cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Can Company Disclosures Discipline State-Appointed Managers - Evidence from Greek Privatizations

Conventional economic theory portrays privatization as a transformative event for a company, even when it is partial and the state maintains control. According to this view, private investors have stronger incentives than voters to monitor management performance and constrain side-payments to political allies of the government. But how exactly can private investors discipline managers they cannot fire? Proponents of privatization place their hopes on disclosure obligations under securities laws, triggered by privatized companies’ stock exchange listings. They argue that, because company disclosures can reveal side-payments to government allies and cause private investors to abandon the stock, management should avoid political favoritism after a stock exchange listing. The Article explores whether investors responded to indications of political favoritism as the above theory would predict. Case study evidence comes from major privatizations in Greece during the last two decades in telecommunications, energy, and gaming. The Article examines the public disclosures of partially privatized companies in two key areas where the risk of political side-deals and corruption remains high: contracts with suppliers and relationships with labor. Greek companies’ disclosure documents included clear indications that payouts to suppliers and labor continued to increase during the period of partial privatization. However, these companies’ stocks remained attractive to investors.
Avoiding Double Recovery: Assessing Liquidated Damages in Private Wage and Hour Actions Under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the New York Labor Law

Wage and hour cases are common in New York, yet courts calculate damages inconsistently when plaintiffs pursue their unpaid wages under both federal and state law. Overlapping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the New York Labor Law both authorize private actions for the recovery of certain unpaid wages, and each also provides an additional 100 percent of the unpaid wages as liquidated damages unless the employer establishes a good-faith defense. Given these similarities, New York wage and hour cases regularly flirt with the double recovery doctrine, which prevents plaintiffs from receiving duplicative awards.Historically, courts in the Second Circuit have been split over whether awarding both sets of liquidated damages offends double recovery. An old New York statute authorized only 25 percent of the unpaid wages as liquidated damages and allowed them only if an employee could demonstrate that the employer’s violation was willful. Based upon the old law’s scienter requirement and upon its legislative history, courts considered the state provision punitive in purpose, as opposed to the federal provision, which is compensatory. Consequently, some courts reasoned that because each provision served a different purpose, the awards were not duplicative. Others disagreed.Although the New York Labor Law’s current liquidated damages provision bears little resemblance to its predecessor, some courts continue to apply analyses of the old statute to the new one. This Note analyzes the effects that amendments enacted in 2009 and 2010 should have upon the preexisting split and contends that neither the current statutory text nor its legislative history conclusively supports characterizing the state provision exclusively as either compensatory or punitive. Instead, the evidence suggests a dual purpose. Since the awards overlap, courts can only avoid double recovery by awarding one set of liquidated damages.
Dimensions of Negligence in Criminal and Tort Law

This article explores different dimensions of the concept of negligence in the law. The first sections focus on the fundamental distinction between conduct negligence (unreasonable creation of a risk of harm), a conception that dominates tort law; and cognitive negligence (unreasonable failure to be aware of a risk either through inadvertence or through mistake), a conception that is much more important in criminal law. The last major section identifies five significant institutional functions served by a legal negligence standard: expressing a legal norm in the form of a standard rather than a rule; personifying fault; empowering the trier of fact to give content to the standard; creating a secondary legal norm parasitic on a primary legal norm; and distinguishing grades of fault. These functions reveal the distinctive significance of negligence, but also disclose numerous problems that the use of such a legal standard can pose. Careful analysis of these different dimensions of negligence clarifies certain misconceptions and has important implications. For example, the question whether "negligence" is an appropriate minimum standard of liability (e.g., for criminal punishment) is unanswerable until we identify the type of negligence at issue (conduct or cognitive) and its role in norm-definition (providing a general standard of liability for harm-creation or, instead, merely an interstitial standard applying only to some elements of a crime). Similarly, comparing negligenceto supposedly "more serious" forms of fault, such as recklessness, knowledge, and purpose, is treacherous and sometimes amounts to comparing apples and oranges. A better understanding of the different conceptions of negligence and of the distinctive institutional functions of a legal negligence standard can facilitate the development of more coherent, and more justifiable, fault criteria in criminal law, torts, and other legal domains.
Decision Making in the Obama White House

Presidents attract extremely smart, ambitious people to serve in the White House, but the quality of the advice the president receives depends upon how he or she uses the available talent. Chief executives face daunting challenges in evaluating the onslaught of information, judging the perspectives of their subordinates, and ensuring that they receive advice based on presidential perspectives rather than the priorities of their subordinates. Political scientists who study presidential decision making have come to consider several factors as central to understanding White House organization and process: the level of centralization, the extent of multiple advocacy, and the use of honest brokers to manage advice to the president. This article examines President Obama’s decision-making style with respect to these three factors and uses several case studies to illustrate them: economic policy, detainee policy, and decision making on the war in Afghanistan.
The Doubtful Validity of Victim-Specific Libel Laws

Laws that single out for penalty defamation of certain individuals undermine the principle that government may not discriminate within a category of expression. The Supreme Court affirmed in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul that this principle applies even to categories of speech that are otherwise unprotected under the First Amendment. In striking down an ordinance that prohibited fighting words addressed to certain topics, the R.A.V. Court also recognized that subject matter discrimination can sometimes amount to viewpoint discrimination. This article contends that victim-specific libel laws should trigger R.A.V.'s close scrutiny of content discrimination within proscribable categories, and that some such laws effect the tacit viewpoint discrimination that evoked the Court's particular skepticism in that case. Furthermore, this type of law does not presumptively meet any of the three exceptions that the R.A.V. opinion carved out from its general bar to selective limitations on proscribable speech.
Financial‐industrial groups in Russia: Emergence of large diversified private companies

(1995). Financial‐industrial groups in Russia: Emergence of large diversified private companies. Communist Economies and Economic Transformation: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 51-66.
Decomposition of Fraud‐Risk Assessments and Auditors' Sensitivity to Fraud Cues*

Practitioners and regulators are concerned that when auditors perceive management's attitude or character as indicative of low fraud risk, they are not sufficiently sensitive to high levels of incentive or opportunity risks in their overall fraud-risk assessments. In this study, we examine whether a fraud-triangle decomposition of fraud-risk assessments (that is, separately assessing attitude, opportunity, and incentive risks prior to assessing overall fraud risk) increases auditors' sensitivity to opportunity and incentive cues when perceptions of management's attitude suggest low fraud risk. In an experiment with 52 practicing audit managers, we find that auditors who decompose fraud-risk assessments are more sensitive to opportunity and incentive cues when making their overall assessments than auditors who simply make an overall fraud-risk assessment. However, this increased sensitivity to opportunity and incentive cues appears to happen only when those cues suggest low fraud risk. When opportunity and incentive cues suggest high fraud risk, auditors are equally sensitive to those cues whether they use a decomposition or a holistic approach. We discuss and examine potential explanations for this finding.
Policing the Cease-and-Desist Letter

S | 47 Policing the Cease-and-Desist Letter Leah Grinvald Associate Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School St. Louis, MO Americans are renowned for being litigious. But only less than three percent of all disputes end up in court, and a paltry one percent of all filed lawsuits end with a decision on the merits. The reason for this paradox is that most disputes take place outside of the judicial system, and further, most disputes start and end with a cease-and-desist letter sent by an aggrieved party to an allegedly infringing party. This is particularly the case in the intellectual property area, where seasoned litigators admit that much of their practice revolves around cease-and-desist letters. Although there is much to favor in the private resolution of disputes, there are economic and legal factors that serve to incentivize some rights holders to send abusive cease-and-desist letters. At the same time, abusive cease-and-desist letters are not effectively regulated where such letters are sent to vulnerable parties, such as individuals and small businesses. It is often these vulnerable targets who will immediately comply with abusive letters due to unique characteristics of this population, which when coupled with the abusive ceaseand-desist letter, create a coercive settlement process. This is problematic because coercion is universally regarded as grounds for invalidating agreements. However, small businesses and individuals do not have the resources to bring the necessary lawsuits to invalidate such agreements, and as such, these coercive settlement agreements are never invalidated. State legislators, state attorney's generals and the United States Congress have all recognized the problems of abusive ceaseand-desist letters in the intellectual property field, at least with respect to the practices of "patent trolls." In the past year state legislatures and Congress have enacted or initiated new legislation, and several state attorney's generals have undertaken enforcement action. While these efforts are laudable, a focus on patent trolls is short-sighted and narrow, as similar problems are occurring in the copyright and trademark area. This Article argues that proposals to assist small businesses and individuals with abusive cease-and-desist letters should be broad-based and also include non-legislative means. In addition, attempts to assist this vulnerable population should also target the characteristics that make them vulnerable to coercion. To do so, this Article proposes both legislative and non-legislative action: first, a new cause of action for abusive cease-and-desist letters for any type of intellectual property infringement; second, greater involvement by the American Bar Association and state and local bar associations; and finally, greater enforcement efforts by states' attorney generals. Biography: Professor Grinvald received her B.A. in East Asian Studies, summa cum laude, from George Washington University. She later obtained a J.D. from the New York University School of Law. Email: lgrinvald@suffolk.edu
Implications of Channel Structure and Operational Mode Upon a Manufacturer's Durability Choice

Motivated by the observation that durability ratings of automobile manufacturers are not necessarily linked to the proportion of leasing but tend to decrease with the density of their dealer networks, we explore the interactions between channel structure (direct interaction with consumers vs. through an intermediary(ies)) and mode of operations (leasing vs. selling) and their implications for a manufacturer's willingness to invest in making her product more durable. Using a manufacturer who leases her product directly to consumers as a point of reference, we find that an isolated change in either the channel structure (selling through an intermediary), or the operational mode (leasing to selling) can decrease the manufacturer's willingness to provide durability. However, if combined, these two changes together may strengthen the manufacturer's willingness to invest in durability. Specifically, the traditional result that a manufacturer who leases provides more durability than one who sells, can be reversed in a decentralized channel
Are Normal Contracts Normal Promises

The notion that contracts are essentially promises is both common and immensely plausible. The 'are' here, of course, is not that of identity: contracts and promises are clearly two different practices. Nor does it designate a symmetrical relation. The obvious fact that countless binding promises are not contracts is sufficient to defeat the claim that promises are essentially contracts. The idea is rather that contracts are a special kind of promises. They are promises that enjoy legal protection, and enjoy it partly, yet essentially, on account of being promises. It is not just that the law speaks the promissory language. The clearest examples of contracts seem to feature directed voluntarily obligations-ones that are voluntarily undertaken by one subject toward another-of which promises are the paradigmatic example. Now the promissory view of contracts has been repeatedly challenged by those who insist that, despite appearances, contractual obligations are superrather than self-imposed. But can one plausibly accept the voluntary view of contracts while rejecting their distinct promissory nature? This is precisely the position that Dori Kimel advocates in his recent, highly original and insightful book. Accepting that contractual obligations are voluntary, and essentially similar to promises in this respect (1-4), he nevertheless sets out to challenge their distinctly promissory interpretation. The differences between the two practices are said to go to their 'very nature' and 'essential properties' (61, 74, titles of chapters 1, 3.). At the 'instrumental' level, both contracts and promises facilitate co-operation, but while promises normally fulfil this function thanks to the existence of trustful personal relations between the parties, contracts normally fulfil it thanks to the threat of enforceable sanctions (57-64). The greater essential difference between the two practices, however, lies in their 'intrinsic' functioning. Contracts and promises, argues Kimel, have completely different-indeed, 'diametrically opposed'-intrinsic normal functions. The intrinsic function promises normally fulfil is the promotion of personal relations through the expression of personal trust and respect. The normal intrinsic function of contracts, by contrast, is the facilitation of personal detachment (65-80).
Engaging the consumer through event marketing: Linking attendees with the sponsor, community, and brand

ABSTRACT With an on-site study at a sponsored event, we construct and test competing models to examine the relationship among event attendees, sponsorship, community involvement, and the title sponsor9s brand with respect to purchase intentions. We show that an attendee9s enthusiasm and activeness in the area of the sponsored event and knowledge of the sponsor9s products positively influence the attendee9s desire that a sponsor be involved with the community. Then, we show that attendees who are more community-minded have a more positive opinion of the sponsor as a result of their event experience; a better opinion of the sponsor contributes to increased intentions to purchase the sponsor9s products. Results from this framework indicate that event marketing, in conjunction with consumers who are enthusiastic, active, and knowledgeable about the sponsor and event, serves as a valuable lever to engage the consumer.
THE FLATTENING FIRM: EVIDENCE FROM PANEL DATA ON THE CHANGING NATURE OF CORPORATE HIERARCHIES

Using a detailed database of managerial job descriptions, reporting relationships, and compensation structures in over 300 large U.S. firms we find that the number of positions reporting directly to the CEO has gone up significantly over time. We also find that the number of levels between the lowest managers with profit center responsibility (division heads) and the CEO has decreased and more of these managers are reporting directly to the CEO. Moreover, more of these managers are being appointed officers of the company. It does not seem that divisional heads are handling larger tasks making them important enough to report directly. Instead, our findings suggest that layers of intervening management are being eliminated and the CEO is coming into direct contact with more managers in the organization, even while managerial responsibility is being extended downwards. Consistent with this, we find that the elimination of the intermediate position of Chief Operating Officer accounts for a significant part (but certainly not all) of the increase in CEO reports. It is also accompanied with greater authority being given to divisional managers. The structure of pay is also different in flatter organizations. Pay and long term incentives are becoming more like that in a partnership. Salary and bonus at lower levels are lower than in comparable positions in a tall organization, but the pay differential is steeper to the top. At the same time, employees in flatter organizations seem to have more long term pay incentives like stock and stock options offered to them. We offer some conjectures to explain these patterns.
Asymmetric inflation expectations, downward rigidity of wages, and asymmetric business cycles

Household expectations of the inflation rate are much more sensitive to inflation than to disinflation. To the extent that workers have bargaining power in wage determination, this asymmetry in their beliefs can make wages respond quickly to inflationary forces but sluggishly to deflationary ones. I microfound asymmetric household expectations using ambiguity-aversion: households, who do not know the quality of their information, overweight inflationary news since it reduces their purchasing power, and underweight deflationary news since it increases their purchasing power. I embed asymmetric beliefs into a general equilibrium model and show that, in such a model, monetary policy has asymmetric effects on employment, output, and wage inflation in ways consistent with the data. Although wages are downwardly rigid in this environment, monetary policy need not have a bias towards using inflation to grease the wheels of the labor market.
Professional Sports Leagues, Antitrust, and the Single-Entity Theory: A Defense of the Status Quo

This Article will argue that single-entity status is inappropriate and unnecessary for professional sports leagues. It will proffer that while professional sports leagues might initially appear to be significantly different from other joint ventures, the difference is functionally superficial and does not justify a fundamental departure from the antitrust rules applicable to other joint ventures. It will contend further that the Copperweld decision, so heavily relied upon by the advocates of single-entity status, does not support their argument, but refutes it instead. It will claim that the hybrid created by the commentators-the league that is at times a single entity and at other times a collection of separate actors-is neither a logical creation nor one that can be usefully defined. Finally, it will argue that the legal and economic logic of the Supreme Court's recent antitrust opinions strongly suggest that undiminished output is the best measure of consumer welfare under the Rule of Reason. When the Rule of Reason is applied to the governing rules and business decisions of professional sports leagues, it reveals that few of those rules and decisions serve to decrease the leagues' output, and therefore the single-entity treatment for those leagues is unnecessary to save them from antitrust condemnation.
Endless Emergency: The Case of Egypt

The Arab Republic of Egypt has been in a declared state of emergency since 1981 and for all but three of the past fifty years. Emergency powers, military courts, and other "exceptional" powers are governed by longstanding statutes in Egypt and authorized by the constitution, and their use is a prominent feature of everyday rule there today. This essay presents Egypt as a case study in what is essentially permanent governance by emergency rule and other exceptional measures. It summarizes the history and framework of emergency rule in Egypt, discusses the apparent purposes and consequences of that rule, mentions judicial limitations on it, and notes the many targets of its exercise over the years, particularly the government9s two most prominent and persistent groups of opponents: Islamists and liberal political activists. It also explains how the country9s March 2007 constitutional amendments, much decried by humanrights organizations inside and outside Egypt, further entrench emergency rule there. The thesis of the essay is that the existence and exercise of emergency powers have been far from exceptional in Egypt; instead they have been a vehicle for the creation of the modern Egyptian state and a tool for the consolidation and maintenance of political power by the government.
Why They Can Watch You: Assessing the Constitutionality of Warrantless Unmanned Aerial Surveillance by Law Enforcement

Today, the federal government and law enforcement agencies nationwide operate unmanned aircraft systems ('UASs') for, among other things, aerial surveillance similar to that which Orwell described. To paraphrase Justice Alito, dramatic technological changes have created a time in which popular expectations of privacy are in flux and may ultimately produce significant changes in popular attitudes. These new UAS technologies promise to increase security and convenience at the cost of privacy, but many people find trading privacy for security worthwhile. Other people, however, believe that warrantless law enforcement UAS surveillance violates their privacy and should be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled on an aerial surveillance case since 1986, let alone a UAS surveillance case. Instead, a patchwork of other Fourth Amendment precedent and Federal Aviation Administration ('FAA') regulations leave the public and law enforcement guessing about the extent of Fourth Amendment privacy protections from warrantless UAS surveillance. Despite the lack of clear constitutional guidance, both public and law enforcement UAS use continues to grow.This Note begins by providing background information on the character and capabilities of UASs, as well as describing their current implementation throughout the United States. Next, it describes the current Fourth Amendment privacy framework and current FAA regulations as they affect UAS surveillance to construct an analytical framework. Last, this Note concludes that although UAS surveillance will likely be found constitutional, three potential arguments challenging the constitutionality of UAS surveillance may persuade the Supreme Court otherwise: (1) establishing the victim was in a constitutionally protected zone, (2) attacking the lawfulness of the vantage point from which the UAS surveilled, and (3) attacking the specific UAS technology used.
Pupillometry: A non-invasive technique for pain assessment in paediatric patients

Objective Pupillometry has been used to assess pain intensity and response to analgesic medications in adults. The aim of this observational study was to explore proof of concept for the use of this technique in paediatric patients. Changes in pupil parameters before and after opioid exposure also were evaluated. Design and setting This was a single-centre, prospective study conducted at an academic paediatric medical centre. Patients Children 9–17 years of age undergoing elective surgical correction of pectus excavatum were enrolled into a protocol approved by the human ethical committee (institutional review board). Interventions Pupil size and reactivity were measured using a handheld pupillometer. Pain was assessed using age-appropriate, validated pain self-report scales. Results Thirty patients were enrolled. Each point change on a 10 cm visual analogue pain intensity scale was associated with a statistically significant mean change of 0.11 mm/s in maximum pupil constriction velocity, and of approximately 0.4% in pupil diameter. As expected, there was an association between total opioid dose (expressed as morphine equivalents) and pupil diameter. Age, sex and baseline anxiety scores did not correlate significantly with pupillary response. Conclusions The association of maximum pupillary constriction velocity and diameter with pain scores illustrates the potential for using pupillometry as a non-invasive method to objectively quantitate pain response/intensity in children. The technique holds promise as a pharmacodynamic ‘tool’ to assess opioid response in paediatric patients.
Workings of a city : location, education, and production

We model the links between residential choice, education, and productivity in a city composed of several communities. Local complementarities in human capital investment induce occupational segregation, although efficiency may require identical communities. Even when some asymmetry is optimal, equilibrium segregation can cause entire "ghettos" to drop out of the labor force. Underemployment is more extensive, the easier it is for high-skill workers to isolate themselves from others. When perfect segregation is feasible, individual incentives to pursue it are selfdefeating and lead instead to a collapse of the productive sector.
Reconstructing Journalists’ Privilege

In the years since Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), judicial protection of journalists' confidential sources has depended upon the case-by-case application of a three-part balancing test.This qualified privilege approach is unsound in theory and unworkable in practice. Achieving the ultimate goal of enriching public dialogue requires an absolute privilege. This article (part of a symposium issue whose scheduled contributors include Anthony Lewis, Max Frankel, Victor A. Kovner, Joel M. Gora, and Rodney A. Smolla) supports that position with multiple lines of argument that include consideration of the lawyer-client analogy and build upon developments in law, history, journalism and public affairs in the years since Branzburg.It argues that advocates for a federal shield statute who compromise this core principle in the interests of practicality are likely to do more harm than good. It urges them to return to the position in a favor of an absolute privilege that was taken by the press amici (but not parties) in Branzburg and by the media before Congress at the time. All public and private mechanisms of accountability depend for their effectiveness upon the availability of information. Those who utilize such mechanisms - including law-makers, business executives who need to know about malfeasance in their organizations sooner rather than later, environmental and consumer advocates, and, yes, prosecutors - should be brought into the coalition of shield law supporters so that the journalistic privilege overcomes its current image as simply a legislative break for a favored industry and the issue is re-placed where it rightly belongs: on the pedestal of public empowerment.
The perils of copyright regulation

The most robust framework for understanding the evolution and consequences of copyright statutes in the United States is the dynamics of interventionism. I apply the framework of Kirzner’s (1985) perils of regulation to the general revision of copyright law in 1976, and explore its effects on entrepreneurship and discovery processes. Critics of copyright commonly recognize the distortions of rent-seeking, but I emphasize the utility of interventionism to explain the “unsimulated” and the “stifled” discovery processes set in motion by copyright interventions, which use legal processes to allocate resources, and deter future discovery by raising transaction costs.
Monopoly production and pricing of finitely durable goods with strategic consumers׳ fluctuating willingness to pay

Abstract Demand volatility and production lead time oblige manufacturers of made-to-stock goods to use economic forecasts in deciding on production quantities. Manufacturers of finitely durable goods face an additional complication—in making production decisions, they must consider not only the uncertainty in demand for new goods, but also how the future sales will be affected by the older goods that will become available via a secondhand market. Using a model of an infinite-horizon sequential game between a monopolistic producer of durable goods and strategic consumers, we investigate how demand volatility affects producers’ production and pricing decisions. We formulate the problem of a monopolist durable goods producer as a discrete-time Markov Decision Process and prove certain structural properties of the sales and production policy. These structural properties facilitate an efficient computational algorithm, which we use in running numerical experiments to explicate the producer׳s strategy and to conduct equilibrium comparative statics analysis. We show that a simple myopic policy is optimal when each period׳s demand is independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.). When demand is correlated across periods, the producer׳s optimal production and sales policy is not myopic, and in some states, when the economy is poor, the producer withholds some of the new goods inventory. Our numerical results suggest that in equilibrium, the producer who is dealing with myopic rather than with forward-looking consumers is more likely to sell some of these held-back goods later, as vintage goods.
Field Case Consulting: Ten Keys for Success

One AACSB accredited College of Business and Economics believes so strongly in the value of student consulting that it requires all of its graduating MBA students to consult. For ten years, its MBA student consulting teams have achieved consistently high ratings in national field case competitions. This business brief explains why and how this curriculum component was instituted, and identifies ten keys for success. It also offers useful background information for those interested in launching a similar progran1. The authors note that they have also applied the ten keys successfully to undergraduate student consulting.
Spillovers from Wiring Schools with Broadband: The Critical Role of Children

Providing broadband to schools can be an effective way to foster household Internet adoption in neighboring areas. On the one hand, the infrastructure put into place to meet schools’ needs can also serve households. On the other hand, students get acquainted with the Internet at school and signal its usefulness to adults at home who, consequently, can be more likely to adopt it. In this paper, we model the roles that broadband use at school and Internet adoption in neighboring households play in the decision to adopt the Internet at home and measure their effects empirically. We use data from Portugal between 2006 and 2009 on household Internet penetration and on how much schools use broadband. We use two different sets of instruments for the schools’ broadband use to alleviate endogeneity concerns. Both approaches yield similar results. We find that broadband use at school leads to higher levels of Internet penetration in neighboring households. Broadband use in schools was responsible for a year-over-ye...
Short Selling: The Impact of SEC Rule 201 of 2010

Despite its sizeable compliance costs, we are unable to document any clear benefits of SEC Rule 201 in ensuring fair valuations and price stability, promoting higher liquidity and execution quality, or preventing a sudden flash crash or prolonged market crises. Our daily and intraday analysis of data both before and after Rule 201 finds that short sellers are naturally more active before the occurrence of negative returns, not after significant price declines. Our simulation results show that Rule 201 further curtails short selling during normal periods, but is not binding on short sellers during the volatile period of the 2008 financial crisis.
Using tax return data to simulate corporate marginal tax rates

Abstract We document that simulated corporate marginal tax rates based on financial statement data [Shevlin, T., 1990. Estimating corporate marginal tax rates with asymmetric tax treatment of gains and losses. The Journal of the American Taxation Association 11, 51–67; Graham, J., 1996a. Debt and the marginal tax rate. Journal of Financial Economics 41, 41–73] are highly correlated with simulated rates based on corporate tax return data. We provide algorithms that can be used to estimate the book or tax simulated rates when they are not available. We find that the simulated book marginal tax rate does a better job of explaining financial statement debt ratios than does the analogous tax return variable and discuss how the book-simulated rate is likely to be an appropriate measure in settings with global, long-term considerations.
Bankruptcy Law and the Cost of Credit: The Impact of Cramdown on Mortgage Interest Rates

AbstractRecent proposals to address housing market troubles through principal modification could increase the cost of credit in the mortgage market. We explore this possibility using historical variation in federal judicial rulings regarding whether Chapter 13 bankruptcy filers could reduce the principal owed on a home loan to the home’s market value. The practice, known as cramdown, was definitively prohibited by the Supreme Court in 1993. We find that home loans closed during the time when cramdown was allowed had interest rates 12–16 basis points higher than loans closed in the same state when cramdown was not allowed, which translates to a roughly 1 percent increase in monthly payments. Consistent with the theory that lenders are pricing in the risk of principal modification, interest rate increases are higher for the riskiest borrowers and zero for the least risky and higher in states where Chapter 13 filing is more common.
Sanctioning Sodomy: The Supreme Court Liberates Gay Sex and Limits State Power to Vindicate the Moral Sentiments of the People

Human sexuality encompasses a variety of orientations, genders, and practices. Individuals may be heterosexual, homosexual, bi-sexual, or asexual in orientation. As judged by physical characteristics (e.g. chromosomes, internal configuration, external genitalia), an individual’s gender may be characterized as male, female, or intersex. Giving rise to theories of multiple genders is the increasingly obvious fact that some people are transgendered, meaning their behaviors reflect a wide variety of gender traits on the male-female continuum and differ from what is normally expected from persons of the genders indicated by their physical characteristics.
New York City Rules! Regulatory Models for Environmental and Public Health

Scholars have become increasingly interested in facilitating improvement in environmental and public health at the local level. Over the last few years, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Council have proposed and adopted numerous environmental and public health initiatives, providing a useful case study for analyzing the development and success (or failure) of various regulatory tools, and offering larger lessons about regulation that can be extrapolated to other substantive areas. This Article, first, seeks to categorize and evaluate these “New York Rules,” creating a new taxonomy to understand different types of regulation. These “New York Rules” include bans, informational regulation, education, infrastructure, mandates, standard-setting, and economic (dis)incentives. In particular, this Article focuses on urban transportation and food systems, including the failed market-based congestion pricing plan for Lower Manhattan; the Citi Bike infrastructure; the proposed “Sugary Drink” ban; informational calorie labeling on food menus; and the emerging compost pollution prevention plan. This Article provides insight into the challenge of matching the proper regulatory tool with any environmental and public health problem, suggesting that certain approaches are more appropriate than others. In general, society requires more forceful nudges than seen to date and, where this kind of push is not possible, policymakers should proceed to lay the groundwork with norm-shifting regulation. Infrastructure shifts are also a successful type of intervention when more intrusive regulation fails. In summary, law proves to be a workable tool to change individual behavior, and major government action can influence social norms and create improved infrastructure.
The Erosion of Home Rule through the Emergence of State-Interests in Land Use Control

Twenty years ago, in Golden v. Planning Board of Ramapo, the New York Court of Appeals called for the state legislature to adopt a system of "State-wide or regional control of [land use] planning" to "insure that interests broader than that of the municipality underlie various land use policies." Returning to this subject after twenty years, the Court of Appeals, in Long Island Pine Barrens Society, Inc. v. Planning Board of Brookhaven, recently confronted the costs of fractured land use planning in a dramatic setting. The appellate division decision, which required that these projects, located in three separate towns, be subjected to a cumulative environmental impact analysis, alarmed home rule advocates who saw it as a threat to the authority of local governments to make land use decisions. The Court of Appeals overturned the decision of the appellate division, disarming environmentalists who had seen the appellate division decision as a mandate for cumulative environmental impact analysis of major projects affecting the critical natural resource areas in the state. New York's highest court referred this matter of "urgent public concern" to the legislature, as it had done twenty years earlier in Golden. How the regional impacts of local land use decisions are to be controlled is an enduring problem still seeking a solution in this state.
Uncovering patterns among latent variables: human rights and de facto judicial independence:

In this paper, we reexamine the relationship between judicial independence and state respect for human rights by taking advantage of new latent measures of both constructs. In our analysis, we demonstrate a simple method for incorporating the uncertainty of these latent variables. Our results provide strong support for theoretical and empirical claims that independent courts constrain human rights abuses. Although we show that independent courts influence state behavior, the strength of the estimated relationship depends upon whether and to what degree empirical models account for uncertainty in the measurement of the latent variables.
Behavioral Consequences of Affect: Combining Evaluative and Regulatory Mechanisms

The proposed model integrates two streams of research on affect by specifying how evaluative and regulatory mechanisms interact to guide behavior. Two experiments demonstrate that when no mood changes are expected, the affective evaluation mechanism guides behavior, leading to a monotonic increase in behavioral intentions as affect conditions shift from negative to positive. When participants expect the behavioral activity to change their current affective states, a combination of affect regulation and affective evaluation produces a U-shape pattern when a mood-lifting cue is present (experiment 1) and an inverted U-shape pattern when a mood-threatening cue is present (experiment 2).
Mark-to-market regulatory accounting when securities markets are stressed: Lessons from the financial crisis of 2007–2009

Abstract While market prices can be useful tools for bank regulation, recent theoretical work argues that reliance on prices can be counterproductive when secondary markets are stressed and illiquid. Evidence from the financial crisis unearthed by Bhat et al. (in press) provides empirical validation of these arguments. Though Bhat et al. do not fully acknowledge it, their findings suggest that forcing banks to count liquidity-induced unrealized losses in securities holdings against regulatory capital destroys value and exposes bank creditors, including taxpayers, to more risk. Policy makers contemplating greater regulatory reliance on market prices ignore these findings at their peril.
Contextual and Temporal Components of Reference Price

An emerging consensus in marketing is that consumers respond to price relative to some standard or reference price. Most researchers modeling brand choice have reasoned that this standard is based ...
Break-Through Innovations and Continuous Improvement: Two Different Models of Innovative Processes in the Public Sector

How do we understand innovation in the public sector? A look at the public and private sector understanding of innovation helps us begin to see how important new ideas are born, nurtured, tested and disseminated.
The Temporal Dynamics of Capable of Substantial Noninfringing Uses

Introduction 197 I. Substantial Noninfringing Uses 200 A. Noninfringing Uses: The Changing Legal Character of Fair Use 200 B. Substantiality: The Changing Amount of Authorized Uses 206 C. The Changing Character and Amount of Uses of Unprotected Works 213 II. Capable of Substantial Noninfringing Uses 215 III. Implications 219 Conclusion 224
MANAGING SWITCHING COSTS IN MULTIPERIOD PROCUREMENTS WITH STRATEGIC BUYERS

This article examines the use of switching costs by long-lived strategic buyers to manage dynamic competition between rival suppliers. The analysis reveals how buyers may employ switching costs to their advantage. We show that when switching costs are high, a buyer may induce suppliers to price more competitively by credibly threatening to replace the incumbent supplier with his rivals. The implications of this finding for adoption of technology and firm organization are explored in settings in which the buyer is integrated with the suppliers and where the buyer is an outsourcer.
Export incentives, financial constraints, and the (mis)allocation of credit: Micro-level evidence from subsidized export loans

Abstract This paper combines an exogenous shock to the supply of subsidized credit with unique loan-level data from the export sector in Pakistan to identify the impact and allocation of such financial incentives. The removal of subsidized credit causes a significant decline in the exports of privately owned firms, while the exports of large, publicly listed, and group network firms are unaffected. Publicly listed firms make no significant adjustments to their balance sheets, and only their profits are reduced, indicating that they are financially unconstrained. Nearly half of all subsidized loans are assigned to such firms, implying a substantial misallocation of credit and an output loss to privately owned firms of 0.75% of GDP. Productivity differences do not explain the heterogeneous effects across firms.
Happiness Metrics in Federal Rulemaking

This Note examines the neoclassical economic framework that pervades contemporary benefit-cost analysis and considers how the fields of behavioral economics and hedonic adaptation may offer superior tools for assessing how regulations impact human behavior. These new hedonic metrics attempt to quantify happiness - rather than monetize utility - and measure how outcomes influence well-being and affect. Through the evaluation of three case studies, this Note considers the flaws of the current approach and how hedonic metrics can supplement prevailing techniques to address these shortcomings. Finally, this Note assesses the legal regimes that govern how courts review agency decisionmaking and suggests that the failure to incorporate hedonic metrics may render agency actions vulnerable to challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Gerrymandering—Vietnamese Style: Escaping the Partial Reform Equilibrium in a Nondemocratic Regime

Hellman's (1998) depiction of the Partial Reform Equilibrium (PRE) presented a prophecy of despair for many transition economies. Because winners from initial economic reforms could use their newfound power to block further reform initiatives that might undermine their lucrative positions, escaping the PRE trap required the simultaneous resolution of two conundrums. Policymakers interested in furthering transition needed to both overcome opposition from the concentrated group of early winners and unite a disparate group of potential beneficiaries from future reforms into an alternative coalition. In this article, I rigorously test the theory that Vietnamese reformers managed to solve both dilemmas and to escape their unique partial reform trap through the targeted creation of new provinces in 1996. The tactic provided reformers with a majority of votes in the Central Committee, allowing them to push through a series of economic initiatives directly at odds with the State Owned Enterprise Sector, Vietnam's...
Evaluating Economic Justifications for Alcohol Restrictions

Does economics justify restricting alcohol consumption? A new line of research concludes that alcohol involves significant social costs and that various restrictions would lead to net social gains. This article focuses on Levy and Miller (1995), who conduct a cost-benefit analysis of serving-intoxicated-patron laws. We administer a survey of taverns in Washtenaw County, Michigan, to investigate the plausibility of some of Levy and Millers claims. We find a number of problems with their economic discussion: in addition to a number of problematic assumptions, they count private costs as social costs and completely ignore consumer and producer surplus associated with alcohol. We find their assumptions bias the results in favor of the restrictions. Despite their popularity in public policy debates, these economic justifications for restricting alcohol are dubious.
The limits of meritocracy: Screening bureaucrats under imperfect verifiability

Abstract Does bureaucratic ability predict promotion in governments? We show that self-reported performance in enforcing the One Child Policy predicts mayoral promotion in China. However, misreporting handicaps screening—a non-manipulated performance measure does not predict promotion. We show that this is consistent with a model where a government has a meritocratic objective but underestimates the imperfect verifiability of performance, rather than a model where a government is only interested in the illusion of meritocracy. Thus, despite meritocratic intentions, we challenge the notion that a successful promotion system effectively substituted for democratic institutions in explaining Chinese growth.