cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Boston Bombers

On April 15, 2013, two bombs were set off during the Boston Marathon. The first suspects were fingered by the public through a new, technologically enabled vigilantism, based upon their appearance as "brown," or "looks Muslim." More than a decade after September 11, that those who appear Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim are identified as terrorists and disidentified as citizens, seems sadly uncontroversial. But what to make of the Tsarnaev brothers? I argue that, while both brothers are generally held to have been responsible for the bombings, Dzhokhar is perceived as the citizen and Tamerlan as the terrorist. While this is formally true - Dzhokhar had successfully naturalized as a citizen and Tamerlan had not - it is also the case that only the younger brother is perceived to be a citizen as a matter of identity. There is tremendous sympathy directed towards the younger brother. This is both linked to the belief that he was brainwashed by his older brother, and produced by a line between the "white ethnic" and "Islamic terrorist" the two brothers differently straddle. For many Americans, Dzhokhar is one of "us." Dzhokhar thus appears as the white American victim of his nonwhite - Muslim and alien - brother. In the words of his friends, Dzhokhar was "just a normal American kid," and, as such, he resists being cast as a monster, the monster that we assume to be the terrorist.
Democracy and Reforms: Evidence from a New Dataset

Abstract Empirical evidence on the relationship between democracy and economic reforms is limited to few reforms, countries, and years. This paper studies the effect of democracy on the adoption of...
Why is it so hard to finance budget deficits? Problems of a developing country

Abstract This paper examines possible ways for a developing country to finance budget deficits by drawing on domestic resources. We do so by analyzing Pakistan’s National Savings Scheme (NSS). The NSS has a number of unusual attributes, and its impact upon the economy of Pakistan is not clear. Given Pakistan’s chronic difficulties with the public sector deficit, the NSS, which is a key instrument in financing that deficit, is of great importance. We use an econometric model to analyze the relationship between the demands for NSS deposits and various other financial instruments in Pakistan. In particular, we look at the relationship between deposits in the NSS, bank deposits, and foreign currency deposits. We conclude that bank deposits and NSS deposits appear to be net substitutes, as do NSS and foreign currency deposits. Bank deposits and foreign currency deposits, however, seem to be neither substitutes nor complements. Also, the estimated income derivative of the demand for bank deposits is negative, while that of foreign currency deposits is positive. For the NSS, it is not significantly different from zero. Finally, is evidence that foreign currency deposits are a net substitute for NSS deposits. Thus, there is some empirical support for the belief that foreign currency deposits have absorbed a part of the demand for NSS deposits. Accordingly, the availability of these foreign currency deposits may have reduced the ability of the government to finance itself.
Exchange rate response to macronews: Through the lens of microstructure

Abstract This study investigates the microeffects of macronews using customer price-contingent orders (i.e. stop-loss and take-profit orders) data from a large foreign exchange dealing bank in the pound/dollar market. Results reveal that price-contingent order placement intensifies 3–5 h prior to the news events. I examine the link between this surge in order placement and the exchange-rate jump following the announcement. I find that price-contingent orders can enhance our ability to explain post-release exchange-rate returns by half. Furthermore, the estimated effect of orders is orthogonal to the news surprises. This implies that there may be a component of the news response that purely reflects institutional features such as order types and not necessarily the content of the public information itself.
A Nineteenth Century “Habeas Corpus Mill”: The Chinese Before the Federal Courts in California

In preventing the landing of Chinese ship passengers arriving in San Francisco in the late nineteenth century, federal officials triggered a series of challenges that would preoccupy California's federal courts for nearly a decade. This litigation produced overwhelming docket pressures, created an acrimonious breach within the Ninth Judicial Circuit, and brought the local federal judges under harsh public criticism for frustrating the demands of the anti-Chinese movement. Despite such pressures, San Francisco's federal judges sought to hear Chinese habeas corpus cases with judicial fairness and offered--for a time at least--protection from some of the most virulent opponents of the Chinese. A series of laws restricting Chinese immigration beginning in 1882, served as an immediate cause of disputes over the validity of detaining Chinese petitioners. Two Judges in particular, Ogden Hoffman of the Northern District of California, and Lorenzo Sawyer, the state's presiding circuit judge, played prominent roles in this habeas corpus litigation.
Intention and Attempt

Anglo-American criminal law traditionally demands a criminal purpose for an attempt conviction, even when the crime attempted requires only foresight or recklessness. Some legal philosophers have defended this rule by appeal to an alleged difference in the “moral character” or “intentional structure” of intended versus non-intended harms. I argue that there are reasons to be skeptical of any such differences; and that even if conceded, it is only on the basis of an unworkable view of criminal responsibility that such a distinction would support a rule restricting attempts to criminal purpose. I defend instead the “continuity thesis,” according to which attempts are functionally continuous with endangerment offenses: both are legal efforts to regulate unreasonably dangerous conduct. The upshot of the continuity thesis is that there is little substantive difference between attempt and endangerment in principle, no matter how they are labeled in law.
Maternity Leave Under the FMLA: An Analysis of the Litigation Experience

In the U.S., the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, ("FMLA") serves as the most visible, and to date, most significant legislative effort in addressing work/family conflicts facing today's workers. While the FMLA is framed in sex-neutral language, conventional wisdom has been that it was enacted to protect women. If conventional wisdom is correct, and the FMLA's motivation is in large measure to protect women, then it is appropriate to evaluate how well the FMLA alleviates problems faced by women due to conflicting job and family responsibilities. The problems faced by women regarding leaves taken due to the birth or adoption of a child, seems particularly well-suited for this purpose. We examine the litigation experience regarding disputes involving leaves taken due to the birth or adoption of a child. By analyzing outcomes of FMLA disputes that are litigated, we obtain a more complete picture of how concerns related to family/work tensions are being resolved in practice. Together with information on how employers have changed leave policies after the enactment of the FMLA, and how employees' behavior has been altered following the enactment of the act, we can provide a more complete picture of the overall impact of the legislation. We begin with a brief description of trends in female labor force participation and the presence of dual-earner households in the U.S. labor market, conditions which likely led to the need for family and medical leave legislation. We then review various practices that business and government organizations have implemented to balance work and family conflicts, as well as related features of the FMLA, particularly those pertaining to childbirth and adoption. With this background in place, we introduce a framework for examining FMLA litigation. We then review federal court cases involving requests for family leave due to the birth or adoption of a child under the FMLA to determine the nature of conflicts occurring under the legislation, and the resolution of those conflicts by the courts.
Procedural Incrementalism: A Model for International Bankruptcy

From Parmalat to Yukos, the pace of cross-border bankruptcy filings has been accelerating. Scholarly attention and policy reform have increasingly focused on the financial distress of enterprises with assets and creditors dispersed throughout multiple jurisdictions. Yet despite ongoing globalization and economic integration, insolvency law has remained stubbornly resistant to treaties and other international efforts to design some form of unified, global regime for resolving private financial defaults. Part of the reason progress remains so elusive is that two competing paradigms of international bankruptcy - universalism and territorialism - continue to divide academics and policymakers alike. Proposed treaties premised on one approach have failed to attract proponents of the other. This article offers a model for how international bankruptcy efforts might find support notwithstanding the ongoing divide between universalism and territorialism. It constructs this model in part by looking at the startling success of one specific reform: the recently adopted UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency, which is already being proposed for domestic enactment as Title 15 to the United States Bankruptcy Code. By looking at what made this specific mechanism of bankruptcy reform successful in the face of so many past failures, and in the face of ongoing normative disagreement about international bankruptcy system design, the article seeks to extrapolate from the Model Law's unique characteristics a general model for global bankruptcy reform. The principal attributes that made the Model Law able to break the international bankruptcy loggerhead, this article argues, were a modesty of scope and focus on procedural law - "procedural incrementalism." By adopting such an approach, the drafters of the Model Law enabled skeptical territorial states a chance to acclimate to a form of proto-universalism - a system that is not universalist in the strict, traditional sense, but one that engages, this article contends, the two theoretical cores of the universalist model. Drawing on some insights of modern conflicts theory, this article further argues that the focus on low stakes, procedural matters at the periphery of bankruptcy law enabled the drafters to earn concessions of regulatory sovereignty - a necessary condition of universalism - that might otherwise have been impossible. The article tests its model of procedural incrementalism against very recent reform efforts that have built upon the growing momentum of the Model Law, such as UNCITRAL's voluminous Draft Legislative Guide for best practices bankruptcy, and finds some preliminary support.
Call Center Outsourcing: Coordinating Staffing Level and Service Quality

In this paper, we study the contracting issues in an outsourcing supply chain consisting of a user company and a call center that does outsourcing work for the user company. We model the call center as a G/G/s queue with customer abandonment. Each call has a revenue potential, and we model the call center's service quality by the percentage of calls resolved (revenue realized). The call center makes two strategic decisions: how many agents to have and how much effort to exert to achieve service quality. We are interested in the contracts the user company can use to induce the call center to both staff and exert effort at levels that are optimal for the outsourcing supply chain (i.e., chain coordination). Two commonly used contracts are analyzed first: piecemeal and pay-per-call-resolved contracts. We show that although they can coordinate the staffing level, the resulting service quality is below system optimum. Then, depending on the observability and contractibility of the call center's effort, we propose two contracts that can coordinate both staffing and effort. These contracts suggest that managers pay close attention to service quality and its contractibility in seeking call center outsourcing.
Local economic effects of a government-owned depository institution: Evidence from a natural experiment in Japan

Abstract Beginning in 2000, Japan’s postal saving system experienced a rapid outflow of funds as a large number of 10-year Postal Saving Certificates were maturing. This paper exploits this episode as a natural experiment in order to investigate the effects of a government-owned depository institution on local economic performance. The results show that the prefectures in which local funds were more heavily invested in the postal saving system in the early 1990s tended to experience a larger shift of funds away from the postal saving system and that these prefectures performed better in terms of output and small business creation in the early 2000s.
U.S. Legal Ethics: The Coming of Age of Global and Comparative Perspectives

This Article reviews the influence of comparative law during the past 100 years on the field of U.S. legal ethics. It begins by defining the field of legal ethics and then divides the last 100 years into three distinct comparative legal ethics eras. The first era consists of the time period between 1904 and 1973, during which there was both domestic and comparative legal ethics scholarship, although a relatively small amount compared to later years. The second time period, which dates from 1974, when legal ethics became a required course, to 1997, represents the coming of age of domestic legal ethics scholarship. This time period also included a significant amount of legal ethics scholarship employing a comparative or global perspective. The Article continues by analyzing the time period from 1998 to the present and offers the thesis that in 1998, there was a fundamental transformation or sea change that occurred with respect to the use of global and comparative perspectives to discuss U.S. legal ethics issues. The Article cites several post-1998 examples to demonstrate the coming of age of these perspectives. The final section of the Article identifies various factors that contributed to, and have helped sustain, these heightened comparative and global perspectives.
Open Access to Legal Scholarship: Dropping the Barriers to Discourse and Dialogue

This article focuses on the importance of free and open access to legal scholarship and commentary on the law.Â It argues that full understanding of authoritative legal texts requires access to informed commentary as well as to the texts of the law themselves, and that free and open access to legal commentary will facilitate cross-border dialogue and foster international discourse in law. The paper discusses the obligations of scholars and publishers of legal commentary to make their work as widely accessible as possible.Â Examples of institutional and disciplinary repositories for legal scholarship are presented, as are the possible impacts of such initiatives as the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship.
Estimating the Impact of WTO and Domestic Reforms on the Indian Cotton and Textile Sectors: a General-Equilibrium Approach

Abstract The agreement to abolish the quotas on textiles and clothing introduced under the Multi-ﬁber Arrangement(MFA) will create a new and much more competitive world market for India’s exports of textiles and cloth-ing. India’s inefﬁcient and costly policies, such as cotton export quotas, the hank yarn obligation, and therestrictive policies on foreign investment that have held back productivity in the Indian apparel sector, willimpose serious costs. The authors consider the implications of reforming these policies in an open tradingenvironment using a multiregion, applied general-equilibrium model.They ﬁnd that the costs of these poli-cies to India increase substantially following abolition of the MFA; the beneﬁts to India from domesticreforms are considerably enhanced when there is global free trade in textiles and apparel. 1. Introduction India is the world’s third largest cotton producer (after the USA and China) with 25%of the world cotton area and 15% of the world cotton output (USITC, 2001). Indiaalso ranks second in textile production (after China) and third in the production of ﬁlament yarn (USITC). Cotton-based garments also dominate India’s exports ofapparel.The cotton sector in India is large and quite complex, with very diverse ﬁrmsand an uneven use of latest technology involved in the processing of cotton into textileand apparel products (Jaikumar, 1995).Traditionally, the cotton spinning, weaving andclothing industries have tended to be viewed as part of an integrated cotton sector.Policies have provided incentives for cotton to be processed in India, and in doing so they have indirectly discriminated against cotton production by depressing cottonprices. Policy intervention has been heavy in the spinning and weaving industries,attempting to reserve parts of each sector for a small-scale industry (SSI) and to main-tain employment even at the expense of lowering productivity. High import barriersand domestic taxes, and problems with export duty drawback mechanisms, have dis-criminated strongly against synthetic ﬁber production and exports, increasing India’sreliance on cotton-based products.The overall picture of the textile and apparel sectors in India is one of great poten-tial but under-performance (Ramakrishna, 1995). This potential is particularly im-portant in light of the liberalization in textiles and wearing apparel trade foreseen under the Uruguay Round agreement, as well as ambitious export-led growth and liberalization programs undertaken by the Indian government since 1991 (Bhide et al.,1996). However, full implementation of the Uruguay Round agreement and recent
How Subprime Borrowers and Mortgage Brokers Shared the Pie

We develop an equilibrium model for origination fees charged by mortgage brokers and show how the equilibrium fee distribution depends on borrowers' valuation for their loans and their information about fees. We use noncrossing quantile regressions and data from a large subprime lender to estimate conditional fee distributions. Given the fee distribution, we identify the distributions of borrower valuations and informedness. The level of informedness is higher for larger loans and in better educated neighborhoods. We quantify the fraction of the surplus from the mortgage that goes to the broker, and how it decreases as the borrower becomes more informed.
Assessing the Federal Trade Commission's Privacy Assessments

Regulators worldwide need to keep tabs on companies caught violating consumer protection rules. Assessments by outside accounting firms are a key tool for regulators to detect privacy and security problems. It's not widely known that an assessment, a term of art in accounting, is a less-intense evaluation than an audit. Also, in practice, assessments overseen by America's top consumer protection cop, the US Federal Trade Commission, fall short of what's needed to ensure that information-intensive companies are protecting privacy and honoring promises. This article outlines five practical steps to make company oversight more effective.
Sources of Franco-German corporate support for the euro: The effects of business network centrality and political connections

During the euro crisis of June 2011, 51 representatives of major French and German corporations launched a political campaign in support of the euro. This study shows that firm size facilitated high-quality business contacts but that variables of economic interest were not associated with a higher probability of campaign participation when controlling for relational variables. Instead, the empirical analysis suggests that Franco-German business leaders joined the campaign because (1) their central network position provided them with informational resources to transcend the interest of their firm, and (2) their social and political embeddedness either led to an internalization of pro-euro values or gave them an incentive to improve their long-term reputation with political decision makers who strongly support the euro as part of the European integration project. Thus, the directors’ corporate and political ties facilitated and motivated corporate political action in support of the euro.
US Economic Sanctions Against China: Who Gets Hurt?

The United States maintains a broad spectrum of economic sanctions against China ranging from export controls to prohibitions on certain imports. Our study finds that, although from a macroeconomic perspective, US sanctions have had no significant adverse effect on China's overall economic growth and trade between the two countries, they do have a negative impact on producers and consumers in both countries. US economic sanctions have hindered technology transfer to China and US investment in China. US restrictions on imports from China have caused deadweight losses for the US due to higher domestic production costs for import substitutes and a reduction in consumption. US export controls have hindered US exports to China and contributed to large US trade deficits with China. The export controls have also caused losses of high-paid jobs in the United States and benefited competitors from other countries. In addition, US economic sanctions against China have had significant third-party effects. China's diversification of imports to sources other than the United States may have a long-term effect on US exports to China even after US economic sanctions against China are lifted.
The Effects of Out‐of‐Regime Guidance on Auditor Judgments About Appropriate Application of Accounting Standards

Accountants making judgments with respect to a particular set of standards are increasingly aware of standards from other reporting regimes that offer additional or conflicting guidance. In fact, IFRS encourages reliance on out-of-regime standards when IFRS lacks guidance. This paper reports the results of two experiments which provide evidence that auditors in such circumstances are vulnerable to contrast effects, whereby reporting judgments under IFRS are systematically influenced away from the accounting treatment supported by standards from another regime (U.S. GAAP). Contrast effects are observed (1) when out-of-regime standards are considered before making a reporting judgment under IFRS, and (2) when out-of-regime standards are applied as local GAAP for a subsidiary of a foreign parent that reports under IFRS. We also find that contrast effects are reduced when auditors believe IFRS lacks guidance. These results have implications for financial statement preparers and auditors in the current incomplete-convergence environment. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Financial executive qualifications, financial executive turnover, and adverse SOX 404 opinions

This study attempts to provide a comprehensive understanding of the interrelationships among chief financial officers’ (CFOs’) professional qualifications, SOX Section 404 internal control weakness, CFOs’ turnover, CFOs’ qualification improvement, and correction of material weaknesses. We find that firms receiving initial adverse SOX 404 opinions for 2004 have less qualified CFOs. Adverse SOX 404 opinion recipients experience more CFO turnover in 2005, and these firms are more likely to hire CFOs having improved qualifications. Results show that simply hiring a new CFO is not associated with SOX 404 opinion improvement. Opinion improvement requires hiring a better qualified CFO.
Foreign Official Immunity and the “Baseline” Problem

The parable is sometimes told of a person who, having asked for directions, receives the response: “I wouldn’t start from here.” Although there can be more than one path to the same destination, starting points do matter. At times, starting points can even determine outcomes. This is true of foreign official immunity, as recent judicial opinions and academic commentary illustrate. By “foreign official immunity,” I mean the immunity of current or former officials of one state from the adjudicatory jurisdiction of another state. Such immunity could exist under the forum state’s domestic law, under international law, or both. In thinking about jurisdictional immunity, it is helpful to distinguish between status-based immunity, which attaches to an individual while he or she occupies a particular position, and conductbased immunity, which attaches to certain acts performed by individuals on behalf of states.1 Conduct-based immunity has emerged as a more contested category than status-based immunity, particularly in cases that are not explicitly governed by statute or treaty. In several recent cases, domestic courts have grappled with the scope of conduct-based immunity as a matter of common law, statutory law, and customary international law. In so doing, some courts have failed to distinguish between precedents involving defendants who are physically present in the forum state’s territory, and precedents involving defendants who have not been served within the jurisdiction. Insisting on this distinction might at first seem counterintuitive, because conduct-based immunity attaches to the act, not the individual. However, all cases of
Gone But Not Conforming: Protecting the Abhorrent Testator from Majoritarian Cultural Norms Through Minority-Culture Arbitration

In a variety of contexts, cultural minorities have cause to fear adjudication of their legal rights and responsibilities in a legal system dominated by majority-culture personnel (most notably including judges and jurors). This is particularly true when cultural minorities attempt to use formal legal processes to give effect to choices that are inconsistent with prevailing community norms. In such cases, the substantive merit of their legal claims is at risk of being subjugated to majoritarian values, through a process that relies on members of the majority culture to vindicate the substantive rights at issue. This phenomenon presents a cruel dilemma: cultural minorities must either forego the formal enforcement of their legal rights or trust enforcement of their rights to a culturally-biased forum. This Article proposes a solution to this Catch-22, at least insofar as testamentary freedom is concerned.Our society is committed in principle to the ideal of testamentary freedom. In practice, however, the law disfavors testamentary dispositions that deviate from the norm; it prefers gifts to the testator's legal spouse and close blood relations over gifts to other potential beneficiaries. Thus, for example, the matriarch who disinherits her children in favor of the guru who gave her spiritual comfort in her declining years faces a greater likelihood that her estate plan will be invalidated by a trier of fact whose sense of propriety is offended by the gift.Using the “abhorrent” testator as the focal point for an exploration of the larger problem of systemic bias, this Article considers testator-compelled arbitration as a means for overcoming the trier of fact's propensity to invalidate any estate plan that does not conform to majoritarian cultural norms. Part I of this Article identifies the problem and explores how the trier of fact in a will contest, wittingly or unwittingly, may use legal doctrines intended to safeguard testamentary freedom to undermine the testamentary freedom of the nonconforming testator. Part II of this Article suggests a means for alleviating this threat to the nonconforming testator's estate plan. Since the threat arises from distinctions between the testator's culture and those of the trier of fact, the proposed solution focuses on cultural understanding. Part II recommends that the nonconforming testator direct in her will that any contest concerning the will shall be adjudicated by an arbitrator appointed by the testator. Thus, the testator will be able to select a decision-maker who is familiar with and respectful of the values that informed the drafting of her estate plan. Lastly, Part III of this Article considers and rejects several objections to testator-compelled arbitration.
Power Shifts in International Law: Structural Realignment and Substantive Pluralism

For most of the past sixty years, the United States and Europe have led, independently and collectively, the international legal system. Yet, the rise of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the BRICs) over the past decade has caused a profound transformation of global politics. This paper examines the implications of this redistribution of power for international law. While international lawyers have long debated the ability of law to constrain state behavior, this paper shifts the debate from the power of law to the role of power within international law. It first advances a structural argument that the diffusion, disaggregation, and issue-specific asymmetries in the distribution of power are giving rise to a multi-hub structure for international law, distinct from past structures such as bipolarity and multipolarity. This multi-hub structure increases pluralism within the international legal system. It also creates downward pressure on international legal processes to migrate from the global level toward a number of flexible, issue-specific subsystems. The paper then proceeds to demonstrate that the anticipated pluralism is emerging at three substantive tension points as some rising powers articulate distinct preferences with respect to sovereignty, legitimacy, and the role of the state in economic development. At each of these tension points, rising powers are reasserting the preeminence of the state in international law, leading to a gradual turning away from the individualization of international law championed by the United States and Europe back toward the Westphalian origins of the international legal system. Notwithstanding this turn, the United States stands to benefit from the new multi-hub structure of international law.
Direct and Market Effects of Enforcing Emissions Trading Programs: An Experimental Analysis

Since firms in an emissions trading program are linked together through a permit market, so too are their compliance choices. Thus, enforcement strategies for trading programs must account for not only the direct effects of enforcement on compliance and emissions decisions, but also the indirect effects that occur because changes in enforcement can induce changes in permit prices. This paper uses laboratory experiments to test for these direct and indirect market effects. Consistent with theoretical predictions, we find a direct effect of enforcement on individual violations, as well as a countervailing market effect through the permit price. Thus, the productivity of increased enforcement pressure to reduce noncompliance is partially offset by a countervailing price effect. Furthermore, there is no direct effect of enforcement on the emissions choices of firms, only a negative price effect. This suggests that the only way increased enforcement can have an impact on environmental quality is if it is large enough and applied widely enough to induce an increase in the equilibrium permit price.
The Effect of Trading Volume on Analysts’ Forecast Bias

ABSTRACT: This study models the interaction between a sell-side analyst and risk-averse investors. It derives an analyst’s optimal earnings forecast and investors’ optimal trading decisions in a setting where the analyst’s payoff depends on the trading volume the forecast generates as well as on the forecast error. In the fully separating equilibrium, we find that the analyst biases the forecast upward (downward) if his private signal reveals relatively good (bad) news. The model predicts that: (1) the analyst biases the forecast upward more often than downward and the forecast is on average optimistic; (2) the magnitude of the analyst’s bias is increasing in the per-share benefit from trading volume he receives; and (3) the analyst’s expected squared forecast error may increase in the precision of his private information. Finally, we characterize the circumstances under which the (rational) analyst acts as if he overweights or underweights his private information.
Market Pricing of Political Risk: Evidence from the Property-Liability Insurance Industry

On September 14, 2005, a press report announced the Mississippi Attorney General's intention to file a suit against the insurance industry forcing homeowners’ insurers to pay flood damage claims despite the standard water damage exclusion. This increase in uncertainty regarding whether insurance contracts would be upheld in Mississippi resulted in an increase in political risk. We use an event-study methodology to measure the equity market's reaction to this change in political risk. We find negative and significant average abnormal returns on the announcement date for insurers that wrote policies in Mississippi, amounting to an estimated average loss in market value of approximately $225 million. By contrast, insurers with no Mississippi exposure experienced insignificant abnormal returns. We do not, however, find a significant relationship between our continuous proxy for exposure extent and abnormal returns. Our results provide some evidence suggesting that political risk is rationally priced by equity market participants.
Antitrust in Innovative Industries

We study the effects of antitrust policy in industries with continual innovation. Antitrust policies that restrict incumbent behavior toward new entrants may have conflicting effects on innovation incentives, raising the profits of new entrants, but lowering those of continuing incumbents. We show that the direction of the net effect can be determined by analyzing shifts in innovation benefit and supply, holding the innovation rate fixed. We apply this framework to analyze several specific antitrust policies. We also show that, in some cases, the tension does not arise, and policies that protect entrants necessarily raise the rate of innovation.
What’s holding back blockchain finance? On the possibility of decentralized autonomous finance

Abstract Despite the past decade’s rapid innovation in adapting blockchain technology to new uses, financial intermediation remains elusive except in basic and highly collateralized forms. We introduce the concept of the technical frontier to delimit the kinds of interactions that can feasibly be structured algorithmically among pseudonymous agents, as on a blockchain, and show that lending and financial intermediation – unlike monetary exchange – lie outside it, even in simple forms. The path forward for truly blockchain-native financial applications, therefore, must involve the integration of real-world identity information in order to disincentivize defection. We discuss several potential technologies for doing so, and conclude that such integration is possible without compromising pseudonymity, provided real-world identity is available in the breach.
Fiscal Discriminations in Three Wars

In 1790, a U.S. paper dollar was widely held in disrepute (something shoddy was not ‘worth a Continental’). By 1879, a U.S. paper dollar had become ‘as good as gold.’ These outcomes emerged from how the U.S. federal government financed three wars: the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. In the beginning, the U.S. government discriminated greatly in the returns it paid to different classes of creditors; but that pattern of discrimination diminished over time in ways that eventually rehabilitated the reputation of federal paper money as a store of value.
The importance of quality: How music festivals achieved commercial success

This paper examines the characteristics that are important to current commercially viable massive music festivals when making decisions on who to hire while facing horizontal and vertical quality differentiation with heterogeneous preferences among intended consumers. A model of customer demand motivates the empirical analysis using a unique bundling problem in which the consumer faces an unknown element, depending on festival reputation for expected utility. The empirical analysis utilizes characteristics important to the negotiation between the festival and the band as input. Musical acts with an album recognized as being of a high quality are about 33 % more likely to be hired by a festival in the year of release and 50 % more likely the following year. A top touring band is 40 % more likely to be hired in the first year, but 45 % less likely to be hired in the following year, likely due to an increased cost of hiring. Festivals hire quality, unknown bands to take advantage of the lower costs of lesser known acts by leveraging a reputation for evaluating quality before the consumer. Other industries face similar input decisions, giving the results a broader application.
The Risk Content of Exports: A Portfolio View of International Trade

It has been suggested that countries whose exports are in especially risky sectors will experience higher output volatility. This paper develops a measure of the riskiness of a country’s pattern of export specialization, and illustrates its features across countries and over time. The exercise reveals large cross-country difierences in the risk content of exports. This measure is strongly correlated with the volatility of terms-of-trade, total exports, and output, but does not exhibit a close relationship to the level of income, overall trade openness, or other country characteristics. We then propose an explanation for what determines the risk content of exports, based on the theoretical literature exemplifled by Turnovsky (1974). Countries with acomparative advantage in safe sectors or a strong enough comparative advantage in risky sectors will specialize, whereas countries whose comparative advantage in risky sectors is not too strong will diversify their export structure to insure against export income risk. We use both non-parametric and semi-parametric techniques to demonstrate that these theoretical predictions are strongly supported by the data.
The Trade Facilitation Agreement: A New Hope for the World Trade Organization

The new WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) is a significant step forward for the international trading regime, representing new hope for the relevance of the WTO.The TFA is the first multilateral agreement since the creation of the WTO in 1995 and includes novel measures to help developing countries build capacity, while also taking into consideration regulatory concerns of WTO members through the application of the general GATT exceptions to the new agreement. While the TFA may appear narrow in scope, with regards to goods it is arguably the broadest WTO Agreement besides the GATT, since all goods that cross national borders find themselves subject to trade facilitation measures. If the TFA is properly interpreted, the combination of capacity-building measures, a focus on technological improvements and the judicious invocation of Article XX could result in a win-win situation wherein routine positive trade is streamlined, reducing time required to cross borders, while negative trade is more easily controlled and regulated at the border.Despite regulatory questions concerning implementation, it is likely that the TFA will reduce the cost of trading across borders, while improving trade for developing countries and allowing WTO members to better control trade flows, through a combination of procedural streamlining and regulatory discretion.
Discounting Dollars, Discounting Lives: Intergenerational Distributive Justice and Efficiency

The view that intergenerational distributive justice and efficiency should be treated separately is familiar, yet controversial. This article elaborates the often-implicit justifications for separate treatment and provides a more express statement of how and when such treatment is appropriate. Substantial attention is devoted to an approach that holds constant the intraand intergenerational distribution of well-being, which proves to be a valuable analytical device even for intergenerational policies that are not distribution neutral. Also explored are possible interrelationships between intergenerational distributive justice and efficiency, the choice of interest rate for discounting dollars, and how the present approach relates to those that would employ direct social weights to dollars at different points in time. Forthcoming, University of Chicago Law Review
Is an Automaker's Road to Bankruptcy Paved with Customers' Beliefs?

We explore the role the feedback loop between firms' financial health and consumers' demand for their products plays in the auto market. We construct a simple model of an automaker making pricing and debt service (continuation) decisions while recognizing that consumers are sensitive to whether it stays in business. We show that multiple equilibria can exist in such a model, and calibrate it to match stylized facts surrounding GM's recent bankruptcy. The results suggest that while the impact of financial distress on demand substantially reduced GM's profit, bank-run-like multiple equilibria do not appear likely in this market.
Cash Holdings and CEO Turnover

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) characteristics, such as the level of risk aversion, are known to affect corporate financial policies, and therefore are likely to impact corporate liquidity decisions. We examine changes in cash holdings around CEO turnover events, a period in which discrete changes in managerial preferences and abilities are likely to have the most dramatic effect on cash holdings. Our results suggest that cash holdings increase significantly following forced departures. The increase is persistent over the successor’s tenure and is robust to controls for the standard firm-level determinants of cash holdings and corporate governance characteristics. We find that higher cash holdings arise mainly through the management of net working capital, as opposed to asset sales or reductions in investment. This suggests that the changes are optimal for shareholders rather than an indication of serious agency problems. This conclusion is supported further by our finding that the marginal value of cash does not decrease following the turnover.
DESIGNING ECONOMIC INSTRUMENTS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT IN A DECENTRALIZED FISCAL SYSTEM

When external effects are important, markets will be inefficient, and economists have considered several broad classes of economic instruments to correct these inefficiencies. However, the standard economic analysis has tended to neglect important distinctions and interactions between the geographic scope of pollutants, the enforcement authority of various levels of government, and the fiscal responsibilities of the levels of government. For example, externalities generated in a particular local area may be confined to the local area or may spill over to other jurisdictions. Also, local governments may be well informed about how best to regulate or enforce pollution control within their jurisdiction, but they may not consider the effects of their actions on other jurisdictions. Finally, the existence of locally-generated waste emissions affects the appropriate assignment of both expenditure and tax responsibilities among levels of government. The standard analysis therefore focuses mainly upon an aggregate (or national) perspective, it typically ignores the possibility that the externality may be created and addressed by local governments, and it does not consider the implications of decentralization for the design of economic instruments targeted at environmental problems. This paper examines the implications of decentralization for the design of corrective policies; that is, how does one design economic instruments in a decentralized fiscal system in which externalities exist at the local level and in which subnational governments have the power to provide local public services, as well as to choose tax instruments that can both finance these expenditures and correct the market failures of externalities?
How Durkheim's Theory of Meaning‐making Influenced Organizational Sociology

Emile Durkheim’s Division of Labor has palpably influenced students of organizations, occupations, and stratification. Chapter 11, by Paul Hirsch, Peer Fiss, and Amanda Hoel-Green, documents that influence by exploring his contribution to our understanding of the global division of labor. In this chapter I examine the influence of Durkheim’s theory of meaning on organizational sociology, which has taken a cultural turn since the late 1970s with the rise of the new institutional theory (Meyer and Rowan, 1977, Dimaggio and Powell, 1983) and organizational culture theory (Barley and Kunda, 1992, Schein, 1996). As the founder of the cultural approach in sociology, Durkheim might well have won credit for the cultural turn in organizational analysis. But while he is frequently cited for his influence on micro-level constructionists and symbolic interactionists, such as Erving Goffman (1974) and Karl Weick (1995), he is rarely cited by social constructionists who study organizations (but see Dobbin 2004).
Do Investors Respond to Explanatory Language Included in Unqualified Audit Reports

This article investigates whether investors respond to explanatory language (EL) added to unqualified audit reports. Although prior research finds an association between auditor EL and lower financial reporting quality, surveys suggest that many investors limit their attention to the unqualified nature of the opinion. We use three‐day abnormal returns and abnormal trading volume to measure investor response to EL in unqualified audit reports issued from 2000 to 2014. We find little evidence to indicate that investors respond to auditor EL at the audit report release date. In further analyses, we find that the lack of investor response is attributable both to incomplete investor reactions (55 percent of EL occurrences) and previous incorporation of EL (40 percent of EL occurrences). Overall, the results support policymakers’ initiatives to improve the usefulness of unqualified audit reports. Les investisseurs reagissent‐ils au texte explicatif des rapports d'audit sans reserve ? Les auteurs se demandent si les investisseurs reagissent au texte explicatif ajoute dans les rapports d'audit sans reserve. Bien qu'un lien entre le texte explicatif de l'auditeur et la qualite inferieure de l'information financiere ait ete observe dans de precedentes etudes, les sondages semblent indiquer que seule l'absence de reserve dans le rapport d'audit retient l'attention de bon nombre d'investisseurs. Les auteurs utilisent les rendements anormaux et les volumes d’echange anormaux notes sur une periode de trois jours pour evaluer la reaction des investisseurs au texte explicatif que contiennent les rapports d'audit sans reserve publies entre 2000 et 2014. Ils relevent peu d'indications susceptibles de confirmer que les investisseurs reagissent au texte explicatif de l'auditeur a la date de publication du rapport d'audit. En poussant plus loin leurs analyses, les auteurs constatent que l'absence de reaction des investisseurs est attribuable a la fois a l'incompletude de leur reaction (55 pour cent des occurrences de texte explicatif) et a l'integration anterieure du texte explicatif (40 pour cent des occurrences de texte explicatif). Dans l'ensemble, les resultats justifient les efforts des normalisateurs pour ameliorer l'utilite des rapports d'audit sans reserve.
The Evolving Intervention Regime in Africa: From Basket Case to Market Place?

The analysis that follows aims to present dynamic new information about pressing law of the use of force and peacemaking developments in Africa. It is meant to be more descriptive than analytic. It will discuss, among other things, the evolution of the international law of the use of force by assessing state practice and treaty law developments in Africa since the end of the Cold War.