cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
What Good Is the Social Model of Disability

A social model of disability relates a person’s disadvantage to the combination of personal traits and social setting. The model appears to have had a profound impact on academics, politics, and law since the 1970s. Scholars have debated the model’s force but its limitations are more severe than have been recognized. This Article claims that the model, like all social construction accounts, has essentially no policy implications. Its impact depends on normative commitments developed by some other logic, such as membership in the disability rights movement or adherence to versions of libertarian, utilitarian, or egalitarian theory that are triggered by the model’s causation story. At the same time, a normative framework within which the social model is relevant may suggest not only policy goals but an institutional design. These points are illustrated by recent controversies involving genetic screening, cochlear implants, and sign language communities. Contrary to impressions left in the law literature, the social model has nothing to say about the proper response to such developments, although the model might have a mediated influence on our sense of the best decisionmakers.
Counterproductive punishment: How prison gangs undermine state authority:

State efforts to provide law and order can be counterproductive: mass-incarceration policies, while incapacitating and deterring individual criminals, can simultaneously strengthen collective crimi...
A quasi-experimental evaluation using roadblocks and automatic license plate readers to reduce crime in Buffalo, NY

This article evaluates the effective of a hot spots policing strategy: using automated license plate readers at roadblocks in Buffalo, NY. Different roadblock locations were chosen by the Buffalo Police Department every day over a two-month period. We use propensity score matching to identify a set of control locations based on prior counts of crime and demographic factors. We find modest reductions in Part 1 violent crimes (10 over all roadblock locations and over the two months) using t tests of mean differences. We find a 20% reduction in traffic accidents using fixed effects negative binomial regression models. Both results are sensitive to the model used though, and the fixed effects models predict increases in crimes due to the intervention. We suggest that the limited intervention at one time may be less effective than focusing on a single location multiple times over an extended period.
British Investment Overseas 1870-1913: A Modern Portfolio Theory Approach

We use a mean-variance approach to address the classic puzzle of British capital export in the 19th century. Our analysis shows that foreign securities listed in London offered significant diversification benefits to British investors. In simple terms, international diversification reduced risk. Conservative estimates of the optimal investment portfolio for a domestic investor suggest that the balance between foreign and domestic security offerings on the London Exchange was close to what classic equilibrium models of asset prices would suggest. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.
Integration of Internal Control and Financial Statement Audits: Are Two Audits Better than One?

The quality of financial statement (FS) audits integrated with audits of internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR) depends upon the quality of ICFR information used in, and its integration into, FS audits. Recent research and PCAOB inspections find auditors underreport existing ICFR weaknesses and perform insufficient testing to address identified risks, suggesting integrated audits - in which substantial ICFR testing is required - may result in lower FS-audit quality than similar FS-only audits. We compare a 2007 - 2013 sample of small, U.S. public company firm-years receiving integrated audits (accelerated filers) to firm-years receiving FS-only audits (non-accelerated filers) and find integrated audits are associated with higher likelihood of material misstatements and discretionary accruals, consistent with lower FS audit quality. We also find evidence of (1) auditor judgment-based integration issues and (2) low-quality ICFR audits harming FS audit quality. Overall, results suggest an importan...
The Dilemma of the Vengeful Client: A Prescriptive Framework for Cooling the Flames of Anger

Lawyers are presented with a challenging dilemma when counseling angry clients who seek to use the legal system as a weapon for vengeance. Legal scholars have argued that lawyers should, where appropriate, dissuade their angry clients from litigation strategies that are immoral or arguably unethical. However, angry clients are remarkably resistant to appeals based on morality and reason. Thus, it is not surprising that lawyers have been largely ineffective in their efforts to dissuade angry clients from using the legal system as a battlefield. Instead, lawyers often reluctantly defer to clients whose judgment is impaired by their emotional reactivity. This article takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and resolving this important problem. Building on studies in the fields of neuroscience, medicine and psychology, I argue that when lawyers serve as hired guns for vengeful clients, the litigation process becomes an escalating cycle of war that inflicts psychological, emotional and even physiological harm on the client. I then shed light on why vengeful clients are so resistant to rational appeals based on morality and even economic self-interest. Finally, I provide a prescriptive framework for lawyers to use in helping vengeful clients significantly reduce the anger that otherwise impairs lawyers' ability to engage in effective client counseling.
When Security Analysts Talk, Who Listens?

Regulators' interest in analyst reports stems from the belief that small investors are unaware of the conflicts sell‐side analysts face and may, as a consequence, be misled into making suboptimal investment decisions. We examine who trades on security analyst stock recommendations by extending prior research to focus on investor‐specific responses to revisions. We find that both large and small traders react to analyst reports; however, large investors appear to trade more than small traders in response to the information conveyed by the analyst's recommendation and earnings forecast revision (proxied by the magnitudes of the recommendation change and the earnings forecast revision, respectively). We also find that small investors do not fully account for the effects of analysts' incentives on the credibility of analyst reports, as captured by the type of recommendation (i.e., upgrade versus downgrade or buy versus sell). In particular, small investors not only trade more than large investors following up...
The presidential election in Belarus, October 2015

Belarus emerged as an independent state in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991 (Zaprudnik, 1993). In March 1994, it became a presidential state when the Belarusian legislature passed the national constitution (Marples, 1996). It then became an authoritarian state after its first presidential election (Dawisha and Parrott, 1997). In that election, Alexander Lukashenko, a former collective farm supervisor and a member of the Belarusian parliament, won an emphatic secondround victory over Vyachaslau Kebich, the Prime Minister (Marples, 1999). This was the last free presidential election held in Belarus, a state now tightly controlled by Lukashenko's personlistic regime. In 1995 and again in 1996, Lukashenko used popular referenda to broaden his power, removing presidential term limits, and dramatically extending executive control over the legislature (Korosteleva et al., 2003).With his authority expanded, Lukashenko implemented vast social welfare programs that are designed to purchase public support (Way, 2005). He also built up a security apparatus, the largest in Europe, which is used to repress and ultimately deter the opposition (Silitski, 2005). In order to further sway public opinion, he consolidated state control over major media, such as television, radio, and print outlets. These tactics coupled with high-levels of electoral fraud helped Lukashenko win re-election in 2000, 2005, and 2010 (White, 2003; White et al., 2005; Marples, 2004; Silitski, 2006; Wilson, 2011). His smallest
Constitutional Tort-Reform

This article, written for the first annual Access to Justice symposium at Loyola Law School of Los Angeles, addresses the implications of due process for tort reform. In a line of relatively recent cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that a tort award of punitive damages must satisfy the procedural and substantive requirements of the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution. So far, constitutional tort-reform has been limited to punitive damages, but such reform is not necessarily limited to this area of tort law. As the article argues, other important tort practices raise the same sort of due process concerns that the Court has relied upon to justify the constitutional tort-reform of punitive damages practice. The Court's punitive damages jurisprudence may thus provide the foundation for a new type of broad-based tort reform. Regardless of what one may think about the Court's foray into tort reform, constitutional tort-reform has desirable characteristics. Rather than addressing the substantive aims of tort liability, constitutional tort-reform is supposed to reduce or eliminate any unreasonable legal uncertainty generated by the tort practice in question. But as the article further argues, the neat distinction between substance and process cannot be attained in practice. Any reform designed to reduce legal uncertainty will depend upon a contestable conception of tort liability, a characteristic of constitutional tort-reform clearly present in the Court's punitive damage jurisprudence. The Court, though, does not have to reach the correct substantive outcome in order to make constitutional tort-reform desirable. If the Court adopts a reform that depends upon the wrong substantive conception of tort law, the states retain the power to adopt a different substantive objective for the tort practice. Constitutional tort-reform therefore can serve the valuable role of forcing state courts and legislatures to identify more clearly the substantive objectives of tort law, an issue of critical importance that has not been adequately addressed by the reform movements of the last century.
Horizontal inventive step and international protection of intellectual property

Abstract This paper studies the intellectual property protection in a global setting where the protection is based on the patentability requirement. When two countries with similar research efficiencies open trade with each other, the world patentability requirement will rise above the autarky levels of both countries. When two countries with sufficiently different research efficiencies open trade with each other, they will both lower their patentability requirements from their respective autarky levels. The model shows that there is under-protection for patents in the second case, which suggests that these countries may want to strengthen their coordination in patentability requirement.
Mutual fund performance when parent firms simultaneously manage hedge funds

Abstract This study examines the performance of mutual funds managed by firms that simultaneously manage hedge funds. We find that the reported returns of mutual funds in these “side-by-side” associations with hedge funds significantly underperformed those of mutual funds that shared similar fund and family characteristics but differed in that they were not affiliated with hedge funds. Digging deeper into performance, we find that the underperformance was confined to return gaps, a return measure that captures the impact of unobservable managerial actions. Interestingly, mutual funds with investment styles that were most closely aligned to affiliated hedge funds generated reported-return alphas and return gaps that underperformed by the greatest amount. Finally, we find that side-by-side mutual funds received less of a contribution to performance from IPO underpricing than similar unaffiliated mutual funds or affiliated hedge funds. Evidence does not support the hypothesis that affiliations with hedge funds allow side-by-side mutual funds to attract superior stock-picking talent. Our evidence does not allow us to rule out the possibility that management firms maximized fee income by strategically transferring performance from mutual funds to hedge funds.
Theory, General Equilibrium, and Political Economy in Development Economics

I discuss the role of economic theory in empirical work in development economics with special emphasis on general equilibrium and political economy considerations. I argue that economic theory plays (should play) a central role in formulating models, estimates of which can be used for counterfactual and policy analysis. I discuss why counterfactual analysis based on microdata that ignores general equilibrium and political economy issues may lead to misleading conclusions. I illustrate the main arguments using examples from recent work in development economics and political economy.
Protection for Sale: An Empirical Investigation

The Grossman-Helpman "Protection for Sale" model, concerning the political economy of trade protection, yields clear predictions for the cross-sectional structure of import barriers. Our objective is to check whether the predictions of the Grossman-Helpman model are consistent with the data and, if the model finds support, to estimate its key structural parameters. We find that the pattern of protection in the United States in 1983 is broadly consistent with the predictions of the model. A surprising finding is that the weight of welfare in the government's objective function is many times larger than the weight of contributions.
On the Similarity of Classical and Bayesian Estimates of Individual Mean Partworths

An exciting development in modeling has been the ability to estimate reliable individual-level parameters for choice models. Individual partworths derived from these parameters have been very useful in segmentation, identifying extreme individuals, and in creating appropriate choice simulators. In marketing, hierarchical Bayes models have taken the lead in combining information about the aggregate distribution of tastes with the individual's choices to arrive at a conditional estimate of the individual's parameters. In economics, the same behavioral model has been derived from a classical rather than a Bayesian perspective. That is, instead of Gibbs sampling, the method of maximum simulated likelihood provides estimates of both the aggregate and the individual parameters. This paper explores the similarities and differences between classical and Bayesian methods and shows that they result in virtually equivalent conditional estimates of partworths for customers. Thus, the choice between Bayesian and classical estimation becomes one of implementation convenience and philosophical orientation, rather than pragmatic usefulness.
Toward a Jurisprudence of Cost-Benefit Analysis

In his book, The Cost-Benefit State, democratic theorist Cass Sunstein urges regulatory agencies to make decisions based on numerical assessments of regulatory consequences, factoring in variables ranging from effects on consumer prices to lives saved. In this Review, I seek to illustrate Sunstein's conception of cost-benefit analysis and critique this conception by suggesting that cost-benefit analysis could serve a more important role than Sunstein would allow. I also argue for a more active judicial role in scrutinizing agency actions than Sunstein would recommend, though not necessarily a less deferential one. In Part I of this review, I outline Sunstein's defense of the role of cost-benefit analysis and his recommendations for implementing it. Part II considers how Sunstein envisions implementation of cost-benefit analysis, including the ways in which Sunstein seeks to expand the practice and the ways in which he ultimately would limit it. In Part III, I offer a broader vision of cost-benefit analysis, recognizing the limitations of both unconstrained agency decision-making and unconstrained judicial decision-making. I argue that the development of cost-benefit principles through common law processes best avoids these opposing dangers. Finally, also in Part III, I argue that judicial review of cost-benefit analyses should take into account agency reputation and political proclivities as developed over a number of such analyses, as well as the political orientation of the courts in cases reviewing agency action.
The Real Effects of Short-Selling Constraints

We use a regulatory experiment (Regulation SHO) that relaxes short-selling constraints on a random sample of U.S. stocks to test whether capital market frictions have an effect on stock prices and corporate decisions. We find that an increase in short-selling activity causes prices to fall, and that small firms react to these lower prices by reducing equity issues and investment. These results not only provide evidence that short-selling constraints affect asset prices, but also confirm that short-selling activity has a causal impact on financing and investment decisions.
Are elite universities losing their competitive edge

We study the location-specific component of research productivity for economics and finance faculty over the last three decades. We find that there was a positive effect of being affiliated with a top 25 university in the 1970s; this effect weakened in the 1980s and disappeared in the 1990s. The decline in elite university fixed effect is due to the reduced importance of physical access to productive research colleagues, which in turn seems due to innovations in communication technology. One implication is that knowledge-based organizations should find it more difficult to capture rents vis-a-vis workers. We find that faculty salaries increased the most where the estimated spillover dropped the most. Despite the loss in local spillovers, elite universities still enjoy an edge in average productivity because of agglomeration of top researchers in prestigious institutions with high long-term research reputations.
Autocratic adaptation: The strategic use of transparency and the persistence of election fraud

Why would an autocrat want, or at least make it appear to want, to reduce election fraud? In recent years, non-democratic rulers have surprisingly begun to embrace fraud-reducing technologies, like web cameras or transparent ballot boxes. The reason for this is found in the relative ease by which one type of fraud can be replaced with another. With the help of new fraud identification techniques, I argue that the installation of web cameras in polling stations changes how fraud is conducted. Web cameras do not reduce fraud, but rather make certain blatant forms of fraud, like ballot box stuffing, more costly. Autocrats then substitute for other types of fraud, such as fabricating the vote count out of view of the cameras.
Nonlinearities, Smoothing and Countercyclical Monetary Policy

Abstract Empirical analysis of the Fed’s monetary policy behavior suggests that the Fed smooths interest rates– that is, the Fed moves the federal funds rate target in several small steps instead of one large step with the same magnitude. We evaluate the effect of countercyclical policy by estimating a Vector Autoregression (VAR) with regime switching. Because the size of the policy shock is important in our model, we can evaluate the effect of smoothing the interest rate on the path of macro variables. Our model also allows for variation in transition probabilities across regimes, depending on the level of output growth. Thus, changes in the stance of monetary policy affect the macroeconomic variables in a nonlinear way, both directly and indirectly through the state of the economy. We also incorporate a factor summarizing overall sentiment into the VAR to determine if sentiment changes substantially around turning points and whether they are indeed important to understanding the effects of policy.
Going Long on Shorts

This Comment explores existing empirical research and concludes that short sales are an important investment vehicle that benefit the financial markets, primarily by increasing the flow of information and improving market efficiency. This comment proposes regulatory changes that may promote more informed short selling, such as regulation of issuers and brokerage firms.
Why are firms unlevered

Abstract In this paper, we examine why firms have no debt in their capital structure. We reject the hypothesis that zero-leverage policies are driven by entrenched managers attempting to avoid the disciplinary pressures of debt. These firms do not have weaker internal or external governance mechanisms. The debt initiation decisions of these firms are not preceded by shocks to their entrenchment, such as takeover threats or the emergence of activist blockholders. Our evidence supports the hypothesis that these firms are financially constrained. Zero-debt firms are small, young, conserve cash from cash-flow, and are more likely to lease their assets. When they have access to a line of credit, they face stricter covenants and higher all-in costs than comparable control firms. They lose market share in economic downturns, consistent with the financial constraints explanation, but inconsistent with theories of predation which suggest that they may be voluntarily stockpiling debt capacity.
Reforming Punishment of Financial Reporting Fraud

Two obvious questions dominate the many cases of malfeasance in corporations and markets that have arrived in the criminal justice system during the last five years: Was the behavior at issue criminal? If so, for how long (if it all) should the perpetrators be sent to prison? Thorough pursuit of either question involves challenging theoretical inquiries. On the second question (punishment), however, the law suffers at a facial level from an embarrassment. Extant criminal law has not come close to working out even the easiest parts of the question of how to punish financial reporting fraud. The United States legal system is botching things even as the courts routinely face decisions with grave consequences: Should the former chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 company, whose shareholders lost hundreds of millions when the company revealed falsity in its finances, be sent to prison for months, years, a decade or even life without parole?1 My goal is to describe some concrete steps to rationalize the process of sentencing corporate offenders in the cases of large-scale financial reporting fraud that have been prevalent since 2001. Even if we set aside some heavy normative questions, such as the wisdom of imprisonment as a sanction for white-collar offenders, the proper mix of deterrent and retributive aims in such cases, and the appropriate theoretical methodology for deriving the “optimal” or “just” sentence in a given case, at least three accessible problems remain. First, we need a scale for comparing one case to another. Second, we need a
Middle-Income Peers as Educational Resources and the Constitutional Right to Equal Access

Concentrated poverty in public schools continues to be a leading determinate of the educational opportunities that minority students receive. Since the effective end of mandatory desegregation, advocates have lacked legal tools to address it. As an alternative, some advocates and scholars have attempted to incorporate the concerns of concentrated poverty and racial segregation into educational litigation under state constitutions, but these efforts have been slow to take hold. Thus, all that has remained for students in poor and minority schools is the hope that school finance litigation could direct sufficient resources to mitigate their plight. This Article offers another solution. Rather than simply importing concepts from federal desegregation into school finance, this Article articulates a unique theory of equal access to middle-income peers that is solidly grounded in state constitutional and school finance principles. In particular, it conceptualizes middle-income students as one of the educational resources that school districts allocate. As such, school finance principles of strategic and equitable distribution of resources apply. This theory is narrower than others and would not directly challenge segregation that exists between districts, but its narrowness is its doctrinal strength. Moreover, an empirical study of district-level practices reveals that conventional wisdom may have underestimated the level of inequality that occurs within districts. The racial inequality in access to middle-income peers within districts is vast and corresponds with dramatic shifts in achievement gaps, a core indicator of constitutional violations in school finance litigation. * © 2012, Derek W. Black, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Education Rights Center, Howard University School of Law. I would like to thank Dean John Charles Boger for supporting me with research assistants during my visit at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Joanne Campbell, in particular, provided invaluable assistance, without which I would have surely spent an additional year or more on this project. Vasanth Sridharan and Rais Akbar, interns with the Education Rights Center, also assisted in the early stages of developing this study. I would like to thank Richard Kahlenberg for his comments on an earlier draft.
Immigration Law and the Proportionality Requirement

I. Proportionality Review Outside Immigration Law 418 II. Proportionality Review in Immigration Law 424 A. Removal as a Punitive Sanction 425 1. Removal of Permanent Residents 427 2. Removal of Non-LPRs 428 B. Re-entry Bars as a Punitive Sanction 431 C. Case-by-Case Proportionality Review in Immigration Cases 435 D. Categorical Proportionality Review in Immigration Cases 439 E. Proportionality Review by Immigration Judges 441 III. Potential Objections 445 A. The Plenary Power Doctrine 445 B. The Continuing Offense Objection 448 C. Lack of Comparative Metrics 451
Oh, Won't You Stay With Me?: Determining Whether § 3 of the FAA Requires a Stay in Light of Katz v. Cellco Partnership

The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) provides the legal framework to render international and interstate arbitration agreements judicially enforceable in the United States. In furtherance of that goal, it provides that if a party initiates litigation rather than arbitration of an arbitrable dispute, either party may request that the court stay the litigation pending arbitration. There is currently a split among the circuit courts in this country as to whether § 3 of the FAA requires a court under these circumstances to stay the suit or whether it has the discretion to dismiss the suit altogether.In Katz v. Cellco Partnership, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a leading U.S. court in creating and shaping domestic and international arbitration law, recently sided with the majority of sister circuits in holding that § 3 requires a court to stay the litigation pending arbitration. This Note argues that the proper interpretation of FAA § 3 does indeed require a stay and proposes that the Supreme Court adopt the Second Circuit’s reasoning. Further, it argues that the mandatory-stay approach is consistent with the plain meaning of the statute, as well as important policy objectives: (1) providing the pro-arbitration framework Congress intended when passing the FAA, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly underscored; (2) foreclosing interlocutory appeals of dismissals that stall arbitrations; (3) rejecting docket management as a grounds for dismissal; and (4) avoiding the general uncertainty and unpredictability of dismissals.
Independent Creation and Originality in the Age of Imitated Reality: A Comparative Analysis of Copyright and Database Protection for Digital Models of Real People

This Article addresses a few of the issues that confront digital artists and modeling companies in the context of copyright law’s requirements of originality and independent creation, and provides a comparative look at potential protection for these types of digital models under differing definitions of originality. In an age when animators deal with pixels as well as paint brushes, the laws of the United States potentially offer digital artists less protection in this context than do the laws of other countries, such as the United Kingdom and Australia. Specifically, the requirement of originality after Feist and the lack of sui generis database protection in the United States provide less protection for digital visual effects artists engaged in modeling reality than do the laws of these other jurisdictions. This Article examines some examples of recent advancements in digital imaging technology; specifically, the ability to create digital clones of preexisting things, such as living or deceased personalities and other, non-human, objects. The Article then provides a comparative analysis of copyright’s requirement of originality in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, followed by a brief look at sui generis protection under the European Union’s recent directive on the legal protection of databases.
New goods and the skill premium

Abstract In a two-cone Heckscher–Ohlin model with CES preferences and a continuum of goods, new northern goods increase the northern skill premium if they are skilled-labor intensive, and may increase the premium if they are unskilled-labor intensive. Thus, the introduction of new goods into US technology could have done more to increase the US skill premium than a closed-economy model would predict. I also explore how new northern goods affect the southern skill premium and what happens if they generate preference-induced reversals across existing goods. I develop a two-step solution method that simplifies comparative static analyses in the two-cone Heckscher–Ohlin model.
Common Ownership and the Corporate Governance Channel for Employer Power in Labor Markets

This article combines two relatively new subjects of antitrust scholarly interest: labor market power and corporate governance. In so doing, it speaks to a number of recent debates that have grown ...
Asymmetric Information in the Market for IPOs

This study utilizes hand-collected ownership data to re-examine the signaling, agency and wealth effect theories in a matched-sample of initial public offerings (IPOs) issued in the U.S. prior to and following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). SOX provides some motivation for revisiting these topics because evidence exists that it may have affected the types of firms going public and ultimately the relatively importance of adverse selection and moral hazard, the asymmetric information problems with which these theories are concerned. Results on both the pre- and post-SOX samples are consistent with the signaling theory and evidence of a wealth effect exists in both eras. However, in contrast to results of studies conducted prior to SOX, both the pre- and post-SOX results give little credence to the agency theory, suggesting that SOX has not impacted investors’ concerns regarding moral hazard. Rather, the difference between the pre-SOX results and the results of previous studies suggests that SOX appeared to reduce moral hazard concerns only through its effect on the self-selection of firms going public.
Why No Parliaments in the United States

Introduction 270 1. Ground-Clearing: Timing and Evidence 272 1.1. Locating the Problem in Time 273 1.2. Silence in the Chamber 275 2. Exploring Hypotheses 275 2.1. Constitutional Disability 276 2.2. Tradition 277 2.3. Ignorance or Misunderstanding 278 2.4. Xenophobia 280 2.5. Conservatism 282 3. Why Have Parliaments in the First Place? 283 4. Villians in the Gilded Age: Legislatures and Parties 285 5. The Silence of the Backlash 291 6. Answering the Question 291 7. Conclusion 294
Welfare state myths and measurement

Myths about welfare states and their effects on economic development abound. In this paper, we rebut three central, related myths: that the current American welfare state is unusually small, that the United States has always been a welfare state laggard, and that the welfare state undermines productivity and economic growth. Very reasonable changes in measurement reveal that all three beliefs are untrue. The American welfare state appears relatively small only by restricting the comparison to rich nations, ignoring employer-provided health insurance, pensions, and public education, and measuring size relative to GDP, rather than on a real per capita basis. The inclusion of public education turns the United States from a laggard to a leader in welfare state development. Including public education and public health as well as cash benefits suggests that welfare state programs as a whole enhance the productivity of capitalism and spur economic development.Comments on this paper can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2566430.
Understanding Practice and Institutions: A Historical Perspective

SYNOPSIS: This paper explains how and why Anglo-American accounting and auditing, along with corporate governance and capital markets, evolved over many centuries in response to changes in market f...
Transparency, Liquidity, and Valuation: International Evidence on When Transparency Matters Most

We examine the relation between firm-level transparency, stock market liquidity, and valuation across countries, focusing on whether the relation varies with a firm's characteristics and economic environment. We document lower transaction costs and greater liquidity (as measured by lower bid-ask spreads and fewer zero-return days) for firms with greater transparency (as measured by less evidence of earnings management, better accounting standards, higher quality auditors, more analyst following, and more accurate analyst forecasts). The relation between transparency and liquidity is more pronounced in periods of high volatility, when investor protection, disclosure requirements, and media penetration are poor, and when ownership is more concentrated, suggesting that firm-level transparency matters more when overall investor uncertainty is greater. Increased liquidity is associated with lower implied cost of capital and with higher valuation as measured by Tobin's Q. Finally, a mediation analysis suggests that liquidity is a significant channel through which transparency affects firm valuation and equity cost of capital.
Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity

Constraint satisfaction problems are a central pillar of modern computational complexity theory. This survey provides an introduction to the rapidly growing field of Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity, which includes the study of quantum constraint satisfaction problems. Over the past decade and a half, this field has witnessed fundamental breakthroughs, ranging from the establishment of a "Quantum Cook-Levin Theorem" to deep insights into the structure of 1D low-temperature quantum systems via so-called area laws. Our aim here is to provide a computer science-oriented introduction to the subject in order to help bridge the language barrier between computer scientists and physicists in the field. As such, we include the following in this survey: 1 The motivations and history of the field, 2 a glossary of condensed matter physics terms explained in computer-science friendly language, 3 overviews of central ideas from condensed matter physics, such as indistinguishable particles, mean field theory, tensor networks, and area laws, and 4 brief expositions of selected computer science-based results in the area. For example, as part of the latter, we provide a novel information theoretic presentation of Bravyi's polynomial time algorithm for Quantum 2-SAT.
Bank relationships and underwriter competition: Evidence from Japan.

Abstract I examine the effects of bank relationships on underwriter choice in the Japanese corporate bond market following the 1993 deregulation. Bank relationships have significant positive effects on a firm's underwriter choice. Relationship firms receive a small but significant fee discount and, consistent with the mitigating effect of competition on hold-up costs, multiple-relationship firms receive a significantly deeper discount than single-relationship firms. Bank shareholding alone negatively affects underwriter choice, whereas shareholding together with loans has significantly more positive effects than loans alone. Finally, existing relationships reduce a Japanese firm's switching probability by 32%, in contrast to only 6% for U.S. firms.
Metrics to measure the technology transfer absorption: analysis of the relationship between institutes and adopters in northern Italy

The aim of this paper is to analyse the technology transfer between public research institutes and users, in particular to measure the absorption intensity of technology within a regional system of innovation. This research uses data from the balance sheets (e.g. turnover, etc.) of the Institutes located in the Northwest of Italy (1996-1998 period). The descriptive analysis shows that private adopters (e.g. firms and individual entrepreneurs) absorb technologies from institutes belonging to the technological field because they can be used for industrial purposes. On the contrary, public adopters (Institutions, EU, government bodies, etc.) absorb technologies and knowledge from Institutes of other fields (economics, physics, geology, etc.) because these can be used in order to solve social problems (economic policy, reduction of pollution, etc.). These technology transfer absorption indices show that public users have a higher intensity of technological absorption than private receptors (firms, etc.). The conclusive part of this paper displays lessons learned, policy and management implications.
Book-tax conformity, earnings persistence and the association between earnings and future cash flows ☆

Abstract Calls for eliminating differences between accounting earnings and taxable income in the US have been debated extensively. Proponents of increased book-tax conformity argue that tax compliance will increase and earnings quality will improve. Opponents argue that earnings quality will decline. We examine whether the level of required book-tax conformity affects earnings persistence and the association between earnings and future cash flows. We develop a comprehensive book-tax conformity measure and find that earnings have lower persistence and a lower association with future cash flows when conformity is higher. Our evidence suggests that increased book-tax conformity may reduce earnings quality.
WHAT EXPLAINS THE RECENT JOBLESS RECOVERIES

This paper considers a correlated unobserved-components model for output, employment, and hours in order to disentangle the causes for the last three jobless recoveries. The composition of the structural shocks during recessions and the periods immediately following recessions has changed, as have the responses of employment and hours to those shocks. Recessions before 1984 were followed by recoveries driven by positive permanent shocks to output, whereas post-1984 recessions were followed by weak recoveries in demand. Employment is more sensitive to demand shocks post-1984, leading to weak recoveries in employment. In addition, hours and employment were complements before 1984, but are treated as substitutes after 1984. Much of the initial decrease in demand is now absorbed on the intensive margin.
Can the European Community Afford to Neglect the Need for More Accountable Safety-Net Management?

As financial institutions and markets transact more and more cross-border business, gaps and flaws in national safety nets become more consequential. Because citizens of host (home) countries may be made to pay for mistakes made in the home (host) country, Basel's lead-regulator paradigm violates the principle of democratic accountability. Because important differences exist in policymaking authority, instruments, and goals, banking supervisors need to improve their ability to monitor and mitigate the consequences of defects in one another's performance. A straightforward way to enhance both capacities would be to establish opportunities for public trading in debt obligations and reinsurance derivatives issued by country-level deposit-insurance entities.
Mainstreaming Children's Rights in Post-Disaster Settings

In recent years, major natural disasters—ranging from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami to the 2010 Haiti earthquake—have challenged the global community to ensure the survival and well-being of millions of individuals under the most difficult circumstances. Each of these natural disasters has created crisis spots with huge numbers of displaced persons, including high numbers of children. The international community has struggled to deliver the resources needed to ensure the prompt and full recovery of the affected populations. In these settings, the challenges confronting children are particularly acute.
Foreign Ownership and Firm Performance: Emerging-Market Acquisitions in the United States

This paper examines the recent upsurge in foreign direct investment by emerging market firms into the United States. Traditionally, direct investment flowed from developed to developing countries, bringing with it superior technology, organizational capital, and access to international capital markets, yet increasingly there is a trend toward “capital flowing uphill” with emerging market investors acquiring a broad range of assets in developed countries. Using transaction-specific information and firm-level accounting data, the paper evaluates the operating performance of publicly traded U.S. firms that have been acquired by firms from emerging markets over the period 1980–2006. The empirical methodology uses a difference-in-differences approach combined with propensity score matching to create an appropriate control group of nonacquired firms. The results suggest that emerging country acquirers tend to choose U.S. targets that are larger in size (measured as sales, total assets, and employment) relative to matched nonacquired firms. In the years following the acquisition target firm sales and employment decline while profitability rises compared with matched nonacquired firms, suggesting significant restructuring of the target firms.
Moral character: What it is and what it does

Abstract Moral character can be conceptualized as an individual's disposition to think, feel, and behave in an ethical versus unethical manner, or as the subset of individual differences relevant to morality. This essay provides an organizing framework for understanding moral character and its relationship to ethical and unethical work behaviors. We present a tripartite model for understanding moral character, with the idea that there are motivational, ability, and identity elements. The motivational element is consideration of others – referring to a disposition toward considering the needs and interests of others, and how one's own actions affect other people. The ability element is self-regulation – referring to a disposition toward regulating one's behavior effectively, specifically with reference to behaviors that have positive short-term consequences but negative long-term consequences for oneself or others. The identity element is moral identity—referring to a disposition toward valuing morality and wanting to view oneself as a moral person. After unpacking what moral character is, we turn our attention to what moral character does, with a focus on how it influences unethical behavior, situation selection, and situation creation. Our research indicates that the impact of moral character on work outcomes is significant and consequential, with important implications for research and practice in organizational behavior.
Auditor Industry Specialization and Evidence of Cost Efficiencies in Homogenous Industries

ABSTRACT: This study examines the audit pricing effects when auditors specialize in industries conducive to transferable audit processes. Our results indicate that industry specialists charge incrementally lower fees in industries with homogenous operations, and particularly in industries with both homogenous operations and complex accounting practices. Moreover, we discover that audit quality is no lower for clients audited by these specialists offering fee discounts, consistent with a conclusion that the reduction in fees indicates cost efficiencies rather than lower-quality audits. Further analysis indicates that the shared economies of scale only occur in a subsample of client firms with relatively high bargaining power. When considered in conjunction with prior research using a survivorship approach, our study provides evidence that certain industries lend themselves to specialization because auditors generate cost-based competitive advantages without compromising service quality. Data Availability:...
Using the Theory of Signal Detection to Improve Ad Recognition Testing.

Recognition tests are a very popular means of assessing the memory effectiveness of advertisements. Unfortunately the recognition scores obtained by current methods reflect both the memory for an a...
Urban Decline and Durable Housing

Urban decline is not the mirror image of growth, and durable housing is the primary reason the nature of decline is so different. This paper presents a model of urban decline with durable housing and verifies these implications of the model: (1) city growth rates are skewed so that cities grow more quickly than they decline; (2) urban decline is highly persistent; (3) positive shocks increase population more than they increase housing prices; (4) negative shocks decrease housing prices more than they decrease population; (5) if housing prices are below construction costs, then the city declines; and (6) the combination of cheap housing and weak labor demand attracts individuals with low levels of human capital to declining cities.
Corporate Law and the Sovereignty of States

This article explores the origins of a social form with lasting and profound sociological implications: the corporation. Though corporations date back as far as the Roman Republic, the early United States fostered a significant transformation in corporate law. Shortly after the American Revolution, several states pioneered a system whereby corporate charters became available to almost anyone (at a price), leading (eventually) to a proliferation of corporate charters unlike anything ever seen before in world history. This proliferation of corporate charters first occurred in colonies that were originally chartered as corporations: Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, all of which used the corporate organizational form for a wide array of social pursuits. These colonies also experienced repeated conflict with the Crown over the rights and privileges of corporations. As American "states," they built on these experiences to liberalize access to the means of incorporation and to elucidate the rights and freedoms of corporations. Other studies aptly document the diffusion of the corporate organizational form after 1800; this article takes up the antecedents to the use and popularity of the modern corporate organizational form. These observations do not supersede scholarly work regarding the economic origins of the American business corporation, but they do shed valuable light on the interdependence of states and markets, as well as the nature of institutional-legal transformation more generally
Beyond the Last Touch: Attribution in Online Advertising

Online advertisers often utilize multiple publishers to deliver ads to multihoming consumers. These ads often generate externalities and their exposure is uncertain, impacting advertising effective...