cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Reassessing the Magnetic Pull of Megacases on Procedure

Because tobacco litigation is widely touted as the biggest of all big cases, it seems worthwhile to reflect on the notion that big cases have been the driving force behind procedural change in this country for the last half century. If tobacco litigation is the biggest of all big cases, it should produce the most striking procedural developments. This paper addresses the question whether tobacco litigation has actually done so. My review of tobacco litigation is that it has been a dud in terms of procedural innovation. Perhaps we should reexamine the entire theme of complex litigation as the sparkplug of modern procedural developments. As Professor Leubsdorf has recently written, the American belief that the adoption of the Federal Rules produced a revolution may be a myth. The idea that megacases have paved the way for further developments may also be a myth. To evaluate these questions, I begin with a typology of complex litigation, finding three general groupings of such cases during the post-World War II era. I then connect those groupings to the main strands of procedural innovation during that period, and use the former champion of megalitigation — asbestos litigation — to show how one set of cases can produce myriad changes and attempted changes in procedure. Against that background, I contrast the relatively limited impact tobacco litigation has had on procedure and offer some explanations why this seems to be the case. In conclusion, I suggest that the presumed connection between megalitigation and procedural innovation may be epochal rather than eternal, and that we may have come to a time when the main innovations will be substantive rather than procedural. Assuming so, tobacco litigation might be a symptom of a new reality, at least for mass torts, in which the scimitar of change shifts away from the proceduralists. But there remain reasons to expect that this change will not happen.
The Number of States and the Economics of American Federalism

In 1789 it was possible to speak of a federation of distinct States joined together for their mutual advantage, but today it is rather the Nation that is divided into subnational units. What caused this shift in focus from the States to the Federal Government? Surely the transformation from a collection of thirteen historically separate States clustered along the Atlantic seaboard to a group of fifty States largely carved out of Federal territory has played a role. Building on previous analysis of the economics of federalism, this essay considers the dynamic effects of increasing the number of states on the efficient allocation of government authority between the State and Federal Governments. When the number of States is low, the externalities imposed by state level actions are more limited - and so is the scope of Federal power. When the number increases, however, the scope of efficient Federal power expands because the States face collective action problems. In the second part of this essay, these insights from the economics of federalism are applied to the question of the optimal number of states in a federal system. Having too few states will lead to insufficient cohesion at the federal level, risking secession and ensuring weak government. On the other end of the scale, having too many states encourages the centralization of power. While the optimal number of state in a federal system will ultimately depend on geography, legal culture, and technology, the available data suggest that the ten provinces of Canada may be too few but the fifty of the US may well be too many.
Are two heads better than one? Evidence from the thrift crisis

We employ a natural experiment from the 1980s, predating the ubiquitous clamor for independence influenced corporate governance structures, to examine which governance mechanisms are associated with firm survival and failure. We find that thrifts were more likely to survive the thrift crisis when their CEO also chaired the firm’s board of directors. On average, chair-holding CEOs undertook less aggressive lending policies than their counterparts who did not chair their boards. Consequently, taxpayer interests were protected by thrifts that bestowed both leadership posts to one person. This is an important policy issue, because taxpayers become the residual claimants for depository institutions that fail as a result of managers adopting risky strategies to exploit underpriced deposit insurance. Our findings corroborate recent evidence that manager-dominated firms resist shareholder pressure to adopt riskier investment strategies to exploit underpriced deposit insurance.
The Use of Relational Discrimination to Manage Market Entry: When Do Social Status and Structural Holes Work Against You?

This study examines how incumbent firms use relational discrimination to manage threats from market entry. The use of relationships to manage market entry implies that incumbent firms decide to col...
Microcredit: Fulfilling or Belying the Universalist Morality of Globalizing Markets

Microcredit is a widely practiced, widely revered technique of international development. It aims to increase incomes of the poor by giving them access to capital which can be used to create small businesses or other productive economic activity. Microcredit, despite its partly "market" approach to the capital needs of the poor, has a deeply ambivalent relationship with global capital and globalizing markets. It is an open question whether microcredit is an activity aimed at extending global markets by drawing the world's poor into them, or whether instead it seeks to be a mechanism creating "faux" markets which compensate the poor for their exclusion from world markets. Microcredit is both an extension of, and remedy for, the logic of global markets.
Administrative Centralization and Bureaucratic Responsiveness: Evidence from the Food Stamp Program

Delegation of administrative authority is commonly thought to involve a tradeoff between the discretion necessary for bureaucratic effectiveness and democratic responsiveness. In many contexts, however, discretion and responsiveness go hand-in-hand: Street-level bureaucrats may adapt their behavior to accommodate local norms and values, even when implementing identical statutory language. I argue that this type of bureaucratic adaptation can explain local variation in participation rates in the national food stamp program. By exploiting between-state differences in the level at which the program is administered, I further show that administrative centralization does not appear to moderate such responsiveness, which is high across institutional settings. Using data on application denial rates for a subset of these states, I offer additional evidence that some of the county-level variation in program participation is a product of decisions made by local case workers. Together, these findings offer important insights on the institutional preconditions for bureaucratic responsiveness and control.
Optimal Risk Taking with Flexible Income

We study the portfolio selection problem of an investor who can optimally exert costly effort for more income. The possibility of generating more income, if necessary, increases the risk-taking appetite of the investor. We find the optimal allocation to the risky security as a proportion of financial wealth and as a proportion of the total wealth, defined as the combination of the financial wealth and the human capital of the investor. When the investor's objective is the maximization of the terminal wealth, we show that the optimal allocation to the risky security is a hump-shaped function of the investment horizon. However, when the investor maximizes utility from intertemporal consumption, the optimal allocation in the risky security is a constant proportion of the total wealth of the investor.
SECURITIES CLASS ACTIONS IN STATE COURT

Over the past two decades, Congress has gradually usurped the power of state regulators to enforce state securities laws and the power of state courts to adjudicate securities disputes. This Paper evaluates the impact of Congressional preemption and preclusion upon state court securities class actions. Utilizing a proprietary database, the Paper presents and analyzes a comprehensive dataset of 1500 class actions filed in state courts from 1996-2010. The Paper first examines the permissible space for state securities class actions in light of Congressional preclusion and preemption embodied in the 1998 Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act (SLUSA) and Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA). The Paper then presents the state class action filing data detailing the numbers, classifications, and jurisdictions of state class action cases that now occupy the state forums. First, as expected, the data indicates that there are few traditional stock-drop securities class actions litigated in state court today. Second, in spite of the debate over the impact of SLUSA and CAFA on 1933 Act claims, very few plaintiffs attempt to litigate these matters in state court. Finally, the number of state court class actions involving merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions is skyrocketing and now surpasses such claims filed in federal court. Moreover, various class counsel file their M & A complaints in multiple jurisdictions. The increasingly large number of multi-forum M&A class action suits burden the defendants and their counsel, the judiciary and even plaintiffs’ lawyers themselves. The paper concludes that absent effective state co-ordination, further Congressional preemption is possible, if not likely.
Law School Marketing and Legal Ethics

Law schools have misled prospective students for years about the value of legal education. In some cases, law school officials have engaged in outright deceit, knowingly spreading false information about their schools. More commonly, they have presented statistics — especially those concerning the employment outcomes of law graduates — in ways nearly guaranteed to confuse readers. These deceptions and sharp practices violate the norms of the legal profession, a profession that scrupulously regulates the advertising of legal services. The deceptions also violate ethical rules prohibiting lawyers from engaging in dishonesty, misrepresentation, and deceit.This article exposes how pitches aimed at prospective students, including the seemingly straightforward recitation of statistics on law school websites, still paint an unduly rosy picture of the legal employment market. Focusing on Rule 8.4(c) of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the article explains that law school officials have exposed themselves to professional discipline, which may offer a solution to the pervasive problem of misleading law school marketing.
Does the Fear of Terrorists Trump the Fear of Persecution in Asylum Outcomes in the Post–September 11 Era?

Historically, U.S. asylum policy has reflected both an effort to provide safe haven for deserving asylum seekers and the intent to promote national security and domestic pol icy priorities. A growing body of empirical evi dence suggests that asylum outcomes, at least in the aggregate, have been weighted more heavily by foreign policy consider ations than humanitarian concerns. Since the mid 1990s, the United States government has reformed the asylum system in response to concerns of abuse by economic migrants, burgeon ing caseloads, and national security threats. Although, as Da vergne (2008) points out, "the most reviled of asylum seekers of the global era is the 'economic refugee,' under suspicion of fleeing poverty and poor prospects in search of a better life" rather than fleeing because of the fear of persecution (65), in the wake of terrorist attacks on the United States in 1993 and 2001, the fears of economic opportunists abusing the system have combined with the broader fear of potential terrorists gaining legal entry into the country through an overburdened asylum system. Since 1995, Congress has passed two major acts to reform the asylum process in reaction to these fears. Both the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the 2005 Real ID Act were passed to prevent economic migrants and individuals who may pose security risks from entering the country on false claims of asylum. Following September 11, the U.S. government has pursued prosecution for documents fraud among asylum appli cants and aggressively enforced safe third country require ments. And, like our European counterparts, the United States has increasingly taken more deterrent and preventative actions to discourage asylum applicants from choosing it as a target for asylum and prevent potential applicants from reaching its ports of entry. Critics fear that the draconian measures adopted in response to these fears are overly broad and worry that worthy applicants have been turned away at the border or denied asylum with increasing frequency, thus leading them to face the real possibility of torture and other forms of per secution. In this article, we examine changes in U.S. asylum policy and whether the heightened security concerns after Sep tember 11 have significantly influenced the U.S. asylum pro cess and outcomes in U.S. immigration courts. U.S. ASYLUM POLICY
Credit Supply and Housing Prices in National and Local Markets

The phenomenon of “irrational exuberance” around housing prices is now well established as a driving force of housing bubbles. However, the roles of credit supply and the mispricing of credit are l...
The Surprising Lessons from Plea Bargaining in the Shadow of Terror

Since September 11, 2001, several hundred individuals have been convicted of terrorism related charges. Of these convictions, over 80% resulted from a plea of guilty. It is surprising and counterintuitive that such a large percentage of these cases are resolved in this manner, yet, even when prosecuting suspected terrorists caught attempting suicide attacks, the power of the plea bargaining machine exerts a striking influence. As a result, a close examination of these extraordinary cases offers important insights into the forces that drive the plea bargaining system. Utilizing these insights, this article critiques two divergent and dominant theories of plea bargaining present in the current literature–the administrative theory and the shadow-of-trial theory. The article then offers a new theory of plea bargaining that both expands on these existing theories and combines relevant aspects of each into one overarching model. In doing so, this article provides for a greater understanding of the function of the plea bargaining machine in the criminal justice process, the roles played by its actors, and the factors influencing its operation.
The Development of Consumer Protection Law, The Institutionalization of Consumerism, and Future Prospects and Perils

The article examines major developments in the statutes, regulations and Supreme Court cases that have regulated consumer financial services since 1969. Major victories and defeats in the battle for laws protecting consumers are described. Consumer protection law is analyzed within the context of consumerism and its role as a movement for social change and law reform. The article describes the development of a permanent organizational structure for engaging in consumer law reform. This development has resulted in the institutionalization of consumerism and its values have become embedded in society’s values, better ensuring its survival. Finally, the article explores the prospects of the continued development of strong consumer protection law and the perils it faces in the future.
Simply asking questions about health behaviors increases both healthy and unhealthy behaviors

Several recent lines of survey research demonstrate that the simple act of asking a question can lead to changes in a respondent's subsequent behavior. In the current research we asked college students their likelihood to either (i) exercise or (ii) use illegal drugs in the coming 2 months. After 2 months we asked the same college students to report their exercising and illegal drug use behaviors. The findings provide further evidence that these “question–behavior” effects occur for socially normative personal health behaviors, a domain that should have high levels of respondent vigilance and defensive processing. Of more concern, we demonstrate that when a question is asked about a socially non‐normative health behavior (i.e., illegal drug use), instead of decreases in the behavior we see increased rates of the non‐normative behavior.
On fixed point theorems and social choice paradoxes

Abstract This note explores the relationship of social choice paradoxes to fixed point theorems. A special case of the paradox proven in Chichilnsky (forthcoming), the non-existence of a continuous anonymous rule that respects anonymity with two voters and two dimensional choice spaces, is proven here to be equivalent to a fixed point problem. We indicate also how the results can be extended to higher dimensional choice spaces and any finite number of agents.
Present at the Beginning of a New Era for Antitrust: Reflections on 1982–1983

The early 1980s were an important time of transitionfor antitrust policy for the Antitrust Division of theU.S. Department of Justice. I had the privilege to beselected to serve as the first ``Chief Economist'' forthe newly installed Assistant Attorney General forAntitrust, William F. Baxter. In this essay I discusssome of the important achievements of that period, aswell as some missed opportunities.
The Electoral College, battleground states, and rule-utilitarian voting

We extend the Feddersen and Sandroni (Am Econ Rev 96(4):1271–1282, 2006) voter turnout model to include partisan districts, a battleground district, and an Electoral College. We find that expected voter turnout by a single party is highest in the battleground district, followed by the party’s majority district, which in turn is followed by the party’s minority district. Total turnout is higher in the battleground district than in the partisan districts, but the gap decreases as the level of disagreement in the partisan districts increases. Lastly, turnout in the battleground district decreases as the partisan districts become more competitive.
Optimal energy efficiency policies and regulatory demand-side management tests: How well do they match?☆

Abstract Under conventional models, subsidizing energy efficiency requires electricity to be priced below marginal cost. Its benefits increase when electricity prices increase to finance the subsidy. With high prices, subsidies are counterproductive unless consumers fail to make efficiency investments when private benefits exceed costs. If the gain from adopting efficiency is only reduced electricity spending, capping revenues from energy sales may induce a utility to substitute efficiency for generation when the former is less costly. This goes beyond standard “decoupling” of distribution revenues from sales, requiring complex energy price regulation. The models’ results are used to evaluate tests in the 2002 California Standard Practice Manual for assessing demand-side management programs. Its “Ratepayer Impact Measure” test best conforms to the condition that electricity price is too low. Its “Total Resource Cost” and “Societal Cost” tests resemble the condition for expanded decoupling. No test incorporates optimality conditions apart from consumer choice failure.
Beyond Search Costs: The Linguistic and Trust Functions of Trademarks

Modern trademark scholarship and jurisprudence view trademark law as an institution aimed at improving the amount and quality of information available in the marketplace by reducing search costs. By providing a concise and unequivocal identifier of the particular source of particular goods, trademarks facilitate the exchange between buyers and sellers, and provide producers with an incentive to maintain their goods and services at defined and persistent qualities.Working within this paradigm, this Article highlights that reducing search costs and providing incentives to maintain quality are related yet distinct functions and shows that recognizing their distinct nature enriches our understanding of trademark law. The Article first develops a distinction between two functions of trademarks: a linguistic and a trust functions. Then, the Article demonstrates how the distinction provides a matrix for evaluating the normative strength of various trademark rules and doctrines. Under this matrix, rules that promote both functions would be considered normatively strong; rules that promote neither function would be normatively weak; and rules that promote one function but not the other would be normatively ambiguous, their strength depending on the results of a closer cost-benefit analysis.
Winning while losing: Competition dynamics in the presence of indirect network effects☆

Abstract What determines competition dynamics in markets with indirect network effects? We analyze this question in a dynamic hardware–software framework, where software firms compete in quality upgrades. We identify market structure as a major determinant of competition dynamics. Indirect network effects tie together the performance of firms on the same platform: a successful competitor raises the value of all firms on the same platform, where an unsuccessful firm may enjoy a windfall increase in its market value. In contrast to the tipping result in the literature, we find tendencies toward increasing competition across platforms for a wide range of market structures.
Technology and the Law: Articulating a Women's Rights Perspective

I have in my office a poster from the NGO Forum of the World Conference, which closed the United Nations Decade for Women, held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985. The design is simple: a black, white, and red drawing of a strong and graceful African woman. Upon her head she carries a sign, in place of the traditional pot or basket. The sign reads, "If it's not appropriate for women, it's not appropriate. Tech and Tools at Forum 85, Nairobi."The poster's specific reference is to the Appropriate Technology movement. Led by women and grassroots activists during the seventies and eighties, this movement challenged the emphasis on big construction projects in foreign aid packages. An "appropriate technology" may be large or small, crafted or "high tech." The important thing is that it be accessible to its users and not require them to conform to its demands. Instead, the technology serves and sustains their chosen way of life.The vibrant image depicted by my poster also challenges the deterministic conception of technology, the idea of a "technological imperative." Two basic deterministic assumptions have profoundly influenced the law's response to technology: (1) that the pattern of technical process is preordained, and not the product of human choice; and (2) that society must adapt its arrangements in response to technological developments. These beliefs are widely held and tend to deflect critical reactions to new products and obscure opportunities to make technology more socially responsive.Today, I want to discuss the status of technology in the law and suggest that, to secure women's rights to health and a viable environment, we must re-evaluate and change the law's treatment of technology. I am going to speak very generally about both medical and reproductive health technologies and production technologies which affect the environment. I will discuss conceptual obstacles to changing the law about technology and suggest that identifying cases in which technology has already been the subject of women's struggles may help orient us toward articulating legal rights to appropriate technology.A threshold difficulty in considering technology is its peculiar invisibility. The familiar is often invisible and our understanding of technology suffers from this limitation. Technology is pervasive and it constitutes the framework for our lives, so we tend not to see individual technologies as objects nor view technological evolution as a category. Indeed, we do not have much lay vocabulary for the term "technology."
Destabilizing properties of a VaR or probability-of-ruin constraint when variances may be infinite

Abstract Despite the use of VaR as a means to control risk, regulations that constrain VaR can have an effect opposite of their intent: to increase risk taking by firms that are doing poorly. Hence VaR constraint regulations can have a destabilizing effect on the financial system. A VaR constraint on the probability that future firm equity value will be less than a floor is a constraint on the probability-of-ruin when the floor is zero. The marginal price of risk with this constraint is coherent and also additive. For a wide class of distributions, the firm—when it is doing poorly—may pay a premium for a lottery that will increase the risk of its portfolio and the opposite when the firm is doing well.
Reforming the Grantor Trust Rules

Few things in the Internal Revenue Code (Code) are as enduring as the grantor trust rules. Housed in Subpart E of Subchapter J of the Code, they are essentially the same rules that were instituted by the so-called Clifford trust regulations promulgated over a half-century age. In instances where the grantor trust rules apply, the Code ignores the separate existence of a trust. Items of income, deductions, and credits against tax are instead attributed to the grantor. Grantors are thus unable to deflect income away from themselves to others (such as a trust or a trust beneficiary) whose income is taxed at a lower marginal rate. The purpose of the grantor trust rules then, and their purpose now, is to safeguard the progressive rate structure of the income tax.
Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets

This essay examines how repugnance sometimes constrains what transactions and markets we see. When my colleagues and I have helped design markets and allocation procedures, we have often found that distaste for certain kinds of transactions is a real constraint, every bit as real as the constraints imposed by technology or by the requirements of incentives and efficiency. I'll first consider a range of examples, from slavery and indentured servitude (which once were not as repugnant as they now are) to lending money for interest (which used to be widely repugnant and is now not), and from bans on eating horse meat in California to bans on dwarf tossing in France. An example of special interest will be the widespread laws against the buying and selling of organs for transplantation. The historical record suggests that while repugnance can change over time, it can persist for a very long time, although changes in institutions that reflect repugnance can occur relatively quickly when the underlying repugnance changes.
Is life more risky in the open? Household risk-coping and the opening of China's labor markets

Abstract This paper uses a unique panel of data from rural China to analyze the impact of expanding connections to off-farm labor markets on the income and consumption of farm households. With stronger village ties to both migrant and local off-farm labor markets, households in previously autarkic village communities experience reduced exposure to shocks affecting agricultural production. The analyses presented in this paper control for the persistent effect of past shocks influencing income and consumption, household attrition potentially correlated with shocks, and endogeneity of household demographic composition, land holdings and village network connections to migrant and local labor markets.
The social cost of labor and project evaluation: A general approach

Abstract This paper presents a general framework for analyzing shadow wages in LDCs. We focus on (i) the differences between the domestic and international prices, (ii) the equilibrating mechanisms in the economy, (iii) the endogeneity of earnings in industry and agriculture, (iv) the consequences of industrial employment creation on agriculture, and (v) the nature of migration and unemployment. We identify those reduced form relationships which are central in determining the shadow wage, and use them to obtain general formulae for the shadow wage. These formulae can be specialized to alternative technological, behavioral, and institutional settings. This yields many new results concerning the relationship between the shadow wage and the market wage. Also, earlier results on shadow wages are derived as special cases of our formulae.
Sending Out an S.O.S.: Public Safety Communications Interoperability as a Collective Action Problem

This Article argues that lack of public safety communications interoperability is the result of what economist Mancur Olson called a collective action problem, and that it is the result of the national policy of public safety spectrum segregation and balkanization. It explores how market forces can be employed to solve collective action problems and also surveys several successful commercial interoperable communications networks shared by public safety users and private customers. It also applies the lessons from a series of case studies and suggests an outline for a spectrum policy that could harness market forces to alleviate the collective action problem responsible for lack of public safety interoperability.
Technology as the Driver of Payment System Rules: Will Consumers Be Provided Seatbelts and Air Bags?

Technology has led to the development of new payment devices and processing systems, and a complicated body of public and private payments law has been established in response. In this environment, consumers have little control over how their payment instruments will be processed. They are subject to onerous adhesion contracts. It is difficult for consumers to understand the legal consequences of using one payment device over another. In light of these developments, many are questioning how much responsibility the law should impose on consumers when errors occur and how much protection they deserve. Some experts favor legal rules that take maximum advantage of the efficiencies technology can achieve and retention of the present legal rules which vary from one payment device and processing system to another. The better approach, however, is to recognize that consumers have common objectives, regardless of the type of payment device they use or how it is processed. These objectives can be achieved through uniform laws that apply to all types of payment instruments and systems. Those laws should guarantee the right to an error resolution procedure, adjudication of disputes before a judicial forum, and a sixty day deadline for reporting erroneous payments.
Updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 1 (FISA) has played a prominent role in the legal response to terrorism after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Following the attacks, amendments to FISA became a high-profile part of the controversial Patriot Act. 2 In December 2005, FISA regained the spotlight when the New York Times revealed that the Bush Administration had authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct domestic surveillance of international communications without obtaining FISA orders. 3 In August 2007, FISA was in the headlines again when Congress passed a controversial amendment to the statute, the Protect America Act of 2007. 4
Concept for a Support Environment to Identify Competitive Information Systems Opportunities

Over the past years there has been growing interest in the use of information systems technology (IST) to gain competitive advantages. The use of Information System Technology (IST) to build Competitive Information Systems (CIS) raises a number of questions. Areas of interest are, amongst others, how to identify opportunities for CIS, how to evaluate these opportunities and how to implement CIS.
Estimation of dynamic discrete choice models by maximum likelihood and the simulated method of moments

We compare the performance of maximum likelihood (ML) and simulated method of moments (SMM) estimation for dynamic discrete choice models. We construct and estimate a simplified dynamic structural model of education that captures some basic features of educational choices in the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s. We use estimates from our model to simulate a synthetic dataset and assess the ability of ML and SMM to recover the model parameters on this sample. We investigate the performance of alternative tuning parameters for SMM.
On the Rational Scope of Probabilistic Rule-Based Inference Systems

Belief updating schemes in artificial intelligence may be viewed as three dimensional languages, consisting of a syntax (e. g. probabilities or certainty factors), a calculus (e. g. Bayesian or CF combination rules), and a semantics (i. e. cognitive interpretations of competing formalisms). This paper studies the rational scope of those languages on the syntax and calculus grounds. In particular, the paper presents an endomorphism theorem which highlights the limitations imposed by the conditional independence assumptions implicit in the CF calculus. Implications of the theorem to the relationship between the CF and the Bayesian languages and the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence are presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of some implications on rule-based knowledge engineering in uncertain domains. This Research was carried out while the author was at the Decision Sciences Department, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The author's current address is 624 Tisch Hall, Washington Square, New York, NY 10003.
Mixing Family With Business: A Study of Thai Business Groups and the Families Behind Them

Abstract How does the structure of the families behind business groups affect the group's organization, governance, and performance? We construct a unique dataset of family trees and business groups for 93 of the largest business families in Thailand. We find a strong positive association between family size and family involvement in the ownership and control of the family businesses. The founders’ sons play a central role in both ownership and board membership, especially when the founder of the group is dead. Greater involvement by sons is also associated with lower firm-level performance, especially when the founder is dead. One hypothesis that emerges from our analysis is that part of the decay of family-run groups over time is due to the dilution of ownership and control across a set of equally powerful descendants of the founder, which creates a “race to the bottom” in tunneling resources out of the group firms.
The Notice Problem, Unlawful Electronic Surveillance, and Civil Liability Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

This paper is the first to analyze the issue of civil liability under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It identifies what this article refers to as the notice problem: individuals subject to mistaken and unlawful electronic surveillance under FISA are never informed of the fact that they have been subject to surveillance. This notice problem is at odds with the unlawful surveillance that has occurred under FISA, as well as the statute's civil liability provision. This paper details the limited notice provisions in FISA and contrasts them with the broader notice provisions of Title III. It provides a concrete account of the instances of unlawful surveillance that have occurred under FISA at both the application and implementation stages. This article proposes the addition of statutory procedures granting the FISA Court the power to eliminate the notice problem in the most egregious cases, and thereby effectuate FISA's civil liability provision for the first time.
Estimating the tail shape parameter from option prices

In this paper, a method to estimate the tail shape parameter of the risk neutral density from option prices is developed. Closed form pricing formulas for out-of-the-money European style options are derived. The pricing formulas satisfy many well known model-free no-arbitrage properties for the options. The focus is only on the tails of the risk neutral density and not on the entire body of the density as many works have already done this. The method is quite general, and applies to a large class of risk neutral densities. Our method can be used without interpolating the implied volatility, or even the knowledge of the current index value or the dividend yield or the risk free rate. This is in contrast to every other method that attempts to estimate the risk neutral density. A case study using S&P 500 Index options is given. In particular, the estimation of the tail shape of S&P 500 index just prior to the market turmoil of the September 2008 shows a thickening of the left tail but a thinning in the midst of the turmoil.
Advancing the Culture of Life Through Faithful Citizenship

This article provides a brief summary of the principles that should guide Catholics in their political decision making and illustrates the application of those principles to our obligation to build a culture of life within a civilization of love. The first section of this article discusses human nature and the obligation to do good and avoid evil. The concepts of freedom, truth, good and evil are defined and their relationship briefly discussed. Section two of the article introduces Catholic political theory regarding the citizen's right and duty to participate in democracy and the limited role of the state in advancing the good of the human person and the human community. Section Three provides a sketch of American constitutional law regarding life issues. Section Four disputes the claim advanced by some Catholics that a candidate's views on abortion is irrelevant because ordinary citizens can not influence an issue that the courts have declared to be a matter of constitutional law. The article concludes with an examination of the potential impact of faithful citizens in building a culture of life through involvement in national and state politics.
Reading Ricci and Pyett to Provide Racial Justice Through Union Arbitration

Despite a longstanding strategy employed by labor unions of staying out of the handling of statutory employment claims, this article suggests a framework and a rationale for unions to embrace arbitration of race discrimination disputes by analyzing the results from two key 2010 Supreme Court decisions, Ricci v. DiStefano and 14 Penn Plaza v. Pyett. In reviewing the statutory employment discrimination claims involved and comparing the actions of the union representing the firefighters in the Ricci case with the actions of the union representing the office security workers in Pyett, the article explains the difficulties faced by unions in taking the appropriate action to resolve these disputes while also identifying an arbitration process that will address the concerns of all the stakeholders. In applying interest-convergence analysis, the article proposes a unique approach of using arbitration to merge the interests of unions in fairly representing all employees without conflicts about choices related to the dispute resolution forum, the interests of employers in having a single efficient forum to resolve these disputes, and the interests of employees of color in having a fair forum with effective representation by their union to obtain a satisfactory resolution of their statutory discrimination claims.
Two-Sided Competition of Proprietary vs. Open Source Technology Platforms and the Implications for the Software Industry

Technology platforms, such as Microsoft Windows, are the hubs of technology industries. We develop a framework to characterize the optimal two-sided pricing strategy of a platform firm; that is, the pricing strategy toward the direct users of the platform as well as toward firms offering applications that are complementary to the platform. We compare industry structures based on a proprietary platform (such as Windows) with those based on an open source platform (such as Linux), and analyze the structure of competition and industry implications in terms of pricing, sales, profitability, and social welfare. We find that, when the platform is proprietary, the equilibrium prices for the platform, the applications, and the platform access fee for applications may be below marginal cost, and we characterize demand conditions that lead to this. The proprietary applications sector of an industry based on an open source platform may be more profitable than the total profits of a proprietary platform industry. When users have a strong preference for application variety, the total profits of the proprietary industry are larger than the total profits of an industry based on an open source platform. The variety of applications is larger when the platform is open source. When a system based on an open source platform with an independent proprietary application competes with a proprietary system, the proprietary system is likely to dominate the open source platform industry both in terms of market share and profitability. This may explain the dominance of Microsoft in the market for PC operating systems.
Enterprise Risk Management as a Dynamic Capability: A test of its effectiveness during a crisis

The dynamic capabilities framework has emerged as a growing area of research within business disciplines—the framework seeks to explain how and why firms adapt successfully to changes in their environments. Yet, whether such capabilities are effective in periods of environmental changes that can be characterized as a crisis remains an unexplored area of research. This paper adopts the position that enterprise risk management (ERM) constitutes a dynamic capability, and examines whether a firm's ERM capability allowed it to respond effectively to the financial crisis of 2008. We find that superior ERM capability was associated with smaller decline in stock price during the downturn and superior profitability during the upturn. The results suggest that firms may need different types of dynamic capabilities to react and respond to different dimensions of environment and types of change. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Long memory and regime switching

Abstract The theoretical and empirical econometric literatures on long memory and regime switching have evolved largely independently, as the phenomena appear distinct. We argue, in contrast, that they are intimately related, and we substantiate our claim in several environments, including a simple mixture model, Engle and Smith's (Rev. Econom. Statist. 81 (1999) 553–574) stochastic permanent break model, and Hamilton's (Econometrica 57 (1989) 357–384) Markov-switching model. In particular, we show analytically that stochastic regime switching is easily confused with long memory, even asymptotically, so long as only a “small” amount of regime switching occurs, in a sense that we make precise. A Monte Carlo analysis supports the relevance of the theory and produces additional insights.
Lives, Life-Years, and Willingness to Pay

In protecting safety, health, and the environment, government has increasingly relied on cost-benefit analysis. In undertaking cost-benefit analysis, the government has monetized risks of death through the idea of “value of a statistical life” (VSL), currently assessed at about $6.1 million. Many analysts, however, have suggested that the government should rely instead on the “value of a statistical life year” (VSLY), in a way that would likely result in significantly lower benefits calculations for elderly people, and significantly higher benefits calculations for children. I urge that the government should indeed focus on statistical life-years rather than statistical lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people. Nor does a focus on life-years run afoul of ethical limits on cost-benefit analysis. It is relevant in this connection that every old person was once young, and that if all goes well, young people will eventually be old. In fact, a focus on statistical lives is a more plausibly a form of illicit discrimination than a focus on life-years, because the idea of statistical lives treats the years of older people as worth far more than the years of younger people. The hard question involves not whether to undertake this shift, but how to monetize life-years, and here willingness to pay (WTP), despite it many problems, is generally the place to begin. Discussion is also devoted to the uses and limits of the willingness to pay criterion in regulatory policy, with reference to the underlying welfare goal and to the nature of moral and distributional constraints on cost-benefit balancing.
The Relationship Between Foundations and Principles in IP Law

In my book, Justifying Intellectual Property ("JIP") (Harvard U Press, 2011), I describe three levels of analysis in intellectual property (IP) Law: (1) specific doctrines and practices; (2) midlevel policy principles, which derive from and tie together various doctrines and practices; and (3) foundational commitments, or basic normative rationales for the existence of IP. This article answers some questions that have been raised about the relationship between these levels, particularly the midlevel principles and foundational commitments. Foundations, for me, answer the "whether" question: whether IP rights ought to exist at all. Once this question is answered in the affirmative, and detailed rules begin to arise to resolve controversies and allocate rights, high-level organizing themes will be seen to emerge that tie together disparate and distinct rules. These are the midlevel principles. One particular goal of this article is to revisit the difference between utilitarianism as a foundational principle and efficiency as a midlevel principle. In JIP I reject utilitarian foundations, yet embrace efficiency as one of four midlevel principles. This article explains why.
In Search of New Foundations

In this paper I argue that corporate finance theory, empirical research, practical applications, and policy recommendations are deeply rooted in an underlying theory of the firm. I also argue that although the existing theories have delivered very important and useful insights, they seem to be quite ineffective in helping us cope with the new type of firms that is emerging. I outline the characteristics that a new theory of the firm should satisfy and how such a theory could change the way we do corporate finance, both theoretically and empirically. FOR A RELATIVELY YOUNG RESEARCHER like myself, there is a very strong tendency to look at the history of corporate finance and be overwhelmed by the giants of the recent past. A field that 40 years ago was little more than a collection of cookbook recipes that ref lected practitioners’ common sense is today a bona fide discipline, taught not only to future practitioners but also to doctoral students, both in business schools and in economic departments—a discipline whose ideas are now inf luencing other areas of economics, such as industrial organization, monetary policy, and asset pricing. The quality and the impact of the contributions that were made to the field during the last 40 years, and in particular in the period from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, justify the widespread feeling that the “golden age” of corporate finance is behind us. Two excellent recent surveys of the main areas of corporate finance reinforce this sense: the capital structure survey by Harris and Raviv ~1991! and the corporate governance survey by Shleifer and Vishny ~1997!. Both are very lucid categorizations of the existing literature. This lucidity is the product not only of the ability of their authors but also of the ripeness of the moment. Both surveys follow a period of intense activity in the field, and in a certain sense, they close it. It is especially noteworthy that, 10 years later, the survey by Harris and Raviv ~1991! would not necessitate any dramatic rewriting. Although there have certainly been important contributions afterward, they have been mostly empirical, and they have not undermined the conceptual framework underlying Harris and Raviv’s analyses.