cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Decision Forest: A Nonparametric Approach to Modeling Irrational Choice

Customer behavior is often assumed to follow weak rationality, which implies that adding a product to an assortment will not increase the choice probability of another product in that assortment. However, an increasing amount of research has revealed that customers are not necessarily rational when making decisions. In this paper, we propose a new nonparametric choice model that relaxes this assumption and can model a wider range of customer behavior, such as decoy effects between products. In this model, each customer type is associated with a binary decision tree, which represents a decision process for making a purchase based on checking for the existence of specific products in the assortment. Together with a probability distribution over customer types, we show that the resulting model -- a decision forest -- is able to represent any customer choice model, including models that are inconsistent with weak rationality. We theoretically characterize the depth of the forest needed to fit a data set of historical assortments and prove that with high probability, a forest whose depth scales logarithmically in the number of assortments is sufficient to fit most data sets. We also propose two practical algorithms -- one based on column generation and one based on random sampling -- for estimating such models from data. Using synthetic data and real transaction data exhibiting non-rational behavior, we show that the model outperforms both rational and non-rational benchmark models in out-of-sample predictive ability.
Law as a seamless web?: comparison of various network representations of the United States Supreme Court corpus (1791-2005)

In this paper, we compare several network representations of the corpus of United States Supreme Court decisions (1791--2005). This corpus is not only of seminal importance, but also represents a highly structured and largely self-contained body of case law. As constructed herein, nodes represent whole cases or individual "opinion units" within cases. Edges represent either citations or semantic connections. As our broader goal is to better understand American common law development, we are particularly interested in the union, intersect and compliment of these various citation networks as they offer potential insight into the time developing structure of the "web of the law."
Risk and Return in the Next Frontier

This article investigates the risk-return relations of stocks traded in frontier markets, a class of small, illiquid, less accessible and less known emerging markets that has escaped the attention of many researchers. We examine the cross-section of risk premiums of 360 stocks traded in 19 frontier markets for the period from January 1997 to June 2004. We first observe that frontier markets provide greater return potentials than emerging and developed markets as well as further diversification benefits. Our investigation indicates that the risks involved when investing in frontier markets can be better understood by using a multifactor extension of CAPM which consists of fundamental factors like beta, price to book and size, and country specific factors including political, economic and financial risk ratings. Two surprising findings emerge from this study: (1) small and value stocks are less risky investment avenues than large and growth stocks, and (2) political, economic and financial risk factors have...
Stock Market Liquidity and the Long-run Stock Performance of Debt Issuers

Previous studies document that the stock returns of bond-issuing firms significantly underperform matched peers over the three to five years following issuance. We revisit this phenomenon and show that the underperformance is the result of an omitted return factor (a "bad model problem"). Debt issuers have significantly higher stock market liquidity than size and book-to-market matched counterparts, and differences in liquidity are largest for the worst-performing groups of issuers. When we additionally match on liquidity or when we include a liquidity factor in the model for expected returns, the evidence of underperformance disappears. The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org., Oxford University Press.
Agency Problems and Dividend Policies Around the World

This paper outlines and tests two agency models of dividends. According to the "outcome model," dividends are paid because minority shareholders pressure corporate insiders to disgorge cash. According to the "substitute model," insiders interested in issuing equity in the future pay dividends to establish a reputation for decent treatment of minority shareholders. The first model predicts that stronger minority shareholder rights should be associated with higher dividend payouts; the second model predicts the opposite. Tests on a cross section of 4,000 companies from 33 countries with different levels of minority shareholder rights support the outcome agency model of dividends.
The Structural Rules of Transnational Law

The ability of a country to regulate extraterritorially depends not simply on rules of prescriptive jurisdiction but also on rules of judicial jurisdiction and the enforcement of judgments. The most extraterritorial law in the world will have little impact if a court cannot or will not exercise jurisdiction over defendants who violate it, or if the resulting judgment cannot be enforced against the defendants' assets. Extraterritoriality must therefore be examined not in isolation but as part of a larger set of rules that I have called the "structural rules of transnational law."
Is the Washington Consensus Dead? Growth, Openness, and the Great Liberalization, 1970s–2000s

According to the Washington Consensus, developing countries' growth would benefit from reductions in barriers to trade. However, the empirical basis for judging trade reforms is weak. Econometrics are mostly ad hoc, results are typically not judged against models, policies are poorly measured, and most studies are based on pre-1990 experience. We address these concerns by employing a model with capital and intermediate goods, compiling new disaggregated tariff measures, and employing treatment and control regression analysis with differences-in-differences. We find that a specific treatment, liberalizing tariffs on imported capital and intermediate goods, led to faster growth, consistent with the model.
Robust Controls for Network Revenue Management

Revenue management models traditionally assume that future demand is unknown but can be described by a stochastic process or a probability distribution. Demand is, however, often difficult to characterize, especially in new or nonstationary markets. In this paper, we develop robust formulations for the capacity allocation problem in revenue management using the maximin and the minimax regret criteria under general polyhedral uncertainty sets. Our approach encompasses the following open-loop controls: partitioned booking limits, nested booking limits, displacement-adjusted virtual nesting, and fixed bid prices. In specific problem instances, we show that a booking policy of the type of displacement-adjusted virtual nesting is robust, both from maximin and minimax regret perspectives. Our numerical analysis reveals that the minimax regret controls perform very well on average, despite their worst-case focus, and outperform the traditional controls when demand is correlated or censored. In particular, on real large-scale problem sets, the minimax regret approach outperforms by up to 2% the traditional heuristics. The maximin controls are more conservative but have the merit of being associated with a minimum revenue guarantee. Our models are scalable to solve practical problems because they combine efficient (exact or heuristic) solution methods with very modest data requirements.
The Merger of Common-Law and Equity Pleading in Virginia

This article describes the separation of common law and equity in Virginia leading up to the 2006 merger of common law and equity pleading and the problems that remain to be solved by the courts.
Radical Reform of Intercollegiate Athletics: Antitrust and Public Policy Implications

Universities operating major intercollegiate athletic programs are heading for, if not already in, a crisis. Corruption continues to affect major football and basketball programs, exacerbated by a failure of imagination and will in identifying and deterring corruption, and by a lack of consensus on what constitutes "corruption" when football and men's basketball stars generate millions of dollars but cannot enjoy a lifestyle commensurate with many peer students. Current levels of spending are nonsustainable at many schools. Even where intercollegiate athletic programs are sustained primarily by football and basketball revenues, otherwise visionary and questioning college presidents have yet to publicly question why these revenues should subsidize nonrevenue sports at the expense of financially pressed classroom activities. Contrary to the NCAA Constitution, major football programs do not operate "in keeping with prudent management and fiscal practices." This Essay sets forth an agenda for reform, explains why the agenda reflects sound public policy, and analyzes why and how the NCAA can implement the agenda in a manner consistent with the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Elections and Alignment

Election law doctrine has long been dominated by rights-andinterests balancing: the weighing of the rights burdens imposed by electoral regulations against the state interests that the regulations serve. For the last generation, the election law literature has emphasized structural values that relate to the functional realities of the electoral system, competition chief among them. This Article introduces a new structural theory—the alignment approach—that has the potential to reframe and unify many election law debates. The crux of the approach is that voters’ preferences ought to be congruent with those of their elected representatives. Preferences as to both party and policy should correspond, and they should do so at the levels of both the individual district and the jurisdiction as a whole. The alignment approach is attractive because it stems from the core meaning of democracy itself. If it is the people who are sovereign, then it is their preferences that should be reflected in the positions of their representatives. The approach also is appealing because of the support it finds in the Supreme Court’s case law. While the Court has never embraced the approach explicitly, it has often recognized the significance of preference congruence. However, it is important not to overstate the approach’s utility. Other election law values matter too and cannot be disregarded. Moreover, many of the factors that produce misalignment are nonlegal and thus cannot be addressed by law reform alone.
The insignificance of auditor selection in the valuation of private companies within the public acquisition market

Previous research has set a firm position on quality and credibility of accounting information in the audit markets. Firth and Smith (1992), Firth and Liau-Tan (1998) and DeFranco et al. (2010) observed that brand name auditors provide higher assurance and credibility to the audited financial statements of companies with little or no trading history. However, in light of this reputable research, the established view from major professional accounting groups is that audits are the same regardless of the audit firm implying auditing homogeneity (Niskanen et al., 2010). The results from this analysis indicated that the price of a privately held company did not vary as a function of the audit firm performing the audit. Two analyses were performed comparing private companies audited by the largest ten accounting firms vs. all others, and Big 5(4) firms opposed to the remaining.
Remanding Multidistrict Litigation

Multidistrict litigation has frequently been described as a “black hole” because transfer is typically a one-way ticket. The numbers lend truth to this proposition. As of 2010, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation remanded only 3.425% of cases to their original districts. That number dwindled to 3.1% in 2012, and to a scant 2.9% in 2013. Retaining cases in hopes of forcing a global settlement can cause a constellation of complications. These concerns range from procedural justice issues over selecting a forum and correcting error, to substantive concerns about fidelity to state laws, to undermining democratic participation ideals fulfilled through jury trials in affected communities. Yet, if transferee judges remanded cases after overseeing discovery into common issues, they could alleviate those concerns while avoiding inconsistent rulings on common questions and streamlining discovery.Despite the potential upside, remand rarely occurs because it disfavors those with litigation control — transferee judges, lead plaintiffs’ attorneys, and defendants. Transferee judges deem settlement a hallmark of their success. Lead plaintiffs’ lawyers try to increase their fees by inserting fee provisions into settlements. Likewise, plaintiffs’ attorneys can bypass doctrinal uncertainties over weak claims by packaging plaintiffs together in a global settlement. And aggregate settlements allow defendants to resolve as many claims as possible in one stroke, take their hit, and return to business, which their shareholders view as a net positive. The remand process itself defers to these vested interests. Although the Panel could remand cases at a party’s request, in practice it appears never to have done so. Rather, it waits for the transferee judge to admit defeat and suggest remand — thereby conceding failure. For transferee judges to begin remanding cases, the “pro-settlement” norm and “remand-as-a-failure” stigma must change. Accordingly, transferee judges should routinely entertain a suggestion for remand by a party or initiate them sua sponte as soon as discovery on common issues concludes and only case-specific issues remain. Likewise, the Panel should seriously consider parties’ remand requests even when the transferee judge does not support them. This reopens a direct line for parties to request remand when common discovery ends, but the transferee judge prefers to hold cases hostage in hopes of coercing settlement.
Relationship Lending: Do Banks Learn?

There is a vast empirical and theoretical literature that points to the importance of borrowerlender relationships for firms’ access to credit. In this paper, we investigate one particular mechanism through which long-term relationships might improve access to credit. We hypothesize that while lending to a firm, a bank receives signals that allow it to learn and better understand the firm’s fundamentals; and that this learning is private; that is, it is information that is not fully reflected in publicly-observable variables. We test this hypothesis using a dataset for 7,618 syndicated loans made between 1987 and 2003. We construct a variable that proxies for firm quality and is unobservable by the bank, so it cannot be priced when the firm enters our sample. We show that the loading on this factor in the pricing equation increases with relationship time, hinting that banks are able to learn about firm quality when they are in an established relationship with the firm. Our finding is robust to controlling for market-wide learning about firm fundamentals. This suggests that a significant portion of bank learning is private and is not shared by all market participants.
Consumer Bankruptcy as Development Policy

Consumer lending has surged in countries across the globe in recent years. Not surprisingly, consumer financial markets have expanded most dramatically in developed economies, especially in the United States and the European Union. Some of the most dramatic changes in consumer borrowing, however, have occurred in the developing world. In recent years, modern consumer financial markets have emerged or have begun emerging in nearly all middle-income and many lower-income countries as these countries have experienced significant per capita growth in recent years. Total financial liabilities of households in India, for example, have increased nearly
How Investors Interpret Past Fund Returns

The literature documents a convex relation between past returns and fund flows of mutual funds. We show this to be consistent with fund incentives, because funds discard exactly those strategies which underperform. Past returns tell less about the future performance of funds which discard, so flows are less sensitive to them when they are poor. Our model predicts that strategy changes only occur after bad performance, and that bad performers who change strategy have dollar flow and future performance that are less sensitive to current performance than those that do not. Empirical tests support both predictions.
Preclinical evidence to support repurposing everolimus for craving reduction during protracted drug withdrawal.

Cue-elicited drug-craving is a cardinal feature of addiction that intensifies (incubates) during protracted withdrawal. In a rat model, these addiction-related behavioral pathologies are mediated, respectively, by time-dependent increases in PI3K/Akt1 signaling and reduced Group 1 metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGlu) expression, within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Herein, we examined the capacity of single oral dosing with everolimus, an FDA-approved inhibitor of the PI3K/Akt effector mTOR, to reduce incubated cocaine-craving and reverse incubation-associated changes in vmPFC kinase activity and mGlu expression. Rats were trained to lever-press for intravenous infusions of cocaine or delivery of sucrose pellets and then subjected to tests for cue-reinforced responding during early (3 days) or late (30-46 days) withdrawal. Rats were gavage-infused with everolimus (0-1.0 mg/kg), either prior to testing to examine for effects upon reinforcer-seeking behavior, or immediately following testing to probe effects upon the consolidation of extinction learning. Single oral dosing with everolimus dose-dependently blocked cocaine-seeking during late withdrawal and the effect lasted at least 24 h. No everolimus effects were observed for cue-elicited sucrose-seeking or cocaine-seeking in early withdrawal. In addition, everolimus treatment, following initial cue-testing, reduced subsequent cue hyper-responsivity exhibited observed during late withdrawal, arguing a facilitation of extinction memory consolidation. everolimus' "anti-incubation" effect was associated with a reversal of withdrawal-induced changes in indices of PI3K/Akt1/mTOR activity, as well as Homer protein and mGlu1/5 expression, within the prelimbic (PL) subregion of the prefrontal cortex. Our results indicate mTOR inhibition as a viable strategy for interrupting heightened cocaine-craving and facilitating addiction recovery during protracted withdrawal.
Breaking up is hard to do: the resilience of the rock group as an organizational form for creating music

Though there is a long tradition of band members quitting the group or taking a hiatus, the rock group as an organization to produce music continues to be both popular and economically viable. The research question addressed in this paper is whether or not it is a good idea to quit or take a hiatus from the group. We begin with a discussion of the framework for understanding why groups are formed and why they may be difficult to keep together. We then discuss differences between groups in the decade of the 1960s versus today. We argue that there is something unique about the output of the group even with the changes in the structure of contracts, compensation, and consumer focus on the artist that explain the resilience of the rock band as an organizational form within which to create music. We compare the charting success of bands that have members leave the group with the charting success of the members who left the group. We identified the groups in five representative years: 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005. We then analyzed the entire Billboard Hot 100 charting careers of those groups and the artists who quit those groups. Our main finding is that when charting success is divided equally among members, going solo pays off—there is a clear economic rationale because solo acts have greater average charting success than the original bands they started in. The other ensuing side projects: duos, collaborations, and other groups are not as lucrative as the original bands. These findings are valid for members of charting groups from each of the 5 years examined. Despite the difficulties in keeping a rock band together, there are fewer band breakups today and remaining with the group generally results in a longer and more productive charting career. Thus, the rock group remains an important organization for producing contemporary music. However, there remains a compelling incentive to go solo. Superstars may benefit from solo projects, but for the average, non-superstar group member, in many circumstances it is better for the band to stay together if the income is divided equally.
Neglect of the Marketplace: The Questionable Economics of America's Bishops

The overwhelming majority of the points made in this assessment of the first draft of the U.S. bishops' pastoral, "Catholic Social 'Teaching and the U.S. Economy,'" shall be critical; indeed, highly critical. It therefore behooves us to begin by considering the positive elements of the bishops' pastoral, before examining its shortcomings.
U.S. ENERGY POLICY AND THE PRESUMPTION OF MARKET FAILURE

Over the last 35 years, the U.S. government has embarked on several major projects to spur the commercial development of energy technologies intended to substitute for conventional energy resources, especially fossil fuels. Those efforts began with the 1973 energy crisis when President Nixon became the first U.S. leader to announce a plan for energy autarky. Presidents Ford and Carter followed Nixon’s “Project Independence” with similar pledges. But beginning with Ford’s 1975 energy act, plans for energy independence were tied directly to the development of new, alternative energy technologies. Under President Carter in particular, the federal government embarked on highly publicized, heavily funded efforts at developing new technologies with specific timetables for commercial entry and, in a few cases, a timetable for mass market substitution. Current mandates for ethanol and other biofuels fit this latter objective. The presumption underlying government alternative energy programs, including the ethanol program, is that voluntary market action is insufficient to develop new energy sources. Therefore, government has to step in to induce the technological development the market fails to create. Only through government intervention, according to this logic, can the market failure be corrected and the
Sexuality, third-party harms, and the “live-and-let-live” approach to religious exemptions

For several years now, a group of prominent religious liberty scholars in the United States have been defending what they call a “live-and-let-live” approach to accommodating religious dissent in the era of marriage equality. The proposed approach calls on the state to avoid taking sides on contested moral issues when individuals of faith claim that their religious beliefs require them to refrain from facilitating marriages by same-sex couples. The objective, it is argued, is to adopt policies that allow both sides to live according to their values. This article critiques the “live-and-let-live” solution to religious exemptions from LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) equality measures by focusing on questions of harms. It argues that the proposed approach calls for a weighing of harms that is largely unprecedented in the history of American antidiscrimination law and problematic in its own right. The article also explains that the approach is premised on questionable assumptions and prediction...
Oil price fluctuations and the Nigerian economy

The single most important issue confronting a growing number of world economies today is the price of oil and its attendant consequences on economic output. Several studies have taken the approach of Hamilton (1983) in investigating the effect of oil price shocks on levels of gross domestic product. The focus of this paper is primarily on the relationship between oil price changes and economic development via industrial production. A vector auto regression model is employed on some macroeconomic variables from 1980 through 2004. The results indicate that oil price changes affect real exchange rates, which, in turn, affect industrial production. However, this indirect effect of oil prices on industrial production is not statistically significant. Therefore, the implication of the results presented in this paper is that an increase in oil prices does not lead to an increase in industrial production in Nigeria.
Technological Evolution and Radical Innovation

Abstract Technological change is perhaps the most powerful engine of growth in markets today. To harness this source of growth, firms need answers to key questions about the dynamics of technological change: (1) How do new technologies evolve? (2) How do rival technologies compete? and (3) How do firms deal with technological evolution? Currently, the literature suggests that a new technology seems to evolve along an S-shaped path, which starts below that of an old technology, intersects it once, and ends above the old technology. This belief is based on scattered empirical evidence and some circular definitions. Using new definitions and data on 14 technologies from four markets, the authors examine the shape and competitive dynamics of technological evolution. The results contradict the prediction of a single S-curve. Instead, technological evolution seems to follow a step function, with sharp improvements in performance following long periods of no improvement. Moreover, paths of rival technologies may...
Global Antitrust Prosecutions of Modern International Cartels

International cartelists face investigations and possible fines in a score of national and supranational jurisdictions, but the three with the most consistent legal responses to global cartels are the United States, Canada, and the European Union. This paper examines the antitrust fines and private penalties imposed on the participants of 167 international cartels discovered during 1990–2003. While more than U.S.$10 billion in penalties has been imposed, it is doubtful that such monetary sanctions can deter modern international cartels. The apparently large size of government fines is distorted by one overwhelming case. Moreover, deterrence is frustrated by the failure of compensatory private suits to take hold outside of North America and the near absence of fines in most Asian jurisdictions. Without significant increases in cartel detection, in the levels of expected fines or civil settlements, or expansion of the standing of buyers to seek compensation, international price fixing will remain rational business conduct.
Beyond Accuracy: Comparison of Criteria Used to Select Forecasting Methods

Two studies were conducted to examine expert opinions of criteria used to select forecasting techniques. In Study One, while "accuracy" was a dominant criterion, the ratings of five of thirteen criteria varied by the role of the forecaster. Researchers rated accuracy relatively higher than did practitioners, educators or decision-makers. Decision makers rated implementation-related criteria, such as "ease" criteria, relatively higher than the other groups. In Study Two, forecasting experts significantly varied their ratings on six of seven criteria according to situations. Other criteria were often as important or more important than accuracy, especially when the situation involved making many forecasts. In general, there was much agreement across roles and across situations that accuracy was the most important criterion, but other criteria were rated as being almost as important. In particular, factors related to implementation, such as ease of interpretation and ease of use, were highly rated.
Accomplice Liability for Unintentional Crimes: Remaining within the Constraints of Intent

This Article addresses the issue of the proper extent of a secondary actor's culpability for unintentional crimes committed by another. Part I reviews accomplice liability and its mens rea requirements generally. Part II discusses the history of the application of complicity theory to unintentional crimes. Part III examines whether accomplice liability for unintentional crimes is proper, and concludes that in keeping with complicity's doctrinal requirements, liability is appropriate only when the secondary actor has the intent to aid in the commission of the culpable act that results in unplanned harm. It evaluates whether the various categories of accomplice statutes sufficiently delineate the intent requirement of accomplice liability for unintentional crimes. In addition, Part III suggests that courts generally assess liability for unintentional crimes indiscriminately because they misunderstand the intent requirements of accomplice liability.
International Law and the War in Iraq

Many international legal scholars and foreign governments have argued that the recent war in Iraq violated international law. This paper, published as part of an Agora in the American Journal of International Law, criticizes this view on two grounds. It explains that these scholars have failed to properly read existing United Nations Security Council resolutions that authorized the use of force against Iraq. Even putting the United Nations to one side, this paper explains that the use of force could have been justified, at the time of the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, as an exercise of self-defense. It argues that traditional notions of self-defense, which permit the anticipatory use of force before an offensive attack occurs, have changed to take into account the greater magnitude of destruction of weapons of mass destruction and the behavior of rogue states.
Integration of physical and futures prices in the US natural gas market

This paper examines the integration between the prices of different types of physical (upstream/end-use) and futures contracts of natural gas in the US for the period of June 1990–Dec 2014. To examine the equilibrium relationship between physical and futures prices, several cointegration tests are applied. The study finds that (a) futures prices are cointegrated with wellhead, power, industrial, and citygate prices; (b) NG1 futures prices Granger cause all physical prices; (c) upstream physical prices Granger cause futures prices; (d) shocks to wellhead prices are the only ones among physical prices with persistent long-term effects; (e) shocks to futures prices have persistent effects on all physical prices; (f) futures contracts with a longer time-to-maturity explain a larger portion of commercial gas price variations; and (g) commercial and residential prices show different behavior compared to other physical prices in multiple tests.
Budgetary Consequences of Selling Federal Power Assets

This article reports on an analysis of the long-term budgetary effects of selling federal power programs at market value. The analysis looks at changes in future budgetary receipts and costs for power operations and at changes in future federal taxes as a result of new ownership. Under current rate-setting policy, federal agencies must generate a future operating surplus (and hence, budgetary income) worth about $46 billion in today's dollars to repay past capital investments. With optimistic assumptions about rising power rates, market values for all federal power assets (including the power-generation assets of the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers) could be as high as $62 billion. In that case, their sale would produce long-term budgetary savings of about $16 billion, in today's dollars. The analysis also notes that budgetary savings are not a measure of the gains in economic efficiency from privatization. Such considerations as efficiency or fairness to particular groups will be important in any debate about the future of federal power programs.
Relating inertia and experience in technology markets: an analysis of households’ personal computer choices

This article empirically analyses how households’ PC purchasing behaviours change with market experience. We find that: households generally exhibit inertia in their PC purchases, the level of inertia is increasing as a function of experience on the PC market, and, for households switching brands, the likelihood of buying a lesser-known brand increases with experience, regardless of the brand of the previous purchase. These findings are consistent with the predictions of a simple learning model, and extend our understanding of how market experience affects purchasing behaviour to an important technology product, with implications that may apply to other similar products.
Should Psychopathy Qualify for Preventive Outpatient Commitment

This chapter argues that people diagnosed with psychopathy alone should not qualify for inpatient involuntary hospitalization or preventive outpatient commitment. Preventive outpatient commitment is controversial. Even though it involves a lesser intrusion on liberty than inpatient commitment, it nonetheless involves a deprivation of liberty protected by due process. As a result, the nature of such commitment must satisfy the reasons that serve to justify it. Outpatient commitment is justified largely based on parens patriae considerations, and this typically requires that the patient be incompetent to make treatment decisions for himself or herself. Moreover, such commitment contemplates that the individual will be provided treatment that is effective for his or her condition. As involuntary treatment generally is not effective for people suffering from psychopathy, the chapter argues that outpatient commitment is inappropriate for this population for parens patriae purposes. Furthermore, people with this condition do not suffer from cognitive impairments that render them incompetent. An additional purpose justifying commitment is protection of the community from harm, a purpose grounded in the state's police power. To justify commitment for this purpose, however, the person must suffer from a condition that makes it difficult for him to control his behavior. The chapter argues that individuals with psychopathy can control their conduct. As a result, the chapter concludes that outpatient commitment based on the police power also is inappropriate. Instead of inpatient or outpatient commitment, the chapter argues that the criminal law should be used for purposes of protecting the community from the antisocial conduct of those suffering from psychopathy.
Empirical pricing kernels

This paper investigates the empirical characteristics of investor risk aversion over equity return states by estimating a time-varying pricing kernel, which we call the empirical pricing kernel (EPK). We estimate the EPK on a monthly basis from 1991 to 1995, using SP G13; C50
Lawyers' Pro Bono Service and American-Style Civil Legal Assistance

Lawyers are often criticized for stinting on their responsibilities for public service; nevertheless, their uncompensated provision of legal services to poor people, or pro bono work, provides a substantial part of available civil legal assistance in the United States. Cross-sectional analysis of data from the late 1990s reveals that reliance on pro bono may render assistance vulnerable to market pressures in ways both obvious and subtle. In states where the legal profession takes in more receipts per lawyer, larger proportions of the profession provide uncompensated service to the poor. In states where the profession feels its work jurisdiction is under threat from unauthorized practice by other occupations, larger proportions of the profession participate in pro bono work than in states where there is no concern about unauthorized practice. As federally subsidized legal assistance shrinks in both scope and scale, growing reliance on pro bono leaves American-style civil legal assistance increasingly vulnerable to market forces.
Has the Tide Turned in Favor of Disclosure? Revealing Money in Politics After Citizens United and Doe v. Reed

This article will cover a short but tumultuous period in the history of campaign finance disclosure law from 2007 to 2010 to highlight the dramatic 180 degree turn that the law has taken on the issue of the constitutionality of disclosure within the past four years. First, I will explore the hostility that many lower courts were exhibiting in the short window between the Supreme Court’s decision in Wisconsin Right to Life II (WRTL II) in 2007 and the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC in 2010. Basically these lower courts made the mistake of applying WRTL II to disclosure laws. This mistake was corrected by the Supreme Court in Citizens United and Doe v. Reed in 2010. After Citizens United and Doe, lower courts all over the country have adopted the Supreme Court’s view that disclosure and disclaimers can be constitutionally applied to advertisements that feature candidates for office directly before an election. And lower courts have gone further to endorse disclosure around ballot measure fights as well. In other words, in the nation’s courts the tide has turned in favor of disclosure of the sources of money in politics.
Silver: A morally good money

It is sometimes said, «money is at the root of all evil.»1 This essay examines whether there are any forms of money (and monetary systems) that are potentially morally good. To do so requires us to look at God’s ethics regarding material resources, and then to see what part, if any, God intends money to serve in the human econ- omy. I conclude that there exists at least one form of money, namely silver, that if used in accord with God’s material resource ethics, is morally good money. God intends the global human economy to be dynamically undergirded by two core principles: sharing resources morally and sustaining the Earth’s environment for future generations and their economic activities. The two principles interrelate and affect the extent and character of each other. They are also intensely ethical concepts, but simultaneously factual. As such, I refer to them throughout this article as «factual-ethical princi- ples.» Both derive directly from the Bible — both the Hebrew and New Testaments. While, as I shall later show, many people are able to disregard one or the other, or both, of these principles in the short run, the principles’ economic gravitas and implications cannot be ignored over the long run. In order to balance the basic sustainment of all human life and to afford wealth and comfort to maximally many members of society, a healthy tension between the two poles must remain in place. From the outset, it is important to describe with some detail aspects of the two principles, and the factual and normative rela- tionship between them. Once these principles are well-de- scribed, it is possible to understand what moral money and monetary systems should look like. Thus, Section 2 describes the first godly factual-ethical principle: moral sharing of resources. Section 3 describes the second godly factual-ethical principle: sustaining the earth. Section 4 combines these principles with a review of the historical monetary system that God instructed the ancient Israelites to create, as well as Jesus’s reflections on that system, to reach conclusions about whether any form of moral money exists, in spite of oft-heard sentiments that all money is an evil. What must also be said is that this article starts out from the position that the Judeo-Christian portrayal of reality is correct. Apart from beliefs, sentiments, fashions, or faiths that argue to the contrary, ethical values as descended from the teachings and tradi- tions of Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples, and the Holy Scrip- tures, are True. Individual or collective departures from those values and teachings have actual economic implications in the mortal world, the grace and mercy of God notwithstanding (North 1992). I therefore assume for present purposes and this readership that I may refer to Scriptures or Church teachings as incontrovert- ible Truth for what might be considered by non-adherents to be either circular logic or teleological bias.
Support at Any Distance? The Role of Location and Prejudice in Public Opposition to the “Ground Zero Mosque”

In 2010, a debate erupted over plans to construct a mosque (as part of a larger multicultural center) approximately two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. The main justification given by elites for opposing the mosque was that building it so close to Ground Zero would appear to be insensitive. Public opinion appeared to support this notion, as large majorities of Americans registered their opposition to the mosque in surveys conducted at the time. In this paper, I examine whether distance was, in fact, an important factor influencing citizens' opposition to the mosque. Using a survey experiment, I asked for opinions on the building of a mosque while randomizing how far the mosque was located from Ground Zero. Results from the experiment indicate that opposition to the mosque was unaffected by how far the mosque would be located from Ground Zero. An analysis of supplemental survey data demonstrates that prejudice against Muslims more generally was the most important factor influencing where citizens stood on this issue.
MARKET DISTORTIONS WHEN AGENTS ARE BETTER INFORMED: THE VALUE OF INFORMATION IN REAL ESTATE TRANSACTIONS

Abstract Agents are often better informed than the clients who hire them and may exploit this informational advantage. Real estate agents have an incentive to convince clients to sell their houses too cheaply and too quickly. We test these predictions by comparing home sales in which real estate agents are hired to when an agent sells his own home. Consistent with the theory, we find homes owned by real estate agents sell for 3.7% more than other houses and stay on the market 9.5 days longer, controlling for observables. Greater information asymmetry leads to larger distortions.
Scaling 'Local': The Implications of Greenhouse Gas Regulation in San Bernardino County

This Essay analyzes local climate regulation in San Bernardino County as a window into the complexities of defining a local scale in an interconnected world. As a purely territorial matter, U.S. cities and counties differ substantially in their size, the physical geography that they encompass, and the needs of their population. Structurally, they remain administrative subunits of states with significant autonomy. Finally, their substantive decisionmaking requires them to engage with a wide range of actors at different scales as they make decisions about multiscalar problems. These layered interactions suggest that a law and geography analysis of San Bernardino County might help to capture the nuances of appropriate and effective local policymaking with respect to climate change. Although law defines the boundaries of San Bernardino in specific ways, the interaction among legal and socio-political spaces reveals a more complex terrain. As local actors span a wide range of geographic and legal scales, urban and rural environments, and the relationships they each entail, supposedly local climate regulation involves multiple territories at different levels of government. More specifically, the Essay explores the dynamics between place and space, and their construction of scale, to provide insights into the boundaries of this "local" territory. Part II describes the overlapping regulatory authorities and sociolegal spaces that converge in San Bernardino County as it addresses the problem of climate change. Part III examines those overlaps through a law and geography lens - specifically geographic network theory and bottom-up networking - to explore the scale of the local climate efforts in the County. The Essay concludes with reflections upon the broader consequences of the dispute for how we conceptualize the "local" and its role in climate regulation.
Robustness and vulnerability of community irrigation systems: The case of the Taos valley acequias

Abstract Traditional economic and policy analysis theory has emphasized the implementation of private or public property rights regimes in order to sustainably manage natural resources. More recent work has challenged this approach by examining the strengths and weakness of common property governance of such resources. This paper contributes to this literature by analyzing the acequia irrigation communities in northern New Mexico. Through statistical analysis, we find that the acequias’ ability to maintain collective-action as estimated by a critical performance function, crop production, is aided by water sharing agreements and access to groundwater, and that it is hampered by property rights fragmentation and urbanization.
Valuing Loss Firms

We investigate whether investors price losses conditional on the likelihood of the firm's return to profitability, consistent with the abandonment option hypothesis (Hayn 1995). We first develop a loss‐reversal model to define subsamples of persistent and transitory losses. We find that on average investors price transitory losses positively over the sample period, as if a transitory loss indicates a low likelihood of exercising the abandonment option. We also observe that early in the sample period investors do not price persistent losses, as predicted by the abandonment option hypothesis. By contrast, later in the sample period, larger persistent losses correspond to higher returns, inconsistent with the prediction of the abandonment option hypothesis. To understand why we observe a change in the valuation of persistent losses over the sample period, we study their components and establish the key role of R&D for their valuation. We find that investors do not price persistent losses without an R&D compo...
A theoretical model of the distribution of teacher attention under benchmark testing.

This paper provides a simple theoretical model designed to capture the targeting incentives created by benchmark testing. Under high-stakes benchmark testing, schools and teachers are judged on the fraction of students that meet some given level of educational attainment. The incentive for teachers is then to allocate their resources towards students who are on the margin of the pass/fail level of educational attainment. This behavior has some empirical support and the aim of the model is to provide a formal means of developing hypotheses for future research.
Should Investors Follow the Prophets or the Bears? Evidence on the Use of Public Information by Analysts and Short Sellers

ABSTRACT: We investigate whether short sellers and analysts differ in their use of information that is predictive of future returns. We find that short interest is significantly associated in the expected direction with all 11 variables examined. In contrast, analysts tend to positively recommend stocks with high growth, high accruals, and low book-to-market ratios, despite these variables having a negative association with future returns. We then investigate the profitability of using short interest in trading. We find abnormal returns (1.11 percent per month) from a zero-investment strategy that (1) shorts firms with highly favorable analyst recommendations (buy signal) but high short interest (sell signal), and (2) buys firms with highly unfavorable analyst recommendations (sell signal) but low short interest (buy signal). Short interest, therefore, appears to capture predictive information that can be used by investors in trading against analysts’ recommendations to increase returns.