cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Pricing Urban Congestion

This paper reviews literature on the optimal design of pricing policies to reduce urban automobile congestion. The implications of a range of complicating factors are considered; these include traffic bottlenecks, constraints on which roads and freeway lanes in the road network can be priced, driver heterogeneity, private toll operators, other externalities besides congestion, and interactions between congestion taxes and the broader fiscal system. I also briefly discuss the incidence of congestion taxes and experience with this policy in the United States and elsewhere. Although the economics literature on congestion pricing has advanced considerably over the past 20 years, research is still needed on the empirical measurement of second-best efficient tolls for urban centers and whether alternative design features have substantial implications for efficiency. More research is also needed on the design of schemes to promote feasibility by compensating adversely affected groups with minimal loss in economi...
Intimate Affiliation and Democracy: Beyond Marriage?

The place of marriage and its relation to the place of families in a just and fair constitutional democracy reverberates as one of the most challenging questions posed in debates over family law and policy. What is government’s interest in intimate affiliation and in families? What is the connection between the forms that intimate affiliation takes and the vitality of the Nation’s constitutional democracy? On the one hand, some voices urge that government should properly support and promote marriage, defined as the union of one man and one woman, as the proxy for the form of family best able to undergird constitutional democracy by allowing realization of the goods associated with family life and carrying out the important functions society assigns to families. On the other hand, critics of marriage’s privileged place contend that it is an imperfect and inadequate proxy for these purposes: it fails to represent the full range of forms of intimate affiliation capable of fostering family members’ capacities for self-government, of allowing the realization of such goods as interdependence, mutual support, and friendship, and of performing the vital function of nurturing children and other dependents. On this view, government should look beyond marriage—
Oil Exporters’ Dilemma: How Much to Save and How Much to Invest

Summary Policymakers in oil-exporting countries confront the question of how to allocate oil revenues among consumption, saving, and investment in the face of high income volatility. We study this allocation problem in a precautionary saving and investment model under uncertainty. Consistent with data in the 2000s, precautionary saving is sizable and the marginal propensity to consume out of permanent shocks is below one, in stark contrast to the predictions of the perfect foresight model. The optimal investment rate is high if productivity in the tradable sector is high enough.
Why the ACLU was Wrong About Nike, Inc. v. Kasky

A discussion of the 2003 Nike v. Kasky case and why, on balance, a commitment to the preservation of freedom of speech favored Kasky rather than Nike.
Toward a Theory of Procedural Justice for Juveniles

The juvenile court has historically been a hybrid institution in terms of its purpose and procedures, incorporating aspects of both the civil and criminal court systems. In the late nineteenth century, the founders of the first juvenile courts in the United States were motivated by a desire to provide a forum—separate and discrete from that of adult criminal defendants—for the adjudication and disposition of child and adolescent offenders.
A Problem in Emotive Due Process: California's Three Strikes Law

The minimum of punishment is more clearly marked than its maximum. What is too little is more clearly observed than what is too much. . . . An error on the maximum side . . . is that to which legislators and men in general are naturally inclined: antipathy, or a want of compassion for individuals who are represented as dangerous and vile, pushes them onward to an undue severity. It is on this side, therefore, that we should take the most precautions, as on this side there has been shown the greatest disposition to err.
“I Don't Agree with Giving Cash”: A Survey Experiment Examining Support for Public Assistance

Objective Existing research on support for anti-poverty programs largely focuses on broad categories of welfare. In this article, we examine variations in support across different public assistance programs. Methods We use an experimental survey design to examine whether support for public assistance is dependent on the type of aid offered. Results We find that programs that offer benefits in-kind are more popular than cash transfers. Moreover, food stamps and child-care subsidies enjoy more support than housing assistance. Open-ended survey responses show that when evaluating anti-poverty programs, respondents adopt one of two perspectives: (1) cash assistance is problematic but other forms of assistance are acceptable or (2) any assistance is problematic. Conclusion By too narrowly focusing on welfare, social scientists run the risk of developing theories and explanations that may not apply to the much larger part of the safety net that is delivered in-kind.
Code-ifying Copyright: An Architectural Solution to Digitally Expanding the First Sale Doctrine

As the internet blossomed into ubiquity, piracy mushroomed with it. To control the threat, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA created a number of safeguards for copyright holders. But the DMCA purposely ignored whether copyright holders could restrict future transfers of their legally purchased work—a concept known in physical property as the “first sale doctrine.” As a result, copyright holders began using licenses to control future transfers of their digital property. This was not the first time copyright holders have attempted to gain greater control over their work. The history of copyright law demonstrates a pattern of struggle between competing interests—with public access to creative works on one side and the need for incentive to create on the other side. Over time, courts and legislators have chosen different responses to this struggle. Each has encountered varying levels of success. But all have dealt exclusively in physical property. The world of physical property is different from that of digital property for two reasons. In the physical world, it is difficult and costly to duplicate works, and over time, these works degrade. By contrast, in the digital world, copying a book, a song, or a movie requires only a couple of keystrokes and a mouse click. Additionally, copying a digital file does not affect its quality. In light of these differences, scholars have offered a number of solutions, focusing on the difference in copying difficulty between physical and digital property. This Note examines the history of copyright law to understand the various solutions available to lawmakers when dealing with the threat of piracy and considers the possibility of a solution focusing instead on the degradation difference between physical and digital property.
Assessing the Effects of Ownership Change on Women and Minority Employees: Evidence from Matched Employer–Employee Data

Abstract While there have been numerous papers on the employment and wage effects of mergers and acquisitions, there has been no direct analysis of the impact of such ownership changes on minority and female workers. This is an unexplored ‘equity’ dimension of these transactions. We fill this gap by analyzing linked employer–employee data for the entire population of Swedish workers and approximately 16,000 manufacturing plants for the period 1985–1998. For each worker employed in these establishments (as well as the entire population of workers), we have data on gender, age, national origin, level of education, type of education, location, industrial sector, annual earnings, as well as each employee’s complete work history during the period. We also have data on numerous plant and firm‐level characteristics, which allows us to control for additional factors that might result in changes in labour composition and relative compensation. Our findings suggest that ownership change does not significantly alter...
Local response to fiscal incentives in heterogeneous communities

Abstract I examine the impact of a property tax-relief program in New York State that lowered the marginal cost of school expenditure to homeowners. I find that a typical school district, which received 20% of its revenue through the program in the school year 2001–2002, raised expenditure by 4.1% and local property taxes by 6.8% in response to the program. I then examine how the preferences of various groups of local taxpayers affect educational spending by identifying systematic variation across districts in the response to fiscal incentives. These results support the hypothesis that homeowners are more influential on local expenditure decisions than renters, owners of second homes, or owners of non-residential property.
The United States' engagement in global tobacco control: proposals for comprehensive funding and strategies.

TOBACCO USE ACCOUNTS FOR MORE DEATHS GLOBALLY than human immunodeficiency virus/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined—more than 5 million deaths annually—and this is expected to increase to more than 8 million by 2030, with nearly 80% of those deaths occurring in developing countries. Beyond health effects, tobacco has dramatic social and economic consequences, consuming health care budgets, depriving families of wage earners, and hindering economic development. Tobacco consumption is shifting from industrialized to developing countries, spurred by increasing incomes, trade liberalization, and intensive marketing. This shift is well established among men and in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, with smoking in Africa projected to increase over the next decade. Women are a major target of opportunity for the industry, which uses advertising tactics such as purse packs containing super-slim cigarettes. Although Congress empowered the US Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco domestically, the United States has failed to lead globally. The United States is among a small minority of countries that has signed, but not ratified, the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) that 171 countries have ratified, covering 87% of the world’s population. In 2009, the United States dedicated only $7 million of the more than $8 billion it spent on global health to international tobacco control, principally for surveillance and capacity building. Moreover, US trade policy supports and enables the industry to expand tobacco use overseas. Nearly every investment and trade agreement negotiated by the United States eliminates or reduces trading partners’ tobacco tariffs and protects US tobacco companies’ overseas manufacturing and investments. In this Commentary, we argue for robust US engagement in global tobacco control, first explaining why it is in the national interest of the United States and then suggesting a comprehensive strategy.
Protecting American Innovators by Combating the Decline of Patents Granted to Small Entities

The new patent laws and recent economic trends indicate that there is a difficult time ahead for small entities. American entrepreneurs and small businesses have created several of the major technological innovations in the past forty years. However, statistics indicate that patents granted to small entities have declined. In the wake of this trend, the U.S. Patent system has undergone significant changes. Currently, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) is in the process of implementing the policies and procedures outlined in its five-year strategic plan. Further, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (“AIA”), the largest patent reform law since 1952, was signed into law on September 16, 2011. Unfortunately, some of these new policies and the overall affect of the AIA may have a negative impact on the patenting efforts of small entities. For example, some scholars have argued that the AIA’s new “first-to-file” regime will result in a significant drop in the number of patents granted to small inventors. Accordingly, new patent policies in combination with the decline in small entity patenting may threaten the ability of small entities to continue to lead the country in innovation.There is some evidence to suggest that an increase in small entity patenting will correlate with a boost in American innovation. In response, this article proposes that the USPTO implement a prioritized examination program for small entities. In support of this program, this article examines policies that may affect a small entities’ ability to participate in patent. This article suggests that the patent prosecution process puts small entities at a disadvantage in comparison to large entities. Further, the new procedures implemented because of the AIA at best maintain the status quo regarding patent prosecution for small entities. Finally, this article proposes a patent valuation tool that would enable USPTO stakeholders to measure the effectiveness of the proposed program. The overall goal of these proposals is to balance the USPTO’s desire to optimize patent quality and timeliness with the goal of increasing the number of filed patent applications that are granted to small entities.
Synthetic Science: A Response to Rabinow

AbstractRabinow’s description of the unique collaborative goal of synthetic biology at Berkeley, to foster a coproduction among multiple disciplines and perspectives from the outset (as opposed to downstream reflection upon ethical, legal, and social implications), is somewhat misleading. While that particular assemblage is represented as coproductive, the inevitability of science as a coproduction is eclipsed. That shortcoming may well be a strategic compromise to ensure effective collaboration, but it could backfire. Idealized images of science, which might be termed synthetic or artificial, have had adverse consequences in legal and administrative assessments of reliable science.
The role of economics in defining antitrust injury and standing

In this article, first published in 17 Managerial & Decision Econ. 127 (1996), we show how economic theory guides the courts' determinations of which harms from collusive and exclusionary practices constitute antitrust injury.
The Association between Big 6 Auditor Industry Expertise and the Asymmetric Timeliness of Earnings

The accounting profession is facing a credibility crisis precipitated by the failure of several high-profile companies and the alleged failure of their auditors to detect and persuade their clients to recognize economic losses in earnings in a timely fashion. Investors, regulators, analysts, and the public are interested in identifying factors that enhance the timeliness of earnings, particularly about bad news. This study provides empirical evidence on one such factor—auditors' industry expertise. Using a large sample of clients of Big 6 auditors, this research examines the association between auditor industry expertise, measured in terms of an industry's share in the auditor's portfolio of client industries, and the speed with which publicly available bad news about future cash flows is recognized in earnings. The findings indicate that the earnings of clients of specialist auditors are more timely in reflecting bad news than earnings of clients of nonspecialist auditors. This finding is consistent with...
Presidential Signing Statements and Executive Power

A recent debate about the Bush administration's use of presidential signing statements has raised questions about their function, legality, and value. We argue that presidential signing statements are legal and that they provide a useful way for the president to disclose his views about the meaning and constitutionality of legislation. In addition, basic tenets of positive political theory suggest that signing statements do not undermine the separation of powers or the legislative process and that, under certain circumstances, they can provide relevant evidence of statutory meaning. Although President Bush has raised many more constitutional challenges within his signing statements than prior presidents have, at least on their face these challenges are similar to challenges made by other recent presidents, such as President Clinton. Whether Bush's views of executive power are significantly different from Clinton's, and if so, whether they are inferior, remain open questions, but these issues are independent of whether signing statements are lawful.
The quality of fiscal adjustment and the long-run growth impact of fiscal policy in Brazil

The authors describe the main trends of Brazil's fiscal policy during the past decade and analyze (1) the ability to raise the primary surplus in response to external shocks, (2) the pro-cyclical nature of fiscal policy, and (3) the long-run impact of government expenditure composition and taxation. They analyze the use of the primary balance as a policy tool within the Drudi-Prati model, wherein the government uses the primary balance to reveal its commitment to service its debt. The authors verify that both the debt ratio and the primary balance are determinants of spreads and credit ratings in Brazil. But the relationship is nonlinear: the impact of the primary balance on spreads is amplified as the debt ratio increases. Using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach, the authors analyze the relationship between the primary balance and economic activity, finding a positive correlation in the long run. However, in the short run fiscal expansions are associated with primary balance reductions and vice-versa during output contractions, confirming the procyclical nature of fiscal policy in the short run. The authors use two approaches, ARDL and a cointegrating value at risk (VAR), to analyze the interaction between public expenditure composition and taxation on growth. Similar results are obtained: large elasticities of output with respect to capital stocks, a significant negative impact of taxation on long-run GDP, and a negative impact of increasing government consumption and transfer payments on GDP. These results shed light on the contribution of fiscal policy to disappointing growth performance in Brazil during the past decade.
In Search of the Link Between Due Process and Jurisdiction

Due process in regard to jurisdiction has been analyzed separately and without relation to other due process requirements. This article tries to bring the two together and suggest ways that due process with regard to jurisdiction should respond to due process standards in other procedural areas.
"A New Era of Openness?": Disclosing Intelligence to Congress Under Obama

As a candidate, Barack Obama promised “a new era of openness,” and his administration has taken some significant steps to increase transparency in the executive branch. But it has also continued the Bush administration’s policy of invoking the state secrets privilege to avoid judicial scrutiny of controversial warrantless surveillance and torture programs. Many commentators have noted the parallels between the Bush and Obama policies on disclosing sensitive information to courts, but they have paid little attention to how the Obama administration compares with the Bush administration in disclosing sensitive information to Congress. This essay fills that gap, and looks in detail at the Bush and Obama administration responses to legislative proposals for expanding intelligence disclosures to Congress. It reviews both the Bush and Obama administration positions on legislation that would require intelligence disclosure to Congress, and finds that there are substantial similarities - though not identity - between the Bush and Obama administrations. Both administrations have opposed disclosure of covert actions to the full intelligence committees as well as mandated disclosure of internal executive branch legal advice. On these most sensitive intelligence issues, we will see increased disclosure to Congress only over the objection of President Barack Obama.
California Hearing Officer Decisions

In this article, Professor Colker presents her analysis of 101 cases decided by California Hearing Officers in special education matters decided between May 3, 2010 and June 20, 2011. She argues that the burden of proof placed on parents often made it difficult for them to prevail even when it appeared they had some strong arguments. She also argues that parents had particular difficulty prevailing when they sought to argue that the school district's proposed educational program was inadequate. Finally, she argues that parents have an overly difficult time persuading a hearing officer that a remedy should be ordered for a procedural violation.
Optimal Demand for Insurance with Consumption Commitments

Some consumption goods, such as housing, involve long-term commitments and their levels of consumption can only be altered with substantial transaction costs. Even though the commitment effect on risk preferences, portfolio choice, and asset prices has been studied, little research has been conducted on its effect on insurance demand. In this paper, we propose a two-stage model to investigate the optimal demand for insurance by agents who derive utility from the consumption of two goods, an easily adjustable good (food) and a commitment good (housing). Our numerical analysis supports the prediction by Chetty and Szeidl (2007) that commitments help rationalize the high demand for insurance against moderate losses. Moreover, our model can explain the low insurance demand for catastrophic risks to some extent. We extend our model to include both insurance purchase and investment in a risky asset. Our results indicate that, with commitments, insurance appears to be a normal good within certain wealth regions. We also find that only when the initial wealth and housing are rather inconsistent individuals are likely to purchase insurance and lottery tickets simultaneously.
Characterizing belief-free review-strategy equilibrium payoffs under conditional independence

Abstract This paper proposes and studies a tractable subset of Nash equilibria, belief-free review-strategy equilibria, in repeated games with private monitoring. The payoff set of this class of equilibria is characterized in the limit as the discount factor converges to one for games where players observe statistically independent signals. As an application, we develop a simple sufficient condition for the existence of asymptotically efficient equilibria, and establish a folk theorem for N-player prisonerʼs dilemma. All these results are robust to a perturbation of the signal distribution, and hence remain true even under almost-independent monitoring.
Competition and Truth in the Market for News

In this essay, we evaluate the case for competition in news markets from the perspective of economics. First, we consider the simple proposition that when more points of view are heard and defended, beliefs will converge to the truth. This concept of "competition" is several steps removed from market competition among actual media firms, but it has played a prominent role in the legal arguments for a free press. We then explore three mechanisms by which increasing competition, or more precisely increasing the number of independently-owned firms, can limit bias or distortions that originate on the supply-side of the media market: First, when governments attempt to manipulate news, competition can increase the likelihood that the media remain independent. Second, when news providers have an interest in manipulating consumers' beliefs, diversity in such incentives can reduce the risk of information being suppressed or distorted. Third, competition may drive firms to invest in providing timely and accurate coverage. Overall, we argue that there are robust reasons to expect competition to be effective in disciplining supply-side bias. Next, we ask how the effect of competition changes when distortions originate on the demand side of the market -- when consumers themselves demand biased or less socially relevant news. We find that increased competition may or may not improve welfare in these cases, though we caution against using this as a justification for concentrating media power in the hands of state-controlled or regulated firms.
Do beliefs about peers matter for donation matching? Experiments in the field and laboratory

Abstract A popular fundraising tool is donation matching, where every dollar is matched by a third party. But field experiments find that matching doesn't always increase donations. Individuals may believe that peers will exhaust the matching funds, so their donation isn't pivotal. We develop a theory of how beliefs about peers' donations affect one's likelihood of donation. We test our theory using novel “threshold match” treatments in field and laboratory experiments. One “threshold match” treatment more than doubles the donation rate relative to no match. To understand the mechanism behind this large increase, we use a lab study to show that beliefs about peers' donations matter. Our theoretical, lab, and field results combined suggest people are more likely to donate when they believe they are more pivotal to securing matching money. Beliefs about others matter, and they should be taken into account when trying to increase donations.
Pedophiles and Cyber-predators as Contaminating Forces: The Language of Disgust, Pollution, and Boundary Invasions in Federal Debates on Sex Offender Legislation

As a distinct class of criminals, sex offenders stand out as being particularly subject to the new “risk management” penal strategies that, according to a number of scholars, have come to dominate punishment rhetoric and practices in recent years. Nonetheless, the criminal justice policymaking that targets sex offenders appears to have a more emotionally based underside. In this paper, I examine the emotional drive that appears to undergird contemporary sex offender lawmaking, suggesting that a significant force propelling the current panoply of sex offender containment strategies is a constellation of emotional expressions of disgust, fear of contagion, and pollution avoidance, manifested in a legislative concern about boundary vulnerabilities between social spheres of the pure and the dangerous. To do so, I analyze the lawmaking discourse of U. S. legislators as they debated four proposed legislative bills directed at sex offenders during the late 1990s.
One Business Professor's Experience With the Diversity Issue and Pressure to Raise Students' Grades

Abstract This article is a response to an article by Holly B. Tompson and George H. Tompson in the September/October 1996 issue of the Journal of Education for Business. In that article, the authors discussed confronting diversity issues in the classroom with strategies to improve satisfaction and retention of international students. The present article describes a case in which the well-intentioned strategies proposed by Tompson and Tompson failed to work and concludes with suggestions for how professors across America should handle students who demand better grades than the ones they rightly deserve.
Formation of Stakeholder Trust in Business and the Role of Personal Values

Declining levels of stakeholder trust in business are of concern to business executives and scholars for legitimacy- and performance-related effects. Research in the area of stakeholder trust in business is nascent; therefore, the trust formation process has been rarely examined at the stakeholder level. Furthermore, the role of personal values as one significant influence in trust formation has been under-researched. In this paper, we develop a contingency model for stakeholder trust formation based on the effects of stakeholder-specific vulnerability and personal values of the trustor. Using a factorial vignette methodology, we find that Schwartz’s (J Soc Issues 50:19–45, 1994) value set interacts with stakeholder roles so that trustworthiness signals of competence and character play differing roles during trust formation. These results inform stakeholder trust research, organizational trust research, and research in personal values. The research also informs managers tasked with rebuilding stakeholder trust in business.
Judicial independence and retention elections

Judges face retention elections in over a third of US state courts of last resort and numerous lower courts. According to conventional wisdom, these elections engender judicial independence and decrease democratic accountability. We argue that in the context of modern judicial campaigns, retention elections create pressure for judges to cater to public opinion on "hot-button" issues that are salient to voters. Moreover, this pressure can be as great as that in contestable elections. We test these arguments by comparing decisions across systems with retention, partisan, and nonpartisan contestable elections. Employing models that account for judge- and state-specific effects, we analyze new data regarding abortion cases decided by state supreme courts between 1980 and 2006. The results provide strong evidence for the arguments. (JEL D72, K40) The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.
Arbitration by the Numbers: The State of Empirical Research on International Commercial Arbitration

THE PRESIDENT of the Association of American Law Schools,1 N. William Hines, in his inaugural address in January 2005, declared that the focus of the Association during his term would be on the ‘empirical dimension’ of legal scholarship.2 Although legal scholarship often has been criticised as being too divorced from empirical realities,3 numerous efforts,– from hiring faculty with interdisciplinary backgrounds, to conducting training in research methods, to the creation of specialised journals – have sought to encourage and facilitate empirical research on legal issues. On the basis of these efforts (and others), Hines concludes that ‘empirical research in law is alive and flourishing in the twenty-first century’.4 The state of empirical research on international commercial arbitration is undergoing a similar transformation. In the past, little systematic information on international arbitration was available – in no small part because arbitration is private rather than public judging. As a result, much of what was known about international arbitration was based on anecdote – the facts of individual cases, attorney ‘war stories’, and the like.5 Today, however, that is changing, fostered by academic and practitioner interest in the subject6 and the increasing willingness of (at least some) arbitration institutions to permit researchers access to case materials.7 Indeed, a number of the presentations at the School of International Arbitration's 20th Anniversary Conference relied on empirical data or emphasised the importance of unresolved empirical issues. While much work remains to be done, the existing literature has made important beginnings toward an empirical understanding of international arbitration.8 Defined broadly, ‘empirical’ research (meaning research ‘[r]elying on or derived from observation or experiment’)9 includes both quantitative and qualitative research methods.10 In simple terms, quantitative research methods involve the collection and analysis of numerical data, while qualitative methods involve …
A Framework for Integrating External Information into New Product Development: Lessons from the Medical Technology Industry

Only the best manufacturers will remain competitive in today's challenging environment. Any manager involved with developing new products knows the excitement, complexity, and risk of this unpredictable undertaking. Based upon findings from four world class manufacturers of medical imaging technology in Japan and the United States, this article presents a new organizing framework for integrating external information into the NPD process. The findings are particularly timely in an era when manufacturers are vulnerable to intense global competition. The article concludes with several implications for managers involved in the new product development process.
Local Risk, Local Factors, and Asset Prices

Firm location affects firm risk through local factor prices. We find more procyclical factor prices such as wages and real estate prices in areas with more cyclical economies, namely, high “local beta” areas. While procyclical wages provide a natural hedge against aggregate shocks and reduce firm risk, procyclical prices of real estate, which are part of firm assets, increase firm risk. We confirm that firms located in higher local beta areas have lower industry-adjusted returns and conditional betas, and show that the effect is stronger among firms with low real estate holdings. A production-based equilibrium model explains these empirical findings.
A Realist Approach to Copyright Law's Formalities

Rejecting the conventional story that formalities in copyright law were abolished by the Berne Convention, this Article demonstrates that privately administered systems of formalities play a significant role in the administration of copyright law worldwide. Indeed, they must because copyright is designed to support a transaction structure which requires rightsholders who seek to attract licensing partners to go through some formal step to identify themselves and the works in which they have a legal or beneficial interest. Canvassing the landscape of mandatory and voluntary public and private systems of formalities, this article argues that: (1) national policymakers retain more policy authority under Berne to impose certain formal requirements on rightsholders than those with a formalist understanding of public formalities argue; (2) private systems of formalities are extensive, economically significant, but are not interoperable with each other in many cases and with voluntary registries and other voluntary public formalities systems; and (3) policymakers should use a mix of approaches to improve the functioning of both public and private formalities systems by promoting or requiring transparency, efficiency, and interoperability in their design and administration.
Disclosure Standards and the Sensitivity of Returns to Mood

We provide evidence that higher-quality disclosure standards are associated with stock returns that are less sensitive to noise driven by investors' moods. We identify return-mood sensitivity (RMS) based on the association between index returns and urban cloudiness, a source of short-term variation in mood. Based on a stylized model, we predict and find evidence consistent with higher-quality disclosure standards reducing RMS by tilting susceptible investors' trades toward information and by facilitating sophisticated investors' arbitrage. Our findings suggest that disclosure standards play an important role in enhancing price efficiency by reducing noise in returns, particularly noise related to investors' short-term moods.
Commercializing Technology Through New Business Incubators

Considers the new business incubator as a means of leveraging resources to develop new companies. The new business incubator - otherwise known as the innovation center, among other names - has been evolving since the late 1970s to give new firms, especially high-technology and manufacturing firms, structure and credibility. As a company's innovative management system, the incubator's director, board of directors, advisory council, and consultant network provide knowledge and enthusiasm, improved efficiency, and the perception of success, among other things. These resources, and more specific assistance related to facilities support, administrative assistance and business expertise, give the company a competitive edge. A national survey of new business incubators was administered in July-August of 1985, followed up by onsite analysis and in-depth interviews with incubator managers and directors in the United States. According to the data from the 50 respondents, management and marketing are the two most important functions of incubators. Firms that participate in an incubator are almost twice as likely to succeed than fail. Four incubator models are discussed: university-related, private, community, and corporate/franchise. At the time of the survey, approximately 170 incubators have been established in the U.S., with more under development in countries such as Japan, China, France, England and Germany. Conclusions show that while the incubator concept is still in the experimental stages, its usefulness in leveraging resources, encouraging development, and promoting cross-institutional networking will ensure its continued growth. (CJC)
Consumer Perceptions of Promotional Activity

Several models of consumer response to promotions suggest that a current decision on brand and purchase quantity depends on the expected time until the next price reduction and the expected size of...
Mainstreaming Employment Contract Law: The Common Law Case for Reasonable Notice of Termination

This Article simultaneously exposes a fundamental error in employment termination doctrine and a paradox in contract law jurisprudence. Contemporary employment law has developed under the assumption that at-will parties may terminate their relationship both without reason and without notice. This Article argues that the second half of this formulation – the idea that parties reserve the procedural right to terminate without notice – is neither historically supported nor legally correct. Employment at will, as originally expressed, was a mere duration presumption reflecting America’s rejection of the predominant British rule favoring one-year employment terms. While subsequent caselaw expanded the presumption in various ways, a reinterpretation that requires advance notice of termination remains compatible with the way in which most contemporary courts articulate the rule. In fact, an examination of general contract law reveals that in a variety of non-employment contexts courts impose on parties to an indefinite relationship the duty to provide reasonable notice while still safeguarding their right to terminate at will. Such an obligation serves not only as a gapfiller in the face of contractual silence, but as a good faith limitation on parties’ exercise of substantive discretion. Absent such a notice requirement, employment is an illusory relationship, one that lacks the modicum of consideration necessary to create a binding contract. While courts have sought to circumvent this problem by theorizing employment as a unilateral contract, that formulation is ill-suited to the reality that both sides generally aspire to an ongoing, dynamic relationship. Instead, this Article recasts employment as a bilateral contract terminable at will by either party upon reasonable notice. Establishing a reasonable notice obligation will grant terminated workers much needed transition time in which to seek new employment and develop new skills. At the same time, adopting this rule paves the way for a more unified body of contract law. The case for deviations from general contract principles is strongest where context-specific rules fulfill the reasonable expectations of the weaker party. Employment-specific contract rules, as they currently stand, do precisely the opposite. While ordinary contract law cannot adequately protect workers’ interests in all circumstances, this Article demonstrates that in at least some instances mainstream doctrine, properly understood and creatively applied, can produce results that are both good for workers and in harmony with existing law.
The Making of the Ecopreneur

In this paper the author contrasts ‘green businesses’ with ‘green-green businesses’. The ideal type of ‘ecopreneur’ is defined as one who creates green-green businesses in order to radically transform the economic sector in which he or she operates. Similarly, ecopreneurship is seen as an existential form of business behaviour committed to sustainability. Some ‘ideal-type’ illustrations of ecopreneurship are given, including recent examples, having in common an accidental evolution into ecopreneurship that then becomes transformative for self, society and economic sector. The author provides some practical suggestions for businesspeople who want to try an ecopreneurial strategy in the private sector, including: green brainstorming; cost reduction; the stimulation of innovation through green design and networking; and the attraction of interest of overwhelmed consumers in an emerging ‘attention economy’ through green marketing and through green start-ups (‘green-green businesses’). He suggests that, to promote ecopreneurship, governments and public officials can: run competitions for the most imaginative green business plans; change tax regimes to promote resource conservation; build ecopreneurship into standards for public-sector managers to meet; and target the creation of high-technology development centres to build serial ecopreneurship and to attract ‘blended value’ venture capital. ● Green-green businesses ● Ecopreneurship
The Big Mac Index And Real-Income Disparity

The Big Mac Index was introduced to (semi-humorously) test the theory of purchasing power parity and measure the disparity in currency values. Instead, in this paper, we consider this index to find out the per capita real-income disparity across 54 countries. We find that the per capita real-income can be very low in some countries even when Big Mac burgers are very cheap, like in India. Among these countries, Hong Kong’s per capita Big Mac affordability is the highest with 47 burgers daily whereas Pakistan’s people could afford just one a day. Additionally, we find that Russia and China’s Big Mac affordability has been significantly increasing over the last decade, Brazil’s has remained more or less constant, however USA’s Big Mac affordability has been falling, indicating that per capita real-income of Americans has been decreasing over the last decade. Finally, we find that increased role of the government might be negatively correlated to per capita real-income. Czech Republic has been experiencing increased Big Mac affordability as the country has been reducing the government’s role; whereas Argentina has been experiencing reduced Big Mac affordability as the country has been moving left and increasing the government’s power.
After/word(s): 'Violations of Human Dignity' and Postmodern International Law

"Never again!" was the crie de coeur of the world leaders after World War II. "Never again" would they tolerate death camps, mass graves, or other crimes against humanity. Several genocides later, however, the phrase has become ironic. Innumerable international as well as national laws have been enacted, but they have failed to stop the carnage. This was the subject of a recent symposium in the American Journal of International Law, which assembled some of the leading minds in international law to analyze the problem from seven different perspectives. Postmodern International Law (PIL) was not among them.As this Article explains, the omission of PIL was fitting because PIL did not fit. PIL eschews the often esoteric language of international law in order to reach a broader audience, including those who "violate human dignity" and those who harbor the violators. In addition, PIL is skeptical about the kind of totalizing theory encouraged by the symposium format. Rather, PIL situates the problem in the spatial and historic contexts of globalization. These are the contexts - fragmented, chaotic, transient - in which the law must function.If law is to function effectively, as the late Yale law professor Robert Cover explained, it must be accompanied by violence, by the political will to impose the law through force. Political will in turn depends on stories that breathe life into the law and give it meaning. Political will has been elusive on the international level, in part, because the modern story that began with Nuremberg is no longer compelling. This Article explains how the modern story lost its luster and why the difficult, complex, and even contradictory stories of PIL are more likely to generate the political will necessary to address violations of human dignity in a postmodern world.
Political Lawyers: The Structure of a National Network

Some research on lawyers active in politics has found that the ties among them create networks in which a center or core of influential actors is surrounded by more peripheral participants. Other studies, however, found more segmented networks, sometimes lacking central players. This research examines the structure and determinants of political ties among forty-seven elite lawyers who served organizations prominent in fourteen national policy issues in 2004–05. The analysis finds a network structure that resembles a rough circle with Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other. Lawyers affiliated with organizations representing a broad constellation of interests are closer to the center of the network, while those working for specialized or narrow causes tend to be located in the periphery. Ties are more dense among conservatives than among liberals. Lawyers who work as organizational leaders or managers are more likely to be near the center than are litigators. Central actors contribute larger amounts to election campaigns. The organized bar, especially the American Bar Association, appears to provide links between liberals and conservatives in one segment of the network.