cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Tax Policy and Corporate Investment

The proposition that the level of business fixed investment in the United States should be increased commands almost universal support. Increasing the rate of investment is widely seen as a panacea for a variety of economic problems including inflation, declining productivity, and the fall of the dollar. While there is agreement as to the inadequacy of business fixed investment, there is little agreement as to the causes of the shortfall. For example, in a recent proceedings volume of the American Economic Review, Alan Blinder concludes with Robert Hall that “The principal source of inadequate capital formation has been our failure to do anything about recessions, not our active use of anti-investment stimulative policies,” while Martin Feldstein (1980) argues that the interaction of inflation and taxation accounts for much of the decline in corporate capital accumulation that has taken place over the last decade.
Parental Rights and the State Regulation of Religious Schools

In Wisconsin v. Yoder, the United States Supreme Court invalidated convictions of several Amish parents for removing their children from school in violation of state mandatory attendance laws. In reaching its decision, the Court argued that protecting the Amish parents' decisions fit into a longstanding American tradition of giving parents control over the upbringing of their children. Yet the Supreme Court mischaracterized the history of parental rights and state interests in education. Contemporary historical research shows that parents have long ceded a large measure of control to the state in the education of their children. Still, very little has been written about this scholarship in legal journals. This article attempts to remedy this deficiency. It isolates and explores three key periods in the development of stateadministered public schools, paying special attention to early public funding of religious schools, the Protestant character of the common schools, and Catholic resistance to the use of the King James Bible in common schools. In so doing, this article argues for a "republican" interpretation of early educational practices. Drawing on that interpretation, the article joins a debate between Noah Feldman, Martha Nussbaum, and others about the nature of American religious liberties, and argues that their views are not able to fully acknowledge the history of Protestant evangelizing in public schools. * Law clerk to the Honorable Kermit V. Lipez. Ph.D. 2005, Northwestern. J.D . 2008, Stanford. This essay was prepared for the Stanford Legal Studies Workshop, 20072008. I a m grateful to members of the workshop for their comments, a nd to Larry Kramer, J oe Bankman, and Rob Reich for their guidance. Finally, thank you to Jeff Peterson, Cara Xidis, Chad Olsen, Cristi Barnes, Alisi Langi, J anice Smith and McKenna Woodger of the BYU Education and Law Journal for their excellent editorial work.
THE ENDOGENEITY OF INFORMATION ASYMMETRY AND CORPORATE FINANCING DECISIONS

Firms endogenize the extent of information asymmetry by choosing the optimal level and channels of direct communication with the capital markets. Firms choose more communication when they have a greater potential demand for external financing (characterized by higher growth, less cash, and higher leverage). We demonstrate that a higher level of communication is associated with a higher probability of equity issuance. We further document that the previously observed negative market reaction to seasoned equity offering (SEO) announcements is attributed only to low-communication firms; high-communication SEO firms experience no significant adverse market reaction.
School Finance Reform: an Empirical Test of the Economics of Public Opinion Formation

Printary and secondary public school finance reforms that began in the 1970s have failed to correct large intrastate spending inequities in the United States. The threat of judicial activity and concern over the stagnating effect of property taxes have caused states to again look at ways in which to bring about reform. This article uses survey data to deternune characteristics significant to individual opinion formation on school finance reform. In addition to traits that proxy for self-interest, measures of fiscal knowledge, political party identification, and opinions on the role of government are all found to be important. Results can be used by policy makers to determine characteristics that are consequential to an individual's decision to support school finance reform.
Cultural divides and digital inequalities: attitudes shaping Internet and social media divides*

Researchers on digital divides have identified demographic and attitudinal factors associated with inequalities in access, skills, and patterns of Internet use, primarily around age, income, and ed...
The Unique Benefits of Treating Personal Goodwill as Property in Corporate Acquisitions

Corporate acquisition talks may not get far if buyer and seller disagree over transaction structure, which can have significant after-tax effects. But the parties may have overlooked an item that, due to its potential tax treatment, could be the key to facilitating the acquisition. That item is the selling shareholder's "personal goodwill." Personal goodwill exists when the shareholder's reputation, expertise, or contacts gives the corporation its intrinsic value. It is most likely to be found in closely held businesses, especially those that are technical, specialized, orprofessional in nature or have few customers and suppliers. If personal goodwill is treated as property that can be sold ancillary to the sale of the corporation's assets or stock, it can produce a more favorable after-tax result for both buyer and seller. An effective transfer ofpersonal goodwill is also necessary to give buyer the benefit of
The Demand for Flood Insurance: Empirical Evidence

Flood damages that occur worldwide remain largely uninsured losses despite the efforts of governmental programs that in many cases make insurance available at below fair market cost. The current study focuses on the financial experience of the United States' National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) from 1983 through 1993 to examine the hypothetical determinants of the flood insurance purchasing decision. The empirical analysis supports the hypotheses that income and price are influential factors in one's decision to purchase flood insurance. Flood insurance purchases at the state level are found to be highly correlated with the level of flood losses in the state during the prior year.
The Philosopher's Brief

One of Kent Greenawalt's signal virtues is his eminent reasonableness and his ability to listen. In the classroom and in print, he offers a fair hearing to the contending viewpoints on law and religion, and offers thoughtful views of his own. In person and on the printed page, he is the seminar leader par excellence. This is at once a great strength and a surprising flaw of Greenawalt's extraordinary new contribution to law and religion scholarship, the two-volume work Religion and the Constitution. 1 Greenawalt's voice in these books is the voice of reason, and it is an attractive one. At the same time, it leaves its readers somewhat short of a definitive standard by which to judge its success. Like many a full seminar class, we may emerge from a study of his work a good deal wiser, but still uncertain about what we have learned about religion and the Constitution. The passage that best illustrates this comes at the beginning of both volumes of Religion and the Constitution. He writes:
Financial Integration and EMU

This paper investigates the effect of European Monetary Union on the integration of the financial services industry within European using data on the announcements of M&A’s within the industry. We find some evidence that EMU has helped financial integration within the euro area. In addition, financial institutions in EMU countries became more active in initiating integration between EMU and non-EMU partners, which also contributedto overall regional integration within European. The more active role of EMU institutions suggests that institutions residing in the eurozone became stronger players in the corporate control market. However, EMU does not facilitate the entry of non-European institutions into European.
Realized volatility and correlation in energy futures markets

Using high-frequency returns, realized volatility and correlation of the NYMEX light, sweet crude oil, and Henry-Hub natural gas futures contracts are examined. The unconditional distributions of daily returns and daily realized variances are non-Gaussian, whereas the distributions of the standardized returns (normalized by the realized standard deviation) and the (logarithms of) realized standard deviations appear approximately Gaussian. The (logarithms of) standard deviations exhibit long-memory, but the realized correlation between the two futures does not, implying rather weak inter-market linkage in the long run. There is evidence of asymmetric volatility for natural gas but not for crude oil futures. Finally, realized crude oil futures volatility responds with an increase in the weeks immediately before the OPEC events recommending price increases. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 28:993–1011, 2008
Why We Need a Commitment Approach to Environmental Policy

Abstract The principal reason why economists have advocated environmental policies based on incentives is that their conception of business behavior derives from the neoclassical model of the firm. Businesses certainly do respond to profit incentives, but firms' behavior is also greatly influenced by socio-political considerations and their organizational capabilities. In recent years, a significant group of businesses that are highly innovative, competitive and socially responsible has emerged. These are not the firms that policy makers envisioned when they formulated command and control and market incentive environmental policies, i.e., control-oriented policies. Because of this, there is a need for new types of environmental policies. Thus, the first purpose of this paper is to propose a new class of environmental policies. The second purpose is to explain why the neoclassical model is deficient as a basis for environmental policy and to explicate the nature of a more appropriate model. Control-oriented policies were designed for firms that behave like neoclassical firms. For high performance organizations (HPOs), what is needed is the opposite of control-oriented policy. What is needed is an environmental policy that takes advantage of HPOs commitment, responsibility, and trustworthiness. The appropriate policy should take into account that overall environmental performance is a product not just of firm behavior but of the whole environmental system of which firms are a part. What is needed is a commitment approach to environmental policy. A commitment approach (CA) to environmental policy is first of all not a control-oriented policy. A CA is a nonregulatory approach in which firms are self-regulated. The CA is only for firms that are able to 1) make a commitment to high environmental performance and 2) develop the capabilities to meet these commitments. The environmental protection (EP) agency that administers the CA would be charged with selecting the particular “high commitment” (HC) firms that would be subject to the policy. Low and intermediate commitment firms would presumably continue to be regulated under the usual control-oriented environmental policies. The selected HC firms would be eligible for government technical assistance and information. In addition, the EP agency could aid the functioning of the environmental systems (ES) in which HC firms are embedded by, for example, providing education and information to these businesses' stakeholders. Finally, it would be necessary for the EP agency to accomplish periodic assessments of how ESs performance departs from the ideal and how these systems' operations require rectification.
Role of Nanoscale Interfacial Proximity in Contact Freezing in Water

Contact freezing is a mode of atmospheric ice nucleation in which a collision between a dry ice nucleating particle (INP) and a water droplet results in considerably faster heterogeneous nucleation. The molecular mechanism of such an enhancement is, however, still a mystery. While earlier studies had attributed it to collision-induced transient perturbations, recent experiments point to the pivotal role of nanoscale proximity of the INP and the free interface. By simulating the heterogeneous nucleation of ice within INP-supported nanofilms of two model water-like tetrahedral liquids, we demonstrate that such nanoscale proximity is sufficient for inducing rate increases commensurate with those observed in contact freezing experiments, but only if the free interface has a tendency to enhance homogeneous nucleation. Water is suspected of possessing this latter property, known as surface freezing propensity. Our findings therefore establish a connection between the surface freezing propensity and kinetic enhancement during contact nucleation. We also observe that faster nucleation proceeds through a mechanism markedly distinct from classical heterogeneous nucleation, involving the formation of hourglass-shaped crystalline nuclei that conceive at either interface and that have a lower free energy of formation due to the nanoscale proximity of the interfaces and the modulation of the free interfacial structure by the INP. In addition to providing valuable insights into the physics of contact nucleation, our findings can assist in improving the accuracy of heterogeneous nucleation rate measurements in experiments and in advancing our understanding of ice nucleation on nonuniform surfaces such as organic, polymeric, and biological materials.
Topics In Finance Part IX Working Capital Management

The final topic in a series looking at financial management from a theoretical perspective, working capital management provides the focus of the current article. We investigate how three key axiomsthe risk-return tradeoff, agency conflicts, and stockholder wealth maximizationrelate to this activity that occupies much of the financial managers time.
Antitrust Law and Competition for Distribution

An unsettled area of antitrust law is the regulation of the competitive process for product distribution and promotion. Competition for distribution involves vertical contracting with respect to product placement, promotional activity, or the decision to carry a particular product. This process includes controversial practices recently subject to intense scrutiny such as slotting allowances, loyalty discounts, bundled rebates, category management and exclusive dealing. Antitrust law has designed rules for each of these practices independently, ignoring the economic relationships between these business practices. This paper examines those relationships by focusing on the economics of competition for distribution. Viewing these practices as part of the competitive process for distribution exposes an antitrust policy that systematically mishandles the regulation of these contracts. The article concludes by arguing in favor of per se legality for distribution contracts foreclosing less than 40% of the market and agreements less than one year in duration. ♦ Assistant Professor, George Mason University Law School; J.D., University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, 2001; Ph.D., University of California at Los Angeles Department of Economics, 2003. I thank Benjamin Klein for valuable discussions, and Bruce Johnsen and Bruce Kobayashi for comments on earlier drafts. Please do not cite or distribute without permission of the author.
Human Capital, Heterogeneity and Estimated Degrees of Intergenerational Mobility

We study the parental investment model of intergenerational mobility, where heterogeneity in 'innate' earnings ability and parents' altruism rate is explicitly modelled. We show that heterogeneity increases the difficulty of detecting the existence of borrowing constrained families. Conversely, the presence of heterogeneity means that economic and linear statistical models of inheritance generate similar intergenerational data on consumption and earnings. We also suggest that nay cross-country differences in intergenerational earnings mobility are more readily interpreted according to the heterogeneity of inherited ability, rather than optimal family responses to countiy-specific institutions for accumulating human capital. The relationship between a citizen's economic status and his family background is an important clue for understanding and evaluating a country's economic performance. Some (eg, Bowles (1972)) have suggested a close relationship between economic status and family background indicates some failure of labour markets or of institutions fostering investment in human capital. Others (eg, Altonji et al. (1992); Mulligan (1997, Table 4.1)) have offered an apparently contradictory suggestion, that 'efficient' allocations involve a very close relationship, on some measures, between the economic status of parents and children. Still others find family background effects to be the most offensive sources of inequality, regardless of whether those effects are consistent with 'efficiency'. Empirical studies of this relationship date back to the earliest days of statistical social science (eg, Galton's 1869 British study of the 'success' and 'eminence' of relatives), and many can be found outside the field of economics (see Goode's 1966 survey for a few examples), but the increasing availability of new data sets for exploring the relationship between earnings, income, wealth, and consumption of parents and, years later, of adult children has appropriately led to new and better econometric estimates of 'intergenerational mobility', or the intergenerational (auto)regression of various measures of economic status, and has even permitted some careful comparisons of those estimates across countries. However, fewer results are available on interpreting such estimates in terms of economic models of inheritance or of the labour market. Loury (1981), and Becker and Tomes (1986) are among the exceptions,' where they show how access to capital markets or other means of
Long-range linkage on chromosome 6p of VEGF, FKBP5, HLA and TNF alleles associated with transplant rejection.

Abstract Polymorphisms in several genes on the short arm of chromosome 6 (6p), among them, VEGF, FKBP5, HLA-DR and TNF-α, have been associated with inflammation and transplant outcome, such as acute rejection. Independent segregation of these genes is unproven, so we investigated linkage between distant genes on 6p and the putative existence of evolutionarily conserved long-range 6p haplotypes. SNPs studied were VEGF-2578*C/A (rs69947), VEGF-1154*G/A (rs1570360) TNF-α-308*G/A (rs1800629) and FKBP5*C/T (rs1360780) in 206 random and 80 selected HLA-DR52 positive individuals. To simplify the analysis, the HLA-DR genotypes were collapsed to the five human ancestral supertypes, namely: HLA-DR51, DR52, DR53, DR1 and DR8. Gametic phase and linkage between paired genotypes were determined using Arlequin 3.01 software, and significance was determined by Chi-square and Fisher's exact test analysis. Significant allelic associations were evident across the 6p region examined. Two putative haplotypes were identified, associated with DR52 and DR1. Within the HLA-DR52 supertype, TNF-α −308*A was associated with DR3, while FKBP5*T was associated with DR6. The interval between VEGF and TNF-α is 12.31 Mb. Therefore, allelic associations are surprising considering expected recombination and the evolutionary time (c10MY) since divergence of DR supertypes. This suggests that DR1 and DR52 haplotypes may have a survival advantage. Within the DR52 supertype, VEGF*C-DR3-TNF −308*A is a ‘high inflammatory’ haplotype associated with acute and chronic rejection, while the FKBP5*T-DR6 haplotype is associated with resistance to endogenous and exogenous glucocorticoids. Conversely, the DR1 haplotype is a ‘low inflammatory’ haplotype.
Desalination and International Watercourse Law

This is a response to Rhett B. Larson, Innovation and International Commons: The Case of Desalination Under International Law, 2012 UTAH L. REV. 759. In this response, Professor Schwabach agrees with Professor Larson as to the economic, human, and environmental importance of desalination technology, and as to the possible disruptive impact of rapid technological change on an international legal regime not yet equipped to deal with widespread large-scale desalination. Next, Professor Schwabach points out that, while Professor Larson addresses primarily brackish-water desalination within drainage basins, the greatest potential use of desalination technology may eventually lie in ocean-water desalination, making drainage basin concepts less relevant. Finally, Professor Schwabach examines Professor Larson’s proposed collaborative and adaptive management (CAM) approach, and welcomes this important contribution to this emerging area of international environmental law.
Do Managers Use the Valuation Allowance Account to Manage Earnings Around Certain Earnings Targets

This paper provides additional evidence on earnings management via the deferred tax asset valuation allowance account (VAA). Earlier publications that do not find evidence of earnings management via the VAA examine contractual incentives using broad samples. A more recent publication finds evidence consistent with earnings management via the VAA but examines capital‐market‐based incentives using a homogeneous sample. To bridge the gap between these studies, we exploit a heterogeneous sample over an extended time period but examine capital‐market‐based incentives to manage earnings. The results provide substantial evidence that firms use the VAA to smooth earnings toward the mean analyst forecast. However, the results do not provide evidence that firms use the VAA to smooth earnings toward positive or prior year's reported earnings targets or engage in “big bath” behavior for any of the earnings targets.
The Use of Self-Directed Learning to Promote Active Citizenship in Science, Technology, and Society Classes

The purpose of this paper is to outline the viability of a student directed assignment within collegiate level Science Technology and Society (STS) curricula for the improvement of the utilization of scientific knowledge and technology in society. The assignment, christened the “Do Something!” assignment, is a novel teaching tool that utilizes students’ individual interests to encourage in­depth learning across disciplines and capitalizes on their personal skills and talents to solve real world problems. The “Do Something!” assignment has been utilized in two STS courses at the Pennsylvania State University (STS 100: The Ascent of Humanity and STS 200: Critical Issues in STS). The structure of this assignment allowed students to make small but concrete contributions towards a sustainable future by applying STS principles. Outcomes indicated that (i) students had an overwhelming positive attitude toward the assignment, (ii) students accomplished in­depth understanding of STS issues outside of their individual fields of study, (iii) students perceived a high level of attainment which resulted in a personal fulfillment, and (iv) that this positive perception encourages them to attempt similar socially beneficial actions outside of the classroom.
Shell games: On the value of shell companies

Abstract A reverse merger allows a private company to assume the current reporting status of another company that is public. This can be done quickly, without fundraising, road show, underwriter, substantial ownership dilution, or great expense. Private firms that go public via reverse merger are often motivated by the need to quickly secure financing through privately placed stock (PIPEs) and the desire to make acquisitions using stock as payment. In each of the last eight years reverse mergers have outnumbered traditional IPOs as a mechanism for going public, and reporting shell companies are providing fuel for much of this growth. We study 585 trading shell companies over the period 2006–2008. The purpose of most of these shell firms is to find a suitor for a reverse merger agreement. These companies have no systematic risk, operations, or assets, and their share price tends to decline over time. Yet, these firms have investors. When a takeover agreement is consummated, shell company three-month abnormal returns are 48.1%. We argue that this exceptional return is compensation to investors for shell stock illiquidity and the uncertainty of finding a reverse merger suitor. We show that shell company returns are much greater at the consummation of a merger than those of a similar entity that in dollar terms is more popular among investors — Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs).
Form and Substance in International Agreements

International agreements exhibit a wide range of variation. Many are negotiated as legally binding agreements, while others are expressly nonbinding. Some contain substantive obligations requiring deep, demanding policy changes; others demand little or simply ratify the status quo ante. Some specify institutions to monitor and sanction noncompliance; others create no review structure at all. Thus, there is considerable variation both in the form of international agreements—in their legal bindingness, as well as in the range of structural provisions for monitoring and addressing noncompliance—and in the substantive obligations they impose. This variation in form and substance raises several fundamental questions about the role of international agreements in world politics.’ Why do states differentiate commitments into those which are legally binding and those which are not? What relationship exists between legality and the substantive provisions of an accord, and between legality and structural provisions for monitoring behavior? What is the relationship between substantive obligations and monitoring provisions? Finally, what difference, if any, do these choices make as to the effectiveness of an agreement?
Intent to Use: A Failed Experiment?

When Congress enacted the Trademark Law Revision Act of 1988 ("TLRA"), it made the first truly radical change in trademark law since the passage of the Lanham Act in 1946. By adding Section 1(b) to the Lanham Act allowing applications for federal trademark registration to be based on an intent to use the mark, Congress for the first time provided a way to apply for federal trademark registration before actual use of a trademark. Congress made this change to bring United States law into closer conformity with the practice elsewhere in the world where use is not a prerequisite to trademark protection. Congress, however, did not go so far as abandoning completely the long American legal tradition that bases trademark ownership and protection on actual use of the mark in connection with the goods or services the mark is intended to identify. The TLRA, while allowing one to file an application based on an intent to use ("ITU") a mark, makes registration itself contingent upon actual use within a set period of time after the issuance of a notice of allowance for the intent to use application. Thus, there is not complete protection until after actual use of the mark has occurred. The TLRA is Congress's attempt to straddle two positions: the American tradition requiring use for trademark protection and the emerging practice elsewhere in the world that does not require such use prior to obtaining trademark protection. This half-way position has created numerous problems and has in many ways failed to accomplish the goal of bringing American law into conformity with the rest of the world. While attempting to clarify the definition of the term "use," it has instead created a morass of varying definitions. Procedural issues have arisen as to the effect of an intent to use application vis-a-vis those who oppose such applications or those who use the applied for mark before a registration actually issues.The American position has also made it more difficult to determine who is entitled to use a mark and under what circumstances. Unfortunately, it is not clear whether there are sufficient benefits from this change in the law to outweigh the numerous problems it has created. It is therefore time to re-evaluate the experiment with the intent to use approach and consider whether Congress should either turn back the clock to pre-1988 law or move forward toward a system that is less based on use of trademark as the prerequisite to legal protection. Part I of this Article summarizes the pre-TLRA history of trademark use and the changes made by the TLRA. Part II addresses the confusion that exists with respect to the meaning of "use" in a postTLRA world. Part III identifies the procedural problems the TLRA has created. Part IV considers whether the ITU provisions of the TLRA have achieved the Congressional goals for enacting the statute. Finally, in Part V, an argument is made for serious re-examination of the intent to use regime created by the TLRA.
Empirics of hills, plateaus, mountains and plains: A Markov-switching approach to growth ☆

Abstract Most economic growth research has been aimed at explaining cross-country differences in average growth rates. However, it is well known that growth experiences differ over time within a country almost as much as they differ among countries. This paper builds on Pritchett's (2000) [Pritchett, Lant, Understanding patterns of economic growth: searching for hills among plateaus, mountains, and plains, World Bank Economic Review, May 2000, 14 (2), 221–250.] observation that the growth process can be thought of as transitions between different growth regimes and proposes a framework for systematic analysis of such regimes and the dynamics of the transitions. I estimate a Markov-switching regression to characterize four distinct growth regimes and transitions between them. The results show that countries switch among regimes of stable growth, “miracle” catch-up, stagnation and crisis with the transition probabilities determined by the quality of institutions. Better institutions appear to improve long-run growth by making episodes of fast growth more persistent. Low average growth rates in countries with weak institutions are a result of these countries spending more time in stagnation regimes rather then being incapable of fast growth at all. Weak institutions do not rule out growth takeoffs but limit their sustainability. The approach directs attention to shifts in growth performance and highlights the fact that identical average growth rates can mask very distinct growth paths.
Mismeasurement of Pensions Before and After Retirement: The Mystery of the Disappearing Pensions with Implications for the Importance of Social Security as a Source of Retirement Support

A review of the literature suggests that when pension values are measured by the wealth equivalent of promised defined benefit pension benefits and defined contribution balances for those approaching retirement, pensions account for more support in retirement than is suggested when their contribution is measured by incomes received directly from pension plans by those who have already retired. Estimates from the Health and Retirement Study for respondents in their early fifties suggest that pension wealth is about 82% as valuable as Social Security wealth. In data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), for members of the same cohort, measured when they are 65–69, pension incomes are about 58% as valuable as incomes from Social Security. Our empirical analysis uses data from the HRS to examine the reasons for these differences in the contributions of pensions as measured in income and wealth data. Key factors accounting for these differences include: a difference in methodology between surveys affecting what is included in pension income; some pension wealth ‘disappears’ at retirement because respondents change their pension into other forms that are not counted as pension income; and the form of annuitization may influence the measure of pension income. A series of caveats notwithstanding, the bottom line is that CPS data on pension incomes received in retirement understates the full contribution pensions make to supporting retirees.
Parties in Elections, Parties in Government, and Partisan Bias

Political parties are active when citizens choose among candidates in elections and when winning candidates choose among policy alternatives in government. But the inextricably linked institutions, incentives, and behavior that determine these multistage choices are substantively complex and analytically unwieldy, particularly if modeled explicitly and considered in total, from citizen preferences through government outcomes. To strike a balance between complexity and tractability, we modify standard spatial models of electoral competition and governmental policy-making to study how components of partisanship—such as candidate platform separation in elections, party ID-based voting, national partisan tides, and party-disciplined behavior in the legislature—are related to policy outcomes. We define partisan bias as the distance between the following two points in a conventional choice space: the ideal point of the median voter in the median legislative district and the policy outcome selected by the elected legislature. The study reveals that none of the party-in-electorate conditions is capable of producing partisan bias independently. Specified combinations of conditions, however, can significantly increase the bias and/or the variance of policy outcomes, sometimes in subtle ways.
Topological evolution of surface transportation networks

This study explores the topological evolution of surface transportation networks, using empirical evidence and a simulation model validated on that data. Evolution is an iterative process of interaction, investment, and disinvestment. The temporal change of topological attributes for the network is also evaluated using measures of connectivity, density, heterogeneity, concentration, and connection patterns. The simulation model is validated using historical data from the Indiana interurban network. Statistical analyses suggest that the simulation model performs well in predicting the sequence of link abandonment in the interurban network as well as the temporal change of topological attributes. The simulation model is then applied on different idealized network structures. Typical connection patterns such as rings, webs, hub-and-spokes, and cul-de-sacs emerge in the networks; the spontaneous organization of network hierarchies, the temporal change of spacing between parallel links, and the rise-and-fall of places in terms of their relative importance are also observed, providing further evidence for the self-organization property of surface transportation networks.
Dialogic Labor Regulation in the Global Supply Chain

This article provides a conceptual model for legal researchers to empirically analyze regulatory interactions between private and public labor regulatory regimes in global supply chains. Regulatory scholars have discussed the rise of private regimes of regulation in global supply chains, and an important branch of this literature has focused on how these private regimes interact with extant public or state regulatory regimes. This article seeks to contribute to this discussion by focusing specifically on the case of labor regulation in global supply chains. It argues for a “dialogic” framework to understand labor regulatory interactions, whereby interactions can be described to function on a continuum of institutional formality, and subjective intentionality. To illustrate how the analytical framework functions in practice, the author conducted an empirical case study on how a private labor regulatory regime in Jordan called Better Work interacted with the Jordanian state.
The Free Exercise Clause: How Redundant, and Why?

This article responds to Professor Mark Tushnet's article, "The Redundant Free Exercise Clause?" Although its analysis and specific conclusions are distinctive, the article reaches a general conclusion similar to Tushnet's - namely, that the contemporary Free Exercise Clause is largely redundant, in that it provides little protection that is not afforded independently by other First Amendment doctrines. The article first contends that the core principle of the contemporary Free Exercise Clause, the nondiscrimination requirement of Employment Division v. Smith, might be subsumed, perhaps entirely, within the free speech principle that disfavors content discrimination. To that extent, the Free Exercise Clause is redundant. The article then considers whether the Free Exercise Clause might have additional, and potentially non-redundant meaning. First, the Clause might not merely forbid purposeful discrimination against religion; it might include a more robust requirement of "general applicability." Second, the Clause might provide some non-redundant constitutional protection against laws that are nondiscriminatory and generally applicable. Third, even when the Clause does no independent doctrinal work, it might have doctrinal significance by informing the particular substance of the Supreme Court's other First Amendment doctrines. The article contends that the exercise of religion now receives only limited constitutional protection, and very little of that protection is grounded distinctively in the Free Exercise Clause. It concludes by highlighting certain basic trends - philosophical, jurisprudential, and religious - that may help explain not only the Court's limited protection of religious exercise as such, but also the migration of religious freedom claims to other doctrinal rubrics.
Off‐Label Use Of Pharmaceuticals: A Detection Controlled Estimation Approach

We identify the rate of off-label use of prescription drugs in the United States during 1993-2008. We apply Detection Controlled Estimation to a comprehensive cross-section of prescriptions and find that rates of off-label use rise from 30.2% to 39.1% during this period. This coincides with a surge in settlements of Department of Justice lawsuits for off-label marketing. Additionally, physicians are more likely to prescribe off-label when there are fewer FDA-approved alternatives and when a patient’s insurance has less restrictive formularies and lower copayments. These substitution patterns are consistent with off-label prescribing by physicians that enhances the welfare of patients.
Child labor and the law: Notes on possible pathologies

Abstract The paper demonstrates that the standard policy for controlling child labor by imposing a fine on firms caught employing children can cause child labor to rise. This ‘pathological’ reaction is, however, reversed as the size of the fine increases.
Indirect Inference Based on the Score

The Efficient Method of Moments (EMM) estimator popularized by Gallant and Tauchen (1996) is an indirect inference estimator based on the simulated auxiliary score evaluated at the sample estimate of the auxiliary parameters. We study an alternative estimator that uses the sample auxiliary score evaluated at the simulated binding function which maps the structural parameters of interest to the auxiliary parameters. We show that the alternative estimator has the same asymptotic properties as the EMM estimator but in finite samples behaves more like the distance-based indirect inference estimator of Gouri«eroux, Monfort and Renault (1993).
Examining Participation Behavior in Defined Contribution Plans Using the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change

Using the transtheoretical model of behavior change (TTM), employee contributions to defined contribution (DC) plans were examined. The data came from the 2001 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Households were categorized into one of four TTM stages: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, and action. The findings indicated that life cycle characteristics, financial characteristics, and personal preferences influenced the likelihood that a household was in the precontemplation, contemplation, or preparation stages relative to being in the action stage.
Resources, Policies, and Agricultural Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa

Agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains low and is falling farther behind other regions of the world. Although agricultural output growth in the region has accelerated since the 1990s, this has been primarily due to resource expansion rather than to higher productivity. Yet there is evidence that agricultural productivity growth has improved in some countries. Enhanced productivity is correlated with investments in agricultural research, wider adoption of new technologies, and policy reforms that have strengthened economic incentives to farmers. Many of the technological improvements have come from the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centers. Benefits from the CGIAR in SSA are estimated to be over $6 for each $1 invested. Returns to national agricultural research are also robust, at least for large countries. But overall investment in agricultural research has remained low, and increases in research capacity will likely be necessary to significantly accelerate agricultural growth in the region. Other constraints to agricultural productivity include government policies that reduce earnings in the farm sector, the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus, and armed conflict within and between countries.
Ordinal aggregation results via Karlin's variation diminishing property

Abstract When is the weighted sum of quasi-concave functions quasi-concave? We answer this, extending an analogous preservation of the single-crossing property in QS: Quah and Strulovici (2012) . Our approach develops a general preservation of n -crossing properties, applying the variation diminishing property in Karlin (1956) . The QS premise is equivalent to Karlin's total positivity of order two, while our premise uses total positivity of order three: The weighted sum of quasi-concave functions is quasi-concave if each has an increasing portion more risk averse than any decreasing portion.
Opportunity Spaces in Innovation: Empirical Analysis of Large Samples of Ideas

A common approach to innovation, parallel search, is to identify a large number of opportunities and then to select a subset for further development, with just a few coming to fruition. One potential weakness with parallel search is that it permits repetition. The same, or a similar, idea might be generated multiple times, because parallel exploration processes typically operate without information about the ideas that have already been identified. In this paper we analyze repetition in five data sets comprising 1,368 opportunities and use that analysis to address three questions: (1) When a large number of efforts to generate ideas are conducted in parallel, how likely are the resulting ideas to be redundant? (2) How large are the opportunity spaces? (3) Are the unique ideas more valuable than those similar to many others? The answer to the first question is that although there is clearly some redundancy in the ideas generated by aggregating parallel efforts, this redundancy is quite small in absolute terms in our data, even for a narrowly defined domain. For the second question, we propose a method to extrapolate how many unique ideas would result from an unbounded effort by an unlimited number of comparable idea generators. Applying that method, and for the settings we study, the estimated total number of unique ideas is about one thousand for the most narrowly defined domain and greater than two thousand for the more broadly defined domains. On the third question, we find a positive relationship between the number of similar ideas and idea value: the ideas that are least similar to others are not generally the most valuable ones. This paper was accepted by Lee Fleming, entrepreneurship and innovation.
Jet quenching in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Parton propagation in dense nuclear matter results in elastic, inelastic and coherent multiple soft scattering with the in-medium color charges. Such scattering leads to calculable modifications of the hadron production cross section that is evaluated in the framework of the perturbative QCD factorization approach. Final state medium-induced gluon bremsstrahlung is arguably the most efficient way of suppressing large transverse momentum particle production in nucleus-nucleus collisions. The observed hadronic attenuation, known as jet quenching, can be related to the properties of the medium, such as density and temperature, and carries valuable information about the early stages of heavy ion reactions. Non-Abelian energy loss in the quarkgluon plasma can be studied in much greater detail through the modification of the two particle back-to-back correlations. Perturbative calculations give good description of the redistribution of the lost energy in lower transverse momentum particles and predict significant increase of the correlation width of away-side di-hadrons. In contrast, energy loss in cold nuclear matter was found to be small but for large values of Feynman-x is expected to complement the dynamical higher twist shadowing in experimentally observable forward rapidity hadron suppression.
Platform Pricing and Investment to Drive Third-Party Value Creation in Two-Sided Networks

Many two-sided platforms, such as eBay, iOS, Android, and Twitter, invest in developer integration tools, such as modular interfaces, interactive development environments, application programming i...
Motivating innovation in newly public firms

Abstract Prior research suggests that executive option grants that do not quickly vest provide managers with better incentives to pursue long-term, instead of short-term, objectives. Previous research also suggests that the pursuit of long-term objectives could be undermined by the risk of early termination. We conjecture that these arguments jointly suggest that managers are better motivated to pursue innovation when they are given more incentive compensation with longer vesting periods for unexercised options and yet some protection from disruptive takeover threats. Our evidence for a sample of newly public firms is consistent with more innovative firms jointly choosing such a combination.
Trade and thy neighbor's war

Abstract This paper is the first to examine the spillover effects of regional conflicts, defined as internal or external armed conflicts in contiguous states, on international trade. Our empirical findings—based on different measures of regional conflict constructed using alternate definitions of contiguity and types of conflict for 145 countries over 1948–2006—reveal a significant negative effect of both intrastate and international conflicts on the bilateral trade of neighboring countries that may not be directly involved in any conflict. The impact increases with conflict duration, and is persistent—on average, it takes bilateral trade 3–5 years to recover after the end of a regional conflict.
Policing Sex, Policing Immigrants: What Crimmigration's Past Can Tell Us About Its Present and Its Future

Previous scholarship locates crimmigration’s origins in the 1980s and ’90s. Drawing on extensive archival research on day-today interactions between local police and federal immigration officials, this Essay explores a lost chapter in the development of crimmigration: the pipeline that brought men arrested by vice squads in gay cruising areas into the deportation system in the 1950s and ’60s. This history demonstrates that the contemporary crimmigration
Prediction of Consumer Behavior by Experts and Novices

Are those who are familiar with scientific research on consumer behavior better able to make predictions about phenomena in this field? Predictions were made for 105 hypotheses from 20 empirical studies selected from Journal of Consumer Research. A total of 1,736 predictions were obtained from 16 academics, 12 practitioners, and 43 high school students: The practitioners were correct on 58.2 percent of the hypotheses, the students on 56.6 percent, and the academics on 51.3 percent. No group performed better than chance.