cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Hadronic parity violation

Abstract The history and phenomenology of hadronic parity nonconservation (PNC) is reviewed. We discuss the current status of the experimental tests and theory. We describe a reanalysis of the asymmetry for p → + p that, when combined with other experimental constraints and with a recent lattice QCD calculation of the weak pion–nucleon coupling h π 1 , reveals a much more consistent pattern of PNC couplings. In particular, isoscalar coupling strengths are similar to but somewhat larger than the “best value” estimate of Donoghue, Desplanques, and Holstein, while both lattice QCD and experiment indicate a suppressed h π 1 . We discuss the relationship between meson-exchange models of hadronic PNC and formulations based on effective theory, stressing their general compatibility as well as the challenge presented to theory by experiment, as several of the most precise measurements involve significant momentum scales. Future directions are proposed.
Addiction, responsibility, and neuroscience

The article addresses the question whether substance addiction should be a moral excuse and legal defense for crimes done by addicts when those crimes are related to their addiction (typically the behaviors in question are use and acquisition of drugs). The conclusion is a qualified "no," with room for that answer to be modified by future research in neuroscience. The article proceeds in five parts. First, the legal doctrines denying addiction as an defense are briefly described. Second, the question of how addiction should be conceptualized is raised, with attention being devoted to the methodological question of whether the law can and should use the medical conceptualization of addiction. Third, the question of why addicts use drugs is examined. Willing addicts (for whom drug use is rational) are distinguished from unwilling addicts (for whom it is not); it is unwilling addicts that are of interest because their "unwillingness" exhibits numerous but distinct defects of rationality that explain why addicts continue to do something so harmful to their interests despite their knowledge that that is what they are doing. The conclusion reached here is that the explanations of addicted behavior are diverse and different for different addicts on different occasions of their use, precluding any general, across the board explanation applicable to all acts by unwilling addicts. Fourth, the moral question is then raised as to whether any of the explanations of the behavior of unwilling addicts excuses them from responsibility for such of that behavior as is wrongful and criminal. The conclusion reached is generally in the negative, but given the diversity of motivations for why addicts continue to use drugs, that conclusion is not universal: some addicts do deserve to be excused. Fifth, two generations of research in the neuroscience of addiction are surveyed and the findings of that research plumbed to see whether the explanatory and moral conclusions discussed above need to be changed. Many have argued that neuroscience has shown that addiction should be a general excuse; grounds are given to reject all such claims. Still, the possibility is held open that future neuroscientific research on specific issues and in specific directions might yet show that addiction excuses more generally than is currently recognized.
The Rise and Fall of Humor: Psychological Distance Modulates Humorous Responses to Tragedy

Humor is a ubiquitous experience that facilitates coping, social coordination, and well-being. We examine how humorous responses to a tragedy change over time by measuring reactions to jokes about ...
Dynamic Responsiveness in the U.S. Senate

Id evelop a theory of dynamic responsiveness that suggests that parties that win elections choose candidates who are more extreme and parties that lose elections choose candidates who are more moderate. Moreover, the size of past victories matters. Close elections yield little change, but landslides yield large rc hanges in the candidates offered by both parties. I test this theory by analyzing the relationship between Republican vote share in U.S. Senate elections and the ideology of candidates offered in the subsequent election. The results show that Republican (Democratic) victories in past elections yield candidates wh oa re more (less) conservative in subsequent elections, and the effect is proportional to the margin of victory. This suggests that parties or candidates pay attention to past election returns. One major implication is that parties may remain polarized in spite of their responsiveness to the median voter.
Equidistribution of dilated curves on nilmanifolds

Generalizing classic results for a family of measures in the torus, for a family $(\mu_t)_{t\geq 0}$ of measures defined on a nilmanifold $X$, we study conditions under which the family equidistributes, meaning conditions under which the measures $\mu_t$ converge as $t\to\infty$ in the weak$^\ast$ topology to the Haar measure on $X$. We give general conditions on a family of measures defined by a dilation process, showing necessary and sufficient conditions for equidistribution as the family dilates, along with conditions such that this holds for all dilates outside some set of density zero. Furthermore, we show that these two types of equidistribution are different.
Is there a relation between audit fee cuts during the global financial crisis and banks’ financial reporting quality?

Abstract As a result of the global financial crisis (GFC), several audit clients were able to negotiate lower audit fees for the years 2008 and 2009. However, the PCAOB has expressed concern that lower audit fees might lead to lower audit effort and lower audit quality and financial reporting quality. This study examines the relation between audit fee cuts and banks’ financial reporting quality. Specifically, we focus on earnings management via loan loss provisions (LLP), the relation between current period LLP and future loan charge-offs, i.e., LLP validity, and the timely recognition of loan losses. For banks audited by Big 4 auditors, we find that income-increasing abnormal LLP are decreasing in audit fee cuts and LLP validity is increasing in audit fee cuts. For banks audited by non-Big 4 auditors, LLP validity is higher for banks that received a fee cut of more than 25% relative to other banks audited by non-Big 4 auditors. We do not observe an association between timely loan loss recognition and cuts in audit fees except for banks audited by non-Big 4 auditors and exempt from internal control audits where a fee cut of more than 25% is associated with less timely loan loss recognition. Overall, the findings suggest that Big 4 auditors constrained earnings management via LLP in banks that received cuts in audit fees. Our findings have important implications for regulators, investors, and others.
The Role of Fault and Motive in Defining Discrimination: The Seniority Question Under Title VII

Seniority systems play an important role in American industry, often governing rights to promotion, pay scales, layoff and relative entitlement to ancillary benefits. Seniority based decision-making protects employees from arbitrary employer action, yet seniority's same protective feature often may frustrate minorities' efforts to achieve actual equal employment opportunity. Relying on Title VII's section 703(h), the Supreme Court has held that seniority systems are immune from attack unless discriminatory intent is shown. In this Article, Professor Brodin reviews the evolution of the intent standard now governing seniority system challenges. He contrasts the Supreme Court's restrictive definition of intent in the seniority system context with the concept of intent found in other sections of Title VII, and in tort and criminal law. He argues that the Court's restrictive definition of intent is neither consistent with the legal system's approach to other conduct with socially injurious effects, nor facilitative of the policies represented by Title VII.
Today's Pragmatic Water Policy: Restoration, Collaboration, and Adaptive Management Along U.S. Rivers

In the absence of a comprehensive national water policy, today's decision making around water resources has come to be characterized by a pragmatic, problem-solving approach, with heightened attention to processes and cooperation. Increasing, water policy today is highlighted by a pragmatism that emphasizes restoration efforts, collaborative institutional arrangements, and adaptive management philosophies.
Are Public Housing Projects Good for Kids

Abstract One goal of federal housing policy is to improve the prospects of children in poor families. This paper examines the effect of public housing participation on housing quality and educational attainment. Using the SIPP, we show that living in projects is associated with more negative outcomes for children, although this appears to be due to unobserved heterogeneity. We control for the endogeneity of project participation using TSIV techniques which combine information on project participation from the CPS with information on outcomes from the Census. We find that project households are less likely to suffer from overcrowding or live in high-density complexes. Project children are less likely to have been held back. Thus, our results run counter to the stereotype that housing projects harm children.
Child Labour Use and Economic Growth: An Econometric Analysis

We present a simple dynamic theory of child labour, human capital formation, and economic growth that is consistent with some of the main features of child labour and economic development. The model supports a number of testable hypotheses, which we investigate econometrically in a systems approach. Using panel data from 64 countries in the period 1960–1980, the econometric results match the theory well. The incidence of child labour is negatively related to parental human capital and education quality, but is positively correlated with education cost. Further, countries with higher amounts of child labour tend to have lower stocks of human capital in the future. There is also a convergence phenomenon between the level and growth of human capital. The lower the current stock of human capital, the higher is current child-labour use and the faster is the growth rate of human capital.
Employee rights and acquisitions

Abstract This paper examines the outcomes and characteristics of corporate acquisitions from the perspective of stakeholder-shareholder agency conflicts. Using state variation in labor protections, we find that acquirers with strong labor rights experience lower announcement returns. Combined acquirer and target announcement returns are also lower in the presence of strong labor rights. Our findings remain statistically and economically significant after we control for a range of deal, firm, industry and state characteristics and explore various channels for the labor rights effect. Overall, the evidence indicates that employee-shareholder conflicts of interest reduce shareholder gains from acquisitions.
When Guilt Begets Pleasure: The Positive Effect of a Negative Emotion:

Abstract Understanding how emotions can affect pleasure has important implications both for people and for firms' communication strategies. Prior research has shown that experienced pleasure often assimilates to the valence of one's active emotions, such that negative emotions decrease pleasure. In contrast, the authors demonstrate that the activation of guilt, a negative emotion, enhances the pleasure experienced from hedonic consumption. The authors show that this effect occurs because of a cognitive association between guilt and pleasure, such that activating guilt can automatically activate cognitions related to pleasure. Furthermore, the authors show that this pattern of results is unique to guilt and cannot be explained by a contrast effect that generalizes to other negative emotions. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for marketing and consumption behavior.
Beyond Absolutism: Legal Institutions In The War On Terror

Absolutist positions make for enticing rhetoric, but no real solutions, on the law and terrorism front. This review essay stakes out a more contextual approach to issues involving torture, executive power, and mercy toward terrorism defendants. Considering recent collections edited by Sanford Levinson and Mark Tushnet, respectively, as well as a new book by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, the essay argues that careful attention to institutions will produce better results than absolutist sentiments. With regard to executive power, for example, the essay argues that seeking congressional ratification of executive action does not always produce outcomes that benefit civil liberties. As the new Military Commissions Act passed after the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld illustrates, sometimes the results of such ratification may be substantively worse than the status quo. The essay concludes that legislative action cannot replace a robust, ongoing approach by the courts.
Interactions of real GNP business cycles in a three‐country time‐series model

The paper describes a procedure for examining short-run dynamic interactions among macroeconomic models by constructing aggregate state-space submodels for dynamic modes corresponding with short-run response patterns. Using the quarterly real GNP from the US, Germany, and Japan for 1974. III to 1991. I we examine dynamic interactions in the frequency ranges roughly comparable with a range of business cycle frequencies. We find that there is no (worldwide) shock common to the three countries even though the German and Japanese real GNP are affected by a common shock.
Does Punishment for ““Culpable Indifference”” Simply Punish for ““Bad Character””? Examining the Requisite Connection Between Mens Rea and Actus Reus

Introduction 220 I. The Problem, in More Detail 229 II. Connection Requirements for Conventional Mental States 234 A. Connecting the Actor’s Purpose or Desire with His Acts 235 B. Connecting the Actor’s Knowledge or Reckless Belief with His Acts 247 C. Connecting the Actor’s Negligence with His Acts 257 III. Connection Requirements for Culpable Indifference 259 A. Introduction: Two Culpable Indifference Criteria 259 1. Idealized Criterion 262 2. Cognitive Counterfactual Criterion 264 B. The Cognitive Counterfactual Criterion: Further Analysis 267
Systemic risk and stability in financial networks

This paper argues that the extent of financial contagion exhibits a form of phase transition: as long as the magnitude of negative shocks affecting financial institutions are sufficiently small, a more densely connected financial network (corresponding to a more diversified pattern of interbank liabilities) enhances financial stability. However, beyond a certain point, dense interconnections serve as a mechanism for the propagation of shocks, leading to a more fragile financial system. Our results thus highlight that the same factors that contribute to resilience under certain conditions may function as significant sources of systemic risk under others. (JEL D85, E44, G21, G28, L14)
From Community to Commodity: The Ethics of Pharma-Funded Social Networking Sites for Physicians

A growing number of doctors in the United States are joining online professional networks that cater exclusively to licensed physicians. The most popular are Sermo, with more than 135,000 members, and Doximity, with more than 100,000. Both companies claim to offer a valuable service by enabling doctors to "connect" in a secure online environment. But their business models raise ethical concerns. The sites generate revenue by selling access to their large networks of physician-users to clients that include global pharmaceutical companies, market research and consulting firms, and hedge funds and other investors. In exchange for a fee, these clients are offered a variety of tools to monitor, analyze, and solicit physicians' opinions. In Sermo's case, clients are also offered opportunities to conduct "awareness campaigns" on the site that are aimed at influencing physician sentiment about specific drugs and medical devices. In effect, these online networks have created an even more efficient means for the pharmaceutical industry to track physician sentiment, disseminate messages, and cultivate key opinion leaders. This paper argues that the dual nature of these sites (a) undermines their integrity and transparency as forums for the exchange of medical opinion and (b) presents an ethical conflict for the doctors who use them.
Are Overconfident CEOs Born or Made? Evidence of Self-Attribution Bias from Frequent Acquirers

We explore the history of mergers and acquisitions made by individual CEOs. Our study has three main findings: (1) CEOs' first deals exhibit zero announcement effects while their subsequent deals exhibit negative announcement effects; (2) while acquisition likelihood increases in the performance associated with previous acquisitions, previous positive performance does not curb the negative wealth effects associated with subsequent deals; and (3) CEOs' net purchase of stock is greater preceding subsequent deals than it is for first deals. We interpret these results as consistent with self-attribution bias leading to overconfidence. We also find evidence that the market anticipates future deals based on the CEO's acquisition history and impounds such anticipation into stock prices.
Viewing Ascension Health From A Design Thinking Perspective

In this commentary, I discuss how the design thinking concepts of empathy, related worlds, prototyping, ethnography, and story could enhance Ascension Health’s organizational design and ultimately its delivery of healthcare services. When organization design integrates a design thinking lens, more meaningful and innovative processes are developed both internally among organizational actors and externally with end users.
Context effects: A representation of choices from categories

Abstract This paper studies a model of reference-dependent choice from sets of options grouped into categories. The proposed model is consistent with experimental evidence documenting context effects in a variety of choice situations. In our model, the reference point for any given category is subjective, and corresponds to the least preferred element in the category under consideration. Every object in a category is evaluated relative to the corresponding reference point; this may distort the objective ranking of options across different categories, and thus possibly give rise to a context-effects bias. The resulting representation is essentially unique. We also provide an economic application of the preferences that we axiomatize to principal-agent models. We show how sellers facing consumers exhibiting the context-effects bias can increase their profits by exploiting their bounded rationality.
BIRTH OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE: CRISIS IN THE WOMB

Abstract The outbreak of World War I shut the New York Stock Exchange for more than 4 months. The conventional explanation maintains that the closure prevented a collapse in stock prices that threatened a repetition of the Panic of 1907. This paper shows that the Wilson Administration encouraged the suspension of trading to pave the way for launching the Federal Reserve System, which was in the process of being born. Federal Reserve insiders considered an adequate stock of gold crucial to the success of the new monetary system. Closing the Exchange helped to forestall an outflow of gold. Central bankers can learn how crisis control is supposed to work from the 1914 experience.
Geographic Location of the Firm and Credit Rating Accuracy

We document in this study that lack of soft information as a result of longer distance between the firm and rating agency headquarters leads to higher errors in bond ratings, reflected by Type I an...
The Decision to Award Punitive Damages: An Empirical Study

Empirical studies have consistently shown that punitive damages are rarely awarded, with rates of about 3 to 5 percent of plaintiff trial wins. Using the 2005 data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Civil Justice Survey, this article shows that knowing in which cases plaintiffs sought punitive damages transforms the picture of punitive damages. Not accounting for whether punitive damages were sought obscures the meaningful punitive damages rate, the rate of awards in cases in which they were sought, by a factor of nearly 10, and obfuscates a more explicable pattern of awards than has been reported. Punitive damages were surprisingly infrequently sought, with requests found in about 10 percent of tried cases that plaintiffs won. State laws restricting access to punitive damages were significantly associated with rates of seeking punitive damages. Punitive damages were awarded in about 30 percent of the plaintiff trial wins in which they were sought. Awards were most frequent in cases of intentional tort, with a punitive award rate of over 60 percent. Greater harm corresponded to a greater probability of an award: the size of the compensatory award was significantly associated with whether punitive damages were awarded, with a rate of approximately 60 percent for cases with compensatory awards of $1 million or more. Regression models correctly classify about 70 percent or more of the punitive award request outcomes. 1 Eisenberg is Henry Allen Mark Professor of Law and Adjunct Professor of Statistical Sciences, Cornell University; Heise is Professor of Law, Cornell Law School; Waters is Senior Court Research Associate, National Center for State Courts; Wells is Charles A. Alexander Professor of Statistical Sciences, Cornell University, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research, Cornell University Weill Medical College. The data analyzed here were gathered under a grant from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and are archived at the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, 2005, Study No. 23862. The views expressed here are those of the authors and not those of either the National Center for State Courts or of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, Germany, at the 2009 meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools, and at the Poster Session of the 2009 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, University of Southern California, Gould School of Law. Eisenberg has analyzed the 2005 Civil Justice Survey data in connection with an expert report for the estate of a plaintiff with a possible punitive damages claim. Fall 2010: Volume 2, Number 2 ~ Journal of Legal Analysis ~ 577 Judge-jury differences in the rate of awards exist, with judges awarding punitive damages at a higher rate in personal injury cases and juries awarding them at a higher rate in nonpersonal injury cases. These puzzling adjudicator differences may be a consequence of the routing of different cases to judges and juries.
Cross‐Country Variation in the Liquidity Effect: The Role of Financial Markets*

This paper examines cross-country variation in the liquidity effect – the negative response of interest rates to money supply shocks – focusing on the role of financial factors in explaining this variation. We estimate the liquidity effect for each of 21 countries using VAR models in which money supply shocks are restricted to be neutral in the long-run, then regress the estimated liquidity effect on financial market variables across countries. We find that financial factors play an important role in determining the magnitude of the liquidity effect, and that this evidence is most consistent with generalised versions of limited-participation models.
Special Issues Raised by Rape Trials

Rape cases reveal core conflicts in the space where evidence, law, and ethics intersect.1 Such conflicts include the tension between victim protection and the rights of the accused, the challenges attorneys face trying to negotiate the demands of sensitive and emotionally difficult cases, and the role of the law in counteracting stereotypes and bias. In this essay, I will begin by presenting the cultural milieu surrounding rape allegations, briefly reviewing attitudes towards perpetrators and victims.2 Next, I will attempt to capture the legal zeitgeist concerning rape, focusing on two recent phenomena: the reversal of false rape convictions based on DNA evidence and the advent of big-media rape trials involving various celebrities. After establishing this groundwork, I will turn to three separate issues of ethics and evidence that arise regularly in rape trials: (1) naming the victim, (2) shielding the victim’s sexual history, and (3) civil
Predictions and Prescriptions for the Endangered Species Act

The thirtieth anniversary of the enactment of the modern Endangered Species Act (ESA) offers an irresistible excuse to suggest changes that are needed to set the statute, and the larger project of environmental protection, on course for greater effectiveness. The 1973 ESA is novel in its approach and reach, in that it reflects both the resource management and pollution control traditions in environmental law. Its evolution indicates broader trends in the legal landscape of environmental law. Making predictions about the future of the ESA is a daunting task. Most predictions made thirty years ago about the statute proved to be wrong. The existence of three inconsistent, but equally plausible stories describing the past thirty years of environmental law history compound the problem, providing little basis upon which to project past trends onto the future.More useful than venturing guesses about the future is describing what changes we need to make in order to fulfill the promise of the ESA. Rather than speculating about the statute's future path, we must carefully plan that path with prescriptions for reform in three major areas: better funding for the ESA program, technology-based limitations to control habitat degradation, and preventative care for biodiversity.
Including Image-Based Perception in Disturbance Observer for Warehouse Drones

Grasping and releasing objects would cause oscillations to delivery drones in the warehouse. To reduce such undesired oscillations, this paper treats the to-be-delivered object as an unknown external disturbance and presents an image-based disturbance observer (DOB) to estimate and reject such disturbance. Different from the existing DOB technique that can only compensate for the disturbance after the oscillations happen, the proposed image-based one incorporates image-based disturbance prediction into the control loop to further improve the performance of the DOB. The proposed image-based DOB consists of two parts. The first one is deep-learning-based disturbance prediction. By taking an image of the to-be-delivered object, a sequential disturbance signal is predicted in advance using a connected pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) and a long short-term memory (LSTM) network. The second part is a conventional DOB in the feedback loop with a feedforward correction, which utilizes the deep learning prediction to generate a learning signal. Numerical studies are performed to validate the proposed image-based DOB regarding oscillation reduction for delivery drones during the grasping and releasing periods of the objects.
Minorities, Shareholder and Otherwise

Corporate law understands what constitutional law does not. Minority status matters to law. Where today's constitutional jurisprudence of equal protection aspires to colorblindness, corporate law places minority concerns at the heart of its endeavor. The minorities of corporate law are minority shareholders - investors holding small, noncontrolling interests in the corporation. By contrasting corporate and constitutional law, I begin to conceptualize "minority" status as a legal fact. I begin by rereading the corporate canon. I show that body's concern not just for wealth maximization, but also its distribution. I reveal corporate law's deep commitment to protecting minority shareholders, operationalized through an elaborate common law and statutory framework. I then apply corporate law's theory of minorities to three hot button debates in the constitutional law realm: affirmative action (recently addressed by the Supreme Court in Grutter and Gratz), California's Racial Privacy Initiative (put to vote in 2003), and the demographic shift to a majority minority polity (already reality in California).
Keynesian Economics, Monetary Policy and the Business Cycle – New and Old

After a brief review of the main differences between New and Old Keynesian economics from the sixties this paper focuses on a tension between traditional sluggish measures of potential output commonly used by policymakers and the New Keynesian (NK) notion of this variable which conceptualizes it as the level of output that would have been produced under perfect competition had all prices and wages been flexible. The paper shows that, under monopolistic competition, NK potential output is often more volatile than the level of output produced under sticky prices and wages implying either of the following. Real life policymakers mistakenly target smooth versions of output or (since actual economies are monopolistically rather than perfectly competi- tive) the flexible price and wage equilibrium does not necessarily maximize welfare. The paper shows, that depending on the shape of the utility function and of the distribu- tion of productivity shocks either case is possible and proposes a criterion for discrimi- nating between them. (JEL E3, E4, E5, E6)
The fiscal role of price stabilization funds: The case of côte d'ivoire

This paper aims to illustrate the important fiscal aspects of an agricultural price stabilization fund by examining the operations and experience of the CSSPPA in Cote d`Ivoire. After considering some of the issues that determine whether a price stabilization fund should be in the private or public sector and investigating the fund`s resource mobilization role through explicit and implicit export taxation, the paper discusses issues related to the adequate insulation of producer prices from changing world market prices, and provides a macroeconomic perspective of the fund`s role in the transmission of export stimuli to the domestic economy.
Capital Structure Deviation and Speed of Adjustment

As a firm deviates from its target leverage from above (below), the bankruptcy costs (foregone tax savings) rise at an increasing rate while the tax savings (reduced bankruptcy costs) rise at a decreasing rate, generating a stronger incentive for rebalancing capital structure. This phenomenon renders the speed of adjustment (SOA) an increasing function of the deviation. Employing a bootstrapping-based estimation strategy that averts well-known estimation biases, we find U.S. firms exhibit a positive SOA sensitivity to leverage deviation. Also, the SOA sensitivity is greater for overlevered than underlevered firms.
Sorting and Private Education in Italy

The economics and politics of private education are complicated and controversial. Recent efficiency-oriented reforms of public transportation, urban sanitation, health care and even prison administration have involved the replacement of public provision of goods and services with private provision at subsidised rates. The question of whether governments should issue tax-financed vouchers to private non-profit suppliers of education is particularly topical in Italy, where the constitution stipulates that state and private schools have equal rights but the latter should not be state-funded. Regional governments, however, have begun to issue means-tested vouchers to offset either state or private schooling costs. Moreover the education minister in the Berlusconi government, Letizia Moratti, was among the signatories of the 1999 ‘Scuola Libera’ manifesto, which advocated the radical privatisation of schooling provision in Italy.1
Specification Analysis of Affine Term Structure Models

This paper explores the structural differences and relative goodness-of-fits of affine term structure models ~ATSMs!. Within the family of ATSMs there is a tradeoff between f lexibility in modeling the conditional correlations and volatilities of the risk factors. This trade-off is formalized by our classification of N-factor affine family into N 1 1 non-nested subfamilies of models. Specializing to three-factor ATSMs, our analysis suggests, based on theoretical considerations and empirical evidence, that some subfamilies of ATSMs are better suited than others to explaining historical interest rate behavior. IN SPECIFYING A DYNAMIC TERM STRUCTURE MODEL—one that describes the comovement over time of short- and long-term bond yields—researchers are inevitably confronted with trade-offs between the richness of econometric representations of the state variables and the computational burdens of pricing and estimation. It is perhaps not surprising then that virtually all of the empirical implementations of multifactor term structure models that use time series data on long- and short-term bond yields simultaneously have focused on special cases of “affine” term structure models ~ATSMs! .A n ATSM accommodates time-varying means and volatilities of the state variables through affine specifications of the risk-neutral drift and volatility coefficients. At the same time, ATSMs yield essentially closed-form expressions for zero-coupon-bond prices ~Duffie and Kan ~1996!!, which greatly facilitates pricing and econometric implementation. The focus on ATSMs extends back at least to the pathbreaking studies by Vasicek ~1977! and Cox, Ingersoll, and Ross ~1985!, who presumed that the instantaneous short rate r~t! was an affine function of an N-dimensional state vector Y~t!, r~t! 5 d 0 1 d y ’ Y~t!, and that Y~t! followed Gaussian and square-root diffusions, respectively. More recently, researchers have explored formulations of ATSMs that extend the one-factor Markov represen
China’s Human Rights Footprint in Africa

A significant amount of recent scholarship and commentary accuses China of plundering the African continent, coddling its dictators, and flouting labor and environmental standards. This paper makes the counterintuitive claim that, despite irrefutable cases of abuse, China’s engagement with Africa has actually improved the human rights conditions of millions of Africans. First, it places China’s abuses in context, showing that they differ little from the abuses and patronage politics of the major Western powers. Second, it examines the evolution of international relations between China and various African countries, from the exportation of political revolution in the 1950s and 1960s, to the promotion of human capital in the 2000s and 2010s. Third, it catalogs the many recent contributions in the educational, agricultural, infrastructural and medical fields that China had made to African development. By challenging the dominant narratives on both theoretical and empirical grounds, I call for a reexamination of a critically important, but often misunderstood, pattern of interactions between China and Africa, a nexus that is shaping world affairs and perceptions in unprecedented ways.
Discovery of Non-Testifying "In-House" Experts Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26

Rule 26(b)(4) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure limits the discovery of facts known or opinions held by “experts” where those facts and opinions were “acquired or developed in anticipation of litigation or for trial.” The rule purports to set forth the nature of these limitations with respect to experts who will testify at trial and “retained or specially employed experts” who will not testify. However, a person seeking to discern the limitations on discovery of a third category of experts, non-testifying experts who are regularly employed by a party and acquire and develop facts and opinions in anticipation of litigation, faces a significant amount of fog. The issue of what, if any, limitations apply to discovery of these “in-house” experts is not addressed plainly by the rule, and the advisory committee note only enhances the uncertainty. This article focuses on the appropriate bearings, which can be extracted from the policies underlying discovery and its limitations. After noting the context in which the issue arises and illustrating how rule 26(b)(4) fails to delineate clearly the appropriate limitations on discovery of in-house experts, the article extracts the policies pertinent to its resolution that emanate from the Rules. The article then explores comprehensively how these policies apply to the in-house expert context and suggests the resolution of the issue that is most consistent with them.
On Territoriality and International Investment Law: Applying China's Investment Treaties To Hong Kong And Macao

In a recent ruling, the Singapore High Court (SGHC) decided to set aside an arbitration award on the basis that the China-Laos bilateral investment treaty does not apply to Macao, a special administrative region of China. This ruling raises a number of interesting issues for the territorial application of investment treaties in general and Chinese investment treaties in particular. Moreover, this ruling is important inasmuch some might urge to proclaim it conclusive for the inapplicability of Chinese investment treaties to both Hong Kong and Macao. Within this context, this article finds that the SGHC overlooked the temporal effect of subsequent agreements to concluded investor-state arbitrations, and on the same time did not adequately explain the effect of devolution agreements on third parties and the impact of the ever expanding parallelism of China’s investment ‘treatification’. In addition, treaty practice on the territorial extension of investment treaties is likely not supportive of the SGHC’s findings, although an analogy with succession and secession cases may suggest otherwise. On balance, this article finds that state practice on the territorial application of investment treaties, along with the circumstances inherent to the case in hand, suggests that the application of Chinese investment treaties to Hong Kong and Macao is still not conclusively determined, even after the ruling of the SGHC.
Learning about noise

Abstract This paper studies how acquisition of non-fundamental information (learning about noise) affects financial markets. We develop a rational expectations model with investors who are endowed with fundamental and non-fundamental information of heterogeneous quality and who optimally allocate learning capacity between fundamentals and noise. We demonstrate that learning about noise increases price informativeness, and the price can be the most informative when the majority of investors acquire non-fundamental information. We also find that i) investors whose prior fundamental information is relatively precise (imprecise) compared to their prior non-fundamental information learn only about fundamentals (noise) and ii) learning about fundamentals (noise) increases (decreases) the heterogeneity in the fundamental information quality across investors.
Does Food Aid Stabilize Food Availability

This paper explores the empirical relationship between U.S. food aid flows per capita and nonconcessional food availability per capita in PL 480 recipient economies. The evidence suggests PL 480, while modestly progressive in its distribution, is if anything procyclical in recipient economies. Food aid fails to stabilize food availability. Both increased domestic food production - i.e., agricultural development - and commercial trade appear more effective than food aid in advancing food security objectives through the stabilization of food availability per capita in low-income economies. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Skill Management in Large-Scale Service Marketplaces

Large-scale, web-based service marketplaces have recently emerged as a new resource for customers who need quick resolutions for their short-term problems. Due to the temporary nature of the relations between customers and service providers (agents) in these marketplaces, customers may not have an opportunity to assess the ability of an agent before their service completion. On the other hand, the moderating firm has a more sustained relationship with agents, and thus it can provide customers with more information about the abilities of agents through skill screening mechanisms. In this paper, we consider a marketplace where the moderating firm can run two skills tests on agents to assess if their skills are above certain thresholds. Our main objective is to evaluate the effectiveness of skill screening as a revenue maximization tool. We, specifically, analyze how much benefit the firm obtains after each additional skill test. We find that skill screening leads to negligible revenue improvements in marketplaces where agent skills are highly compatible and the average service times are similar for all customers. As the compatibility of agent skills weakens or the customers start to vary in their processing time needs, we show that the firm starts to experience sizable improvements in revenue from skill screening. Apparently, the firm can reap the most of these substantial benefits when it runs only one test. For instance, in marketplaces where agents posses uncorrelated skills, the second skill test only brings an additional 2% improvement in revenue. Accounting for possible skill screening costs, we then show the optimality of offering only one test when the compatibility between agent skills is sufficiently low. The results of this paper also have important implications in terms of the right level of intervention in the marketplaces we study. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Inter-company matching and the supply of informed capital

Abstract We model an economy where it is beneficial for high-type organizations to collaborate with other high types, and where this assortative-matching pattern allows informed financiers to provide inexpensive funds to partner companies of their high-type ventures. The expected funding benefit associated with finding high-type partners increases in the supply of informed capital, which creates an additional incentive for high types to search. Our main result is that, in such a setting, a critical mass of informed capital is sometimes required for an efficient equilibrium to obtain. We provide a novel channel for how the financial sector can impact real outcomes, specifically by affecting matching patterns.
Courts and New Democracies: Recent Works

Recent literature on comparative judicial politics reveals a variety of roles that courts adopt in the process of democratization. These include, very rarely, serving as a trigger for democratization and, more commonly, serving as downstream guarantor for departing autocrats or as downstream consolidator of democracy. In light of these roles, this article reviews six relatively recent books: Courts in Latin America, edited by Helmke and Rios-Figueroa (2011); Judges Beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship: Lessons from Chile, by Hilbink (2007); Cultures of Legality: Judicialization and Political Activism in Latin America, edited by Couso, Huneeus, and Sieder (2011); The Legacies of Law: Long-Run Consequences of Legal Development in South Africa, 1652–2000, by Meierhenrich (2008); Judging Russia: Constitutional Court in Russian Politics 1990–2006, by Trochev (2008); and New Courts in Asia, edited by Harding and Nicholson (2010).
Implied Volatility of Leveraged ETF Options

AbstractThis paper studies the problem of understanding implied volatilities from options written on leveraged exchanged-traded funds (LETFs), with an emphasis on the relations between LETF options with different leverage ratios. We first examine from empirical data the implied volatility skews for LETF options based on the S&P 500. In order to enhance their comparison with non-leveraged ETFs, we introduce the concept of moneyness scaling and provide a new formula that links option implied volatilities between leveraged and unleveraged ETFs. Under a multiscale stochastic volatility framework, we apply asymptotic techniques to derive an approximation for both the LETF option price and implied volatility. The approximation formula reflects the role of the leverage ratio, and thus allows us to link implied volatilities of options on an ETF and its leveraged counterparts. We apply our result to quantify matches and mismatches in the level and slope of the implied volatility skews for various LETF options usin...
Do we really ‘know’ what we think we know? A case study of seminal research and its subsequent overgeneralization

We show that the community of accounting researchers has not fully appreciated the sensitivity of research conclusions to (necessarily) subjective research design choices, and that this failure has led to the subsequent overgeneralization of early evidence. Our analysis is based on a case study that examines the effects of two basic research design choices, and subsequent researchers' appreciation of the impact of those choices. To enhance our study's accessibility to a broad cross-section of the accounting research community, our case study focuses on an article that is covered in most accounting doctoral programs — the recipient of the second American Accounting Association “Seminal Contribution to Accounting Literature Award” — Beaver's 1968 article on the information content of annual earnings announcements [Beaver, W. (1968). The information content of annual earnings announcements. Empirical research in accounting; selected studies, 1968. Supplement to Journal of Accounting Research, 6, 67–92.] Our analysis reveals that the research design choices in Beaver's study significantly affected the results. Beaver clearly explained these choices, and was careful in drawing inferences. Nevertheless, subsequent researchers interpreted Beaver's evidence too broadly. Our new empirical evidence suggests that the information content inference is much more fragile than is generally suspected. We also present citation analyses showing that, consistent with the Kuhnian view that adherents of a paradigm tend to ignore (later) anomalous evidence, subsequent researchers largely overlooked post-Beaver evidence that was inconsistent with the paradigm's interpretation of Beaver's results. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of how cognitive biases of individuals, combined with biases inherent in the review process and the academy in general, foster an environment where the placement of the first research bricks affect the whole wall. While the case study focuses on an archival empirical financial accounting study, consideration of the effects of subjective research design choices and the documented deficiencies in the interpretation of research are relevant to empirical accounting researchers in general and to critical theorists, as well. While accounting scholars ‘think we understand’ the impact of research design choices, the evidence presented here suggests that we have collectively failed to apply this understanding in practice. Such failure delays the acquisition of knowledge. This study provides a salient demonstration indicating that we must constantly remain on guard to recognize the subjective nature of research design choices, to consider the likely effects of those choices, and to be cautious in drawing generalizations.
New Lie products for groups and their automorphisms

We generalize the common notion of descending and ascending central series. The descending approach determines a naturally graded Lie ring and the ascending version determines a graded module for this ring. We also link derivations of these rings to the automorphisms of a group. This uncovers new structure in 4/5 of the approximately 11.8 million groups of size at most 1000 and beyond that point pertains to at least a positive logarithmic proportion of all finite groups.