cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Discovery of a 7 second anomalous X-ray pulsar in the distant Milky Way

Abstract We report the serendipitous discovery of a 7-s X-ray pulsar using data acquired with the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA). The pulsar is detected as an unresolved source located towards a region of the Galactic plane ( l,b ⋍ 29.5,0.08 ) that coincides with an overdensity of star-formation tracers. The signal suffers tremendous foreground absorption, equivalent to N h ⋍ 1023 cm−2; the absorption correlates well with a line-of-sight that is tangential to the inner spiral arms and the 4-kpc molecular ring. The pulsar is not associated with any known supernova remnants or other cataloged objects in that direction. The near sinusoidal pulse (period P ⋍ 6.9712 ) is modulated at 35% pulsed amplitude, and the steep spectrum is characteristic of hot black-body emission with temperature kT ∼ 0.65 keV. We characterize the source as an anomalous X-ray pulsar (AXP).
Supersymmetric Dirac-Born-Infeld axionic inflation and non-Gaussianity

An analysis is given of inflation based on a supersymmetric Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action in an axionic landscape. The DBI model we discuss involves a landscape of chiral superfields with one U(1) shift symmetry which is broken by instanton type non-perturbative terms in the superpotential. Breaking of the shift symmetry leads to one pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone-boson which acts as the inflaton while the remaining normalized phases of the chiral fields generically labeled axions are invariant under the U(1) shift symmetry. The analysis is carried out in the vacuum with stabilized saxions, which are the magnitudes of the chiral fields. Regions of the parameter space where slow-roll inflation occurs are exhibited and the spectral indices as well as the ratio of the tensor to the scalar power spectrum are computed. An interesting aspect of supersymmetric DBI models analyzed is that in most of the parameter space tensor to scalar ratio and scalar spectral index are consistent with Planck data if slow roll occurs and is not eternal. Also interesting is that the ratio of the tensor to the scalar power spectrum can be large and can lie close to the experimental upper limit and thus testable in improved experiment. Non-Gaussianity in this class of models is explored.
General Relativistic MHD Jets

Magnetic fields connecting the immediate environs of rotating black holes to large distances appear to be the most promising mechanism for launching relativistic jets, an idea first developed by Blandford and Znajek in the mid-1970s. To enable an understanding of this process, we provide a brief introduction to dynamics and electromagnetism in the space–time near black holes. We then present a brief summary of the classical Blandford–Znajek mechanism and its conceptual foundations. Recently, it has become possible to study these effects in much greater detail using numerical simulation. After discussing which aspects of the problem can be handled well by numerical means and which aspects remain beyond the grasp of such methods, we summarize their results so far. Simulations have confirmed that processes akin to the classical Blandford–Znajek mechanism can launch powerful electromagnetically dominated jets and have shown how the jet luminosity can be related to black hole spin and concurrent accretion rate. However, they have also shown that the luminosity and variability of jets can depend strongly on magnetic field geometry. We close with a discussion of several important open questions.
The Mass of the Gravitational Field

AbstractBy mass–energy equivalence, the gravitational field has a relativistic mass density proportional to its energy density. I seek to better understand this mass of the gravitational field by a...
Constraining the initial conditions of the Universe using large scale structure

Primordial non-Gaussianity induces a scale-dependent bias in large scale structure (LSS) data, proportional to fNL/k2 for the exact local ansatz. Recent work has shown that models of inflation that predict a large squeezed limit bispectrum, such as multi-field models and single field inflation with a modified initial state, typically give rise to a generalized local ansatz, with the scale-dependent bias now proportional to NL/kα. We use photometric measurements of the angular power spectrum of luminous red galaxies and quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release Eight (SDSS DR8) with the above parameterization to constrain the amplitude NL and scale-dependence α. We find that the marginalized upper limit on α is 2.0 at the 95% confidence level, consistent with the local ansatz. We also present Fisher forecasts for a survey of the same size as DR8 to assess the role of systematics in current photometric LSS data. Moreover, we present analytic results on the expected mass dependence of NL for different inflationary models, which can be an important observable for future surveys, if primordial non-Gaussianity is non-zero.
Covariant Constraints on Hole-ography

Hole-ography is a prescription relating the areas of surfaces in an AdS bulk to the differential entropy of a family of intervals in the dual CFT. In (2+1) bulk dimensions, or in higher dimensions when the bulk features a sufficient degree of symmetry, we prove that there are surfaces in the bulk that cannot be completely reconstructed using known hole-ographic approaches, even if extremal surfaces reach them. Such surfaces lie in easily identifiable regions: the interiors of holographic screens. These screens admit a holographic interpretation in terms of the Bousso bound. We speculate that this incompleteness of the reconstruction is a form of coarse-graining, with the missing information associated to the holographic screen. We comment on perturbative quantum extensions of our classical results.
A quantum annealer with fully programmable all-to-all coupling via Floquet engineering

Quantum annealing is a promising approach to heuristically solving difficult combinatorial optimization problems. However, the connectivity limitations in current devices lead to an exponential degradation of performance on general problems. We propose an architecture for a quantum annealer that achieves full connectivity and full programmability while using a number of physical resources only linear in the number of spins. We do so by application of carefully engineered periodic modulations of oscillator-based qubits, resulting in a Floquet Hamiltonian in which all the interactions are tunable. This flexibility comes at the cost of the coupling strengths between qubits being smaller than they would be compared with direct coupling, which increases the demand on coherence times with increasing problem size. We analyze a specific hardware proposal of our architecture based on Josephson parametric oscillators. Our results show how the minimum-coherence-time requirements imposed by our scheme scale, and we find that the requirements are not prohibitive for fully connected problems with up to at least 1000 spins. Our approach could also have impact beyond quantum annealing, since it readily extends to bosonic quantum simulators, and would allow the study of models with arbitrary connectivity between lattice sites.
On the irreversible dynamics emerging from quantum resonances

We consider the dynamics of quantum systems which possess stationary states as well as slowly decaying, metastable states arising from the perturbation of bound states. We give a decomposition of the propagator into a sum of a stationary part, one exponentially decaying in time and a polynomially decaying remainder. The exponential decay rates and the directions of decay in Hilbert space are determined, respectively, by complex resonance energies and by projections onto resonance states. Our approach is based on an elementary application of the Feshbach map. It is applicable to open quantum systems and to situations where spectral deformation theory fails. We derive a detailed description of the dynamics of the spin-boson model at arbitrary coupling strength.
Pp-Waves on Superbrane Backgrounds

In this paper we discuss a method of generating solutions of the Einstein equations on supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric backgrounds. The method involves the embedding of a supersymmetric spacetime into another, curved spacetime. We present three examples with constituent spacetimes which support "charges", one of which was known previously and the other two of which are new. All of the examples have PP-waves as one of the embedding constituents.
A refined Brill–Noether theory over Hurwitz spaces

Let $$f:C \rightarrow \mathbb {P}^1$$ be a degree k genus g cover. The stratification of line bundles $$L \in {{\,\mathrm{Pic}\,}}^d(C)$$ by the splitting type of $$f_*L$$ is a refinement of the stratification by Brill–Noether loci $$W^r_d(C)$$ . We prove that for general degree k covers, these strata are smooth of the expected dimension. In particular, this determines the dimensions of all irreducible components of $$W^r_d(C)$$ for a general k-gonal curve (there are often components of different dimensions), extending results of Pflueger (Adv Math 312:46–63, 2017) and Jensen and Ranganathan (Brill–Noether theory for curves of a fixed gonality, arXiv:1701.06579 , 2017). The results here apply over any algebraically closed field.
A new release of MOPAC incorporating the INDO/S semiempirical model with CI excited states

The semiempirical INDO/S Hamiltonian is incorporated into a new release of MOPAC2016. The MOPAC2016 software package has long been at the forefront of semiempirical quantum chemical methods (SEQMs) for small molecules, proteins, and solids and until this release has included only NDDO-type SEQMs. The new code enables the calculation of excited states using the INDO/S Hamiltonian combined with a configuration interaction (CI) approach using single excitations (CIS), single and double excitations (CISD), or multiple reference determinants (MRCI) where reference determinants are generated using a complete active space (CAS) approach. The capacity to perform excited-state calculations beyond the CIS level makes INDO/CI one of the few low-cost computational methods capable of accurately modeling states with substantial double-excitation character. Solvent corrections to the ground-state and excited-state energies can be computed using the COSMO implicit solvent model, incorporating state-specific corrections to the excited states based on the solvent refractive index. This code produces physically reasonable electronic structures, absorption spectra, and solvatochromic shifts at low computational costs for systems up to hundreds of atoms, and for both organic molecules and metal clusters.
Channel Estimation for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Assisted Wireless Communications Considering Doppler Effect

In wireless systems aided by reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), channel state information plays a pivotal role in achieving the performance gain of RISs. Mobility renders accurate channel estimation (CE) more challenging due to the Doppler effect. In this letter, we propose two practical wideband CE schemes incorporating Doppler shift adjustment (DSA) for multi-path and single-path propagation environments, respectively, for RIS-assisted communication with passive reflecting elements. For the multi-path scenario, ordinary CE is first executed assuming quasi-static channels, followed by DSA realized via joint RIS reflection pattern selection and transformations between frequency and time domains. The proposed CE necessitates only one more symbol incurring negligible extra overhead compared with the number of symbols required for the original CE. For the single-path case which is especially applicable to millimeter-wave and terahertz systems, a novel low-complexity CE method is devised capitalizing on the form of the array factors at the RIS. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms yield high CE accuracy and achievable rate with low complexity, and outperform representative benchmark schemes.
Self-Scaling Clusters and Reproducible Containers to Enable Scientific Computing

Container technologies such as Docker have become a crucial component of many software industry practices especially those pertaining to reproducibility and portability. The containerization philosophy has influenced the scientific computing community, which has begun to adopt - and even develop - container technologies (such as Singularity). Leveraging containers for scientific software often poses challenges distinct from those encountered in industry, and requires different methodologies. This is especially true for HPC. With an increasing number of options for HPC in the cloud (including NSF-funded cloud projects), there is strong motivation to seek solutions that provide flexibility to develop and deploy scientific software on a variety of computational infrastructures in a portable and reproducible way. The Cyberinfrastructure Resource Integration team in the XSEDE project has developed a simple tool which provides HPC infrastructure in the cloud that scales with user demand. We now present one possible solution which uses the Nix package manager in an MPI-capable Docker container that is converted to Singularity. It provides consistent installations, dependencies, and environments in each image that are reproducible and portable across scientific computing infrastructures. We demonstrate the utility of these containers with cluster benchmark runs in a self-scaling virtual cluster using the Slurm scheduler deployed in the Jetstream and Aristotle Red Cloud OpenStack clouds. We conclude that this technique is useful as a template for scientific software application containers to be used in the XSEDE compute environment, other Singularity HPC environments, and cloud computing environments.
H-MAGMA, inheriting a shaky statistical foundation, yields excess false positives.

Abstract The ‘snp-wise mean model’ of Multi-marker Analysis of GenoMic Annotation is often used to perform gene-level testing for association with disease and other phenotypes. This methodology, in turn, forms the foundation for H-MAGMA. Unfortunately, that foundation is unsound, with implications for H-MAGMA results published in Nature Neuroscience regarding genes associated with psychiatric disorders: e.g., only 125 of H-MAGMA’s 275 reported discoveries for autism replicate when the foundation’s flaws are corrected.
Comparison of measured and simulated spin-wave mode spectra of magnetic nanostructures

Motivated by the importance of magnetization dynamics in nanomagnets for the development and optimization of magnetic devices and sensors, we measured and modeled spin wave spectra in patterned elliptical nanomagnets. Ferromagnetic resonance spectra for multiple nanomagnets of Ni80Fe20, fabricated by electron-beam lithography to have nominal short-axes of 200 nm or 100 nm, were measured by use of heterodyne magneto-optical microwave microscopy. Scanning electron microscope images taken of the same nanomagnets were used to define element shapes for micromagnetic simulations. The measured spectra show significant differences between nominally identical nanomagnets, which could be only partially attributed to uncontrolled shape variations in the patterning process, as evidenced by the limited agreement between the measured and simulated spectra. Agreement between measurements and simulations was improved by including a zone of reduced magnetization and exchange at the edges of the nanomagnets in the simulations. Our results show that the reduction of shape variations between individual magnetic random-access memory elements can potentially improve their performance. However, unambiguous determination of materials parameters in nanomagnets based on analysis and modeling of spin wave spectra remains problematic.
Simultaneous Input and State Interval Observers for Nonlinear Systems with Full-Rank Direct Feedthrough

A simultaneous input and state interval observer is presented for Lipschitz continuous nonlinear systems with unknown inputs and bounded noise signals for the case when the direct feedthrough matrix has full column rank. The observer leverages the existence of bounding decomposition functions for mixed monotone mappings to recursively compute the maximal and minimal elements of the estimate intervals that are compatible with output/measurement signals, and are proven to contain the true state and unknown input. Furthermore, we derive a Lipschitz-like property for decomposition functions, which provides several sufficient conditions for stability of the designed observer and uniform boundedness of the sequence of estimate interval widths. Finally, the effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated using an illustrative example.
Inflationary Dynamics in Guatemala

Abstract. Short-run price dynamics for Guatemala are analyzedusing a linear transfer function methodology. This approach has previously been employed for other national economies such as the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Nigeria. The data for this study range from 1960 to 2010. Inflation is measured using the consumer price index. Explanatory variables include the monetary base, real output, interest rates, and the exchange rate. Allof the estimated coefficients exhibit the arithmetic signs hypothesized by the theoretical model. Almostall of the parameter estimates satisfy the 5-percent significance criterion and all exhibit economically plausible magnitudes. Estimation results indicate that although monetary policy effects begin to materialize within twelve months of implementation, the bulk of the impacts associated with the money supply do not occur until the second year after any monetary policy action is taken. Keywords. Inflation, Guatemala, Monetary Economics, Applied Econometrics. JEL. C22, E31, O54.
Joint confidence sets for structural impulse responses

Many questions of economic interest in structural VAR analysis involve estimates of multiple impulse response functions. Other questions relate to the shape of a given impulse response function. Answering these questions requires joint inference about sets of structural impulse responses, allowing for dependencies across time as well as across response functions. Such joint inference is complicated by the fact that the joint distribution of the structural impulse response estimators becomes degenerate when the number of structural impulse responses of interest exceeds the number of model parameters, as is often the case in applied work. This degeneracy may be overcome by transforming the estimator appropriately. We show that the joint Wald test is invariant to this transformation and converges to a nonstandard distribution, which can be approximated by the bootstrap, allowing the construction of asymptotically valid joint confidence sets for any subset of structural impulse responses, regardless of whether the joint distribution of the structural impulse responses is degenerate or not. We propose to represent the joint confidence sets in the form of “shotgun plots” rather than joint confidence bands for impulse response functions. Several empirical examples demonstrate that this approach not only conveys the same information as confidence bands about the statistical significance of response functions, but may be used to provide economically relevant additional information about the shape of and comovement across response functions that is lost when reducing the joint confidence set to two-dimensional bands.
Coase, Institutionalism, and the Origins of law and Economics

INTRODUCTION 499 I. BRITISH MARGINALISM BEFORE COASE 502 A. MARGINALISM, EQUILIBRIUM, AND THE COST OF MOVING RESOURCES .. 502 B. THE ORDINALIST REVOLUTION 508 II. THE RISE OF INSTITUTIONALISM 515 A. DARWIN, BEHAVIORISM, AND THE REVOLT AGAINST MARGINALISM ..... 515 B. INSTITUTIONALIST ECONOMICS FROM VEBLEN TO THE LEGAL REALISTS ...... 521 III. COASE: FROM NEOCLASSICISM TO NEW INSTITUTIONALISM 529 A. COASE AND OLD INSTITUTIONALISM 529 B. THE BUSINESS FIRM AND INSTITUTIONALISM, OLD AND NEW 530 C. LAWRENCE KELSO FRANK 532 D. CLARK AND OVERHEAD COSTS 532 E. PIGOU, KALDOR, AND ROBINSON: THE FIRM IN EQUILIBRIUM 537 CONCLUSION: FROM COASEAN INSTITUTIONALISM TO LAW AND ECONOMICS ...... 540
Privacy and the encryption debate

Robert Heinlein, author of Stranger in a Strange Land as well as countless other science fiction stories, once claimed that "The sole thing achieved by any privacy law is to make the bugs smaller." Heinlein may be correct, but that travesties will happen does not sanction them—and maybe we will invent bugs to root out and foil other bugs.
Investment and CEO compensation under limited commitment

Abstract We extend the neoclassical investment model ( Hayashi, 1982 ) to allow for limited commitment on compensation contracts. We consider three types of limited commitment: (i) managers cannot commit to compensation contracts that provide lower continuation utility than their outside options; (ii) shareholders cannot commit to negative net present value (NPV) projects; (iii) both the managers and the shareholders cannot commit. We characterize the optimal contract under general convex adjustment cost functions and provide examples for which closed-form solutions can be obtained. We show that, as in the data, small firms invest more, grow faster, and have a higher Tobin׳s Q than large firms under the optimal contract. In addition, the pattern of the dependence of chief executive officer (CEO) compensation on past performance implied by our model is also consistent with empirical evidence.
ILLEGITIMATE HARM: LAW, STIGMA, AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST NONMARITAL CHILDREN

No one would dispute that for most of U.S. history, nonmarital children suffered significant legal and societal discrimination. Although many individuals believe that the legal disadvantages attached to “illegitimate” status have disappeared in the last forty years, this Article demonstrates that the law continues to discriminate against nonmarital children in a number of areas, including intestate succession, citizenship, and child support. Societal biases against nonmarital children also remain. A majority of Americans believe that the increase in nonmarital births is a significant societal problem and almost 50% believe that unmarried women should not have children. Some courts are aware of societal biases against nonmarital children and have tried to protect children from the “stigma of illegitimacy.” However, legislative and executive efforts to promote marriage and reduce nonmarital births, along with some courts’ rejection of same-sex marriage on the ground that the state’s goal in creating civil marriage is to discourage nonmarital childbearing, have signaled that nonmarital families are deviant. These messages may serve to strengthen existing societal disapproval of nonmarital families and their children. The state has an interest in supporting family forms that further children’s well-being, such as stable marriages. The state also has a duty to protect children from the economic, social, and psychic harms caused by legal discrimination against nonmarital children. This Article proposes a model statute that would eliminate remaining legal discrimination against nonmarital children. It also suggests ways lawmakers can alter their messages suggesting that nonmarital families are inherently inferior. The reforms suggested in this Article may reduce remaining societal biases against nonmarital children while allowing the state to support marital and nonmarital children. ∗ Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School. This Article benefitted from comments received at the Pace Law School Faculty Workshop, the Seton Hall Law School Summer Brown Bag Series, the International Society of Family Law and Midwest Family Law Consortium Conference, the Family Law Scholars of Greater New York Workshop, the Fourteenth Annual LatCrit Conference, the Emerging Family Law Scholars and Teachers Conference, and the Advanced Critical Race Studies Seminar at UCLA School of Law. Special thanks to Carlos Bellido, Carl Coleman, Nancy E. Dowd, Rachel Godsil, Tristin Green, Clare Huntington, and Charles Sullivan for conversations and comments on earlier drafts. Lindsay Baretz, Meghan McSkimming, Jean Paige Patterson, Shaun Salmon, Bisola Taiwo, and the Seton Hall Law School librarians provided excellent research assistance. This project was supported by the Seton Hall Law School Summer Research Fund. 1 Maldonado: Illegitimate Harm: Law, Stigma, and Discrimination Against Nonmar Published by UF Law Scholarship Repository, 2011 346 FLORIDA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 63
Information-Based Trading in Dealer and Auction Markets: An Analysis of Exchange Listings

Are auction markets or dealer markets better able to identify informed traders? Our analysis of firms that transfer to an alternative exchange structure indicates that traders are more anonymous in a competing dealer market than in an auction environment. Our evidence also shows that the associated changes in the probability of trading with an informed trader are related to changes in the bid-ask spread. The reduction in bid-ask spreads is more pronounced for firms with higher probability of transacting with an informed trader prior to the relocation from a dealer to an auction market.
Marriage In The Time Of Internet Ministers: I Now Pronounce You Married, But Who Am I To Do So?

This article explores the conflicting law regarding the validity of marriages performed by "ministers" who have been "ordained" over the internet.
The Cringing and the Craven: Freedom of Expression in, Around, and Beyond the Workplace

Work is a place where many adults devote significant portions of their waking lives, but it is also a place where civil liberties, including freedom of speech, are significantly constrained. I examine the regulation and control of expressive activity in and around the workplace from legal, managerial, and ethical perspectives. The focus of this article is on workplace freedom of expression: the ability to engage in acts of expression at or away from the workplace, on subjects related or unrelated to the workplace, free from the threat of discipline or discharge. I present a taxonomy of workplace-relevant acts of expression, describe the present legal status of workplace expression, review and integrate theoretical perspectives on free speech, drawn mainly from legal theory and philosophy, and critically assess the state of freedom of expression in the workplace, arguing that it is excessively and unnecessarily limited in both law and management practice.
Walking the Hedonic Product Treadmill: Default Contrast and Mood-Based Assimilation in Judgments of Predicted Happiness with a Target Product

Consumers often browse through many products (a product context) before evaluating a particular target product. We examine the influence of four product context characteristics on happiness with a target product: pleasantness, sequence, domain match with target (i.e., whether products in the context set belong to the same category as the target), and context set size. When context and target match, pleasant and improving (compared to less pleasant and worsening) contexts induce less happiness with the target product. When there is domain mismatch, however, the results are reversed. Furthermore, the assimilation effects are significantly influenced by set size, but the contrast effects are not. While the contrast effects appear to occur by default and appear to be driven by a process of comparison, the assimilation effects appear to be driven by mood. These effects hold even when perception of domain match is manipulated via instructional framing.
The Implications of Summer Learning Loss for Value-Added Estimates of Teacher Effectiveness

School districts across the United States increasingly use value-added models (VAMs) to evaluate teachers. In practice, VAMs typically rely on lagged test scores from the previous academic year, which necessarily conflate summer with school-year learning and potentially bias estimates of teacher effectiveness. We investigate the practical implications of this problem by comparing estimates from “cross-year” VAMs with those from arguably more valid “within-year” VAMs using fall and spring test scores from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K). “Cross-year” and “within-year” VAMs frequently yield significant differences that remain even after conditioning on participation in summer activities.
Passion and Nation: War, Crime, and Guilt in the Individual and the Collective

Riffing off of George Fletcher's theory of Romanticism and war, the article reviews Fletcher's arguments, which received derisive reviews during the War against Iraq in 2003. The article takes Fletcher's approach seriously in considering the problem of war as a Romantic impulse, and the difficulties caused by that understanding. The article then derives arguments on the limits of the laws of war to apply to military actions against terrorism. The article considers the nature of collective guilt as a mitigating element in the crimes of one individual, and it considers the nature of non-state enemies in war. This last point is illustrated through detailed contrast between the U.S. experiences in the Barbary Wars and the Punitive Expedition to Mexico.
The Baby and the Bath Water: The American Critique of European Contract Law

This paper aims to contribute to a larger research agenda concerning the possibility of meaningful transatlantic dialogue about private-law reform. Both the European Union and the United States regulate private autonomy extensively. In spite of contextual similarities, there are several barriers making dialogue among legal scholars difficult. In particular, the conversation about social justice, an important element of private law reform within the European Union, is now quite marginal in American contract law scholarship. In U.S. legal academia, social justice is a matter for moral philosophers, development economists, and constitutionalists. Against this background, this paper takes a close look at a recent transatlantic exchange in matters of private law reform – a Chicago Law School conference on a proposed Common European Sales Law – and identifies a few counter-intuitive points of convergence between U.S. and European scholarship. Along the way, the paper also highlights structural and discursive incompatibilities, but concludes that the dialogue is, as a whole, valuable and should be kept alive. In designing a post-national architecture of autonomy, Europe may draw better lessons from U.S. regulatory experiences if it deconstructs, first, the wholesale pro-market rhetoric of otherwise relevant literature. When this is done, the payoffs of American commentaries become more appreciable. Taking the lead from some Chicagoan insights, this paper recommends customizing the empirical investigation of EU markets so as to factor socio-economic asymmetries into the equation of private law reform.
Implications of Renegotiation for Optimal Contract Flexibility and Investment

In a stylized model of biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing, this paper shows how the potential for renegotiation influences the optimal structure of supply contracts, investments in innovation and capacity, the way scarce capacity is allocated, and firms' resulting profits. Two buyers contract for capacity with a common manufacturer. Then, the buyers invest in innovation (product development and marketing) and the manufacturer builds capacity. Finally, the firms may renegotiate to allow a buyer facing poor market conditions to purchase less than the contractual commitment and a buyer facing favorable conditions to purchase more. We show that renegotiation can greatly increase the firms' investments and profits, provided that the contracts are designed correctly. Failing to anticipate renegotiation leads to contracts that allow too much flexibility in the buyer's order quantity, and perform poorly relative to contracts designed to anticipate renegotiation. We provide clear conditions under which quantity flexibility contracts with renegotiation coordinate the system. Where quantity flexibility contracts fail, employing tradable options improves performance.
Neural Light Transport for Relighting and View Synthesis

The light transport (LT) of a scene describes how it appears under different lighting conditions from different viewing directions, and complete knowledge of a scene’s LT enables the synthesis of novel views under arbitrary lighting. In this article, we focus on image-based LT acquisition, primarily for human bodies within a light stage setup. We propose a semi-parametric approach for learning a neural representation of the LT that is embedded in a texture atlas of known but possibly rough geometry. We model all non-diffuse and global LT as residuals added to a physically based diffuse base rendering. In particular, we show how to fuse previously seen observations of illuminants and views to synthesize a new image of the same scene under a desired lighting condition from a chosen viewpoint. This strategy allows the network to learn complex material effects (such as subsurface scattering) and global illumination (such as diffuse interreflection), while guaranteeing the physical correctness of the diffuse LT (such as hard shadows). With this learned LT, one can relight the scene photorealistically with a directional light or an HDRI map, synthesize novel views with view-dependent effects, or do both simultaneously, all in a unified framework using a set of sparse observations. Qualitative and quantitative experiments demonstrate that our Neural Light Transport (NLT) outperforms state-of-the-art solutions for relighting and view synthesis, without requiring separate treatments for both problems that prior work requires. The code and data are available at http://nlt.csail.mit.edu.
Exact aggregation and estimation

Abstract In this paper we provide sufficient conditions, which, when combined with recent developments in the theory of exact aggregation, permit estimation of group specific demand systems when micro-level information is unavailable. We illustrate the approach by estimating group specific cost of living indices using only readily available census information and aggregate expenditure data.
Do Firms Target Credit Ratings or Leverage Levels

Firms reduce leverage following credit rating downgrades. In the year following a downgrade, downgraded firms issue approximately 1.5%–2.0% less net debt relative to net equity as a percentage of assets compared to other firms. This relationship persists within an empirical model of target leverage behavior. The effect of a downgrade is larger at downgrades to a speculative grade rating and if commercial paper access is affected. In particular, firms downgraded to speculative are about twice as likely to reduce debt as other firms. Rating upgrades do not affect subsequent capital structure activity, suggesting that firms target minimum rating levels.
Communication, Decision Making, and the Optimal Degree of Transparency of Monetary Policy Committees

This paper develops a theoretical model of a monetary policy committee with heterogeneous members whose decisions and public communications are observed by the financial markets. It thereby provides a link between the literatures on monetary policy committees and central bank communication. The results show that transparency about the different views among committee members surrounding the economic outlook is beneficial. However, communicating the diversity of views about the monetary policy decision may not be welfare enhancing, at least in the short term. These results support previous empirical findings and have strong implications for how committees should communicate.
A Spatial Analysis of Delegate Voting at the Constitutional Convention

Previous studies of the U.S. Constitutional Convention have relied on votes recorded for the state blocs or a relatively small number of delegate votes. We construct a new data set covering delegate votes on over 600 substantive roll calls, and use the data in several ways. First, we estimate a single dimensional position for the delegates which reflects their overall voting patterns. Next, we explain these positions using a variety of delegate and constituent variables. Finally, we suggest a method for identifying state and floor medians, which can be used to predict equilibrium outcomes at the Convention.
Increasing Rural Health Clinic Utilization with SMS Updates: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Uganda

Summary This paper examines an alternative to monitoring staff at a public health clinic in rural Uganda. The program sent SMS updates regarding confirmed attendance of clinic staff and activities to randomly selected cell phone-owning households in the local community. These messages aimed to reduce uncertainty regarding the availability of clinic services, and in turn, increase the expected benefit of deciding to visit the local health clinic. A difference-in-difference approach is used to evaluate the impact of the SMS program, and we find that the messages led to an increase in clinic attendance, the receipt of medicine, and reduced the duration of illness for young children aged six and under. However, these benefits are only seen for children who are the same sex as the cell phone owner, suggesting favoritism toward the health of these children. The benefits are found to be similar for both boys and girls. This is evidence that it is possible to increase health care utilization without changing the behavior of clinic staff.
The moral difference between infanticide and abortion: a response to Robert Card.

First, I want to thank Professor Card for his thought provoking comments. It is a pleasure to be interpreted carefully and with a reasonable degree of charity. Professor Card wonders whether my view on abortion is liberal or moderate. I would describe it as liberal with respect to both the legal status of abortion and the moral status of early abortion, but moderate with respect to the moral status of late abortion. In other words, I argue that abortion should be legal, safe, and accessible at all stages of pregnancy, but that late abortion calls for more in the way of moral justification than early abortion. I also argue that infanticide is rarely justified in the contemporary world, because there are usually alternatives that would give the child a chance to live a good life, without violating anyone else's basic moral rights. Professor Card is unconvinced by my arguments for regarding infanticide as less often justified than late abortion, and suggests that they undermine my defense of women's right to choose abortion. Some of his points are well made, and tend to show that there are few sudden and dramatic changes in either the intrinsic or the relational properties of the fetus/infant at the moment of birth, except for the obvious changes in its location with respect to the mother, and its physiological connections to her. I agree, but argue that these changes are morally significant. Furthermore, some developmental changes, while they do not occur suddenly at the time of birth, nevertheless point to a difference in moral status between typical neonates and foetuses of earlier gestational ages. Before returning to these points, I need to address an important misunderstanding. Some of Professor Card's objections are based on the assumption that I regard the viability of the late-term foetus as the primary factor which makes late abortion more difficult to Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 Volume 14 Number 4 2000
Performance measurement for accountability in corporate governance : A data envelopment analysis approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show the applicability of data envelopment analysis (DEA) in arriving at an unbiased account of relative performance in a set of companies, using the pharmaceutical industry as an example.Design/methodology/approach – A DEA‐based income efficiency measure of business performance for the pharmaceutical industry is computed. The pharmaceutical industry, which includes many multinational corporations with complex governance problems, and the strategies that allowed firm efficiency rankings to change over time, over ten recent years, are analyzed.Findings – The analyses indicate that the inclines and declines in DEA efficiency rankings are related to the strategic choices made by the upper management.Research limitations/implications – The paper attempted to trace firm behavior post hoc to validate the DEA rankings. All relevant firm behavior may not have been captured; the paper only attempted to capture behavior reported in the respectable business press, which may ...
Contract and Choice

This Article contributes to an ongoing debate, afoot in academic, legal, and policy circles, over the future of consumer arbitration. Utilizing a newly available database of credit card agreements, the Article offers an in-depth examination of dispute resolution practices within the credit card industry. In some respects, the data cast doubt on the conventional wisdom about the pervasiveness of arbitration clauses in consumer contracts and the presence of unfair terms. For example, the vast majority of credit card issuers do not utilize arbitration clauses, and by the end of 2010, the majority of credit card debt was not subject to such an agreement. Likewise, while the use of class waivers is widespread in arbitration clauses, most clauses lack the sort of unfair procedural terms for which arbitration is often criticized. The upshot of these and other findings is that consumers, in some respects, have more choice in their contracts than the literature suggests. Our work also responds to the suggestions of some scholars that businesses favor arbitration clauses in their consumer contracts but not their business-to-business agreements. On the contrary, our research suggests that the difference may not be as dramatic as previous research suggests. These results hold important implications for ongoing policy debates, including the proposed Arbitration Fairness Act pending in Congress as well as the work of the newly minted and controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Our findings suggest that the Arbitration Fairness Act may be based on faulty empirical premises and that the blanket prohibition contained in the Act may be overbroad. Our findings also provide a model that the CFPB might follow in conducting its statutorily required study of the use of arbitration clauses in consumer financial services contracts.ContentsIntroduction 2I. Background & Literature Review 9II. What Do Arbitration Clauses in Credit Card Agreements Look Like? 14A. Sample 14B. Trends in the Use of Arbitration Clauses 161. Use of arbitration clauses 172. Carve-outs 213. Opt-out provisions 23C. Provisions of Arbitration Clauses 24J. Governing arbitration law 262. Provider rules 283. Delegation clauses 324. Minimum recovery provisions 365. "Unfair" provisions 376. Arbitration costs 417. Appeals and court review 46D. Arbitration Clauses in Business Credit Card and Deposit Account Agreements 491. Business credit card agreements 512. …
The Effect of Investor Status on Investors' Susceptibility to Earnings Fixation

This study investigates whether an individual's status as a current or a prospective investor affects the investor's susceptibility to earnings fixation and proposes a mechanism to reduce earnings fixation. Our experimental results suggest that current investors are more susceptible to earnings fixation than prospective investors, and that current investors can reduce earnings fixation by explicitly forecasting future earnings as part of their evaluation process. We provide theory-consistent evidence that current investors' prevention focus makes them elevate the importance of summary earnings in their evaluation of a company. However, after forecasting future earnings, current investors view summary earnings as only one of several similarly important evaluation inputs rather than as one substantially more important input (relative to its components). Our study contributes to research on earnings fixation and investor status. We also contribute to practice by documenting the moderating effect of investor status on earnings fixation and by identifying a simple mechanism that current investors can use to reduce their susceptibility to earnings fixation.
Building Brand Awareness in Dynamic Oligopoly Markets

Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on advertising to build and maintain awareness for their brands in competitive markets. However, awareness formation models in the marketing literature ignore the role of competition. Consequently, we lack both the empirical knowledge and normative understanding of building brand awareness in dynamic oligopoly markets. To address this gap, we propose an N-brand awareness formation model, design an extended Kalman filter to estimate the proposed model using market data for five car brands over time, and derive the optimal closed-loop Nash equilibrium strategies for every brand. The empirical results furnish strong support for the proposed model in terms of both goodness-of-fit in the estimation sample and cross-validation in the out-of-sample data. In addition, the estimation method offers managers a systematic way to estimate ad effectiveness and forecast awareness levels for their particular brands as well as competitors' brands. Finally, the normative analysis reveals an inverse allocation principle that suggests---contrary to the proportional-to-sales or competitive parity heuristics---that large (small) brands should invest in advertising proportionally less (more) than small (large) brands.
The Behavioral Economic Case for Paternalistic Workplace Retirement Plans

Dependence on 401(k) retirement accounts continues to cause a massive retirement crisis in the United States by leaving most workers unprepared for retirement. The voluntary, inaccessible, employer-centered, expensive, and consumer-driven nature of these plans has combined to make retirement a type of corporate-inspired elder abuse in America.Behavioral economics considers the utility of permitting individual choice in decision-making settings. Many, however, have been misled to believe that more choice is always better. Yet, according to one prominent commentator, this consumer-driven paradigm will lead to forty-eight percent of current workers between the ages of fifty and sixty-four being poor when they reach retirement. Behavioral economic workplace research instead strongly suggests that a better approach would be to use “choice architecture” to nudge workers into well-diversified, low-fee default retirement accounts set up by government-regulated private retirement funds. Such a successful paternalistic workplace retirement model already exists. The Australian Superannuation Guarantee is a mandatory, universal, private, and comparatively inexpensive workplace retirement scheme. It also aligns the interests of retirement fund managers with fund participants. Most Australian employees do not exercise choice with regard to how their retirement contributions are invested. Employer contributions default into an individual’s MySuper retirement account operated by the country’s best money managers, who invest worker funds in a diversified manner, while charging very low investment fees. As part of my Stewart Lecture remarks, I outline here a vision for the transformation of the American 401(k) retirement system into an efficient and sustainable superannuation model based on behavioral economic insights from the Australian workplace retirement system.
Immigration - Refugee Act of 1980 - Resistance to Female Circumcision as Grounds for Political Asylum in the United States

This article focuses on gaining political asylum in the US to avoid female circumcision. In re Kasigna exhibited the problems faced in trying to attain political asylum to avoid female gender mutilation. The case highlighted hurdles that must be conquered to effectively protect females, following in Kasinga's footsteps, from facing gender mutilation.