cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Why Not a Political Coase Theorem? Social Conflict, Commitment and Politics

Abstract Do societies choose inefficient policies and institutions? An extension of the Coase theorem to politics would suggest the answer is no. This paper discusses various approaches to political economy and develops the argument that there are strong empirical and theoretical grounds for believing that inefficient policies and institutions are prevalent. We conclude that these inefficient institutions and policies are chosen because they serve the interests of politicians or social groups that hold political power at the expense of the rest. The theoretical case depends on commitment problems inherent in politics; parties holding political power cannot make commitments to bind their future actions because there is no outside agency with the coercive capacity to enforce such arrangements. Journal of Comparative Economics 31 (4) (2003) 620–652.
Regulator performance, regulatory environment and outcomes: An examination of insurance regulator career incentives on state insurance markets

Abstract In this paper we test whether the past or future labor market choices of insurance commissioners provide incentives for regulators in states with price regulation to either favor or oppose the industry by allowing prices that differ significantly from what would otherwise be the competitive market outcome. Using biographical data on insurance regulators, economic and state specific market structure and regulatory variables, and state premium and loss data on the personal automobile insurance market, we find no evidence consumers in prior approval states paid significantly different “unit prices” for insurance than consumers in states that allow competitive market forces to determine equilibrium prices during the time period 1985–2002. We do, however, find evidence regulators who obtained the position of insurance commissioner by popular election and those who seek higher elective office following their tenure as insurance commissioner allow higher overall “unit prices” relative to competitive market states. The “unit price” of insurance in regulated states is not statistically different from the competitive market outcome for regulators that make lateral moves back into state government and it is mildly higher for regulators who enter the insurance industry following their tenure. Finally, we find some evidence regulators who describe themselves as consumer advocates are successful reducing the price of insurance in favor of consumers in regulated markets. Overall the results are consistent with the existence of asymmetric information in the regulatory process that agents use to enhance their career aspirations.
New Predictions for Charmed and Bottom Baryons

I review the recent proposal that there are new isotriplet heavy baryons with masses approximately 2380 MeV and 5760 MeV. This prediction follows from the application of heavy spin-flavor and light SU(3) symmetries to the observed charmed and bottom baryon states. It also entails assumptions about the spin and parity quantum numbers of the observed states which are different than is commonly supposed. The discovery of such states would imply that the nonrelativistic constituent quark model is a poor predictor of heavy baryon spectroscopy. I update the analysis in light of new data which have become available.
"Control frauds" as financial super-predators: How "pathogens" make financial markets inefficient

White-collar criminology scholarship shows that “control frauds” (frauds led by the CEO) use accounting fraud to deceive (or suborn) sophisticated financial market participants. Large control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crimes combined. Weak regulation, supervision and ethics produce epidemics of control fraud that cause systemic economic damage. As with the natural world, these financial super-predators act like pathogens that take over a firm and act as a “vector” to cause ever greater damage. Control fraud theory poses a major challenge to the efficient markets hypothesis and the resulting praxis that devalues financial regulation.
Reconsidering Brooke Group: Predatory Pricing in Light of the Empirical Learning

Empirical research has found evidence of predatory pricing in a number of industries. Leading firms in airlines, coffee, oil, shipping, sugar, telecommunications, and tobacco have used deep, temporary price cuts to weaken their competitors and preserve or enhance their long-run market power. Even though studies dating back to the 1970s have shown that predatory pricing is a rational and not uncommon strategy, the Supreme Court has asserted that “predatory pricing is rarely tried, and even more rarely successful.” On this basis, the Court has established a pro-monopolist and anti-consumer test for predatory pricing claims.Incorporating the empirical findings, the proposed test for predation aims to strike a better balance between the two risks for all legal rules -- false positives (condemning innocent defendants for predatory pricing) and false negatives (acquitting defendants that engaged in predation). To establish a presumption of predation, plaintiffs would have to satisfy market structure and price-cost tests. Defendants would then have the opportunity to rebut this presumption through the showing of credible procompetitive justifications for their pricing practices. This test would create a wide safe harbor for vigorous price competition but also deter aggressive price discounting that reduces competition and harms consumers in the medium and long run.
The opportunity cost of duality

A dual representation of a technology, e.g., a cost function, may not contain all of the technological information, but it will contain all of the information about input vectors that would be chosen by a cost-minimizing firm. At least this much is clear for deterministic technologies. The main question addressed in this paper is whether the same can be said about stochastic technologies and their dual representations. Despite some pessimism expressed in the stochastic frontier literature on this question, we argue that there is no extra cost imposed in the stochastic case. Thus, the conclusion of this paper is: Just dual it!
Product alliances, alliance networks, and shareholder value: Evidence from the biopharmaceutical industry

Despite sustained interest in product alliance activity, little is known regarding the effect of product alliances on shareholder value. Whereas proponents of alliances justify their formation by emphasizing access to relevant resources and know-how, critics highlight the risks inherent in alliance partner opportunism. To reconcile these opposing viewpoints, we develop and test a conceptual framework that predicts the impact of product alliance activity and the broader network it engenders on shareholder value: stock returns, systematic risk, and idiosyncratic risk. Our examination of 359 biopharmaceutical firms and their associated networks over a 20-year observation window shows that unanticipated product alliance activity is associated with not only lower idiosyncratic risk, but also with lower stock returns. Unanticipated network centrality of the focal firm and the unanticipated density of ties in its extended network significantly moderate the effects of product alliance activity. Our findings help to reconcile the divergent views on product alliance activity.
Monetizing Online Marketplaces

This paper considers product-ranking and ad-pricing mechanisms for online marketplaces by modeling both consumer search (browsing, clicking, and purchase) and seller advertising behaviors.
Using video to disclose forward-looking information: the effect of nonverbal cues on investors’ judgments

We conduct two experiments to examine how investors react to nonverbal cues of certainty as displayed by a CEO communicating forward-looking information via the relatively new and emerging medium of video. Results of the first experiment suggest that, at least for the setting we examine, investors react more negatively (do not react more positively) to a video disclosure when the CEO displays nonverbal cues of uncertainty (certainty), relative to the same disclosure delivered via audio or written text. A second experiment reveals that the lack of a positive reaction to the certain CEO in the video may be due to investors’ belief that the CEO has incentives to convey certainty via nonverbal cues. Indeed, even a subsequent good-news realization—which should add credibility to the CEO’s certainty cues—does not change this perception. Our study has implications for firms considering video as a medium for disclosure.
No Accounting for School Vouchers

The standard conservative view of privatization in education favors state funding of private schools, religious and nonreligious, without state oversight to ensure accountability for how the money is used. The standard liberal view opposes state funding of private schools regardless of whether there is state oversight to ensure that the funding improves children's secular education. This Article highlights the main points against both standard views, and it advances the intermediate position that states may provide funding for private schooling but only if they also regulate and oversee the private schools sufficiently to ensure state money actually improves the secular education those schools provide. The Article further critiques prevailing assumptions about what accountability entails, and it assesses to what extent there is real educational accountability in voucher programs today.
Importing Energy, Exporting Regulation

This Article identifies and addresses a growing contradiction at the heart of United States energy policy. States are the traditional energy regulators and energy policy innovators — a role that has only grown more important without a settled federal climate policy. But federal regulators and market pressures are increasingly demanding integrated national and international energy markets. Deregulation, the rise of renewable energy, the shale revolution, and new sources of motor fuel precursors like crude and ethanol have all increased interstate energy trade. The Article shows how integrated national energy markets are driving states to regulate imported fuel and electricity based on how it was produced elsewhere. That is, states that import energy are now exporting their energy regulations to cover production in their trading partners. But exported regulation has its own problems: it threatens to splinter interstate markets, undercutting the federal push for integrated and efficient energy markets; and it violates the Constitution’s dormant commerce clause. Indeed, these innovative exported regulations are now caught up in litigation across the country.The Article argues that, to preserve states’ role, while also maintaining a national energy market, Congress should empower the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to immunize non-discriminatory state laws from commerce clause scrutiny if, and only if, they do not threaten to splinter interstate energy markets. The project considers how these federal regulators might assess state energy laws in three salient areas: regulation of imported electricity, regulation of imported fuel, and regulation of energy export and supply chains.
On-the-job search, sticky prices, and persistence

Abstract Models of the monetary transmission mechanism often generate empirically implausible business fluctuations. This paper analyzes the role of on-the-job search in the propagation of monetary shocks in a sticky price model with labor market search frictions. Such frictions induce long-term employment relationships, such that the real marginal cost is determined by real wages and the cost of an employment relationship. On-the-job search opens up an extra channel of employment growth that dampens the response of these two components. Because real marginal cost rigidity induces small price adjustments, on-the-job search gives rise to a strong propagation of monetary shocks that increases output persistence.
DISAPPEARING DIVIDENDS: CHANGING FIRM CHARACTERISTICS OR LOWER PROPENSITY TO PAY?

The proportion of "rms paying cash dividends falls from 66.5% in 1978 to 20.8% in 1999, due in part to the changing characteristics of publicly traded "rms. Fed by new listings, the population of publicly traded "rms tilts increasingly toward small "rms with low pro"tability and strong growth opportunities } characteristics typical of "rms that have never paid dividends. More interesting, we also show that regardless of their characteristics, "rms have become less likely to pay dividends. This lower propensity to pay is at least as important as changing characteristics in the declining incidence of dividend-paying "rms. 2001 Published by Elsevier Science S.A. JEL classixcation: G35; G32
Real exchange rates and relative prices: An empirical investigation

Abstract This paper uncovers a striking empirical regularity: the consumer price of a good relative to a different good within a country tends to be much less variable than the price of that good relative to a similar good in another country. This fact seems to hold for all goods except very simple, homogeneous products. Models of real exchange rates are likely to have predictions regarding this relation, so this fact may provide a useful gauge for discriminating among models.
The Public’s Right to Health: When Patient Rights Threaten the Commons

This Article offers a contemporary examination of traditional public health objectives to address social problems not amenable to individual resolution. Taking the tradition a step further, it defines a “public health right” that may justify certain government actions that otherwise appear to impair individual rights. For example, lawmakers are considering whether current regulations on prescription drugs should be loosened to allow terminally ill patients to access drugs before they have been tested and approved for the general public. This Article concludes that expanding access to experimental drugs would violate the public health right to scientific knowledge and new drug development. The choice of a few patients to avail themselves of untested drugs depletes the “commons” of biomedical research. The Article concludes by briefly testing the public health right against other contemporary laws intended to promote public health and welfare, finding some but not all are justified.
Accrual-Based and Real Earnings Management Activities Around Seasoned Equity Offerings

Abstract We show that SEO firms engage in real activities manipulation, and the decline in post-SEO performance due to the real activities management is more severe than that due to accrual management. Our evidence is important, because it shows that post-SEO operating underperformance is driven not just by accrual reversals, but also reflects the real consequences of operational decisions made to manage earnings. We also show how firms’ choices of real versus accrual-based earnings management activities around SEOs vary predictably as a function of the firm's ability to use accrual management and the costs of doing so.
Myth and Reality of Flat Tax Reform: Micro Estimates of Tax Evasion Response and Welfare Effects in Russia

We examine the effects of Russia’s 2001 flat rate income tax reform on consumption, income, and tax evasion. We use the gap between household expenditures and reported earnings as a proxy for tax e...
Do the Benefits of Reducing Accounting Complexity Persist in Markets Prone to Bubble

Standard setters and regulators generally assume that making accounting easier to process leads to more efficient markets, thereby benefiting traders. I test that assumption in markets that are prone to price bubbles. Market efficiency will obtain only if reducing complexity in accounting leads traders to acquire and process that information more readily, and then to trade in a manner that moves price closer to fundamental value. This reasoning implies two causal links—(1) the link from less complex information to greater processing of that information, and (2) the link from greater processing of information to more efficient markets. I test these causal links in an experiment by examining the effect of reducing accounting complexity on market efficiency, as mediated by processing accounting information and as moderated by the market’s propensity to form price bubbles. Traders buy and sell shares of an asset in a multiperiod, double auction market in which speculative capital gains are possible. I find that reducing complexity in information increases processing. However, this processing increases market efficiency only in markets that are less prone to a price bubble. Conversely, in markets more prone to bubble some traders that process information trade according to value, while other informed traders utilize profitable non-value trading strategies that exacerbate price inefficiencies.
Startup Acquisitions as a Hiring Strategy: Worker Choice and Turnover

This study investigates the effectiveness of high-tech startup acquisitions as a hiring strategy (“acqui-hiring”) versus traditional hiring. Unlike regular hires who choose to join a new firm on th...
The Constitutional Initiative in Montana

The constitutional initiative power provided in 1972 Montana Constitution is basic to its plan to increase the democratic responsiveness of a state government weighed down by detailed and inflexible constitutional provisions and interpretations that had accumulated since statehood. It serves, in other words, as a direct practical guarantee of the primary provisions of the Constitution's Declaration of Rights: popular sovereignty and self-government. Popular sovereignty exercised through the constitutional initiative can lead to a paradox, however. While the constitutional initiative can make government more responsive to voters by constraining legislative policymaking or removing constraints on policymaking imposed by judicial review, it also can complicate the constitutional text over time so as to leave state government less responsive in the end. The originators of the constitutional initiative in Montana foresaw this possibility, what one delegate called “a Constitution that looks like California and Louisiana.”This article discusses the function of the constitutional initiative as a direct expression of the popular sovereignty guaranteed by the Montana Constitution. Part I explores the historical roots of the constitutional initiative power and process in earlier Montana constitutions and elsewhere. Part II records the origin of the constitutional initiative in the debates that preceded, constituted, and followed the 1972 Constitutional Convention and ratification process. Part III describes voters’ use of the constitutional initiative and the Supreme Court’s active supervision of amendment procedures. Circulation of constitutional initiative petitions is the most common form of direct democracy in Montana, but at the polls voters more frequently shape the Constitution by approving amendments referred by the Legislature. Both processes focus on fiscal policy and individual rights. Part IV assesses the constitutional initiative in historical and national contexts and considers its future in Montana. The relative infrequency of constitutional initiatives could change as petitioners drive supply through the professionalization of signature gathering and voters drive demand through attempts to make the legislative and judicial branches more responsive on specific issues. Thus, the future of the Montana Constitution depends on the state government’s fidelity to the principles of popular sovereignty in the current Constitution.
Rule Consequentialism and the Problem of Partial Acceptance

Most plausible moral theories must address problems of partial acceptance or partial compliance. The aim of this paper is to examine some proposed ways of dealing with partial acceptance problems as well as to introduce a new Rule Utilitarian suggestion. Here I survey three forms of Rule Utilitarianism, each of which represents a distinct approach to solving partial acceptance issues. I examine Fixed Rate, Variable Rate, and Optimum Rate Rule Utilitarianism, and argue that a new approach, Maximizing Expectation Rate Rule Utilitarianism, better solves partial acceptance problems.
Iqbal-ing Seagate: Plausibility Pleading of Willful Patent Infringement

“Few issues in civil procedure jurisprudence are more significant than pleading standards, which are the key that opens access to courts.” Practically speaking, pleadings are the necessary gateway to any civil action and unlock the doors to discovery. In general, a complaint should set forth the basic facts known to the plaintiff and serves to put defendants on notice of the allegations and resulting harm that the plaintiff seeks to remedy. However, ascertaining the depth of the harm and defendants’ specific injurious conduct frequently requires extensive discovery procedures. In the interest of serving judicial economy and avoiding frivolous litigation, these discovery procedures are generally only available once a complainant has sufficiently pled facts upon which he has shown that he is entitled to relief. In 2009, the Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Iqbal raised the bar for what must be pled to survive defendants’ motions to dismiss and to begin the discovery process. The Court abandoned the “no set of facts” language that prevailed as the judicial interpretation of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) for half a century, and elevated the standard to one where the pleadings must “state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Just two years earlier, in In re Seagate Technology, LLC, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit similarly abandoned its own well-established negligence standard for proving willful patent infringement. Relying on the Supreme Court’s latest interpretation of “willful,” the Federal Circuit elevated the threshold of willfulness to a level of “objective recklessness.”This Note argues that when taken together, Iqbal and Seagate will raise the bar for sufficiently pleading willful patent infringement beyond any attainable level. Part II describes the Supreme Court’s recent decisions that heighten the standard for Rule 8(a)(2) pleadings and the Federal Circuit’s shift from a negligence standard to a recklessness standard for proving willful patent infringement. Part III provides a review of the plausibility-standard language and suggests three mechanisms rooted in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that patentee–plaintiffs can employ to circumvent the stringent threshold to survive defendants’ motions to dismiss. Part IV evaluates the new standard for willful patent infringement by comparing it to standards for bad-faith infractions in other areas of intellectual property law. Finally, Part IV also contemplates whether the courts should desert willfulness as the hallmark indicium for increased damages in favor of other bad-faith characteristics of the defendant or conduct surrounding the infringement.
A stochastic dominance approach to program evaluation with an application to child nutritional status in Kenya

We propose a new method to evaluate program impacts across the entire distribution of outcomes and changes in outcomes. The method applies stochastic dominance estimation to differences-in-differences across subgroups and time, thereby allowing us to look beyond the mean impact and to tease out program effects that differ across the distribution of changes in an outcome variable of interest. We apply this to a government program in Kenya and find that it was associated with less deterioration in children's nutritional status among the worst-off children, thus, effectively functioning as a nutritional safety net.
Does the Yield Spread Predict Recessions in the Euro Area

This paper studies the informational content of the slope of the yield curve as a predictor of recessions in the euro area and provides evidence of the potential usefulness of this indicator for monetary policy purposes. In particular, the historical predictive power of ten variations of yield spreads, for different segments of the yield curve, is tested using a probit model. The yield spread between the ten-year government bond rate and the three-month interbank rate outperforms all other spreads in predicting recessions in the euro area. The forecast accuracy of the spread between ten-year and three-month interest rates is also explored in an exercise of out-of-sample forecasting. This yield spread appears to contain information beyond that already available in the history of output, and to outperform other competitor indicators.
The Federal Line Item Veto Experiment: After the Supreme Court Ruling, What's Next?

The federal line item veto has ceased to exist, thanks to the Supreme Court's June 1998 ruling invalidating the expansion of the president's rescission authority that was contained in the Line Item Veto Act. This article reviews the application of the Act during 1997, its effect on spending and the deficit, the judicial reaction to its use, and the prospects for the restoration of some version of the power. President Clinton was quite restrained in the use of his new power, with the exception of his cancellations in the Military Construction appropriation bill; these were ultimately restored by the Congress. Because of the president's restraint, the Line Item Veto Act had a miniscule affect on spending and the deficit; total cancellations represented less than .04 percent of FY98 discretionary budget authority. Ultimately, the Supreme Court held that the Act violated Article I, Section 7 because it created a Constitutionally impermissable way for the president to change laws. There is no clear fallback position for supporters of the Act; alternatives are either difficult to enact, hard to administer, or too weak to be considered an effective substitute. Given the problems in enacting any alternative, it may be that the federal line item veto will end up only as a historical anomaly.
Climate change, agricultural production and civil conflict: Evidence from the Philippines

Abstract Using unique data on conflict-related incidents in the Philippines, we exploit seasonal variation in the relationship between rainfall and agricultural production to learn about the mechanism through which rainfall affects civil conflict. We find that an increase in dry-season rainfall leads to an increase in agricultural production and dampens conflict intensity. By contrast, an increase in wet-season rainfall is harmful to crops and produces more conflict. Consistent with the hypothesis that rebel groups gain strength after a bad harvest, we find that negative rainfall shocks lead to an increase in conflict incidents initiated by insurgents but not by government forces. These results suggest that the predicted shift towards wetter wet seasons and drier dry seasons will lead to more civil conflict even if annual rainfall totals remain stable. We conclude that policies aimed at mitigating the effect of climate change on agriculture could have the added benefit of reducing civil conflict.
Indeterminacy and the Establishment Clause

Professor Gedicks's main thesis is that the Supreme Court's dominant "discourse" has been "secular" and "individualist," but that many of its decisions can be adequately explained only by an older "religious communitarian" discourse that allows governments to exercise their power to encourage people to accept the foundational morality of conservative religion. Gedicks concludes that were the Supreme Court to make the doctrinal changes that would render the law of the religion clauses "a coherent expression of secular individualism," that would be highly unpopular. And, at this stage in the country's history, "[r]eligious communitarian discourse is not a viable alternative to secular individualism." The Court cannot develop a compromise position because the two discourses are "mutually exclusive." (p. 435) (alteration in original) (footnotes omitted).
Teaching Amidst Transformation: Integrating Global Perspectives on the Financial Crisis into the Classroom

Teaching during tumultuous times requires creativity, but the lessons that emerge during times of crisis can also enrich classroom discussion by underscoring different perspectives and potential solutions to traditional classroom problems. This essay describes some methods for using examples from the recent financial crisis in the classroom, with the aim of enhancing comparative analyses and tying traditional financial concepts to broader themes stemming from the financial crisis.
Temptation in vote-selling: Evidence from a field experiment in the Philippines

Abstract We report the results of a randomized field experiment in the Philippines on the effects of two common anti-vote-selling strategies involving eliciting promises from voters. An invitation to promise not to vote-sell is taken up by most respondents, reduces vote-selling, and has a larger effect in races with smaller vote-buying payments. The treatment reduces vote-selling in the smallest-stakes election by 10.9 percentage points. Inviting voters to promise to “vote your conscience” despite accepting money is significantly less effective. The results are consistent with a behavioral model in which voters are only partially sophisticated about their vote-selling temptation.
Be Careful What You Look for: The Effect of Trait Competitiveness and Long Hours on Salesperson Deviance and Whether Meaningfulness of Work Matters

Ask sales managers and recruiters what they look for in a salesperson, and they will report that they seek competitive, hard-working professionals who match the culture of their company, and research would support the contention that such things generally help the sales organization. But could two of these factors—specifically, trait competitiveness and working long hours—actually be associated with counterproductive sales behavior? This research examines the effect of trait competitiveness, hours worked, and person-organization fit on the three forms of deviant salesperson behavior (organizational deviance, interpersonal deviance, and frontline deviance) and, in addition to testing these main effects, investigates whether managers can attenuate these relationships by investing time explaining the meaningfulness of the salesperson's job to the salesperson. Using survey data collected from 160 business-to-business salespeople from multiple companies and multiple industries, results support five of seven hy...
The End of Bankruptcy

The law of corporate reorganizations is conventionally justified as a way to preserve a firm’s going-concern value: Specialized assets in a particular firm are worth more together in that firm than anywhere else. This paper shows that this notion is mistaken. Its flaw is that it lacks a welldeveloped understanding of the nature of a firm. Initially, it is easy to confuse size with specialization and overstate the extent to which assets are dedicated to a particular enterprise. Even when such dedicated assets exist, they often do not need to stay in the same firm. As Coase taught us, as the costs of contracting go down, so too does the value of keeping assets in a particular firm. But even when specialized assets must be kept inside a firm, two other forces limit the need for a traditional law of corporate reorganizations. Capital structures are increasingly designed with financial distress in mind. For these firms, control rights shift from one set of investors to another as the firm encounters difficulty. Such firms either never file for bankruptcy, or, if they do, it is only to vindicate the predetermined allocation of control rights. Even where control rights are not sensibly allocated, a quick sale of the firm restores order. When firms can be sold as going concerns, the need for the traditional negotiated plan of reorganization disappears. The vast majority of firms in financial distress never enter bankruptcy. Today the Chapter 11 of a large firm is an auction of the assets, followed by litigation over the proceeds. To the extent we understand the law of corporate reorganizations as providing a collective forum in which creditors and their common debtor fashion a future for a firm that would otherwise be torn apart by financial distress, we may safely conclude that its era has come to an end. * Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School. Forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review. ** Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School. We thank Barry Adler, Marcus Cole, Michael Hilgers, Richard Levin, Alan Littmann, Eric Posner, Mark Ramseyer, and David Skeel for their help. Prior versions of this Article were presented at the University of Chicago Law School and the Annual Meeting of the American Law and Economics Association. For his support and insight throughout this project, we are especially grateful to our colleague Edward Morrison. We also thank the John M. Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Dean’s Fund at Vanderbilt for research support. Baird & Rasmussen, page 2
The Lexus or the olive tree? Trading off between global convergence and local divergence

Abstract To operate effectively in global markets, marketing managers need to understand that consumer response to globalization may be more complex than is commonly assumed. We examine a proposed conceptual framework to describe consumers' responses to globalization through a cross-national survey on consumer support for a pan-European government policy aimed at countering global convergence by preserving local cultural divergence. We find that consumer support for the policy increases with beliefs about the policy's efficacy in preserving the authenticity of cultural products and protecting their local economic production structures, while it decreases with beliefs about policy-induced price increases. The national cultural values of individualism and masculinity influence this tradeoff between cultural and economic considerations. These findings are further corroborated by secondary data on 22 EU countries.
The value theory of democracy

Liberal political theorists often argue that justice requires limits on policy outcomes, limits delineated by substantive rights. Distinct from this project is a body of literature dedicated to ela...
"Too stubborn to ever be governed by enforced insanity": Some therapeutic jurisprudence dilemmas in the representation of criminal defendants in incompetency and insanity cases.

Little attention has been paid to the importance of the relationship between therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and the role of criminal defense lawyers in insanity and incompetency-to-stand-trial (IST) cases. That inattention is especially noteworthy in light of the dismal track record of counsel providing services to defendants who are part of this cohort of incompetency-status-raisers and insanity-defense-pleaders. On one hand, this lack of attention is a surprise as TJ scholars have, in recent years, turned their attention to virtually every other aspect of the legal system. On the other hand, it is not a surprise, given the omnipresence of sanism, an irrational prejudice of the same quality and character of other irrational prejudices that cause (and are reflected in) prevailing social attitudes of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic bigotry, that infects both our jurisprudence and our lawyering practices. Sanism is largely invisible and largely socially acceptable, and is based predominantly upon stereotype, myth, superstition, and deindividualization. It is sustained and perpetuated by our use of alleged “ordinary common sense” (OCS) and heuristic reasoning in an unconscious response to events both in everyday life and in the legal process. This paper examines the literature that seeks to apply TJ principles to the criminal law process in general, drawing mostly on the work of Professor David Wexler. It considers why the lack of attention that I have referred to already is surprising (given TJ's mandate and the fact that many TJ issues are inevitably raised in any insanity or IST case). The paper then considers why this lack of attention is not surprising, given the omnipresence of sanism. It will consider some of the actual counseling issues that might arise in these contexts, and offer some suggestions to lawyers representing clients in cases in which mental status issues may be raised. The paper concludes that we must rigorously apply therapeutic jurisprudence principles to these issues, so as to strip away sanist behavior, pretextual reasoning and teleological decision making from the criminal competency and responsibility processes, so as to enable us to confront the pretextual use of social science data in an open and meaningful way. This gambit would also allow us to address—in a more successful way than has ever yet been done—the problems raised by the omnipresence of ineffective counsel in cases involving defendants with mental disabilities.
Citizen participation in pollution permit markets

Abstract Should citizens lobby the government to reduce pollution permit endowments or should they participate directly in the market by purchasing and retiring permits? We address this question in a two-stage model. In the first stage firms and citizens exert effort to influence the endowment of permits. In the second stage firms, and perhaps citizens, participate in the permit market. Even when citizens choose not to purchase permits, the possibility of doing so may affect the equilibrium. In our basic model, citizens choose not to purchase permits; this result can be reversed if permits are grandfathered.
Strictly Wrong as a Tax Policy: The Strict Liability Penalty Standard in Noneconomic Substance Transactions

This Note analyzes the propriety of using a strict liability standard to assess tax penalties for transactions lacking economic substance. Noneconomic substance transactions lack legitimate business objectives and exist only to produce tax benefits. Under current law, the Internal Revenue Service can disallow the tax benefit claimed by the taxpayer and then assess a penalty for the taxpayer’s understatement of tax liability. In response, the taxpayer can assert a reasonable cause exception, which can serve as a defense to the penalty should the taxpayer demonstrate that he had reasonable basis for his tax position. In the last decade, numerous legislative proposals sought to eliminate the reasonable cause exception and replace it with a strict liability standard. This Note examines the conflict created by this potential change in the tax law. This Note begins by defining the economic substance doctrine, as used in the U.S. courts of appeals, to determine whether a transaction lacks economic substance. This Note then explains the accuracy-related penalty assessed for noneconomic substance transactions, as well as the reasonable cause exception to the penalty. Two cases illustrate the interaction of the economic substance analysis, the tax penalty, and the reasonable cause exception. Next, this Note summarizes legislative proposals spanning from 1999 to 2009, which would codify the economic substance doctrine and adopt a strict liability penalty standard. The strict liability standard is then analyzed at length, as this Note discusses the arguments for and against it. Ultimately, this Note concludes that on balance, the strict liability standard should not be adopted, but regardless of whether the current penalty regime is retained or alternative solutions are developed, the reasonable cause exception should remain a feature of the standard by which to penalize noneconomic substance transactions.
How Not to Catch a Thief: Why the Economic Espionage Act Fails to Protect American Trade Secrets

In 1996, increasing foreign threats to the trade secrets of American companies led Congress to pass the Economic Espionage Act (EEA), which criminalizes the theft of trade secrets with the intent to benefit a foreign government in 18 U.S.C. § 1831. In the sixteen years since its passage, the EEA has largely failed to curb trade secret theft by foreign governmental actors, and the U.S. economy has suffered billions of dollars in losses due to economic espionage. While the FBI and DOJ have prioritized economic espionage investigations and prosecutions in recent years, only six convictions under § 1831 of the EEA have resulted since 1996. This Note evaluates the stated policies underlying the EEA, and argues that narrow judicial treatment of cases involving economic espionage under § 1831 conflicts with the goals of Congress and frustrates the prosecutorial objectives of the DOJ. This Note posits that recent legislation amending the EEA — the Foreign and Economic Espionage Penalty Enhancement Act, which passed in January 2013 — indicates Congress's desire to broaden the elements of § 1831 of the EEA. While this Note recognizes certain problems inherent in the EEA itself, it concludes by advocating an expansion of the recent amendments to the EEA in order to fulfill Congress's goal of reducing international theft of American trade secrets.
Bank consolidation and new business formation

Abstract As the trend of bank consolidation activities continues to grow in the US and globally, the debate on the impact of such consolidation on small business credits and activities are still inconclusive. Building on the existing research [Berger, A.N., Saunders, A., Scalise, J.M., Udell, G.F., 1998. The effects of bank mergers and acquisitions on small business lending. Journal of Financial Economics 50, 187–229]; [Black, S.E., Strahan, P.E., 2002. Entrepreneurship and bank credit availability. Journal of Finance LVII (6), 2807–2833], this paper investigates the effects of the actual intensity of bank consolidation on the formation of new businesses in the US local markets. Evidence portrays that in the short-run, the overall intensity of bank consolidation is negatively related to the rate of new business formation, and this negative relationship is primarily driven by consolidations initiated by large acquirers. On the contrary, consolidations between small-to-medium sized banks show a positive impact on new business development and these results are consistent even when the M&As are distinguished with respect to in-market or out-of-market acquirers initiating the deals. However, two years after the consolidations, the evidence reveals a positive and significant impact on the rate of new business formation in the local markets for consolidations initiated by large in-market acquirers.
Structures of Discrimination

This essay argues that, in order for women and men to be fully equal, we need to understand the structures of discrimination; that is, the forms of the subordination that are deeply rooted in how we stereotype women and men in ways that deny them benefits or impose burdens. The essay explores how gender stereotypes have contributed to: the failure of the criminal justice system to investigate the disappearances of young women; women’s unequal access to reproductive health services; and discrimination in polygamous family structures. Conditions for stratification and subordination of women exist when wrongful gender stereotypes are socially pervasive across sectors, and persistent over time. In understanding how restrictive stereotypes of women are pervasive and persistent in criminal law, health law and family law, one is better equipped to dismantle structures of discrimination more generally.
The Causal Effects of Short-Selling Bans: Evidence from Eligibility Thresholds

We identify the causal effects of short-selling bans on stock prices using regression discontinuity (RD). We exploit three threshold-based rules that determine a stock’s short-selling eligibility on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Short-selling bans have a large effect on short-selling volume at all thresholds. Despite this, bans do not affect stock prices. Stock returns, volatility, and crash risk are not different for banned versus unrestricted stocks when appropriate counterfactual stocks are used to measure a ban’s effects. Our findings suggest that short-selling bans are not as costly as previously argued, but are ineffective at reducing volatility or buttressing prices. Received September 13, 2017; editorial decision April 29, 2018 by Editor Jeffrey Pontiff.
Avoiding model selection by the use of shrinkage techniques

Abstract It is argued that, in most cases, model selection procedures, including those based on popular criteria such as predictive loss and information, lead to inadmissible procedures. In particular, properties of the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) in a nested sequence of regression models are analyzed by reduction to an appropriate canonical form. It is shown that the AIC has some undesirable features, and an alternative proper Bayes procedure is suggested. Numerical compari- sons of risks are presented.
The Fourth Trimester

This Article introduces a new conceptual framework to the legal literature on pregnancy and pregnancy discrimination: the fourth trimester. The concept of a fourth trimester, drawn from maternal nursing and midwifery, refers to the crucial three to six month period after birth when many of the physical, psychological, emotional, and social effects of pregnancy continue. Giving this concept legal relevance extends the scope of pregnancy beyond the narrow period defined by conception, gestation, and birth and acknowledges that pregnancy is a relational process, not an individual event. In the United States, however, antidiscrimination law has failed to acknowledge the demands of the fourth trimester; it operates from the presumption that pregnancy begins at conception and ends at birth. Without employing a fourth trimester framework, the current federal antidiscrimination regime will continue to permit pregnancy discrimination against women because employers can discriminate on the basis of activities that typify the fourth trimester of the pregnancy. Judges, administrative actors, movement lawyers, and other policy makers should recognize that the law should prohibit discrimination on the basis of fourth trimester activities like breastfeeding, caring for newborn infants, or recovery. As a matter of law and policy, discrimination arising from these activities during the fourth trimester should be regarded as pregnancy discrimination. * Associate Professor of Law, Tulane University Law School. The author presented versions of this Article at the Lutie A. Lytle Black Women Law Faculty Writing Workshop, “A Scholarly Salon at UNLV,” at the New Scholar Program of the South Eastern Association of Law Schools, at LatCrit XVI, and at Southwestern Law School’s ClassCrits Conference. She would like to thank participants of those workshops for helpful comments and questions. The author would also like to thank Adeno Addis, Benjamin Barton, Dan Danielsen, Martin Davies, Adam Feibelman, Bob Force, Andrea Freeman, Jim Gordley, Kristen Gresham, Catherine Hancock, Catherine Hardee, Jennifer S. Hendricks, Jancy Hoeffel, Nancy Levit, Christine Littleton, Glen Lunney, Isabel Medina, Pam Metzger, Dave Meyer, Athena Mutua, Shu-Yi Oei, Sally Richardson, Stacey Seichsneider, Amy Stein, George Strickler, Camille Walsh, and Robert Westley for their generous comments and suggestions. In addition, thanks go to Amanda Austin, Anthony Johnson, R.J. Griglio, Tracy Law, Editha Rosario, Alex Wheeden, and Sophie Melissa Woodruff for helpful research assistance and the editors and staff of the Michigan Journal of Law Reform, particularly Emma Lawton, Abigail Edwards, and Andrew Clopton, for excellent editing suggestions. Sheila Matambanadzo, Sikwa Matambanadzo, David Noble, and Delilah Noble deserve many thanks for providing fertile conditions for doing this work. All mistakes remain the sole responsibility of the author.
Exporting South Africa's Social Rights Jurisprudence

The South African Constitution and its early jurisprudence have been discussed extensively among comparative constitutional law scholars and other academics. Frequently, the Constitution has been described as a model document for the domestic protection of human rights, and the South African Constitutional Court, the highest court in post-apartheid South Africa, has often been lauded by political progressives and human rights activists for advancing the cause of equality and justice.