cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Schwarzschild Models for the Galaxy

Schwarzschild's orbit-superposition technique is the most developed and well-tested method available for constraining the detailed mass distributions of equilibrium stellar systems. Here I provide a very short overview of the method and its existing implementations, and briefly discuss their viability as a tool for modeling the Galaxy using Gaia data.
The star-formation history of the Milky Way Galaxy

The star-formation histories of the main stellar components of the Milky Way constrain critical aspects of galaxy formation and evolution. I discuss recent determinations of such histories, together with their interpretation in terms of theories of disk galaxy evolution.
California Year in Review: 2013 Special Education ALJ Decisions

This article reviews 74 special education cases decided by California ALJ's between January 1, 2013 and December 11, 2013. The author concludes that the ALJ's provided stingy relief even when students prevailed, there was often unsuccessful litigation on behalf of a student following the termination of a consent decree or court order, many of the cases reflected negative attitudes towards the mothers of the student, and school districts often preferred more restrictive placements than the parent/student. Not surprisingly, students faced very unfavorable outcomes when they were not represented by a lawyer.
Greed or good deeds: An examination of the relation between corporate social responsibility and the financial performance of U.S. commercial banks around the financial crisis

Abstract We examine the relation between banks’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance in a context of the recent financial crisis. We find that banks, in general, appear to be rewarded for being socially responsible as financial performance is positively and significantly related to CSR scores. We find that the biggest banks pursue socially responsible activities to a significantly greater extent than smaller banks. Further, the largest banks see a steep increase in CSR strengths and a steep drop in CSR concerns after 2009.
Turning a Blind Eye: Wall Street Finance of Predatory Lending

Today, Wall Street finances up to eighty percent of subprime home loans through securitization. The subprime sector, which is designed for borrowers with blemished credit, has been dogged by predatory lending charges, many of which have been substantiated. As subprime securitization has grown, so have charges that securitization turns a blind eye to financing abusive loans. In this paper, we examine why secondary market discipline has failed to halt the securitization of predatory loans. When investors buy securities backed by predatory loans, they face a classic lemons problem in the form of credit risk, prepayment risk, and litigation risk. Securitization exacerbates all three risks by unbundling the mortgage process, giving rise to adverse selection. In theory, the lemons problem should cause investors to flee the market for subprime mortgage-backed securities or demand a risk premium commensurate with the worst quality loans. Instead, securitization allays adverse selection concerns by structuring transactions so that risk-averse investors receive their agreed-upon return without needing to screen out predatory loans. In addition to pricing, the secondary market uses structured finance and deal terms, instead of filtering, to manage credit, prepayment, and litigation risk. Furthermore, structured finance provides incentives to securitize predatory loans. Voluntary due diligence could help ameliorate the problem, but those efforts remain sparse. To alter this perverse incentive structure, we propose legislation to impose a duty on secondary market assignees of subprime home loans to investigate and police predatory lenders.
On Status Quo Bias in Civic Education

Should civic education in a democracy cultivate children’s beliefs in the substantive merits of existing laws and political institutions? Such status quo educational bias can be both a barrier to political progress and a threat to the state’s legitimacy. Against these objections, I aim to show how and when adults’ fallible beliefs about the substantive merits of existing political arrangements constitute compelling reasons for status quo educational bias. And I argue that the values of stability, compliance, and patriotism underpin important reasons for status quo bias that appeal not to the substantive merits of existing institutions but merely to the fact that those institutions are the status quo.
THE RAMSEY PROBLEM IN OPTIMAL ECONOMIC GROWTH UNDER RESOURCE LIMITATIONS

The paper constructs a model of optimal Growth with resource constraints. It was the first to call for what came to be called environmental accounting in calculation of national income accounts (proposition 2 of the paper) and it is only second after the author's PhD dissertation to provide sufficient conditions for existence of optimal programs.
Why Trade Agreements are not Setting Information Free: The Lost History and Reinvigorated Debate over Cross-Border Data Flows, Human Rights, and National Security

Herein, we examine how the United States and the European Union use trade agreements to advance the free flow of information and to promote digital rights online. In the 1980s and 1990s, after US policymakers tried to include language governing the free flow of information in trade agreements, other nations feared a threat to their sovereignty and their ability to restrict cross- border data flows in the interest of privacy or national security. In the twenty-first century, again many states have not responded positively to US and EU efforts to facilitate the free flow of information. They worry that the US dominates both the Internet economy and Internet governance in ways that benefit its interests. After the Snowden allegations, many states adopted strategies that restricted rather than enhanced the free flow of information. Without deliberate intent, efforts to set information free through trade liberalization may be making the Internet less free. Finally, the two trade giants are not fully in agreement on Internet freedom, but neither has linked policies to promote the free flow of information with policies to advance digital rights. Moreover, they do not agree as to when restrictions on information are necessary and when they are protectionist.
Judges as Cosmopolitan Transnational Actors

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Connecticut School of Law at NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository. Ithas been accepted for inclusion in University of Connecticut School of Law Articles and Working Papers by an authorized administrator of NELLCOLegal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact tracy.thompson@nellco.org.
Japanese and U.S. Cross-Border Common Stock Investments

Abstract At the end of 1989, Japanese investors held just over 1% of the U.S. stock market, while U.S. investors held less than 1% of the Tokyo market. This pattern of very limited cross-holding has persisted for nearly two decades, despite the diversification gains from cross-border investment. None of the standard explanations for limited international equity holding, such as capital controls on Japanese investors or limits on the international exposure of institutional portfolios, appears satisfactory. To justify these patterns, investors in both the United States and Japan must believe, inconsistently, that expected returns are substantially higher in their own market than in foreign markets.
The Role of Accounting Accruals in Chinese Firms

Cheng and Li (2013) investigate whether income smoothing improves earnings informativeness for Chinese firms by replicating the research design of Tucker and Zarowin (2006). The results suggest that the relation still holds for a more recent sample of US firms but the relation is different for Chinese firms. These results are interesting, and the authors argue that the poorer information environment in China is a possible culprit for the different results. This discussion raises the issue of what role accruals play in Chinese accounting. I replicate the study by Dechow (1994) in the Chinese market and find evidence consistent with the prediction that earnings exhibit less short-term noise than cash flows and greater associations with stock prices as the performance benchmark. These findings are indicative of accruals playing a similar role for Chinese firms as for US firms but also draw attention to some unresolved questions and areas for future research.
Audit quality and accrual persistence: evidence from the pre‐ and post‐Sarbanes‐Oxley periods

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is two‐fold: first, to examine whether the quality of accruals, as measured by accrual persistence, improved in the post‐Sarbanes‐Oxley (SOX) period, and second, to examine the degree to which SOX‐related improvement in accrual persistence varies across companies depending on the degree of their auditor's independence.Design/methodology/approach – The paper compares accrual persistence in the pre‐ and post‐SOX periods to test the first question. Then, partitioning on relative client importance as a measure of auditor independence, the paper compares the SOX‐based improvement for clients of low and high independence audit firms.Findings – The study first demonstrates that accrual persistence increased significantly in the post‐SOX period. The study also finds evidence that in the post‐SOX period, the subsample of companies audited by Big‐N auditors with lower‐independence experienced the greatest improvement in accrual persistence.Originality/value – This is the first pa...
How Much Does Size Erode Mutual Fund Performance? A Regression Discontinuity Approach *

The two main stylized facts in the mutual fund literature are that funds exhibit little ability to persistently outperform their peers, but that new money flows into funds with the highest past returns. The traditional interpretation is that fund managers are unskilled and fund investors are unsophisticated. Berk and Green (2004) offer an alternative, arguing that more-skilled managers will manage more assets but, because of diseconomies of scale, will generate the same expected returns as less-skilled managers. In their model, cross-sectional regressions of fund returns on fund size will significantly underestimate true diseconomies of scale. To identify the causal impact of mutual fund size on performance, we exploit the fact that small differences in mutual fund returns can cause discrete changes in Morningstar ratings that, in turn, generate discrete differences in mutual fund size. The diseconomies of scale that we estimate using this regression discontinuity approach are not statistically distinguishable from those estimated in standard cross-sectional regressions. Consequently, any downward bias in performance persistence arising from diseconomies of scale is likely to be small. (JEL classification: G23, G24, G14)
The Role of Community Involvement in Implementing Living Wage Ordinances

Although the living wage movement has been instrumental in the passage of almost 120 ordinances in its ten-year history, little attention has been paid to the implementation of the laws. This article analyzes the factors that can affect the success of living wage implementation. The results suggest that implementation is weaker when left solely to city administrators and more expansive when living wage advocates participate in the process. For example, involvement of advocates is more likely to lead to workplace monitoring, stricter procedures for employers to obtain a waiver, and evaluation of outcomes.
Structural basis for transcription complex disruption by the Mfd translocase

Transcription-coupled repair (TCR) is a sub-pathway of nucleotide excision repair (NER) that preferentially removes lesions from the template-strand (t-strand) that stall RNA polymerase (RNAP) elongation complexes (ECs). Mfd mediates TCR in bacteria by removing the stalled RNAP concealing the lesion and recruiting Uvr(A)BC. We used cryo-electron microscopy to visualize Mfd engaging with a stalled EC and attempting to dislodge the RNAP. We visualized seven distinct Mfd-EC complexes in both ATP and ADP-bound states. The structures explain how Mfd is remodeled from its repressed conformation, how the UvrA-interacting surface of Mfd is hidden during most of the remodeling process to prevent premature engagement with the NER pathway, how Mfd alters the RNAP conformation to facilitate disassembly, and how Mfd forms a processive translocation complex after dislodging the RNAP. Our results reveal an elaborate mechanism for how Mfd kinetically discriminates paused from stalled ECs and disassembles stalled ECs to initiate TCR.
The Descent of Responsible Procreation: A Genealogy of an Ideology

This article traces the genealogy of responsible procreation, which has emerged as the primary defense of the same-sex marriage ban. To put it succinctly, the responsible-procreation defense surmises that same-sex couples already procreate responsibly, and that the rights and responsibilities of marriage should be limited to furthering the goal of encouraging more responsible procreation by heterosexuals. This article seeks to illuminate the responsible procreation defense by tracing how it emerged and how it has functioned and fared in constitutional challenges.What does this genealogy of responsible procreation reveal? The roots of responsible procreation are undoubtedly religious and the defense particularly bears resemblance to a Vatican statement penned by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1987. The presuppositions of the responsible procreation defense are in considerable tension with current social and legal realities. Most saliently, responsible procreation has been rejected as a justification for limiting heterosexuals' constitutional rights. Its starring role was in welfare reform’s racialized and gendered rhetoric demonizing poor, single, black mothers. On welfare reform's heels, Congress hastily harnessed responsible procreation for use in the Defense of Marriage Act, racing against the much-feared first state recognition of same-sex marriage. When first subjected to trial at the state level, the responsible-procreation defense lacked credible supporting evidence. But leading social conservative academics and advocates came to its rescue. The newly-elaborated defense was rejected as "unpersuasive" in a sleeper test case as well as in the notorious decision invalidating the same-sex marriage ban in Massachusetts. Eventually, however, several state intermediate and high courts endorsed it. But other state high courts have rejected the defense, and some state governments and now the federal government have disavowed the defense. It also has failed to withstand the rigor of its first federal trial, succumbing to the overwhelming weight of evidence against its logic. In addition, most courts since the federal trial have rejected the defense in recent challenges to various anti-gay measures. In short, the responsible-procreation defense appears to be ideological, invidious, and on the wane.
The impact of state ownership on performance differences in privately-owned versus state-owned banks: An international comparison

This paper examines how government ownership and government involvement in a country’s banking system affect bank performance from 1989 through 2004. Our study uncovers an interesting pattern of changing performance differences between state-owned and privately-owned banks around the Asian financial crisis. We find that state-owned banks operated less profitably, held less core capital, and had greater credit risk than privately-owned banks prior to 2001, and the performance differences are more significant in those countries with greater government involvement and political corruption in the banking system. In addition, from 1997 to 2000, the 4-year period after the beginning of the Asian financial crisis, the deterioration in the cash flow returns, core capital, and credit quality of state-owned banks was significantly greater than that of privately-owned banks, especially for the countries that were hardest hit by the Asian crisis. However, state-owned banks closed the gap with privately-owned banks on cash flow returns, core capital, and nonperforming loans in the post-crisis period of 2001–2004. Our findings can best be explained by Shleifer and Vishny’s [Shleifer, A., Vishny, R.W., 1997. A survey of corporate governance. J. Finance 52, 737–783] corporate governance theory on state ownership of firms and Kane’s [Kane, E.J., 2000. Capital movement, banking insolvency, and silent runs in the Asian financial crisis. Pacific-Basin Finance J. 8, 153–175] life-cycle model of a regulation-induced banking crisis.
Household schooling and child labor decisions in rural Bangladesh

Using empirical methods, this paper examines household schooling and child labor decisions in rural Bangladesh. The results suggest the following: poverty and low parental education are associated with lower schooling and greater child labor; asset-owning households are more likely to have children combine child labor with schooling; households choose the same activity for all children within the household, regardless of gender; there is a weak association between direct costs and household decisions; finally, higher child wages encourage households to practice child labor.
Industrial Development and Innovation: Some Lessons from Vaccine Procurement

Summary This paper suggests that demand instruments of international vaccine procurement, instead of being seen primarily as a global management instrument, can usefully induce industrial change and technological innovation through improved technical standards and regulations. The example of Indian vaccines is analyzed, and an industrial evolution schematic is investigated. The findings suggest that some fine tuning can improve the demand side for technological innovation. However, tensions between industrial and health policies and their separate evolutions are also visible, and more is needed to link industrial and technological gains with domestic health needs, if the goal is broader social impact.
Judge Jack Weinstein and the Allure of Antiproceduralism

In one sense of the word proceduralist — a person with expertise in procedure — Judge Jack Weinstein is among the leading proceduralists on the federal bench. But in another sense of the word proceduralist — an adherent of proceduralism, or faithfulness to established procedures — he falls at a different end of the spectrum. Looking at four examples of Judge Weinstein’s work in mass litigation, this Article considers what it means to be an antiproceduralist, someone unwilling to let procedural niceties stand in the way of substantive justice. The allure of antiproceduralism is that it eschews technicalities in favor of substantive justice, but technicalities are in the eye of the beholder, and this Article asks what is lost when a judge steers around procedural constraints.
Smart Cities: Quality of Life, Productivity, and the Growth Effects of Human Capital

From 1940 to 1990, a 10% increase in a metropolitan area's concentration of college-educated residents was associated with a 0.8% increase in subsequent employment growth. Instrumental variables esti- mates support a causal relationship between college graduates and em- ployment growth, but show no evidence of an effect of high school graduates. Using data on growth in wages, rents, and house values, I calibrate a neoclassical city growth model and find that roughly 60% of the employment growth effect of college graduates is due to enhanced productivity growth, the rest being caused by growth in the quality of life. This finding contrasts with the common argument that human capital generates employment growth in urban areas solely through changes in productivity.
Reimposable Discounts and Medieval Contract Penalties

Penalty damages in contract—contrary to Anglo-American law since the late Middle Ages—ironically are common as reimposed discounts in modern consumer contracts. The reimposable discount is a late-twentieth-century sales scheme that combines legal puffery with illegal penalties. These pitches are used to sell furniture, appliances, cell phones, cars, to rent apartments, and to promote elective eye surgery. The offers are tempting and often heavily marketed in the media. The common premise is that if the buyer acts now, the seller will discount the good or service by reducing the price, or by postponing the first payment and waiving interest payments during
Sectoral and national aggregate disturbances to industrial output in seven European countries

Abstract This paper decomposes the quarterly and annual growth rate of industrial production in two-digit manufacturing industries in seven European countries and the United States into components that are specific to industries but common to nations, components that are specific to nations but common to industries, and idiosyncratic componets. The paper shows that both industry-specific and nation-specific shocks are empirically important. Assuming that shocks to productivity vary across industries but not systematically across national boundaries for the sample countries, this result casts doubt on the hypothesis that most macroeconomic fluctuations can be ascribed to technology shocks alone.
Globalization and the rule of law: “A machine that runs of itself?”

AND SOCIETY (Gunther Roth & Claus Wittich trans., Univ. of California Press 1978); ANTHONY KRONMAN, MAX WEBER (Stanford Univ. Press 1983); Douglas North & Barry R. Weingast, Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in SeventeenthCentury England, 49 J. ECON. HIST. 803 (1989); David M. Trubeck, Max Weber on Law and the Rise of Capitalism, 1972 WIS. L. REV. 720.
Confronting Information Asymmetries: Evidence from Real Estate Markets

There are relatively few direct tests of the economic effects of asymmetric information because of the difficulty in identifying exogenous information measures. We propose a novel exogenous measure of information based on the quality of property tax assessments in different regions and apply this to the U.S. commercial real estate market. We find strong evidence that information considerations are significant. Market participants resolve information asymmetries by purchasing nearby properties, trading properties with long income histories, and avoiding transactions with informed professional brokers. The evidence that the choice of financing is used to address information concerns is mixed and weak.
Property Rights in Emerging Platform Technologies

Abstract This article considers an externality that affects a broad range of markets, specifically markets where one set of firms sells some platform technology such as a computer, video game console, or operating system, while another possibly overlapping set of firms sells peripherals compatible with that platform, for example, computer software or video game cartridges. The externality causes certain peripheral sellers to charge prices that are unprofitably high. That is, these firms could earn greater profits if only they could coordinate to charge lower prices. In many markets, such coordination is possible; firms can contract, for example, or integrate. In markets based on relatively new platform technologies, however, coordination will typically be difficult. The article explains why and argues that intellectual property law can and should facilitate price coordination in these “emerging technology” settings.
The Variable Morality of Constitutional (and Other) Compromises: A Comment on Sanford Levinson’s Compromise and Constitutionalism

This comment to Sanford Levinson's Brandeis lecture at Pepperdine focuses on the role and types of compromises made during several stages of constitutional processes, formative and constitutive, interpretive and on-going, as negotiated by Constitutional meaning makers (drafters and Supreme Court 'deciders'), and post hoc justifications. This essay discusses recent work on compromise as institutional design, pragmatic or principled, and regime defining and sustaining. Both the prejorative (compromise is unprincipled) and more positive (compromise accounts for the 'reality' and moral existence of different sides of an issue or polity) understandings of compromise are reviewed, in light of Professor Levinson's scholarship on constitutional formation and judicial opinion writing and negotiation, and other scholars' (e.g., Avishai Margalit, Jon Elster, Robert Mnookin and this author's (Menkel-Meadow) work on compromise generally as a moral and practical issue in constitutional, political, and other forms of negotiated political orders.
Gonzales v. Raich: federalism as a casualty of the war on drugs.

The Supreme Court's recent decision in Gonzales v. Raich marks a watershed moment in the development of judicial federalism. If it has not quite put an end to the Rehnquist Court's "federalism revolution," it certainly represents a major step in that direction. In this Article, I contend that Raich represents a major - possibly even terminal - setback for efforts to impose meaningful judicial constraints on Congress' Commerce Clause powers. Raich undermines judicial enforcement of federalism in three interlocking ways: by adopting an essentially limitless definition of economic activity thereby ensuring that virtually any activity can be aggregated to produce the "substantial effect [on] interstate commerce" required to legitimate congressional regulation under United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison; by making it easier for Congress to impose controls on even non-economic activity by claiming that it is part of a broader regulatory scheme; and finally, by restoring the so-called rational basis test, holding that "[w]e need not determine whether [defendants'] activities, taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce in fact, but only whether a rational basis exists for so concluding." The Supreme Court's recent seemingly pro-federalism decisions in Gonzales v. Oregon and Rapanos v. Army Corps of Engineers actually do little or nothing to mitigate the impact of Raich. I also contend that the Raich decision is misguided on both textual and structural grounds. The text of the Constitution does not support the nearly unlimited congressional power endorsed in Raich. Such unlimited power also undercuts some of the major structural advantages of federalism, including diversity, the ability to "vote with your feet," and interstate competition for residents. Raich's undercutting of federalism by upholding the power of Congress to ban the possession of homegrown medical marijuana closely parallels legal developments during the Prohibition era of the 1920s. In both periods, the establishment of a nationwide prohibition regime greatly eroded decentralized federalism, in part because the Supreme Court accepted the government's claims that the power to regulate a market in prohibited substances necessarily required comprehensive regulation of virtually all sale or possession of the commodities in question. The future of judicial federalism may depend not just on the precise doctrinal impact of Raich, but on the possibility that liberal jurists and political activists may come to recognize that they have an interest in limiting congressional power. A cross-ideological coalition for judicial enforcement of federalism would be far more formidable than today's narrow alliance between some conservatives and libertarians. Ironically, the Raich decision, in combination with other recent developments, may help bring about such a result.
Labor Supply Response to the Earned Income Tax Credit

This paper examines the impact of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86), which included an expansion of the earned income tax credit, on the labor force participation and hours of work of single women with children. We identify the impact of TRA86 by comparing the change in labor supply of single women with children to the change for single women without children. We find that between 1984–1986 and 1988–1990, single women with children increased their relative labor force participation by up to 2.8 percentage points. We observe no change in the relative hours worked by single women with children who were already in the labor force.
Identifying Technically Efficient Fishing Vessels: A Non-Empty, Minimal Subset Approach

There is a growing resource economics literature, concerning the estimation of the technical efficiency of fishing vessels utilizing the stochastic frontier model. In these models, vessel output is regressed on a linear function of vessel inputs and a random composed error. Using parametric assumptions on the regression residual, estimates of vessel technical efficiency are calculated as the mean of a truncated normal distribution and are often reported in a rank statistic as a measure of a captain's skill and used to estimate excess capacity within fisheries. We demonstrate analytically that these measures are potentially flawed, and extend the results of Horrace (2005) to estimate captain skill for thirty-nine vessels in the Northeast Atlantic herring fleet, based on homogeneous and heterogeneous production functions within the fleet. When homogeneous production is assumed, we find inferential inconsistencies between our methods and the methods of ranking the means of the technical inefficiency distributions for each vessel. When production is allowed to be heterogeneous, these inconsistencies are mitigated.
Who will deregulate the deregulators

A well-intentioned and fully informed regulator may determine that the optimal policy is to deregulate the market, yet the regulator may be constrained from doing so. In this condition, deregulatory policies originate in exogenous shocks to the regulator’s choice environment. Entrepreneurship in political and economic markets is a primary source of institutional change that promotes deregulation.
The application of model checking for securing e-commerce transactions

Model checking is an effective component for performing online transactions that build customer trust and confidence.
Rethinking Religious Reasons in Public Justification

This article intervenes in the debate on the place of religious arguments in public reason. I advance the debate not by asking whether something called “religious reasons” ought to be invoked in the justification of coercive laws, but by creating a typology of (a) different kinds and forms of religious arguments and, more importantly, (b) different areas of political and social life which coercive laws regulate or about which human political communities deliberate. Religious arguments are of many different kinds, are offered to others in a variety of ways, and the spheres of life about which communities deliberate pose distinct moral questions. Turning back to the public reason debate, I argue then that political liberals ought to be concerned primarily about the invocation of a certain subset of religious reasons in a certain subset of areas of human activity, but also that inclusivist arguments on behalf of religious contributions to public deliberation fail to justify the use of religious arguments in all areas of public deliberation.
To Be or Not to Be: An Optimum Currency Area for South Asia?

This paper empirically investigates whether South Asian countries constitute an optimum currency area (OCA) by applying a structural vector auto-regression (SVAR) model to trace global, regional, and domestic shocks. Variance decomposition shows that domestic shocks dominate regional and global shocks, which contrasts with our findings for the European Union countries, used as a basis for comparison. We conclude that at the present time the South Asian region as a whole does not meet the prerequisite conditions of an OCA. The loss of an autonomous monetary instrument can outweigh the benefits of a common currency.
The Monetary Policy Risks of Hospitality Stocks

On the basis of 100 monetary policy announcements made by the U.S. Federal Reserve between 1994 and 2005, we estimate the reaction of the hotel and restaurant industry stock values to the Fed’s monetary policy actions. We find that the portfolios of hotel industry stocks react strongly to unexpected changes in the Federal Funds Target Rate. Specifically, for a hypothetical surprise 25-basis-point rate cut, the value-weighted hotel industry stock portfolio registers a one-day gain of 245 basis points (or 2.45 percent). This response is 78 percent stronger than that of the overall equity market in the United States. On the other hand, the restaurant industry is not as responsive to the unexpected changes in the monetary policy. When the Federal Reserve announces a reversal of monetary policy in either direction, hotel industry stocks react more strongly than do others.
Mental and behavioral health legal preparedness in major emergencies.

Public health emergencies and disasters are often defined by their impact on human health. The 2010 Haiti earthquake, one of the worst natural disasters in global history, had a staggering impact on human morbidity and mortality. More than 230,000 individuals perished from the earthquake itself, thousands more died waiting to be treated for their injuries, and a multitude of survivors face disabling physical impairments. In a country of abject poverty and dysfunctional health services, the physical plight of Haitians constitutes a health emergency necessitating international response efforts. Other natural disasters such as the 2004 Asian tsunamis and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. displaced hundreds of thousands of people and caused billions of dollars in damage. Entire economic and social centers were destroyed. Although the 2009/2010 H1N1 influenza pandemic did not damage the built environment, it did affect millions globally, causing or contributing to thousands of deaths among children, young adults, and others who do not typically succumb to seasonal influenza.
Firm communication and investor response: A framework and discussion integrating social media

Abstract I provide a general framework of firms’ financial communication process and investor response to information, moving from disclosure through dissemination to investor response and management response. I then discuss the entrance of social media into firm communications, highlighting both classic and unique aspects of social media in the communication process. I place Cade (2018) in this literature and discuss areas ripe for future research. Finally, I encourage researchers interested in social media to acknowledge and embrace the unique opportunities and challenges in this area.
MIGRATION CONSEQUENCES OF WELFARE REFORM

Abstract We investigate whether recent changes in welfare policy affect the migration of low-educated unmarried mothers. Estimates indicate that welfare reform is associated with an increase in employment-related intrastate migration, and a decrease in non-employment related migration, both within and between states. The net effect was a small increase in intrastate migration and a small decrease in interstate migration. The close link between migration and employment suggests that welfare reform has motivated low-income women to move for economic reasons. In general, welfare policy appears to have a much larger effect on residential location because of its relationship to employment than because of benefit differences between states.
The Effects of Income Transparency on Well-Being: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Author(s): Perez-Truglia, Ricardo | Abstract: In 2001, Norwegian tax records became easily accessible online, allowing everyone in the country to observe the incomes of everyone else. According to the income comparisons model, this change in transparency can widen the gap in well-being between richer and poorer individuals. We test this hypothesis using survey data from 1985–2013. Using multiple identification strategies, we show that the higher transparency increased the gap in happiness between richer and poorer individuals by 29%, and it increased the life satisfaction gap by 21%. We provide suggestive evidence that some, although probably not all, of this effect relates to changes in self-perceptions of relative income. We provide back-of-the-envelope estimates of the importance of income comparisons, and discuss implications for the ongoing debate on transparency policies.
Domestic pollution havens: evidence from cancer deaths in border counties

Abstract Domestic pollution havens may grow at state and international borders where there are substantial differences in the intensity of labor and environmental regulations. A new panel data set on cancer death rates is used to test this hypothesis. Cancer death rates from cancers with an environmental component have increased more in low regulation states relative to high regulation states. Relative to interior counties in the same low regulation states, counties that border high regulation states have experienced increased death rates from cancers with an environmental component. Relative to interior counties in the same states, cancer rates are falling at the Mexican border and rising at the Canadian border.
Career Concerns and Resource Allocation in Conglomerates

We investigate resource allocation decisions in conglomerates when managers are motivated by career concerns. When divisional cash flows are differentially informative about managerial ability, we show that it is in the managers' interest to overallocate unobservable intangible resources to the more informative divisions. Anticipating this bias, it is optimal for the firm's owners to also overallocate observable capital to the more informative divisions. The model provides rationale for corporate socialism and corporate hedging. It also highlights a cost of segment reporting and tracking stocks, namely, that they allow managers to distort their perceived ability at the expense of investors. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.
Lobbying for a Common External Tariff from inside and out

We consider the interactions between domestic lobbying and cross-border lobbying in a Customs Union (CU) in determining the Common External Tariff (CET). There are two types of cross-border lobbying: (i) lobbying from member-nation firms to the governments of other CU countries, and (ii) lobbying by firms from outside to the CU nation governments. Within this context, we analyze the effect of regulations on foreign lobbying on the equilibrium lobbying levels, and on the CET. If lobbying levels are strategic complements, tightening of restrictions on lobbying from outside the CU unambiguously reduces all types of lobbying. If non-CU firms are relatively large, the CET will rise in response to tighter regulations.
International Reserves: Precautionary Versus Mercantilist Views, Theory and Evidence

This paper compares the importance of precautionary and mercantilist motives in the hoarding of international reserves by developing countries. Overall, empirical results support precautionary motives; in particular, a more liberal capital account regime increases international reserves. Theoretically, large precautionary demand for international reserves arises as a self-insurance to avoid costly liquidation of long-term projects when the economy is susceptible to sudden stops. The welfare gain from the optimal management of international reserves is of a first-order magnitude, reducing the welfare cost of liquidity shocks from a first-order to a second-order magnitude.
Misclassifying Core Expenses as Special Items: Cost of Goods Sold or Selling, General, and Administrative Expenses?†

Prior studies of classification shifting in the income statement conclude that managers misclassify core expenses as special items to inflate reported core earnings (McVay 2006; Fan, Barua, Cready, and Thomas 2010). These studies do not distinguish between the core expense components—cost of goods sold (COGS) and selling, general, and administrative expenses (SGA). This study models COGS and SGA separately, and investigates managers’ misclassification of COGS versus SGA to meet different profitability benchmarks. We find that COGS (but not SGA) misclassification is associated with just beating the benchmark of gross margin four quarters earlier. In comparison, both COGS and SGA misclassification are associated with just beating the benchmarks of zero core earnings, prior-year core earnings, and analyst earnings forecasts in the fourth fiscal quarter. We also investigate real activities management (RAM) of COGS and SGA to meet benchmarks, and find that managers engage in RAM of COGS to achieve the gross margin benchmark, but not core earnings benchmarks. We demonstrate that unexpected SGA contains a significant misclassification effect distinct from RAM, suggesting that future RAM research should consider controlling for expense misclassification. Overall, our study extends prior literature on both classification shifting and RAM.
The Differential Effects of Extracurricular Activities on Attributions in Résumé Evaluation

This study examines the effects that extracurricular activities have on the attributions a resume reader makes about an applicant. Three characteristics of extracurricular activities (number of activities, holding positions of leadership, and relevance of the activities) were manipulated across 24 resumes of fictitious college graduates. Some 219 raters read the resumes and made judgments about the level of the applicant’s quality. The results showed a main effect for the number of activities, a main effect for holding leadership positions, and a main effect for relevance of the activity. Furthermore, a three–way interaction revealed the differential effects that the relevance of the activities had on the attributions at different levels of leadership and number of activities. A mix of career–related and social activities garnered higher ratings for those who held leadership positions in five activities. However, for those who were leaders in only two activities or were not leaders in five, having only career–related activities earned them higher ratings. For applicants who were not leaders in two activities, relevance of the activities played no role.
Demystifying the Chinese Economy

China was the largest and one of the most advanced economies in the world before the eighteenth century, yet declined precipitately thereafter and degenerated into one of the world's poorest economies by the late nineteenth century. Despite generations' efforts for national rejuvenation, China did not reverse its fate until it introduced market-oriented reforms in 1979. Since then it has been the most dynamic economy in the world and is likely to regain its position as the world's largest economy before 2030. Based on economic analysis and personal reflection on policy debates, Justin Yifu Lin provides insightful answers to why China was so advanced in pre-modern times, what caused it to become so poor for almost two centuries, how it grew into a market economy, where its potential is for continuing dynamic growth and what further reforms are needed to complete the transition to a well-functioning, advanced market economy.
Organization structure, contract design and government ownership: A clinical analysis of German privatization

Abstract This paper examines the role that organization structure and contract design played in resolving economic and political problems that arose during Germany's privatization process. We find that German officials structured organizations and contracts in a way that made credible the government's commitment to rapid privatization. This credibility served to protect the process from political and social opposition. In addition, it enabled Germany to attract talented private sector managers to its privatization effort. This began with the establishment of an independent privatization agency, the Treuhand. It culminated with the creation of another set of independent organizations called Management KGs, to which the Treuhand outsourced part of its restructuring, management and privatization work.
‘Training the eye’: formation of the geocoding subject

From 2004 to 2007, a nonprofit organization in Seattle conducted over twenty-five street surveys in ten neighborhoods. Participants in these surveys collected geographic data about community ‘deficits’ and ‘assets’ using handheld devices, while walking around their local neighborhoods. These residents marked graffiti, litter, vacant buildings, and abandoned automobiles, as well as, ‘friendly’ business districts, appropriate building facades, and peopled sidewalks—all among their categories of interest, initially borrowed from a New York City foundation responsible for developing the handheld devices. Here, I analyze the geocoding protocol, ‘Training the Eye’, that was created by the New York City foundation and was adapted by the Seattle nonprofit. This technology of citizen engagement in governmental practice enacts an embodied cartographic vision that is productive of liminal subjectivities. These practices of geocoding, of assessing place in space, are intensely bodily, both in their messy enactment of...
User Surveys: Libraries Ask, "Hey, How Am I Doing?"

Mr. King offers suggestions on how to create and use surveys effectively to assess the quality of a library
Is unemployment good for the environment

Environmental quality is a public good, potentially impacted by everybody. Individual level pro-environmental behavior affects environmental quality in the aggregate. Therefore, it is important to understand what causes individual’s pro-environmental behaviors to change. We quantify the causal effect of one determinant, unemployment, using an EU-27 population representative Eurobarometer survey. Drawing on results from the theory of the private provision of public goods, and recognizing that unemployment decreases income and the opportunity cost of time, we formulate testable predictions that unemployment will decrease the extent of pro-environmental behaviors that require monetary contributions and increase the extent of pro-environmental behaviors that mainly require time/effort. Instrumental variables regressions provide empirical evidence to support these hypotheses. Changes in the unemployment rate within a sub-national region provide the exogenous variation needed to identify the causal effect. Several supplemental questions on the survey provide evidence that environmental issues lose saliency and economic issues gain saliency when one becomes unemployed, suggesting that interested parties may wish to emphasize cost savings of pro-environmental behavior rather than environmental benefits during times of increased unemployment.
Africa’s Debt: Who Owes Whom?

External debt burdens have forced sub-Saharan African countries to divert scarce resources from health, education, and other pressing social needs in order to pay debt service. Despite bearing heavy social costs for two decades, most countries in the region have become ever more deeply indebted. To a large extent, their plight stems from the fact that the original loans often were not used productively. Instead borrowed funds were captured by African political elites and channeled abroad as capital flight. Responsibility for the resulting transformation of public liabilities into private assets falls not only on past African governments, but also on their private and official creditors. One way to resolve to Africa's present debt crisis would be to cancel all debts. But apart from the political impediments to such a solution, this would simply set the stage for a new round of borrowing, capital flight, and eventual crisis. An alternative strategy is for African governments to repudiate debts selectively, by invoking the doctrine of "odious debt" in international law to reject responsibility for the repayment of loans whose proceeds were diverted abroad. In addition to easing today's debt burdens, this strategy would promote more responsible lending in future years.
The Pricing of Mortgages by Brokers: An Agency Problem?

Mortgage brokers have grown in importance in the home mortgage origination process in recent years, suggesting they provide a valuable service matching borrowers and lenders, although their involve...