainty. We demonstrate how to account for each of these via statistical uncertainty measures and sensitivity analyses broadly, as well as in a specific case study on estimating the basic reproductive number, ${R}_0$, for SARS-CoV-2.
Equity Ownership and Firm Value in Emerging Markets

This paper investigates whether management stock ownership and large non-management blockholder share ownership are related to firm value across a sample of 1433 firms from 18 emerging markets. When a management group's control rights exceed its cash flow rights, I find that firm values are lower. I also find that large non-management control rights blockholdings are positively related to firm value. Both of these effects are significantly more pronounced in countries with low shareholder protection. One interpretation of these results is that external shareholder protection mechanisms play a role in restraining managerial agency costs and that large non-management blockholders can act as a partial substitute for missing institutional governance mechanisms.
Late Charges, Regular Billing, and Reasonable Consumers: A Rationale for a Late Payment Act

This essay considers the reasonable behavior of consumers in relation to law and the policies that tolerate the assessment of late payment penalties, fees, and surcharges. Attention is trained principally on the inadequately-regulated cycle of creditor billing and debtor repayment practices, rather than on excessively high fees. The focus here is on the credit card issuers and, to a lesser degree, the wireless telecommunication vendors. Problems associated with late fee billing cycles cut a wide swath of billing for recurring debt repayment, however. A variety of different demands on consumers imposed sector-by-sector interact to magnify the consumers' difficulties. Part I addresses the multitude of ways that billers can impose late fee charges. This Part also identifies those deficiencies in legal regimes that aid and abet those who send out bills, by acquiescing to strategies that induce late fee revenue. Part II considers some information-processing and other cognitive difficulties that arise from the late payment regime, and contends that unearned redistribution from consumers to billers results from such incoherence and confusion, and also results in general welfare losses. Part III reviews existing statutory and common-law causes of action through which consumers might hope to recover from billers who intentionally or recklessly diminish the likelihood that deadlines will be met. Part IV proposes a Late Payment Act that illustrates the type of approach that could be adopted on a state - or nation - wide basis to address several of the key shortcomings.
The Costs, Wealth Effects, and Determinants of International Capital Raising: Evidence from Public Yankee Bonds

Abstract This paper examines the costs, wealth effects, and determinants of international capital raising for a sample of 260 public debt issues made by non-U.S. firms in the Yankee bond market. We find that investors demand economically significant premiums on bonds issued by firms that are located in countries that do not protect investors' rights and do not have a prior history of ongoing disclosure. The results provide support for the literature that suggests better legal protections and more detailed information disclosure increases the price investors will pay for financial assets. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: F3, G1.
Is Full Better than Half? Examining the Longitudinal Effects of Full-Day Kindergarten Attendance.

Kindergarten policy varies widely both across and within states. Over the past decade, a number of states have instituted a full-day kindergarten requirement and others are considering it as a way to increase educational achievement. Many parents also support full-day kindergarten as a source of child care. This paper uses the Early Child Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 to evaluate the efficacy of this policy. In ordinary least squares, probit, county fixed effects, and instrumental variables models, we find that there are initial benefits for students and the mothers of students who attend full-day kindergarten, but that these differences largely evaporate by third grade. Contrary to claims by some advocates, attending full-day kindergarten is found to have no additional benefit for students in families with income below the poverty threshold. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management
Attacking the Atom: Does Bombing Nuclear Facilities Affect Proliferation?

Abstract What are the consequences of military strikes against nuclear facilities? In particular, do they ‘work’ by delaying the target states ability to build the bomb? This article addresses these questions by conducting an analysis of 16 attacks against nuclear facilities from 1942 to 2007. We analyze strikes that occurred during peacetime and raids that took place in the context of an ongoing interstate war. The findings indicate that strikes are neither as uniformly fruitless as the skeptics would suggest, nor as productive as advocates have claimed. There is evidence that the peacetime attacks delayed the target's nuclear program, although the size of this effect is rather modest. The wartime cases were less successful, as attacks often missed their targets either due to operational failure or limited intelligence on the location of critical targets. In our concluding section we show that many of the conditions that were conducive to past success are not present in the contemporary Iran case. Overal...
Scrooge-The Reluctant Stakeholder: Theoretical Problems in the Shareholder-Stakeholder Debate

Corporations law around the world is moving in the direction of the shareholder primacy model, common in the USA and other common law countries. Lawyers, academics and public policy analysts are divided as to the merits of the model and its main competitor, the stakeholder model. The gist of arguments usually hinge on economics. This article examines the claims for and against the two models on their own terms, and suggests that law has a unique contribution to make to the development of the corporation and society.
Tobit or Not Tobit

Time-diary surveys collect detailed information about individuals’ activities over a short period of time, typically one day. Thus, it is common to see zero time spent in many activities, even for individuals who regularly do the activity. Because of the large number of zeros, Tobit would seem to be the natural approach. However, once it is recognized that these zeros arise not from censoring, but from a mismatch between the reference period of the data (the diary day) and the period of interest (typically much longer than a day), it is not clear that Tobit is appropriate. I examine the bias associated with alternative procedures for estimating the marginal effects of covariates on time use. I begin by adapting the infrequency of purchase model to time-diary data and showing that OLS estimates are unbiased. Next, using simulated data, I examine the bias associated with three procedures that are commonly used to analyze time-diary data – Tobit, the Cragg [11] two-part model, and OLS. I find that the estimated marginal effects from Tobit are biased and that the bias increases with the fraction of zero-value observations. The two-part model performs significantly better, but generates biased estimates when the number of zeros is a function of the covariates. Only OLS generates unbiased estimates in all of the simulations considered here
Standards for Corporate Conduct in the International Arena: Challenges and Opportunities for Multinational Corporations

T he role of large multinational corporations (MNCs) is becoming increasingly critical to the growth and development of the economies of emerging nations. MNCs have become an engine of change through their injection of capital, technology, organizational skills, and a competitive environment where the status quo, in both the economic and the socio-political arena, is constantly being challenged. Foreign corporations not only bring with them new technologies and management systems; they also bring a different kind of corporate culture and assumptions about the openness of the external environment. The increased globalization and privatization of economic activity has not been without serious side effects. Developing countries face economic and socio-political pressures causing severe stresses in the social fabric of their societies. There is also the loss—real or perceived—of bargaining leverage in dealing with multinational corporations. Desperate for investment capital and foreign technologies, they compete with other developing countries in yielding to the MNCs by providing concessions in terms of wages, working conditions, and environmental degradation. Another fear, although not explicitly expressed, is that of open economies providing greater information to the masses and thereby eroding the hege-
An overview: A new era of tax enforcement - from ''big stick'' to responsive regulation

Recent developments in regulation and tax administration in Australia inspired this article on tax compliance and responsive regulation. This article analyzes the economics of crime and compliance as the dominant approach to tax enforcement of the past three and a half decades. It evaluates the key advantages and disadvantages of the economic approach as well as its application to tax. The article then explores responsive regulation as an alternative method that draws on the economic paradigm but also supplements this approach with other theories, particularly those involving identity, conflict escalation, and procedural justice. Building on this analysis and a case study of Australian investors in mass marketed tax schemes, the article suggests that the broader, more balanced, and closely tailored method of regulating responsively may enable regulators to draw on the advantages of the economic model while alleviating some of its drawbacks. Responsive regulation may therefore constitute a superior method for regulating compliance.
When consumers do not make an active decision: Dynamic default rules and their equilibrium effects

Abstract Dynamic defaults for recurring purchases determine what happens to consumers enrolled in a product or service who take no action at a decision point. Consumers may face automatic renewal, automatic switching, or non-purchase defaults. Privately optimal dynamic defaults depend on the contributions of adjustment costs versus costless opt-out frictions: both produce inertia under renewal defaults, but differ under non-renewal defaults. Defaults have equilibrium effects on pricing by changing the elasticity of repeat demand. Socially optimal defaults depend on firms' pricing responses as well; more elastic repeat demand restrains price increases on repeat customers and can reduce inefficient switching.
Do Industry-Specialist Auditors Influence Stock Price Crash Risk?

SUMMARY: Francis (2011) calls for more research on “the effect of audit quality on economic outcomes.” We respond by examining whether high-quality auditors reduce stock price crash risk, an important consideration for stock investors. We argue that high-quality auditors reduce crash risk because of their information intermediary and corporate governance roles. Using a large sample of U.S. stocks spanning the period 1990–2009, we examine the issue empirically by using auditor industry specialization as our proxy for auditor quality. Our main finding is a statistically significant and negative association between auditor industry specialization and stock price crash risk, implying that high-quality auditors can directly benefit investors by reducing tail risk. In addition, we provide evidence that industry-specialist auditors moderate the effects of opacity, accounting conservatism, and tax avoidance on crash risk. Finally, our main finding of a negative relation between auditor industry specialization an...
Asymptotics for 1D Klein-Gordon Equations with Variable Coefficient Quadratic Nonlinearities

We initiate the study of the asymptotic behavior of small solutions to one-dimensional Klein-Gordon equations with variable coefficient quadratic nonlinearities. The main discovery in this work is a striking resonant interaction between specific spatial frequencies of the variable coefficient and the temporal oscillations of the solutions. In the resonant case a novel type of modified scattering behavior occurs that exhibits a logarithmic slow-down of the decay rate along certain rays. In the non-resonant case we introduce a new variable coefficient quadratic normal form and establish sharp decay estimates and asymptotics in the presence of a critically dispersing constant coefficient cubic nonlinearity. The Klein-Gordon models considered in this paper are motivated by the study of the asymptotic stability of kink solutions to classical nonlinear scalar field equations on the real line.
Beyond history and "on a roll": The list of the most well-studied human protein structures and overall trends in the protein data bank.

Of the roughly 20,000 canonical human protein sequences, as of January 20, 2021, 7,077 proteins have had their full or partial, medium- to high-resolution structures determined by x-ray crystallography or other methods. Which of these proteins dominate the protein data bank (the PDB) and why? In this paper, we list the 273 top human protein structures based on the number of their PDB entries. This set of proteins accounts for more than 40% of all available human PDB entries and represent past trends as well as current status for protein structural biology. We briefly discuss the relationship which some of the prominent protein structures have with protein research as a whole and mention their relevance to human diseases. The top-10 soluble and membrane proteins are all well-known (most of their first structures being deposited more than 30 years ago). Overall, there is no dramatic change in recent trends in the PDB. Remarkably, the number of structure depositions has grown nearly exponentially over the last 10 or more years (with a doubling time of 7 years for proteins, obtained from any organism). Growth in human protein structures is slightly faster (at 5.9 years). The information in this paper may be informative to senior scientists but also inspire researchers who are new to protein science, providing the year 2021 snap-shot for the state of protein structural biology.
Correlation of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activity during rest and acute stress tasks.

Autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity is a core and central component of emotion and motivated action. The myriad social and cognitive challenges faced by humans require flexible modulation of ANS activity for different contexts. In this study, simultaneous activity of the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system was measured using respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and pre-ejection period (PEP), respectively. Samples combined four previous studies (N = 325, 63% female, aged 15-55) in which RSA and PEP were collected continuously during a resting baseline and an acute stressor, the Trier Social Stress Task. The concurrent relation between RSA and PEP responses was modelled in order to determine the extent to which SNS and PNS activity is correlated across the task within and between participants, and whether this correlation was moderated by age, race, sex, or baseline RSA and PEP. Overall, RSA and PEP were reciprocally coupled. However, recovery from a stressor was characterized by coactivation. Individuals also vary in the extent to which their SNS and PNS are reciprocally coupled; women, younger adults, and individuals with higher baseline RSA showed more reciprocal coupling than men, older adults, and those with lower baseline RSA, respectively, reflecting greater coordination of physiological responding in the former groups.
Coagulation‐Fragmentation Equations with Multiplicative Coagulation Kernel and Constant Fragmentation Kernel

We study a critical case of Coagulation-Fragmentation equations with multiplicative coagulation kernel and constant fragmentation kernel. Our method is based on the study of viscosity solutions to a new singular Hamilton-Jacobi equation, which results from applying the Bernstein transform to the original Coagulation-Fragmentation equation. Our results include wellposedness, regularity and long-time behaviors of viscosity solutions to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation in certain regimes, which have implications to wellposedness and long-time behaviors of \emph{mass-conserving} solutions to the Coagulation-Fragmentation equation.
$N-1$ Reliability Makes It Difficult for False Data Injection Attacks to Cause Physical Consequences

This paper demonstrates that false data injection (FDI) attacks are extremely limited in their ability to cause physical consequences on $N-1$ reliable power systems operating with real-time contingency analysis (RTCA) and security constrained economic dispatch (SCED). Prior work has shown that FDI attacks can be designed via an attacker-defender bi-level linear program (ADBLP) to cause physical overflows after re-dispatch using DCOPF. In this paper, it is shown that attacks designed using DCOPF fail to cause overflows on $N-1$ reliable systems because the system response modeled is inaccurate. An ADBLP that accurately models the system response is proposed to find the worst-case physical consequences, thereby modeling a strong attacker with system level knowledge. Simulation results on the synthetic Texas system with 2000 buses show that even with the new enhanced attacks, for systems operated conservatively due to $N-1$ constraints, the designed attacks only lead to post-contingency overflows. Moreover, the attacker must control a large portion of measurements and physically create a contingency in the system to cause consequences. Therefore, it is conceivable but requires an extremely sophisticated attacker to cause physical consequences on $N-1$ reliable power systems operated with RTCA and SCED.
An ownership policy and deadlock detector for promises

Task-parallel programs often enjoy deadlock freedom under certain restrictions, such as the use of structured join operations, as in Cilk and X10, or the use of asynchronous task futures together with deadlock-avoiding policies such as Known Joins or Transitive Joins. However, the promise, a popular synchronization primitive for parallel tasks, does not enjoy deadlock-freedom guarantees. Promises can exhibit deadlock-like bugs; however, the concept of a deadlock is not currently well-defined for promises. To address these challenges, we propose an ownership semantics in which each promise is associated to the task which currently intends to fulfill it. Ownership immediately enables the identification of bugs in which a task fails to fulfill a promise for which it is responsible. Ownership further enables the discussion of deadlock cycles among tasks and promises and allows us to introduce a robust definition of deadlock-like bugs for promises. Cycle detection in this context is non-trivial because it is concurrent with changes in promise ownership. We provide a lock-free algorithm for precise runtime deadlock detection. We show how to obtain the memory consistency criteria required for the correctness of our algorithm under TSO and the Java and C++ memory models. An evaluation compares the execution time and memory usage overheads of our detection algorithm on benchmark programs relative to an unverified baseline. Our detector exhibits a 12% (1.12×) geometric mean time overhead and a 6% (1.06×) geometric mean memory overhead, which are smaller overheads than in past approaches to deadlock cycle detection.
Inventory Integration with Rational Consumers

Retailers have increasingly pursued initiatives to combine inventory located throughout their enterprise into a single stock from which customers anywhere in their distribution network may purchase...
Packing random items of three colors

Consider three colors 1,2,3, and forj≤3, considern items (X i,j)i≤n of colorj. We want to pack these items inn bins of equal capacity (the bin size is not fixed, and is to be determined once all the objects are known), subject to the condition that each bin must contain exactly one item of each color, and that the total item sizes attributed to any given bin does not exceed the bin capacity. Consider the stochastic model where the random variables (X i,jj)i≤n,j≤3 are independent uniformly distributed over [0,1]. We show that there is a polynomial-time algorithm that produces a packing which has a wasted space≤K logn with overwhelming probability.
Conventional Wisdom: Acknowledging Uncertainty in the Unknown

There has been much debate about the wisdom of calling an Article V Constitutional Convention. This piece -- which responds to Michael Stern's paper on the same topic -- cautions that some parameters should be considered prior to holding any such Convention. While the author is not inherently in favor of or opposed to the idea of an Article V Constitutional Convention, she holds some reservation about rushing in blindly. Key concerns include which Constitutional body, Article I, Article II or Article III, would ultimately have the last word on the breadth and workings of an Article V Convention.