cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Video Influencers: Unboxing the Mystique

Influencer marketing is being used increasingly as a tool to reach customers because of the growing popularity of social media stars who primarily reach their audience(s) via custom videos. Despite the rapid growth in influencer marketing, there has been little research on the design and effectiveness of influencer videos. Using publicly available data on YouTube influencer videos, we implement novel interpretable deep learning architectures, supported by transfer learning, to identify significant relationships between advertising content in videos (across text, audio, and images) and video views, interaction rates and sentiment. By avoiding ex-ante feature engineering and instead using ex-post interpretation, our approach avoids making a trade-off between interpretability and predictive ability. We filter out relationships that are affected by confounding factors unassociated with an increase in attention to video elements, thus facilitating the generation of plausible causal relationships between video elements and marketing outcomes which can be tested in the field. A key finding is that brand mentions in the first 30 seconds of a video are on average associated with a significant increase in attention to the brand but a significant decrease in sentiment expressed towards the video. We illustrate the learnings from our approach for both influencers and brands.
How Domain Terminology Affects Meeting Summarization Performance

Meetings are essential to modern organizations. Numerous meetings are held and recorded daily, more than can ever be comprehended. A meeting summarization system that identifies salient utterances from the transcripts to automatically generate meeting minutes can help. It empowers users to rapidly search and sift through large meeting collections. To date, the impact of domain terminology on the performance of meeting summarization remains understudied, despite that meetings are rich with domain knowledge. In this paper, we create gold-standard annotations for domain terminology on a sizable meeting corpus; they are known as jargon terms. We then analyze the performance of a meeting summarization system with and without jargon terms. Our findings reveal that domain terminology can have a substantial impact on summarization performance. We publicly release all domain terminology to advance research in meeting summarization.
Experimental Validation of a Real-Time Optimal Controller for Coordination of CAVs in a Multi-Lane Roundabout

Roundabouts in conjunction with other traffic scenarios, e.g., intersections, merging roadways, speed reduction zones, can induce congestion in a transportation network due to driver responses to various disturbances. Research efforts have shown that smoothing traffic flow and eliminating stop-and-go driving can both improve fuel efficiency of the vehicles and the throughput of a roundabout. In this paper, we validate an optimal control framework developed earlier in a multilane roundabout scenario using the University of Delaware's scaled smart city (UDSSC). We first provide conditions where the solution is optimal. Then, we demonstrate the feasibility of the solution using experiments at UDSSC, and show that the optimal solution completely eliminates stop-and-go driving while preserving safety.
Exploiting the Redundancy in Convolutional Filters for Parameter Reduction

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have achieved state-of-the-art performance in many computer vision tasks over the years. However, this comes at the cost of heavy computation and memory intensive network designs, suggesting potential improvements in efficiency. Convolutional layers of CNNs partly account for such an inefficiency, as they are known to learn redundant features. In this work, we exploit this redundancy, observing it as the correlation between convolutional filters of a layer, and propose an alternative approach to reproduce it efficiently. The proposed ‘LinearConv’ layer learns a set of orthogonal filters, and a set of coefficients that linearly combines them to introduce a controlled redundancy. We introduce a correlation-based regularization loss to achieve such flexibility over redundancy, and control the number of parameters in turn. This is designed as a plug-and-play layer to conveniently replace a conventional convolutional layer, without any additional changes required in the network architecture or the hyper-parameter settings. Our experiments verify that LinearConv models achieve a performance on-par with their counter-parts, with almost a 50% reduction in parameters on average, and the same computational requirement and speed at inference. Source is available at https://github.com/kkahatapitiya/LinearConv.
Stationary solutions of the curvature preserving flow on space curves

We study a geometric flow on curves, immersed in $${\mathbb {R}}^3$$ , that have strictly positive torsion. The evolution equation is given by $$\begin{aligned} X_{t}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\tau }} \mathbf{B} \end{aligned}$$ where $$\tau $$ is the torsion and $$\mathbf{B} $$ is the unit binormal vector. In the case of constant curvature, we find all of the stationary solutions and linearize the PDE for the torsion around stationary solutions admitting an explicit formula. Afterwards, we prove the $$L^2({\mathbb {R}})$$ linear stability of the stationary solutions corresponding to helices with constant curvature and constant torsion.
Suppression gene drive in continuous space can result in unstable persistence of both drive and wild‐type alleles

Rapid evolutionary processes can produce drastically different outcomes when studied in panmictic population models vs. spatial models. One such process is gene drive, which describes the spread of "selfish" genetic elements through a population. Engineered gene drives are being considered for the suppression of disease vectors or invasive species. While laboratory experiments and modelling in panmictic populations have shown that such drives can rapidly eliminate a population, it remains unclear if these results translate to natural environments where individuals inhabit a continuous landscape. Using spatially explicit simulations, we show that the release of a suppression drive can result in what we term "chasing" dynamics, in which wild-type individuals recolonize areas where the drive has locally eliminated the population. Despite the drive subsequently reconquering these areas, complete population suppression often fails to occur or is substantially delayed. This increases the likelihood that the drive is lost or that resistance evolves. We analyse how chasing dynamics are influenced by the type of drive, its efficiency, fitness costs, and ecological factors such as the maximal growth rate of the population and levels of dispersal and inbreeding. We find that chasing is more common for lower efficiency drives when dispersal is low and that some drive mechanisms are substantially more prone to chasing behaviour than others. Our results demonstrate that the population dynamics of suppression gene drives are determined by a complex interplay of genetic and ecological factors, highlighting the need for realistic spatial modelling to predict the outcome of drive releases in natural populations.
Wave-kinetic approach to zonal-flow dynamics: Recent advances

The basic physics of drift-wave turbulence and zonal flows has long been studied within the framework of the wave-kinetic theory. Recently, this framework has been reexamined from first principles, which has led to more accurate yet still tractable “improved” wave-kinetic equations. In particular, these equations reveal an important effect of the zonal-flow “curvature” (the second radial derivative of the flow velocity) on the dynamics and stability of drift waves and zonal flows. We overview these recent findings and present a consolidated high-level picture of (mostly quasilinear) zonal-flow physics within reduced models of drift-wave turbulence.
Variable bandwidth kernel regression estimation

In this paper we propose a variable bandwidth kernel regression estimator for i .i .d . observations in ℝ2 to improve the classical Nadaraya-Watson estimator. The bias is improved to the order of O (hn 4 ) under the condition that the fifth order derivative of the density function and the sixth order derivative of the regression function are bounded and continuous. We also establish the central limit theorems for the proposed ideal and true variable kernel regression estimators. The simulation study confirms our results and demonstrates the advantage of the variable bandwidth kernel method over the classical kernel method.
A state-dependent model of intermediate goods pricing

Recent analyses of transaction-level datasets have generated new stylized facts on price setting and greatly influenced the empirical macroeconomics literature. This work has uncovered marked heterogeneity in price stickiness, demonstrated that even non-zero price changes do not fully "pass through" cost shocks, and offered evidence of synchronization in the timing of price changes. Further, intrafirm prices have been shown to differ from arm's length prices in each of these characteristics. This paper develops a state-dependent model of intermediate goods pricing, which allows for arm's length and intrafirm transactions, and is capable of generating these empirical pricing patterns.
What if Europe held an election and No One Cared

Last June�s European Parliament (�EP�) election was widely considered a failure. Turnout was low across Europe, and, as has been the case in every EP election since they were introduced in 1979, voters responded exclusively to domestic cues in deciding how to fill the European Union�s only directly elected body. Campaigns were waged entirely on domestic issues outside of the purview of the EP, and the popularity of domestic prime ministers, who were not on the ballot, was the most important factor in determining the results. The EP is supposed to provide a popular check on the other legislative bodies in the European Union (�EU�), which are either appointed or directly controlled by member state governments, and thereby reduce the EU�s �democratic deficit.� Instead, the failure of EP elections to generate popular feedback on EU policy allows the deficit to fester and undermines the separation of powers inside the EU. This paper argues that the problems of EP elections are much like the problems in a variety of American state and local elections. Election laws ensure that national parties are on the ballot, and both legal limitations and strategic considerations make it difficult for these national parties to develop separate localized identities, or in the case of EP elections, Europeanized ones. Rationally ignorant voters who know little about the individual figures in these European bodies rely on the party heuristic that is available on the ballot, as it is the only relevant information that they have. Moreover, they do so even though it is unclear how closely preferences on European or local policies track preferences about national issues. The result is that national party preference ends up being reflected in these elections, despite the fact that the winners will decide policies at another level of government. Put another way, there is a �mismatch� between the institutional role the EP is asked to play in the EU�s separation of powers�the voice of European citizens about EU policies�and the level of party competition at which EP elections are contested. Mismatch problems are endemic in federal systems and are generated by constitutional structures that ask more of voters than they are capable of providing. However, they can be solved or at least mitigated with election law tools. Following a procedure used in a variety of developing countries, the EU could pass a law that the EP will only seat members from those parties that both won seats from a given EU country and received a certain percentage of the vote in a quarter of EU member states. This would force the coalitions formed in the EP�the so-called �Euro-parties��onto EP ballots, as parties would need to contest elections across Europe. Voters thus would have access to a European rather than national heuristic on the EP ballot, which would better allow them to use these elections to express preferences about EU policy.
Low Interest Rates and Risk-Taking: Evidence from Individual Investment Decisions

How do low interest rates affect investor behavior? We demonstrate that individuals “reach for yield,” that is, have a greater appetite for risk-taking when interest rates are low. Using randomized investment experiments holding fixed risk premiums and risks, we show low interest rates lead to significantly higher allocations to risky assets among diverse populations. The behavior is not easily explained by conventional portfolio choice theory or institutional frictions. We then propose and provide evidence of mechanisms related to investor psychology, including reference dependence and salience. We also present results using observational data on household investment decisions. Received July 18, 2017; editorial decision July 30, 2018 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.
THE WTO AND ANTIDUMPING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Since the 1995 inception of the World Trade Organization (WTO), developing countries have become some of the most frequent users of the WTO-sanctioned antidumping trade policy instrument. However, little is known about the pattern of actual industrial use of antidumping in developing countries. This paper exploits newly available data to examine nine of the major “new user” developing countries, matching data on production in 28 different 3-digit ISIC industries to data on antidumping investigations, outcomes and imports at the 6-digit Harmonized System product level. We use a cross-country panel of industry-level data to estimate determinants of antidumping protection. We present evidence consistent with theory that developing country industries that seek and receive antidumping import protection are responding to macroeconomic shocks, exhibit characteristics consistent with endogenous trade policy formation, and face some changing market conditions consistent with requirements of the WTO Antidumping Agreement. On average, a one standard deviation change in the key determinants affects the probability of an industry-level antidumping investigation by 50%. However, the evidence also suggests substantial heterogeneity in determinants of antidumping use across developing countries, which highlights the flexibility of this policy as a protectionist tool responsive to many different types of political-economic shocks. Nevertheless, this also indicates that WTO rules may have imposed relatively little discipline on national use of the policy during this time period.
Identification in matching games

I study a many-to-many, two-sided, transferable-utility matching game. Consider data on matches or relationships between agents but not on the choice set of each agent. I investigate what economic parameters can be learned from data on equilibrium matches and agent characteristics. Features of a production function, which gives the surplus from a match, are nonparametrically identified. In particular, the ratios of complementarities from multiple pairs of inputs are identified. Also, the ordering of production levels is identified.
Importing Financial Data

In this article, we describe two commands—fetchyahooquotes and fetchyahookeystats—that import historical financial data and key current financial statistics from Yahoo! Finance.
A Quandary in Law? A (Qualified) Catholic Denial

A contribution to the second law review symposium dedicated to Steven Smith’s Law’s Quandary (Harvard 2004), this paper asks whether the “quandary” in which Smith finds modern law and jurisprudence is not, at least in part, the consequence of misunderstanding the classical natural law jurisprudence. The paper advances an interpretation of natural law according to which the natural law is the human person’s “participation” in the eternal law itself, with literally cosmic consequences for how we understand the ends and measures of human lawmaking. Mounting an argument against Justice Scalia’s thesis that “God applies the natural law,” the paper goes on to explore the consequences of the natural law’s being, first, available to all rational persons and, second, capable of coercive implementation only according to the norms of positive law that respect the common good. The paper concludes that while we might be in an “ontological” quandary in law today, we are not – because we have in fact received the natural law – in an “ontic”
A Theory of Capital Structure, Price Impact, and Long-Run Stock Returns under Heterogeneous Beliefs

We study an environment with short-sale constraints and heterogeneous beliefs among outsiders and between insiders and outsiders. Firm insiders choose between equity, debt, and convertible debt to raise external financing. We analyze two settings: one in which heterogeneous beliefs is the only market imperfection and another in which there are significant security issue and financial distress costs. Our model generates a pecking order of external financing different from asymmetric information models, and new predictions for capital structure, sequential tranching of securities, the price impact of security issues, and long-run stock returns. We also provide a new rationale for convertible debt issuance. (JEL G32)
Disaggregate evidence on the persistence of consumer price inflation

This paper uses disaggregate inflation data spanning all of consumption to examine: (i) the persistence of disaggregate inflation relative to aggregate inflation; (ii) the distribution of persistence across consumption sectors; and (iii) whether persistence has changed. Assuming mean inflation to be unchanged, disaggregate persistence inflation is consistently below aggregate persistence. Taking into account an early 1990s shift in mean inflation identified by break tests yields much lower estimates of both aggregate and disaggregate persistence for 1984–2002. But with the mean break, average disaggregate persistence is actually as great as aggregate inflation persistence. A factor model provides a natural framework for interpreting the relationship between aggregate and disaggregate persistence. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Prices versus auctions in large markets

This paper studies the use of posted prices and auctions in a large dynamic market with many short-lived sellers and long-lived buyers. Although a reserve-price auction maximizes the expected revenue, the optimal revenue decreases when the market becomes more buyer-friendly; namely, when buyers survive longer, face fewer competitors, and become more patient. As the market becomes more buyer-friendly, the revenue advantage of a reserve-price auction over posting a price also decreases, but using posted prices would lead to sale and allocative inefficiencies.
What Do Independent Directors Know? Evidence from Their Trading

We compare the trading performance of independent directors and other o‐cers of the flrm. We flnd that independent directors earn positive and substantial abnormal returns when they purchase their company stock, and that the difierence with the same flrm’s o‐cers is relatively small at most horizons. The results are robust to controlling for flrm flxed efiects, the size of the transaction and stock holdings in the flrm, flrm’s size and book to market, and past return volatility. Both executive o‐cers and independent directors make higher returns in flrms with weaker governance and the gap between these two groups widens in such flrms. Independent directors on the audit committee and independent director who attend more frequently the board meetings earn higher return than other independent directors at the same flrm. Finally, independent directors earn signiflcantly higher returns than the market when they buy the company stock in the window around a restatement announcement.
The importance of creative capital for economic growth in the presence of learning by doing

We analyze the economic growth related effects of learning by doing in a region that is creative in the sense of Richard Florida. Firms in this region use physical and creative capital to produce output. We model learning by doing and our analysis of the working of this creative region leads to four results. First, we specify the private marginal products of physical and creative capital and the corresponding factor rewards and then explain why the physical to creative capital ratio must be identical for all firms. Second, we compute the equilibrium growth rate of consumption and then point out that this rate must equal the equilibrium growth rate of output. Third, we show how long run growth in this region is affected by changes in technology, a preference parameter, and the stock of creative capital. Finally, we compare the decentralized equilibrium growth rate in this region with the growth rate arising from social planning.
The Effect of Auditors' Use of a Reciprocity‐Based Strategy on Auditor‐Client Negotiations

Auditors face the challenging tasks of attesting that the financial statements are free from material misstatement while simultaneously fostering a functional working relationship with the client. As the financial statements may be considered, in part, a product of negotiations between the auditor and client management (Antle and Nalebuff 1991), the negotiation strategy employed by the auditor may be useful in effectively fulfilling both tasks. To investigate the effect of auditor strategy on the resolution of proposed audit adjustments in a post Sarbanes‐Oxley environment, we conduct experiments that examine both the client and auditor sides of the negotiation. We investigate a strategy of “concession” that draws upon the societal rule of reciprocation, which makes the waiving of inconsequential audit differences transparent. Specifically, with a concession approach, the auditor brings to the attention of the client all the audit differences (both significant and inconsequential) discovered during the au...
The Joint Law Venture: A Pilot Study

This pilot study evaluates the effectiveness of law firms entering into joint ventures, an increasingly eyed business model particularly by American and British lawyers seeking to expand into promising financial markets. One country at the center of the joint venture experiment has been Singapore. With the strong encouragement of the Singaporean government (which has long embraced foreign investment), various elite law firms from the United States and Britain have been partnering with domestic Singaporean law firms for over the past decade. Because these foreign firms were traditionally barred from practicing Singaporean law on their own, the ‘joint law venture,’ or JLV as it came to be called, was initiated to provide the Americans and British with an opportunity to access the highlydesired, lucrative local market – through the use of their Singaporean joint venture colleagues. In return, the Singaporean firms were to benefit by gaining international legal contacts, learning ‘best practices’ from their foreign counterparts, and enhancing their reputations by being tied to prestigious law firm powerhouses. Until now, no work has fully investigated whether these JLVs have actually fared as well as their advocates had hoped. Therefore, based on fieldwork conducted in Singapore, including in-depth interviews of the relevant parties, this project fills this gap – uncovering how due to economic misalignment, cultural misunderstandings, and a sheer breakdown of necessary human relationships, in more cases than not the JLV has been a failed business model. For these reasons, I argue that American and British law firms may wish to think seriously before pursuing the JLV route – not just in Singapore but perhaps even in other markets in which they are already present or are contemplating entering.
INNOVATION, PRICE COMPETITION AND THE ‘TILT’ OF COMPETITION POLICY

Innovation is the key to rising living standards; competition is the key to a rapid rate of innovation.
News from the U.S. and Japan: Which moves the yen/dollar exchange rate?

Abstract Intra-daily movements in the yen/dollar exchange rate are examined in four non-overlapping segments within each business day from January 1980 to September 1985. The results indicate that the dollar tended to appreciate in the New York segment and depreciate in the European segment. In three of the four subsamples considered, the Tokyo segment made virtually no contribution to annual yen/dollar rate movements. The volatility of the exchange rate also differed across markets. Finally, in examining the relative effects of news from the U.S. and Japan explicitly, U.S. money announcement surprises had the most consistent effects.
Working on the "Mommy-Track": Motherhood and Women Lawyers

This Article examines the effects of motherhood on the careers of women lawyers and the efficacy of the 'mommy-track' as a means of ameliorating these effects. Part I examines the current position of women in the legal profession. Part II examines the nature of 'motherhood' and the risk/benefit function of 'mommy-tracking.' Part III analyzes the 'mommy-track' from the perspective of feminist jurisprudence. Finally, Part IV examines issues related to workplace transformation. It is the position of this paper that 'mommy-tracking' reinforces undesirable stereotypes. Ironically, this apparent 'solution' actually forestalls the transformations, at home and at work, which could enable women to choose both motherhood and career. Thus, 'mommy-tracking' both results from and perpetuates gender inequality because women, unlike men, still pay the cost of parenthood with their careers.
Autumnal Rage: Playing with Islamic Fire

American intervention in the “Muslim World” over the past several years has by no means been non-controversial; rather, critics often charge that we alternatively violate international law or selectively use its protective cloak to advance our own interests. Viewed through this lens, American pronouncements might understandably be received as edicts encroaching upon local autonomy and reminiscent of colonial days. Still, the unfolding acts of violence against Americans and Western embassies in the “Muslim World” following the online posting of a United States-made “Mohammad video” were not foreseen. If they had been, we can assume – and hope – that the relevant embassies would have recalled or at least reduced their staffs especially as violence in the region is not a new phenomenon. However, these unfortunate events present us with an opportunity to query whether these attacks were foreseeable, and to review the psychology behind our being caught off guard.This solemn occasion perhaps reflects a warped understanding of our hosts’ cultural sensitivities, or even our limited genuine interest in what concerns them at all. We are led to question the ability and willingness of American policymakers to consider – and thereby respect – local priorities. Insofar as Islam permeates the culture of many of these host nations, our priorities reflect our foreign policy’s willingness to accommodate it; is this foreign policy so decidedly grounded in values antagonistic to Islam? To further pressurize the situation, the present conundrum coincidentally presents “Mr. Obama’s most serious foreign policy crisis of the election season.” In order to strike a respectful balance among nations’ competing interests, international customary law provides standards that all states must respect in order to maintain the peace and stability. Additionally, all members of the United Nations must adhere to the tenets of its charter including principles relating to the use of force and the “sovereign equality of all its Members.” Moreover, the community of nations continues to have a duty to protect populations suffering from a humanitarian disaster. The issue presented before us, is whether we have failed to live up to this responsibility in our dealings with the “Muslim World.” Specifically, has the current Administration acted in violation of international law just as its predecessors are commonly charged to have done? Armed with this knowledge, we might re-consider our regional security expectations.
The Corporate Cost of Capital and the Return on Corporate Investment

We estimate the internal rates of return earned by nonfinancial firms on (i) the initial market values of their securities and (ii) the cost of their investments. The return on value is an estimate of the overall corporate cost of capital. The estimate of the real cost of capital for 1950-96 is 5.95 percent. The real return on cost is larger, 7.38 percent, so on average corporate investment seems to be profitable. A by-product of calculating these returns is information about the history of corporate earnings, investment, and financing decisions that is perhaps more interesting than the returns. WHAT IS THE OVERALL COST of capital for U.S. nonfinancial corporations? Does the rate of return on investment exceed this cost of capital? How do firms finance investment? We address these questions. The standard textbook prescription calls for estimating a firm's cost of capital as a weighted average of the expected returns on its securities. Putting aside the difficult problem of estimating expected returns, this approach is straightforward for individual firms since the mix of securities in a firm's capital structure and the rates it pays on various forms of debt are known. But problems arise at the aggregate corporate level. For example, it is difficult to estimate aggregate quantities and returns for privately placed debt, and privately placed debt is a common form of corporate financing. We take a different approach, less fraught with measurement problems. In effect, we treat the entire nonfinancial corporate sector as an investment project. The cost of capital for the nonfinancial sector is estimated as the internal rate of return (IRR) that equates the initial market values of firms with the present values of their post-entry net cash flows and their terminal market values, all of which are estimated accurately. The IRR on value is a useful benchmark with many potential applications. For example, it is a starting point for cost of capital estimates for individual firms, which, of course, differ from the aggregate because of differences in
Liability Insurance, Moral Luck, and Auto Accidents

Beginning with the seminal work by Williams and Nagel, moral philosophers have used auto accident hypotheticals to illustrate the phenomenon of moral luck. Moral luck is present in the hypotheticals because (and to the extent that) two equally careless drivers are assessed differently because only one of them caused an accident. This Article considers whether these philosophical discussions might contribute to the public policy debate over compensation for auto accidents. Using liability and insurance practices in the United States as an illustrative example, the Article explains that auto liability insurance substantially mitigates moral luck and argues that, as a result, the moral luck literature is unlikely to make a significant contribution to this public policy debate. The debate would benefit more from philosophical analysis of victims’ luck, which is not as substantially mitigated by liability insurance.
Design of Search Engine Services: Channel Interdependence in Search Engine Results

AbstractThe authors examine prominent placement of search engines’ own services and effects on users’ choices. Evaluating a natural experiment in which different results were shown to users who performed similar searches, they find that Google’s prominent placement of its Flight Search service increased the clicks on paid advertising listings by more than half while decreasing the clicks on organic search listings by about the same quantity. This effect appears to result from interactions between the design of search results and users’ decisions about where and how to focus their attention: users who decide what to click on the basis of relevance were more likely to select paid listings, whereas users who are influenced by visual presentation and page position were more likely to click on Google’s own Flight Search listing. The authors consider implications of these findings for competition policy and for online marketing strategies.
Optimal Leadtime Differentiation via Diffusion Approximations

This study illustrates how a manufacturer can use leadtime differentiation-selling the same product to different customers at different prices based on delivery leadtime-to simultaneously increase revenue and reduce capacity requirements. The manufacturer's production facility is modeled as an exponential single-server queue with two classes of customers that differ in price sensitivity and delay sensitivity. The manufacturer chooses the service rate and a static price for each class of customer, and then dynamically quotes leadtimes to potential customers and decides the order in which customers are processed. The arrival rate for each class decreases linearly with price and leadtime. The manufacturer's objective is to maximize profit, subject to the constraint that each customer must be processed within the promised leadtime. Assuming that some customers will tolerate a long delivery leadtime, we show that this problem has a simple near-optimal solution. Under our proposed policy, capacity utilization is near 100%. Impatient customers pay a premium for immediate delivery and receive priority in scheduling, whereas patient customers are quoted a leadtime proportional to the current queue length. Queue length and leadtime can be closely approximated by a reflected Ornstein-Uhlenbeck diffusion process. Hence, we have a closed form expression for profit, and choose prices and capacity to optimize this. In case customers may choose either the class 1 deal or the class 2 deal, the proposed policy is made incentive compatible by quoting a leadtime for the class 2 (patient) customers that is longer than the actual queueing delay.
Inferences from Litigated Cases

AbstractPriest and Klein argued in 1984 that, because of selection effects, the percentage of litigated cases won by plaintiffs will not vary with the legal standard. Many researchers thereafter concluded that one could not make valid inferences about the character of the law from the percentage of cases plaintiffs won, nor could one measure legal change by observing changes in that percentage. This article argues that, even taking selection effects into account, one may be able to make valid inferences from the percentage of plaintiff trial victories, because selection effects are partial. Therefore, although selection mutes changes in the plaintiff trial win rate, it does not make the win rate completely invariant to legal change. This article shows that inferences from litigated cases may be possible under the standard screening and signaling models of settlement, as well as under Priest and Klein’s original divergent-expectations model.
Retail Assortment Planning Under Category Captainship

Retail assortment planning can have a tremendous impact on a retailer's bottom-line performance. Over the past years, retailers have increasingly relied on their leading manufacturers for recommendations regarding the assortment to be offered to the consumers in a particular category, a practice often referred to as category captainship. Our research investigates the consequences of using category captains for assortment selection decisions. We develop a game-theoretic model where multiple manufacturers sell their products to consumers through a single retailer. We compare a model where the retailer selects the assortment in the category with a model where the retailer relies on a category captain for assortment decisions in return for a target category profit. We show that category captainship can, in some circumstances, benefit not only the retailer and the category captain, but also the noncaptain manufacturers. Our results have implications regarding the implementation of category captainship practices.
The Claims Resolution Tribunal and Holocaust Claims Against Swiss Banks

This article discusses the legal challenges for implementing settlements for Holocaust reparation claims to Swiss bank accounts. It specifically discusses the activities related to the settlement of these claims undertaken by the Independent Committtee of Eminent Persons (Volcker Commission). The article's first section presents historical information about Holocaust claims against Swiss banks. Specifically, it attempts to answer the question of why it has taken so long for Holocaust reparation claims against Swiss banks to be processed. The author blames this delay primarily on the "obfuscation by the Swiss banks and the inattention of the Swiss government[,]" which is indicated by the fact that a complete accounting of the banks' Holocaust-era activities was not publicized until the mid 1990's under the direction of the Volcker Commission. Next, the article provides information about the Claims Resolution Tribunal's claims resolution procedures. This tribunal, established by the Volcker Commission, was charged with arbitrating Holocaust reparation claims brought by private citizens against Swiss banks. It explains how claims resolutions procedures were modified throughout the history of the tribunal to expedite the process and ensure that the tribunal focused only on those claims that were truly related to losses caused by the Holocaust. This is followed by an analysis of the most challenging legal issues related to resolving Holocaust claims against Swiss banks, including burden of proof and plausibility problems, choice of law conflicts, and difficulties in determining whether claimants were truly descended from Holocaust victims. The article concludes with a discussion of what reparation and restitution claims accomplish in terms of "moral accounting" to the families of the victims, and the damage done to all the parties involved by the banks' failure to address their moral responsibilities related to Holocaust claims in a timely matter.
Comesa and Sadc: Prospects and Challenges for Regional Trade Integration

Regional integration has been seen in Africa as a means of encouraging trade and securing economies of scale. This paper examines in detail the prospects and challenges for trade expansion in the two most prominent arrangements in eastern and southern Africa: the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It finds that possibilities of growth in intraregional trade may be limited, but that the two arrangements offer opportunities for member countries to gain policy credibility for trade reforms and tariff liberalization and to address structural weaknesses. In this regard, the negotiation of the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union can also have a significant impact.
On optimizing the provision of guided tours to tourists during the slack season

We study two approaches to the optimal provision of guided tours to tourists by a firm during the slack season. In the “scheduling by numbers” approach, our firm focuses on the number of tourists who must be in our firm’s premises before this firm begins to use the tour guide to provide tours to waiting tourists. In the “scheduling by time” approach, the focus of our firm is on the time during which it can use the tour guide for other tasks because there is no demand for guided tours. For both approaches, we first derive our firm’s long run expected net cost per unit time from the provision of guided tours. Next, we solve the two net cost minimization problems confronting our firm. Finally, we compare the optimized values of the two net cost functions and show that scheduling by numbers results in lower long run net costs to our guided tour providing firm.
Internal Control Weaknesses and Financial Reporting Fraud

SUMMARY: This study examines whether and how weak internal controls increase the risk of financial reporting fraud by top managers. There is a longstanding debate on whether control strength significantly affects fraud risk, yet little evidence on this issue. Further, there is no evidence on the mechanism linking control strength to fraud risk. We find a strong association between material weaknesses and future fraud revelation. We theorize that this link could be attributable to weak controls (1) giving managers greater opportunity to commit fraud, or (2) signaling a management characteristic that does not emphasize reporting quality and integrity. We find support for the opportunity explanation, but not through specific accounts linked to control weaknesses. Instead, consistent with the PCAOB's assertion, weaknesses in entity-wide controls, not process-level controls, are associated with a higher risk of reporting fraud. JEL Classifications: M41.
Trade Agreements in the Shadow of Lobbying

This paper presents a model of international trade agreements in which the executive branches of each government negotiate agreements while the legislative branches, subject to political pressure from firms, can disrupt them. Lobbying is in the style of Grossman and Helpman (1994) with a new feature: all actors face uncertainty arising from the complexity of the legislative process. I demonstrate that the lower the executives set tariffs in a trade agreement, the more effort lobbies put forth to prevent its ratification. Thus trade agreements act as a domestic political commitment device: executives set relatively high tariffs to discourage lobbying and increase the chance that the agreement will be ratified. The model sheds light on the empirical puzzle surrounding governments' welfare weights in the Grossman and Helpman (1994) model and can speak to important trade policy-making events such as the four-year delay in the ratification of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement.
Transaction costs, information technology and development.

This paper explores potential channels through which information technology (IT) affects economic development. The channel emphasized here is the reduction of transaction costs through the use of information technology. We discuss the nature of transaction costs, their possible impacts on economic outcomes, and the impacts of IT on transaction costs. We provide a theoretical discussion of how a reduction in transaction costs may affect the number of intermediate goods that are produced, and in turn how that number may affect the development path of the economy. We then draw on our fieldwork in rural India that examined the economics of rural Internet kiosks, and relate this multifaceted case study to the theoretical discussion of transaction costs. We conclude with a broader discussion of the potential impact of IT on developing economies.
Dames & Moore v. Regan: Congressional Power over Foreign Affairs Held Hostage by Executive Agreement with Iran

This article analyzes and discusses problematic issues of Presidential Authority in the foreign affairs arena in the aftermath of the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-1981, and the United States Supreme Court decision in Dames & Moore v. Regan. It analyzes application of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Trading With the Enemy Act (TWEA) illuminating broad implications for the division of powers between political branches, and the problematic prospect of an "Imperial Presidency" in the absence or reticence of Congressional opposition to the President’s actions during national emergencies. It also examines the use of international executive agreements to settle claims of American Nationals against foreign governments and entities; the author considers and discusses possible sources of the power to conclude agreements, delegation and separation of powers problems arising in this context, in addition to public policy rationales for legitimizing such agreements. Last, the article identifies the legal, constitutional and political difficulties arising from the Dames & Moore decision while also distinguishing the pragmatic necessity for Executive flexibility in this area.
Some Observations About the Standards Applied to Labor Injunction Litigation Under Sections 10(j) and 10(l) of the National Labor Relations Act

Recently, I gave a lecture to a seminar of federal judges. In preparing the talk, I confirmed what I had suspected at first impression: the judiciary has reverted significantly, although not universally, to some practices of pre-Norris-LaGuardia days. In dealing with the NLRA's sections 10(l) and 10(j), the courts often practice two standards. As for section 10(l), which is aimed almost entirely at unions, federal courts are inclined virtually to rubber-stamp National Labor Relations Board requests for injunctions. However, in considering applications for section 10j) injunctions, which are primarily aimed at employers, the courts are inclined, especially when employers are the respondents, to be more critical of the Board's petition and, as a result, often deny or significantly qualify the requested relief. The Norris-LaGuardia Act was enacted to prevent federal courts from interfering with union activities. Serving as a backdrop to sections 10 (1) and 10(), the Norris-LaGuardia Act suggests that, if there were to be a double standard, it would work in a manner opposite to the one that has evolved. The first two sections of this article briefly summarize the events leading to the Norris-LaGuardia Act and to the enactment of the two explicit exceptions in the National Labor Relations Act. Next, I attempt to set out and critique what the courts are doing. Finally, I urge standards which I think should be applied to both section 10(l) and section 10(0) cases.
Is Gaza Occupied?: Redefining the Status of Gaza Under International Law

Israel’s loss of "effective control" over Gaza is legally sufficient to indicate that the occupation of the territory has ended, but there has been reluctance on the part of the international community to accept the change in status. While it is not legally necessary to obtain international recognition of Israel’s position, it is politically important for the absence of occupation to be acknowledged by international legal experts so that Israel would not be held to the more stringent legal requirements of an occupier and to lend greater legitimacy to Israel’s acts of self-defense. Redefining Gaza’s status from an "occupied territory" to a "sui generis territory" in order to reflect the absence of "effective control" would be an affirmative step towards statehood for the Palestinian people and greater security for the people of Israel.
Frame Search and Re-search: How Quantitative Sociological Articles Change During Peer Review

Peer review is a central institution in academic publishing, yet its processes and effects on research remain opaque. Empirical studies have (1) been rare because data on the peer review process are generally unavailable, and (2) conceptualized peer review as gate-keepers who either accept or reject a manuscript, overlooking peer review’s role in constructing articles. This study uses a unique data resource to study how sociological manuscripts change during peer review. Authors of published sociological research often present earlier versions of that research at annual meetings of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Many of these annual meetings papers are publicly available online and tend to be uploaded before undergoing formal peer review. A data sample is constructed by linking these papers to the respective versions published between 2006 and 2012 in two peer-reviewed journals, American Sociological Review and Social Forces. Quantitative and qualitative analyses examine changes across article versions, paying special attention to how elements of data analysis and theory in the ASA versions change. Results show that manuscripts tend to change more substantially in their theoretical framing than in the data analyses. The finding suggests that a chief effect of peer review in quantitative sociology is to prompt authors to adjust their theoretical framing, a mode or review I call “data-driven.” The data-driven mode of review problematizes the vision of sociological research as addressing theoretically motivated questions.