cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, and Changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims of Domestic Violence

This Article presents a hypothesis suggesting how and why the criminal justice response to domestic violence changed, over the course of the twentieth century, from sympathy for abused women and a surprising degree of state intervention in intimate relationships to the apathy and discrimination that the battered women’s movement exposed. The riddle of declining public sympathy for female victims of intimate-partner violence can only be solved by looking beyond the criminal law to the social and legal changes that created the Exit Myth. While the situation that gave rise to the battered women’s movement in the 1970s is often presumed to be part of a long history of state tolerance or even approval of violence against women, the real history is actually much more complicated. Indeed, at least until 1930, wife beaters were routinely brought to criminal court and fined or sentenced to a jail term. Whereas wife killers often faced life imprisonment or even the death penalty, juries acquitted many women who used lethal violence against their abusive husbands. What happened between the 1920s and the later decades of the twentieth century that changed how the public and the criminal justice system responded to domestic violence? This Article offers the following hypothesis: As women gained the vote and sought easy access to divorce, and as mothers of minor children began to compete for jobs formerly held exclusively by men, society and the criminal justice system less often saw abused wives as frail beings who needed protection against their violent husbands. Changes in employment opportunities, family and property law, and psychosocial understandings of intimate relationships combined to create a false sense of the ease with which women could exit an abusive marriage. This overestimation of women’s ability to leave, paired with the new view that women did not need to be protected in paternalistic ways, contributed to waning sympathy for female victims of intimate-partner violence. In the second half of the twentieth century, such women were presumed — often unfairly and incorrectly — to be capable of safely leaving their relationships and supporting themselves. As gender roles changed to allow greater female autonomy, the criminal justice response may have become more punitive and less sympathetic toward women trapped in violent intimate relationships.
Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers

This paper investigates the relation between growth forecast errors and planned fiscal consolidation during the crisis. We find that, in advanced economies, stronger planned fiscal consolidation has been associated with lower growth than expected. The relation is particularly strong, both statistically and economically, early in the crisis. A natural interpretation is that fiscal multipliers were substantially higher than implicitly assumed by forecasters. The weaker relation in more recent years may in part reflect learning by forecasters and in part smaller multipliers than in the early years of the crisis.
Why do Women Leave Science and Engineering

The author uses the 2003 and 2010 National Survey of College Graduates to examine the higher exit rate of women compared to men from science and engineering relative to other fields. The author finds that the higher relative exit rate is driven by engineering rather than science, and that half the gap can be explained by the relatively greater exit rate from engineering of women dissatisfied with pay and promotion opportunities. Family-related constraints and dissatisfaction with working conditions are found to be only secondary factors. The relative exit rate by gender from engineering does not differ from that of other fields once women’s relatively high exit rates from male fields generally are taken into account.
Corporate financing decisions when investors take the path of least resistance

We argue that inertial behavior on the part of investors can have significant consequences for corporate financial policy. One implication of investor inertia is that it improves the terms for the acquiring firm in a stock-for-stock merger, because acquirer shares are placed in the hands of investors, who, independent of their beliefs, do not resell these shares on the open market. In the presence of a downward-sloping demand curve, this leads to a reduction in price pressure and, hence, to cheaper equity financing. We develop a simple model to illustrate this idea and present supporting empirical evidence.
Investor Overreaction to Earnings Surprises and Post‐Earnings‐Announcement Reversals

Prior literature suggests that the market underreacts to the positive correlation in a typical firm’s seasonal earnings changes, which leads to a post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD) in prices. We examine the market reaction for a distinct set of firms whose seasonal earnings changes are uncorrelated and show that the market incorrectly assumes that the earnings changes of these firms are positively correlated. We also document that positive (negative) seasonal earnings changes in the current quarter are associated with negative (positive) abnormal returns in the following quarter. Thus, we observe a reversal of abnormal returns, consistent with a systematic overreaction to earnings, rather than the previously documented PEAD. Additional analysis indicates that financial analysts similarly overestimate the autocorrelation of these firms, although to a lesser extent. We also find that the magnitude of overestimation and the subsequent price reversal are inversely related to the richness of the information environment. Our results challenge the notion that investors recognize but consistently underestimate earnings correlation and provide a new perspective on the inability of prices to fully reflect the implications of current earnings for future earnings.
India-focused publications in leading international business journals

Despite an increase in the number of India-focused articles appearing in leading international business journals, there has not been any attempt to conduct systematic reviews that can inform academicians and practitioners about research that has accumulated over the years and identify areas that may be worthwhile to pursue in the future. This article attempts to fill this gap by providing an overview of all publications focusing on the Indian context that appeared in seven leading international business journals between 1991 and 2008. Findings suggest that 74 publications involving 180 authors affiliated to 112 academic and six non-academic institutions from nine international locations contributed to the research by examining a wide variety of international business topics. Findings also reveal that authors affiliated to US-based institutions published more than others and the majority of top-cited publications appeared after 1995. Contributions of various authors and institutions are ranked and summaries of publication types, research methodologies, examined topics, and citations received by different articles are provided. This article concludes by suggesting avenues of future research.
Unconstitutional Entanglements: The Religious Right, the Federal Government, and Abstinence Education in the Schools

This article argues that current federal funding for abstinence-only sex education violates the Establishment Clause. Previous establishment clause challenges to the abstinence-only education system focused either on overt religious messages included in curricula or on federal funding going to religious groups to teach abstinence-only education. These challenges have ignored the religious history of abstinence-only education and the particular religious values that are endorsed by even the allegedly "secular" curricula. This article demonstrates that the current funding of abstinence-only education violates the Supreme Court's test for religious neutrality as set forth in Lemon v. Kurtzmann.
Understanding gasoline price dispersion

This paper models and estimates the gasoline price dispersion across time and space by using a unique data set at the gas station level within the USA. Nationwide effects (measured by time fixed effects or crude oil prices) explain up to about 51 % of the gasoline price dispersion across stations. Refinery-specific costs, which have been ignored in the literature due to using local data sets within the USA, contribute up to another 33 % to the price dispersion. While state taxes explain about 12 % of the price dispersion, spatial factors such as local agglomeration externalities, land prices, and distribution costs of gasoline explain up to about 4 %. The contribution of brand-specific factors is relatively minor.
The Effect of Task Interdependence and Type of Incentive Contract on Group Performance

ABSTRACT: We extend Fisher et al. (2003) to investigate the effectiveness of a budget‐based incentive contract to settings with alternate task characteristics.We first replicate their finding: when...
Too Much Information: How Not to Think About Privacy and The Fourth Amendment

Fourth Amendment law today is overloaded with information: not just in the sense that the explosive growth of digitized information requires rethinking traditional rules of search and seizure, but also and more importantly in the sense that a preoccupation with data flows has led to the neglect of important dimensions of privacy. There is no doubt that the control of personal information is an important value and one uniquely threatened by the rise of social media, by the proliferation of technological surveillance, and by the arrival of Big Data. But the reduction of privacy to control over information has made it difficult to think sensibly about the distinctive threats posed by government searches, and it is partly to blame for the growing and unwarranted idea that the Fourth Amendment should be decoupled from privacy - an idea variously motivated by a belief that the concept of privacy is meaningless, by the fear that privacy is dead or dying, and by a sense that the main threats to privacy today are orthogonal to the chief dangers posed by law enforcement. Search and seizure law would be better served by an understanding of privacy rooted in respect for a zone of refuge and informed by privacy’s longstanding associations with enclothement, retreat, and personal sovereignty. This alternative conception of privacy - privacy as refuge - should also be attentive to the relational nature of privacy, the connection between privacy and civility, and the effects of privacy violations on the perpetrators as well as the victims.
Stewards, Agents, and the Founder Discount: Executive Compensation in New Ventures

Agency theory suggests that the interests of opportunistic, self-interested agents conflict with those of principals. Stewardship theory suggests instead that executives' interests are aligned with company interests and that executives are thus more intrinsically motivated than agency theory implies. This study develops hypotheses regarding the psychological and situational factors that affect the applicability of each theory to executive compensation. I tested hypotheses using a unique data set of 1,238 executives from 528 private companies. Results suggest significant differences between founder-stewards and nonfounder agents that diminish with company growth, and significant effects of equity ownership and outside rounds of financing.
STUDENT RESPONSIVENESS TO EARNINGS DATA IN THE COLLEGE SCORECARD

Using the universe of SAT score sends to colleges and the exact date on which these scores are sent, we estimate how students responded to the release of the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard in September 2015. We find that data on annual cost and graduation rate, both of which were previously available, did not impact the volume of score sends received by colleges. By contrast, we estimate that each 10% increase in reported earnings resulted in a 2.4% increase in score sends. The impact is driven almost entirely by well‐resourced high schools and students. We find little evidence that the count or composition of enrolled students changed as a result of the Scorecard information shock with the exception of a slight increase in academic preparedness, as measured by SAT scores, among enrollees at colleges with higher reported earnings. (JEL I2, I23, I26, I28, L15)
Immigration, Association, and the Family

In this paper I provide a philosophical analysis of family-based immigration. This type of immigration is of great importance, yet has received relatively little attention from philosophers and others doing normative work on immigration. As family-based immigration poses significant challenges for those seeking a comprehensive normative account of the limits of discretion that states should have in setting their own immigration policies, it is a topic that must be dealt with if we are to have a comprehensive account. In what follows I use the idea of freedom of association to show what is distinctive about family-based immigration and why it ought to have a privileged place in our discussion of the topic. I further show why this style of argument neither allows states to limit nearly all immigration nor requires them to have almost no limits on immigration. I conclude by showing that all states must allow some degree of family-based immigration, and that this is a duty owed not to ‘outsiders’ seeking to enter, but rather to current citizens.
The value of technological advance in decarbonizing the U.S. economy

Abstract This paper examines the role of technology in managing the costs of a carbon constraint on the U.S. economy. Two portfolios of technology are examined. One reflects modest investments in climate-friendly technologies, the other more aggressive development. The analysis indicates that the development of a broad range of low- to zero-carbon emitting technologies can substantially reduce (but not eliminate) the economic cost of decarbonization. By enabling large-scale emission reductions on the supply-side, costly reductions in demand are avoided. In particular, the emergence of electricity as a low-carbon fuel provides a powerful lever for achieving reductions in other sectors of the economy at lower cost. While the analysis suggests that there is no “free lunch,” the bill, which may indeed be well worth paying, can be greatly reduced through an accelerated R&D program and successful diffusion of new technology throughout the economy.
The Risk-Adjusted Cost of Financial Distress*

Financial distress is more likely to happen in bad times. The present value of distress costs therefore depends on risk premia. We estimate this value using risk-adjusted default probabilities derived from corporate bond spreads. For a BBB-rated firm, our benchmark calculations show that the NPV of distress is 4.5% of predistress value. In contrast, a valuation that ignores risk premia generates an NPV of 1.4%. We show that marginal distress costs can be as large as the marginal tax benefits of debt derived by Graham (2000). Thus, distress risk premia can help explain why firms appear to use debt conservatively.
Fiddling while Rome burns: The story of the federal rules and experts

The distinction between educational and deferential modes of trial are briefly explored, and a proposal to amend FRE 702 to require that expert testimony be provided in a comprehensible fashion is advanced.
Input Suppliers, Differential Pricing, and Information Sharing Agreements

It is common for firms to systematically share information with their input suppliers. Although such agreements with horizontal rivals have been analyzed, there has been little work examining vertical sharing, and that analysis has focused on suppliers that set uniform prices. However, there has been a systematic change in the US policy toward vertical relationships in the past decades: both FTC inaction and courts rulings have curtailed the effect of Robinson-Patman, a law meant to prevent differential pricing. Furthermore, it is not clear if differential pricing reflects the suppliers' or the buyers' power. The interaction of these effects is examined.
Fertility and Social Security

We examine the effects of changes in government provided old age pensions on fertility choices in the context of two models of fertility, the one by Barro and Becker (1989), and the one inspired by Caldwell and developed by Boldrin and Jones (2002). In the Barro and Becker model parents have children because they perceive their children’s lives as a continuation of their own. In the Boldrin and Jones’ framework parents procreate because the children care about their old parents’ utility, and thus provide them with old age transfers. We find that the direction of the effect on fertility in the Barro and Becker model depends on whether child rearing costs are primarily in goods or in time, but that the size of the eff ect is always very small. This is inconsistent with empirical results which find a reduction of between 0.7 and 1.2 children born per woman over the relevant range. In the Boldrin and Jones model increases in the size of the public pension system always decrease fertility, regardless of the type of costs incurred to raise the children. In addition, the model accounts for about half of the observed variation. We also fi nd that, in the Boldrin and Jones model, access to capital markets has important quantitative effects on fertility choices, and could, potentially, account for as much of the change in fertility seen in developed countries over the last 70 years as the increase in the size of Social Security systems.
Can out‐of‐sample forecast comparisons help prevent overfitting?

This paper shows that out-of-sample forecast comparisons can help prevent data mining-induced overfitting. The basic results are drawn from simulations of a simple Monte Carlo design and a real data-based design similar to those used in some previous studies. In each simulation, a general-to-specific procedure is used to arrive at a model. If the selected specification includes any of the candidate explanatory variables, forecasts from the model are compared to forecasts from a benchmark model that is nested within the selected model. In particular, the competing forecasts are tested for equal MSE and encompassing. The simulations indicate most of the post-sample tests are roughly correctly sized. Moreover, the tests have relatively good power, although some are consistently more powerful than others. The paper concludes with an application, modelling quarterly US inflation. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Harmonization and the Goals of Copyright: Property Rights or Cultural Progress?

In recent decades, strong pressure has emerged to harmonize U.S. copyright law with the copyright laws of foreign countries, particularly the laws of Western Europe, where many American companies pursue business. Accordingly, with the Copyright Act of 1976 and amendments thereafter, Congress has attempted to conform to the requirements of various agreements, notably the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which the U.S. joined in 1989. This harmonization has allowed for greater predictability and ease in conducting business across borders, but, at times, has frustrated the fundamental purposes and social objectives of copyright law.The pressure for international conformity has altered the means for acquiring copyright protection, has restructured the term of copyright duration, and has brought new protection under U.S. law where no legal rights previously existed. The result of these changes has been an increasingly complex and often ambiguous body of law, which provides more protection for foreign works than for domestic works, clumsily juxtaposes legal doctrines, and ultimately strays from the constitutional purposes of copyright law and from the ideal of an international standard. Some controversy has surrounded many of the additions made to U.S. copyright law in the name of harmonization, which may have harmful effects for the public. From strict penalties for circumventing technological controls to extended copyright terms, these changes often result in obstacles to the public’s ability to use, build upon, and learn from copyrighted works.
An examination of the continuous-time dynamics of international volatility indices amid the recent market turmoil

Abstract Volatility indices have been designed for many markets as gauges to measure investors' fear of market crash. The recent market turmoil has produced historically high volatility levels. We take a look at the behavior of the VIX and VSTOXX indices by including the recent market turmoil into the data. We estimate various continuous-time models with focus on the structure of the drift and diffusion functions. Two methodologies are utilized: the maximum likelihood estimation, and Ait-Sahalia's parametric specification test. While the results from the parametric specification test advocate strongly for specifying more flexible drift and diffusion functions, nonlinear drift structure often only adds negligible benefit in terms of the likelihood function value. Simulation is carried out to study the finite sample bias and jump omission bias. Our results call for caution against finite sample bias when adopting a particular model or fixing a particular parameter vector.
Credit Ratings and the Cost of Municipal Financing

A common belief held among researchers and policy makers is that regulatory reliance has inflated market demand for credit ratings, despite their decreasing informational value. Advances in information technology, coupled with reputation losses following the subprime crisis, renew the question of whether investors still rely on ratings to assess credit risk. Using Moody’s 2010 scale recalibration, which was unrelated to changing issuer fundamentals, we find that ratings still matter to investors and to issuers—apart from any regulatory implications. Our results commend improved disclosure to mitigate mechanistic reliance on ratings and inefficiencies due to rating standards that vary across asset classes. Received October 9, 2015; editorial decision June 7, 2017 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.
Justice and Truth in Political Discourse

Since the Watergate scandal, campaign finance reform has been the focus of a great deal of national attention.1 Legislation has attempted to limit the amount that individuals or various entities may contribute to candidates or spend on political advertising or campaigns.2 Although the public generally supports campaign finance reform,3 reforms implemented thus far have not been effective in appreciably reducing campaign costs and the role of large contributions.4 Reform of campaign finance presents difficult political and legal problems. Regulation of campaign contributions has proved to be difficult. Contributions may facilitate lobbying of public officials that can be positive. Lobbying may inform as well as persuade. It is clearly an activity protected by the First Amendment; however, campaign contributions may promote individual or special interests that may conflict with the common good. Because of the need to finance costly campaigns, elected officials tend to give more attention to major contributors.5 This provides these well-financed interests
Product Development and the Timing of Information Disclosure under U.S. and Japanese Patent Systems

Abstract This paper examines the consequences of the differences in the timing of information disclosure between the U.S. and Japanese patent systems. Under the Japanese system it is possible for a firm to apply for a patent, knowing the exact specifications of a rival's patent application . In contrast, in the United States the only way a firm learns about a rival's innovation is upon the actual granting of the rival's patent. We argue that this difference enables Japanese firms to coordinate their RD and State University of New York at Stony Brook, Rutgers University, and NBER.
The relationship between displaying and perceiving nonverbal cues of affect: a meta-analysis to solve an old mystery.

The authors address the decades-old mystery of the association between individual differences in the expression and perception of nonverbal cues of affect. Prior theories predicted positive, negative, and zero correlations in performance—given empirical results ranging from r .80 to r .64. A meta-analysis of 40 effects showed a positive correlation for nonverbal behaviors elicited as intentional communication displays but zero for spontaneous, naturalistic, or a combination of display types. There was greater variation in the results of studies having round robin designs and analyzed with statistics that do not account for the interdependence of data. The authors discuss implications for theorists to distinguish emotional skills in terms of what people are capable of doing versus what people actually do.
Clipping Coupons for Democracy: An Egalitarian/Public Choice Defense of Campaign Finance Vouchers

This Article proposes a market-based alternative to our current unpopular regime for financing federal election campaigns. Under the proposal, each voter receives vouchers for federal elections to contribute either to candidates directly or to interest groups; with limited exceptions, only funds from the voucher system could be spent to support or oppose candidates for elected federal offices. Using public choice theory, Professor Hasen argues that the voucher plan would promote an egalitarian political market in which each person has roughly equal political capital regardless of preexisting disparities in wealth, education, or organizational ability. After demonstrating that the current campaign finance regime favors wealthy and well-organized interests at the expense of the poor and those with diffuse interests, the author identifies four distinct benefits of the voucher proposal. First, the voucher proposal minimizes the role of wealth in the political process and facilitates the organization of those individuals who currently lack political capital. Second, the proposal is likely to promote a stable transition to a more egalitarian political order and a more chaotic, though fairer, legislative process. Third, the voucher proposal's market orientation registers the intensity of voter preferences well. Finally, the proposal has a realistic chance of being enacted and of passing constitutional muster. The author concludes by demonstrating the superiority of the voucher plan under the four criteria to non-voucher public financing of Congressional campaigns, proportional representation, and group-based political solutions
Information Disclosure and Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods

This article analyzes the effect of information generation and disclosure upon free-riding and on the likelihood that cooperative efforts collapse in a public-goods game. In this model, the prospect of greater disclosure can make all individuals worse off ex ante by reducing expected contributions to the public good. The model provides conditions under which disclosure becomes either more or less desirable as a function of the number of individual contributors. Regulation or competitive problems that increase direct costs of disclosure may on average increase the provision of public goods and improve welfare. The desirability of disclosure in the contexts of collective political action, debt renegotiation, and production in teams are discussed.
On the Dynamics of Hedge Fund Strategies

Hedge fund managers are largely free to pursue dynamic trading strategies, and standard static performance appraisal is no longer accurate for evaluating hedge funds. Accordingly, this article presents some new ways of analyzing hedge fund strategies following a dynamic linear regression model. Statistical residual diagnostics are considered to assess the appropriate use of the model. The authors unveil dynamic alphas and betas for each investment style during the period of January 1994 to December 2008.They examine the in-sample goodness-of-fit and out-of-sample predictability on hedge fund performance. By simulating a hypothetical trading strategy, they demonstrate that the model-based predictability helps to implement a profitable fund selection process. Finally, timing skills can be directly examined with a dynamic model; they find significant evidence for market timing, volatility timing, and liquidity timing, which is consistent with the timing literature about hedge funds.
Doctrine Formulation and Distrust

Legal scholars exhaustively debate the substantive wisdom of Supreme Court decisions and the appropriate methods for interpreting legal texts but rarely consider the more pragmatic need to craft rules that will be faithfully implemented by the lower court judges who have the last word in the overwhelming majority of cases. Political scientists, in contrast, invest tremendous effort seeking to determine whether lower courts “comply” with Supreme Court directives, but find themselves unable to explain why their own studies generally find high levels of compliance. This Article argues that part of the answer lies in the Court’s ability to craft legal doctrines that both shape a trial court’s initial decision and increase the efficacy of appellate monitoring. After identifying numerous strategies for increasing lower court control, this Article argues that appreciating the links between them helps illuminate recent developments in three areas of public law: the constitutional law of punitive damages; the rules governing “officer suits” brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983; and the concept of “reasonable” searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment.
Professors, Social Class, and Affirmative Action: A Pilot Study

A popular input measure of bureaucratic success is whether the demographic characteristics of an organization's personnel reflect those of the community. Does the bureaucracy employ, for example, e...
The social, professional, and legal framework for the problem of pain management in emergency medicine.

The problem of harmful, unnecessary and neglected pain has been studied extensively in many health care settings over the past decade. Research has documented the incidence of untreated pain, and scholars and advocates have given the problem several names: “public health crisis,” “oligoanalgesia, and “moral failing,” among them. Articles have identified a litany of now familiar “obstacles” or “barriers” to effective pain relief. Each of these individual obstacles or barriers has been the subject of targeted remedial action in at least some context. The checklist approach to improving care for patients in pain, however, is likely to have only limited effect. What really appears to be operating is a complex ecosystem that supports ambivalence, denial, and even suspicion of the circumstance of patients in pain and efforts to treat them. Pain relief in emergency medicine, a relatively new setting for the study of challenges to treating pain, provides a revealing context for viewing discrete obstacles to effective pain management in medicine as part of an integrated environment into which patients with pain enter for treatment.
An Economic Approach to the Law of Evidence

The law of evidence is the body of rules that determines what, and how, information may be provided to a legal tribunal that must resolve a factual dispute. This article is the first comprehensive (though it is neither exhaustive nor definitive) economic analysis of evidence law. Author concludes that the institutional and doctrinal structure of the American law of evidence has a subtle, though intuitive, implicit, and incomplete, economic logic. He both emphasizes the close connection between rules of evidence and the use of the jury and makes repeated reference to Bayes theorem. Although economic theory provides the framework of analysis in this article, author draws heavily on an empirical literature on trials and evidence that is largely psychological in orientation, as well as on Bayes theorem, other aspects of decision theory, and statistical inference. The approach is therefore eclectic rather than narrowly economic, although it slights epistemological and other philosophical perspectives on the trial process, which seem to me to have only a very limited utility. The articles explanatory findings and reformist suggestions are summarized in the Conclusiona glance at which will show that, despite the still widespread belief that economic analysis of law has an inherent tendency toward politically conservative reforms, this is clearly not true with regard to the law of evidence.
Reconsidering union wage effects: Surveying new evidence on an old topic

I examine evidence on private sector union wage gaps in the United States. The consensus opinion among labor economists of an average union premium of roughly 15 percent is called into question. Two forms of measurement error bias downward standard wage gap estimates. Match bias results from Census earnings imputation procedures that do not include union status as a match criterion. Downward bias is roughly equal to the proportion of workers with imputed earnings, currently about 30 percent. Misclassification of union status causes additional attenuation in union gap measures. This bias has worsened as private sector density has declined, since an increasing proportion of workers designated as union are instead nonunion workers. Corrections for misclassification and match bias lead to estimated union gaps substantially higher than standard estimates, but with less of a downward trend since the mid 1980s. Private sector union gaps corrected for these biases are estimated from the CPS for 1973–2001. The uncorrected estimate for 2001 is .13 log points. Correction for match bias increases the gap to .18 log points; further correction for misclassification bias, based on an assumed 2 percent error rate, increases the gap to .24. Reexamination of the skill-upgrading hypothesis leads to the conclusion that higher union gap estimates are plausible. The conventional wisdom of a 15 percent union wage premium warrants reexamination.
The Law of Standard Form Contracts: Misguided Intuitions and Suggestions for Reconstruction

The law of standard form contracts rests on intuitions. This Essay explores these intuitions and examines intended consumer behavior in common contracting contexts. The first study in this Essay focuses on the intent of consumers to read form contracts in four different scenarios. The second examines the extent to which prevalent rational-economic factors influence potential consumers in their intent to read form contracts. Our findings support some of the common assumptions found in contract law literature and contradict others. The findings from the first questionnaire support the assumption that most consumers do not read most of the contracts in their entirety at the time of contracting. However, the findings do not support the assumption found in some literature that a substantial minority of consumers read their contracts and thus might discipline sellers. The results also show that many more consumers indicate a tendency to read contracts after the fact. The findings of the second questionnaire show that at the time of contracting, the most prevalent rational-economic reasons for reading the contract are cost, length of contract and the prospects of influencing or changing contract terms. Cost and the chance to influence or change contract terms are also detrimental factors in consumers' intention to read form contracts after the fact, as is the opportunity to learn new things about their rights and obligations under the contract. Quite surprisingly, however, legal jargon, print density and font size are not key factors in consumers' decisions on whether to read their contracts. As the Essay explains, all of these findings might serve policy makers and courts in better designing the law that governs consumer form contracts. * Associate Professor, Colman Law School-College of Management Academic Studies. LL.B., Tel Aviv University (2001); LL.M (2003), J.S.D. (2005), Yale Law School. We thank Ben Alarie, Eyal Zamir, and the participants at the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (2008) at Cornell Law School for comments and discussions on earlier drafts. We also acknowledge the kind support of the Research Foundation of The College of Management Academic Studies-School of Law, and thank Dana Lapidos and Renan Feldman for their able research
The Central Tendency: A Second Factor in Bond Yields

We assume that the instantaneous riskless rate reverts toward a central tendency which, in turn, is changing stochastically over time. As a result, current short-term rates are not sufficient to predict future short-term rate movements, as it would be the case if the central tendency were constant. However, since longer maturity bond prices incorporate information about the central tendency, longer maturity bond yields can be used to predict future short-term rate movements. We develop a two-factor model of the term structure which implies that a linear combination of any two rates can be used as a proxy for the central tendency. Based on this central-tendency proxy, we estimate a model of the one-month rate that performs better than models which assume the central tendency to be constant.
Does the Structure of an Urban System Affect Income Disparities

In this paper I analyze the impact of basic training and specialized training on the distribution of skill, income disparity, social welfare, and on the structure of a decentralized specialized city system. This is done in a spatial general-equilibrium model of a closed economy producing a single consumption good. The economy is populated with a continuum of unskilled labor with potential heterogeneous ability. The only consumption good can be produced by specialized technology or by general technology. Specialized technology requires specialized training that enables each worker to transform his potential ability into productivity. General technology requires basic training that enables all workers, independent of their potential ability, to produce the good at a constant marginal product. In this framework I show that such an equilibrium exists uniquely and is efficient. Then I characterize the conditions that lead to a different distribution of skills, a different system of cities, and generate income disparity endogenously. Thus, the paper presents a link among income disparities, social welfare, and the structure of an urban system that is new to this literature.
The Danger of Leverage and volatility

High expected returns are attractive but are associated with high risk. Ultimately, risk shows up as volatility. Volatility is a fundamental feature of a business but can be increased through firm or investor leverage. Volatility without leverage significantly reduces long term return. Leverage and volatility combined can turn moderately poor returns into disasters and reduce long term return far more than is generally appreciated. Many investments with high expected returns have disappointing long term returns or appreciable chances of disaster.
Universal Arguments and Particular Arguments on Abortion Rights

Since Roe v. Wade, much academic commentary has investigated the merits of Due Process Clause-based defenses of abortion rights relative to Equal Protection Clause-based defenses. My general goal in this paper is to explore the nature of the arguments in defense of abortion rights since Roe. Yet, in categorizing and differentiating between these various arguments, I depart from this commonly-emphasized distinction between due process and equal protection. The distinction that I focus on is between what I will call “universal” and “particular” arguments — two categories of argument that cross-cut the familiar due process-equal protection divide.What is to be gained by conceptualizing and categorizing abortion rights arguments as universal, particular, or some hybrid of the two — as opposed to categorizing them according to some other set of descriptive labels? This analytical framework offers three primary contributions. First, in line with others who are concerned with the broader social and political acceptability or unacceptability of abortion rights, I believe that we might illuminate such issues in different ways by thinking in terms of the universal and particular. A second contribution of the analytical framework builds upon the preceding point: much of my focus in this paper is on illuminating the distinctive rhetorical appeal of particular-arguments on abortion rights that, I believe, have been relatively under-emphasized in the literature. Even though particular-arguments may directly reference the conditions, hardships, and circumstances distinct to only a subset of the polity, I argue that so long as such appeals to entrenched difference or unique circumstances are made in the context of a sufficiently robust political community, these targeted appeals can still have substantial political and normative appeal. Finally, a third contribution of employing this conceptual framework is that it allows for conceptualizing the abortion rights debate in ways that link it to broader themes in the examination of American political identity and community.
Television ad-skipping, consumption complementarities and the consumer demand for advertising

Endogenous consumption of advertising is common. Consumers choose to change channels to avoid TV ads, click away from paid online video ads, or discard direct mail without reading advertised details. As technological advances give firms improved abilities to target individual consumers through various media, it is becoming increasingly important for models to reflect the endogenous nature of ad consumption and to consider the implications that ad choice has for firms’ targeting strategies. With this motivation, we develop an empirical model of consumer demand for advertising in which demand for ads is jointly determined with demand for the advertised products. Building on Becker and Murphy (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108(4), 941–964 1993)’s ideas, the model treats advertising as a good over which consumers have utility and obtains demands as the outcome of a joint utility maximization problem. Leveraging new data that links household-level TV ad-viewing with product purchases, we provide empirical evidence that is consistent with the model: ad-skipping is found to be lower when a household has purchased more of the advertised brand, and purchases are higher when more ads have been watched recently, suggesting that advertising and product consumption are jointly determined. Fitting a structural model of joint demand to the data, we evaluate consumer welfare and advertiser profitability in advertising targeting counterfactuals motivated by an “addressable” future of TV. We find that targeting on the predicted ad-skip probability is an attractive strategy, as it indirectly selects consumers that value the product. Reflecting the positive view of advertising in the model, we also find that net consumer welfare may increase in several targeting scenarios. This occurs because under improved targeting, firms shift advertising to those who are likely to value it. At the same time, consumers that do not value the ads end up skipping them, mitigating possible welfare losses. Both forces are relevant to assessing advertising effects in a world with improved targeting and ad-skipping technology.
Censorship v3.1

Internet censorship has evolved. In Version 1.0, censorship was impossible; in Version 2.0, it was a characteristic of repressive regimes; and in Version 3.0, it spread to democracies who desired to use technology to restrain unwanted information. Its latest iteration, Version 3.1, involves near-ubiquitous censorship by democratic and authoritarian countries alike. This article suggests a set of responses to censorship that cabin its abuses and push it toward more legitimate methods.
Repositioning Dynamics and Pricing Strategy

Abstract The authors measure the revenue and cost implications to supermarkets of changing their price positioning strategy in oligopolistic downstream retail markets. Their approach formally incorporates the dynamics induced by the repositioning in a model with strategic interaction. They exploit a unique data set containing the price format decisions of all U.S. supermarkets in the 1990s. The data contain the format change decisions of supermarkets in response to a large shock to their local market positions: the entry of Wal-Mart. The authors exploit the responses of retailers to Wal-Mart entry to infer the cost of changing pricing formats using a revealed-preference argument. The interaction between retailers and Wal-Mart in each market is modeled as a dynamic game. The authors find evidence that entry by Wal-Mart had a significant impact on the costs and incidence of switching pricing strategy. Their results add to the marketing literature on the organization of retail markets and have implications f...
Stock Prices Under Inflation With Taxation of Nominal Gains

- To isolate the effect of inflation through this tax, the analysis is conducted under the assumption that other inflation-caused distortions have been removed. In particular, the following forms of indexation are assumed to be in effect: All dollar amounts in the tax tables reflect the consumer price index;' the used-up portion of producers' goods is deducted at replacement prices; and only real interest is taxed and recognized as an expense. Our findings are consistent with the basic conclusion of Feldstein et al. regarding the significant effect of taxing nominal gains on the return from equity, but differ on specific results. Their economy-wide growth model virtually ignores tax implications of growth at the level of the firm, limiting the relevance of their numerical estimates to the special case of a stationary economy.' Use of a firm valuation model yields the following main conclusions. (a) Prevailing tax and inflation rates and realistic deferral practices cause the adverse effect of inflation on common equity values to be substantial. (b) The contribution of inflation to the overall tax burden is moderate. (c) The adverse effect of inflation on stock prices should increase with the real rate of growth, while its proportionate contribution to the overall tax burden should decrease with the growth rate. (d) The effect of deferral on the overall burden is likely to be small; its contribution to the (small) impact of capital gains tax and its effect on price may be significant, although smaller than predicted by Bailey [3] and Feldstein et al. [8]. (e) Under prevailing conditions, the distortive effect of inflation on the allocation of capital may be significant.
Biases in demand analysis due to variation in retail distribution

Abstract Aggregate demand models typically assume that consumers choose between all available products. Since consumers may be unwilling to search across every store in a given market for a particular item, this assumption is problematic when product assortments vary across stores. Using supermarket scanner data for five product categories we demonstrate that approximately one third of products have limited retail distribution, which account for one fourth of dollar sales. Monte Carlo analysis demonstrates that the level of limited product availability observed in the data can significantly bias the results of aggregate demand models that incorrectly assume all consumers in a given market face the same choice set.