cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Graph Interpolating Activation Improves Both Natural and Robust Accuracies in Data-Efficient Deep Learning

Improving the accuracy and robustness of deep neural nets (DNNs) and adapting them to small training data are primary tasks in deep learning (DL) research. In this paper, we replace the output activation function of DNNs, typically the data-agnostic softmax function, with a graph Laplacian-based high-dimensional interpolating function which, in the continuum limit, converges to the solution of a Laplace–Beltrami equation on a high-dimensional manifold. Furthermore, we propose end-to-end training and testing algorithms for this new architecture. The proposed DNN with graph interpolating activation integrates the advantages of both deep learning and manifold learning. Compared to the conventional DNNs with the softmax function as output activation, the new framework demonstrates the following major advantages: First, it is better applicable to data-efficient learning in which we train high capacity DNNs without using a large number of training data. Second, it remarkably improves both natural accuracy on the clean images and robust accuracy on the adversarial images crafted by both white-box and black-box adversarial attacks. Third, it is a natural choice for semi-supervised learning. This paper is a significant extension of our earlier work published in NeurIPS, 2018. For reproducibility, the code is available at https://github.com/BaoWangMath/DNN-DataDependentActivation .
Effect of aerobic exercise on amyloid accumulation in preclinical Alzheimer's: A 1-year randomized controlled trial.

Background Our goal was to investigate the role of physical exercise to protect brain health as we age, including the potential to mitigate Alzheimer’s-related pathology. We assessed the effect of 52 weeks of a supervised aerobic exercise program on amyloid accumulation, cognitive performance, and brain volume in cognitively normal older adults with elevated and sub-threshold levels of cerebral amyloid as measured by amyloid PET imaging. Methods and findings This 52-week randomized controlled trial compared the effects of 150 minutes per week of aerobic exercise vs. education control intervention. A total of 117 underactive older adults (mean age 72.9 [7.7]) without evidence of cognitive impairment, with elevated (n = 79) or subthreshold (n = 38) levels of cerebral amyloid were randomized, and 110 participants completed the study. Exercise was conducted with supervision and monitoring by trained exercise specialists. We conducted 18F-AV45 PET imaging of cerebral amyloid and anatomical MRI for whole brain and hippocampal volume at baseline and Week 52 follow-up to index brain health. Neuropsychological tests were conducted at baseline, Week 26, and Week 52 to assess executive function, verbal memory, and visuospatial cognitive domains. Cardiorespiratory fitness testing was performed at baseline and Week 52 to assess response to exercise. The aerobic exercise group significantly improved cardiorespiratory fitness (11% vs. 1% in the control group) but there were no differences in change measures of amyloid, brain volume, or cognitive performance compared to control. Conclusions Aerobic exercise was not associated with reduced amyloid accumulation in cognitively normal older adults with cerebral amyloid. In spite of strong systemic cardiorespiratory effects of the intervention, the observed lack of cognitive or brain structure benefits suggests brain benefits of exercise reported in other studies are likely to be related to non-amyloid effects. Trial registration NCT02000583; ClinicalTrials.gov.
Macroprudential Regulation Under Repo Funding

Abstract The use of collateral has become one of the most widespread risk mitigation techniques. While it brings stabilizing effects to the individual cash lender, it may exacerbate systemic risk by accelerating bank deleveraging under funding stress. We show how a liquidity shock to the cash lender may propagate as a solvency shock via liquidity hoarding even if the cash lender remains solvent in all states of nature. Albeit a privately optimal response of the cash lender to a liquidity shock, bank deleveraging may lead to excessive bankruptcy among its borrowing counterparties while, at the same time, triggering contagion across asset classes. To buttress financial system resilience, we lay out a menu of macroprudential policies that deactivate this channel of financial contagion.
The Battle for Mindshare: The Emerging Consensus that the First Amendment Protects Corporate Criticism and Parody on the Internet

This article describes the development of trademark liability for corporate criticism or parody on the Internet and the emerging judicial consensus that imposing liability on this form of political speech violates the First Amendment rights of Internet users. The article begins by analyzing the expansion of trademark rights from a method of protecting merchants against counterfeiting into a broad-ranging tort against any invasion of consumers’ good feelings towards a business or its products. Courts and Congress made this expansion possible by eroding the requirement of commercial competition as a prerequisite to trademark liability and by crafting sometimes overbroad rules against creating “initial interest confusion,” establishing negative associations with a trademark, or “cybersquatting” on a domain name similar to a mark. Fortunately, the federal appellate courts are making it increasingly clear that the First Amendment shields Internet speech devoted to criticizing or making fun of corporations from censorship under trademark law. The author argues that this emerging consensus is consistent with the principal normative justifications for trademark rights as a means of preserving valuable property interests and promoting economic efficiency. Finally, he contends that trademark rights should be restricted to policing commercial competition, rather than non-commercial Internet speech. This limitation is essential if consumers are to preserve their autonomy in light of the pervasive influence of advertising and their ability to participate fully in a democratic society in light of the considerable power of the business world. © 2004 Virginia Journal of Law & Technology Association, at http://www.vjolt.net. Use paragraph numbers for pinpoint citations. † Assistant Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law. E-mail: htravis@post.harvard.edu. J.D., 1999, Harvard Law School. I thank Professors William W. Fisher III and Mark Lemley for introducing me to the intricacies of trademark law in cyberspace, and Jason King Binder, Soyoung Jung, and the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology for their editorial insight.
Assessing the Impact of RFID on Return Center Logistics

As many manufacturers, retailers, distributors, and logistics firms adopt RFID, the technology is becoming pervasive in the supply chain. Although its advocates include retail giants such as Wal-Mart, not all companies are enthusiastic about its benefits. It is not clear whether RFID is a boon or a curse to the supply chain---its market growth may just be an issue of compliance. To establish the real benefits of RFID, we conducted a field study with GENCO, a third-party logistics company that deployed RFID in the outbound logistics operations at one of its return centers. Our analysis found that the RFID implementation had a significant impact on the GENCO outbound process. The number of customer claims fell substantially following the RFID deployment. After controlling for other factors in our model, we confirmed that RFID was a key factor that contributed to the positive results at this return center. The current study underscores the potential of RFID for today's businesses.
The efficiency of managed care "patient protection" laws: incomplete contracts, bounded rationality, and market failure.

The 1990's have seen an explosion of state legislation mandating the provision of specific health insurance benefits, and the federal government appears poised to enact significant managed care patient protection legislation as well. Although patient protection is popular with voters, economists often decry such legislation as inefficient because it forces consumers to pay for benefits they do not purchase in the free market. In this article, Professor Korobkin argues that managed care regulation can enhance efficiency by requiring the provision of benefits likely to be inefficiently underprovided by the free market. First, relying on a simple game-theoretic model, the article contends that managed care organizations (MCOs) have an incentive to provide an inefficiently low quality of certain types of benefits because it is difficult for consumers to evaluate their quality prior to contracting, and because consumers who are able to evaluate quality after contracting are the customers that MCOs do not wish to retain. Second, relying on behavioral research on consumer decision making, the article claims that consumers' bounded rationality prevents them from rewarding MCOs in the market for providing a broader range of valued benefits, thus creating another incentive for MCOs to provide inefficiently low quality benefits. The article then compares the ability of regulatory mandates to mitigate the effects of these market imperfections with the promise of market facilitating approaches. Finally, it compares the relative institutional competence of courts, legislatures, and independent commissions to determine which mandates would be efficiency enhancing and which would not.
Contentious Citizenship: Undocumented Activism in the Not1More Deportation Campaign

This article examines a key shift in the activism of undocumented immigrants: the move from pro-system, institutionally-focused politics to the more contentious, direct action politics of the Not1More Deportation campaign. I trace this shift by analyzing three dimensions of undocumented activism: the content of the narratives or experiential accounts shared by activists; the tactics utilized by DREAMers and community-based organizations of undocumented immigrants; and the strategies of emotion management and emotional performance adopted by activists. I argue that this move toward contentious politics was fueled by an iterative process of movement claims-making and institutional response, which both empowered undocumented activists and rendered them skeptical of reliance on formal institutions or political parties. This article draws on several years of empirical research with undocumented activists in the state of Arizona; it analyzes the Not1MoreDeportation campaign as it has occurred both in Arizona and nationwide.
Implications of Indeterminacy: Naturalism in Epistemology and the Philosophy of Law II

In a circulated but heretofore unpublished 2001 paper, I argued that Leiter’s analogy to Quine’s “naturalization of epistemology” does not do the philosophical work Leiter suggests. I revisit the issues in this new essay. I first show that Leiter’s replies to my arguments fail. Most significantly, if – contrary to the genuinely naturalistic reading of Quine that I advanced – Quine is understood as claiming that we have no vantage point from which to address whether belief in scientific theories is ever justified, it would not help Leiter’s parallel. Given Leiter’s way of drawing the parallel, the analogous position in the legal case would be not the Legal Realists’ indeterminacy thesis, but the very different position that we have no vantage point from which to address whether legal decisions can ever be justified. I then go on to address the more important question of whether the indeterminacy thesis, if true, would support any replacement of important legal philosophical questions with empirical ones. Although Ronald Dworkin has argued against the indeterminacy thesis, if he were wrong on this issue, it would not in any way suggest that the questions with which Dworkin is centrally concerned cannot fruitfully be addressed. The indeterminacy thesis is a bone of contention in an ordinary philosophical debate between its proponents and Dworkin. Of course, if the determinacy thesis were true, no one should try to show that it is false, but this triviality lends no support to the kind of replacement proposal that Leiter proposes. I conclude with some general reflections on naturalism and philosophical methodology.
Citigroup: A Case Study in Managerial and Regulatory Failures

Citigroup has served as the poster child for the elusive promises and manifold pitfalls of universal banking. When Citicorp merged with Travelers to form Citigroup in 1998, Citigroup’s leaders and supporters asserted that the new financial conglomerate would offer unparalleled convenience to its customers through “one-stop shopping” for banking, securities and insurance services. They also claimed that Citigroup would have a superior ability to withstand financial shocks due to its broadly diversified activities.By 2009, those bold predictions of Citigroup’s success had turned to ashes. Citigroup pursued a high-risk, high-growth strategy during the 2000s that proved to be disastrous. As a result, the bank recorded more than $130 billion of losses on its loans and investments from 2007 to 2009. To prevent Citigroup’s failure, the federal government provided $45 billion of new capital to the bank and gave the bank $500 billion of additional help in the form of asset guarantees, debt guarantees and emergency loans. The federal government provided more financial assistance to Citigroup than to any other bank during the financial crisis.During its early years, Citigroup was embroiled in a series of high-profile scandals, including tainted transactions with Enron and WorldCom, biased research advice, corrupt allocations of shares in initial public offerings, predatory subprime lending, and market manipulation in foreign bond markets. Notwithstanding a widely-publicized plan to improve corporate risk controls in 2005, Citigroup continued to pursue higher profits through a wide range of speculative activities, including leveraged corporate lending, packaging toxic subprime loans into mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations, and dumping risky assets into off- balance-sheet conduits for which Citigroup had contractual and reputational exposures.Post-mortem evaluations of Citigroup’s near-collapse revealed that neither Citigroup’s managers nor its regulators recognized the systemic risks embedded in the bank’s far-flung operations. Thus, Citigroup was not only too big to fail but also too large and too complex to manage or regulate effectively. Citigroup’s history raises deeply troubling questions about the ability of bank executives and regulators to supervise and control today’s megabanks.Citigroup’s original creators - John Reed of Citicorp and Sandy Weill of Travelers - admitted in recent years that Citigroup’s universal banking model failed, and they called on Congress to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act’s separation between commercial and investment banks. As Reed and Weill acknowledged, the universal banking model is deeply flawed by its excessive organizational complexity, its vulnerability to culture clashes and conflicts of interest, and its tendency to permit excessive risk-taking within far-flung, semi-autonomous units that lack adequate oversight from either senior managers or regulators.
The Contagion Effect of Low-Quality Audits

ABSTRACT : We investigate if the existence of low-quality audits in an auditor office indicates the presence of a “contagion effect” on the quality of other (concurrent) audits conducted by the off...
Rhetorical Federalism: The Value of State-Based Dissent to Federal Health Reform

This Article makes the affirmative case for the widespread trend of state resistance to the recently enacted, comprehensive federal health reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“ACA”). A significant number of states have engaged in various forms of objection to the new federal laws, including filing lawsuits against the federal government, enacting laws providing that ACA will not apply to residents of the state, and refusing to cooperate with implementing the new laws. This Article identifies reasons why those actions should not be disregarded simply as Tea Party antics or election-year gamesmanship but instead should be considered valuable to health care policymaking and federal-state relations. In making the case for rhetorical federalism, this Article examines and expands previously articulated theories, including uncooperative federalism and opportunistic federalism. Key provisions of ACA implicating states are examined under the operative theories.
Lean manufacturing, non‐financial performance measures, and financial performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how utilization of non‐financial manufacturing performance (NFMP) measures impacts the lean manufacturing/financial performance relationship.Design/methodology/approach – A structural equation model (SEM) is estimated using data provided by 121 US manufacturing executives. In addition to examining direct effects, the study examines whether NFMP measurement mediates or moderates the lean manufacturing/financial performance relationship.Findings – The results provide substantial evidence that utilization of NFMP measures mediates the relationship between lean manufacturing and financial performance.Research limitations/implications – The study's findings regarding NFMP measurement suggest that the mixed results of prior studies of the lean manufacturing/financial performance relationship may be due in part to a failure to account for NFMP measurement. Limitations of the study are the non‐random sample and its small sample size, relative to the SEM estimated....
Inflation targeting and business cycle synchronization

Abstract Inflation targeting seems to have a small but positive effect on the synchronization of business cycles; countries that target inflation seem to have cycles that move slightly more closely with foreign cycles. Thus the advent of inflation targeting does not explain the decoupling of global business cycles, for two reasons. Indeed business cycles have not in fact become less synchronized across countries.
High Mass Resonances at ATLAS

A brief overview of searches for high mass resonances using a subset of data collected by the ATLAS experiment during the 2011 LHC run is presented. Various final states are explored including dilepton, diphoton, lepton with missing transverse energy, dijet, photon with a jet, top anti-top pairs, and Z boson pairs. No new resonance has been found and limits on several new physics models are set.
The Uzbek Growth Puzzle

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan’s output fell less than in any other former Soviet Republic, and growth turned positive in 1996/97. Given the country’s hesitant and idiosyncratic approach to reforms, this record has suprised many observers. This paper first shows that a standard panel model of growth in transition systematically underpredicts Uzbek growth from 1992-1996, confirming the view that Uzbekistan’s performance consitutes a puzzle. It then attempts to resolve the puzzle by appropriately extending the model. The main result is that Uzbekistan’s output performance was driven by a combination of low initial industrialization, its cotton production, and its self-sufficiency in energy.
Evaluating wireless carrier consolidation using semiparametric demand estimation

The US mobile phone service industry has dramatically consolidated over the last two decades. One justification for consolidation is that merged firms can provide consumers with larger coverage areas at lower costs. We estimate the willingness to pay for national coverage to evaluate this justification for past consolidation. As market level quantity data are not publicly available, we devise an econometric procedure that allows us to estimate the willingness to pay using market share ranks collected from the popular online retailer Amazon. Our semiparametric maximum score estimator controls for consumers’ heterogeneous preferences for carriers, handsets and minutes of calling time. We find that national coverage is strongly valued by consumers, providing an efficiency justification for across-market mergers. The methods we propose can estimate demand for other products using data from online retailers where product ranks, but not quantities, are observed.
Finding a high road: The moral case for Salvific Pluralism

the most devout and ethical persons of non-Christian faiths might find themselves in hell simply because they do not believe one of the essential tenets of Christianity seems difficult to reconcile with God's moral perfection. Despite this, most arguments for salvific pluralism have rested largely on epistemological and metaphysical concerns. John Hick, for example, sometimes argues that the fundaments of the major religious traditions correctly describe different aspects of ultimate reality and sometimes argues that ultimate reality is unknowable, leaving all religions on roughly equal ground. In this essay, I attempt a purely moral case for salvific pluralism by developing the ethical intuitions that I think ultimately ground pluralist sympathies. I argue that there is nothing culpable, by itself, in accepting certain nonChristian religious traditions. Since it would be unjust to punish someone for a non-culpable behavior or state, it follows that salvation does not depend on assent to the fundaments of Christianity. At the outset, I should note that the argument presented here is intended to respond to Christian exclusivism, and the argument's character reflects that focus in two related ways. First, the argument attempts specifically to show only that non-Christian classically theistic traditions are legitimate paths to salvation. My concern in this essay is primarily to rebut the exclusivist claim that Christianity is the only path to salvation, and not to establish the stronger Hickean claim that all the major religious traditions are legitimate paths to salvation. While I believe that these other traditions are also viable paths to salvation, a somewhat different argument from the one I make in this essay would be needed to show this. Given my objective and intended audience, it is easier to make the case that there is nothing culpable about accepting other classically theistic traditions precisely because of their doctrinal proximity to Christianity. Thus, my choice to focus on traditions closer to Christianity is purely methodological and should not be construed as in any way disparaging the soteriological prospects of other traditions.
Genetic information and the importance of context: implications for the social meaning of genetic information and individual identity.

Current genetic information laws are controversial and confusing. This article proposes a theoretical position for developing legal safeguards that recognize a distinction between genetic information in the research and clinical contexts. Individual identity is central to both the criticism of current overprotection of genetic information and the alternative regulatory scheme for genetic information. The article warns against genetic essentialism that changes the social meaning of genetic information and alters concepts of identity. Laws that consider the context within which genetic information arises avoid the pitfall of eroding concepts of identity and beliefs in autonomy. One consideration of context is to recognize the difference between genetic information in the clinical context and genetic information in the research context. In the research context genetic attributes are typically not yet tied to identity because the genetic information uncovered is unlikely to have clinical significance. The laws failure to recognize context protects genetic information that says nothing about an individual's identity. This encourages a shift in the social meaning of genetic information toward a genetic essentialism, which undermines traditionally held ideas of individual identity and autonomy. The beginnings of a solution lie in developing a fluid means to protect genetic information when it becomes sufficiently tied to individual identity. This approach must take into consideration context, and focus on the substantive character of the information, instead of evaluating information on the exclusive criteria of whether it is genetic. The legal tool that allows this fluidity, sufficiently considers context, and maintains a strong emphasis on identity is the tort of misappropriation of identity. The tort recognizes a continuum of proper legal protections based on the context within which genetic information is collected and used, and on the substantive content of the genetic information.
Affective Intuition and Task-Contingent Affect Regulation

Mood influences cognitive activity and behavior in systematic ways. Since such affective contingencies are repeatedly and broadly experienced, they should be available for learning and possibly conscious introspection. We examine the role of such intuitive theories in guiding affect regulation in a series of four studies and show that even suboptimal hedonic adjustments (i.e., preferences for the negative pole of the affective spectrum such as negative mood maintenance) were deliberately chosen in an attempt to match cognitive requirements of forthcoming tasks. We contrast affect discrepancy and strength of signal hypotheses to explain how affect regulation goals are activated.
TORTS, CORRECTIVE JUSTICE, AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

Numerous legal theorists argue that corrective justice is distinct both conceptually and normatively from distributive justice. In particular, they contend that it is an error to view corrective justice as ancillary to distributive justice, necessary only to maintain or restore a preferred allocation of benefits and burdens. The specific arguments of these legal theorists are addressed and shown to be inconclusive in relation to what I term the Dependence Thesis. The Dependence Thesis holds that a normative account of the occasions of corrective justice is dependent on a larger theory of distributive justice. The nature of this dependence relation varies from theory to theory. The role of tort compensation schemes within libertarian, liberal egalitarian, and utilitarian theories of distributive justice is discussed. It is argued that such theories provide comprehensive and critical perspectives on historical corrective practices, neither simply endorsing nor invalidating them. An alternative normative account of the occasions of corrective justice, offered by legal theorists who support the autonomy of corrective justice from distributive justice, is also discussed.
"Religious Freedom," The Individual Mandate, and Gifts: On Why the Church is Not a Bomb Shelter

The Health and Human Services’ regulatory requirement that all but a narrow set of “religious” employers provide contraceptives to employees is an example of what Robert Post and Nancy Rosenblum refer to as a growing ”congruence” between civil society’s values and the state’s legally enacted policy. Catholics and many others have resisted the HHS requirement on the ground that it violates ”religious freedom.” They ask (in the words of Cardinal Dolan) to be ”left alone” by the state. But the argument to be ”left alone” overlooks or suppresses the fact that the Catholic Church understands that it is its role to correct and transform society, not merely to be left alone in a gilded cage. This paper uses the HHS mandate as a vehicle by which to clarify the Catholic understanding of the ideal – but currently mostly unachievable – relationship between Church and state: the state should receive its principles from the Church, not the Church from the state. Social justice and subsidiarity disallow a state that reduces the Church to the status of a bomb shelter. Leviathan is happy to have the Church out of sight and out of mind.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE USE OF BEHAVIORAL MODELS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

Abstract Much of the gap between the potential of Information Systems and their realization can be explained by behavioral and organizational issues. This paper outlines the scope of behavioral research in information systems using selected examples, identifies several principles underlying this work and suggests reasons why the results of this research are of value.
Square-Root Lasso: Pivotal Recovery of Sparse Signals via Conic Programming

We propose a pivotal method for estimating high-dimensional sparse linear regression models, where the overall number of regressors $p$ is large, possibly much larger than $n$, but only $s$ regressors are significant. The method is a modification of the lasso, called the square-root lasso. The method is pivotal in that it neither relies on the knowledge of the standard deviation $\sigma$ or nor does it need to pre-estimate $\sigma$. Moreover, the method does not rely on normality or sub-Gaussianity of noise. It achieves near-oracle performance, attaining the convergence rate $\sigma \{(s/n)\log p\}^{1/2}$ in the prediction norm, and thus matching the performance of the lasso with known $\sigma$. These performance results are valid for both Gaussian and non-Gaussian errors, under some mild moment restrictions. We formulate the square-root lasso as a solution to a convex conic programming problem, which allows us to implement the estimator using efficient algorithmic methods, such as interior-point and first-order methods.
Affirmative Refraction: "Grutter v. Bollinger" Through the Lens of "The Case of the Speluncean Explorers"

Part of the "Symposium from Brown to Bakke to Grutter: Constitutionalizing and defining racial equality"
Using Recruiter Assessments of Applicants' Resume Content to Predict Applicant Mental Ability and Big Five Personality Dimensions

Information provided on applicants' resumes provides a convenient, cost-effective means for applicant screening. We sought to determine if recruiters' assessments of the presence of certain types of information on job applicants' resumes was related to applicants' general mental ability and personality traits. Forty recruiters from 35 organizations assessed the extent to which specified items were present on the resumes of job applicants. Results indicated relationships between recruiters' judgments regarding applicants' resume information and applicants' cognitive ability and Big Five personality characteristics. Implications for the use of resume information in the selection process are discussed.
Earnings Management and Ownership Retention for Initial Public Offering Firms: Theory and Evidence

This paper investigates, both theoretically and empirically, how earnings management and ownership retention interact, and how these two jointly affect the equilibrium market valuation of IPO firms in the presence of information asymmetry. Analytically, this paper extends the univariate signaling framework of Leland and Pyle (1977) and derives an efficient signaling equilibrium in which both reported earnings and ownership retention are endogenously chosen to convey the IPO issuer's private information. It is shown that even though either ownership retention or reported earnings communicates the issuer's type to the market unambiguously, the issuer will strategically employ both signals to achieve separation from potential lower quality imitators at minimal cost. Comparative statics analysis shows that the trade‐off between the two signals depends critically on the uncertainty over future earnings. The theoretical analysis generates several empirical implications regarding market efficiency, IPO pricing, ...
The performance of gender as reflected in American evidence rules: Language, power, and the legal construction of liability

The rules of evidence govern the admissibility of evidence in trials and determine the scope of meaning to be accorded to that evidence. This paper examines two American evidence rules and suggests that both rules incorporate ‘masculine’ norms of language usage. The evidence rule defining adoptive admissions provides that, when a person is confronted with an accusation of wrong-doing and fails to assertively deny it, the allegation is deemed to be admitted through silence. This rule presumes that one’s natural reaction upon an accusation would invariably be an explicit denial, such that silence can be fairly taken as a confession. Thus, this rule privileges assertive and confrontational modes of speech—all coded as ‘masculine’—and ignores the ways in which power asymmetries impact responses to accusation. Likewise, the evidence rule construing apology as an admission of fault denigrates expressions of emotional solidarity—coded as ‘feminine’—in favor of a presumption that penalizes those who say ‘sorry’ by presuming it means ‘I’m sorry I did something wrong’ rather than ‘I’m sorry that something bad has happened to you.’ Evidence rules such as these both channel and constrain the legal interpretation of language in ways that sustain gendered hierarchies of legal power.
2012 Virtual Conference of the International Communication Association, May 14-June 8

To date, virtual conferences have typically taken place in industries such as computer and IT, health care, and financial services. Until recently in higher education, web-based lectures, presentations, seminars, and training workshops have been more common than large multi-day conferences. What follows is a report about a three-week long 2012 Virtual Conference of the International Communication Association, May 14-June 8, held in conjunction with the physical convention in Phoenix, Arizona, May 24-28. The author, who served as a respondent for the Communication and Technology division, shares her observations and insight and reflects on the future of virtual event technology in academe.
Removing biases in computed returns

This paper presents a straightforward method for asymptotically removing the well-known upward bias in observed returns of equally-weighted portfolios. Our method removes all of the bias due to any random transient errors such as bid-ask bounce and allows for the estimation of short horizon returns. We apply our method to the CRSP equally-weighted monthly return indexes for the NYSE, Amex, and NASDAQ and show that the bias is cumulative. In particular, a NASDAQ index (with a base of 100 in 1973) grows to the level of 17,975 by 2006, but nearly half of the increase is due to cumulative bias. We also conduct a simulation in which we simulate true prices and set spreads according to a discrete pricing grid. True prices are then not necessarily at the midpoint of the spread. In the simulation we compare our method to calculating returns based on observed closing quote midpoints and find that the returns from our method are statistically indistinguishable from the (simulated) true returns. While the mid-quote method results in an improvement over using closing transaction prices, it still results in a statistically significant amount of upward bias. We demonstrate that applying our methodology results in a reversal of the relative performance of NASDAQ stocks versus NYSE stocks over a 25 year window.
Multinational Enterprise Pursuit of Minimized Liability: Law, International Business Theory and the Prestige Oil Spill

This Article examines the activities of various multinational enterprises (INEs) involved in the Prestige oil spill of 2002. The liability exposure of such enterprises is found to have been minimized by three legal phenomena which result from the current treatment of MNEs under national and international law. Review of the Prestige spill suggests that MNE liability exposure may be minimized by: (1) outsourcing, (2) reliance on renegade regime regulation, and (3) operation of the corporate veil. The reason for this observed minimized MINE liability is twofold. First, the current legal landscape which frames MNE activities is deficient to the extent that it facilitates this minimization. Second, MNEs adopt available minimization strategies to reduce liability exposure because this is consistent with their broader operational tendencies, as is explained in international business and international political economy scholarship. For instance, MNEs seek reduced liability exposure because this is consistent with their drive to reduce transaction costs. . BA (Hons.) (Calgary), MA (Carleton), LL.B. (Ottawa), LL.M (McGill, in progress), of the Bar of Ontario. The author would like to thank Craig Forcese, Donald M. McRae and Maureen A. Molot for their valuable comments on an earlier draft. All errors remain the author's own. Published by Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository, 2008 2008] MNE LIABILITY MINIMIZATION 411 IN TRO DUCTION 4 12 A. MNE Liability Minimization, Public Policy, and the Rule of L aw 4 13 B. What is a Multinational Enterprise? 414 C . T he Prestige Spill 4 15 II. MULTINATIONAL ENTERPRISE LIABILITY MINIMIZATION 418 A . O utsourcing 420 B. Renegade Regime Regulation 424 1. Secrecy H avens 425 2. Flags of Convenience I ....... 427 C. Reliance on the Corporate Veil 431 1. The Scope of the Corporate Veil 432 2. Legal Instances Where the Veil Unravels 434 i. Statutory Intervention 434 ii. A gency L aw 434 iii. Veil-Piercing Doctrine 435 iv. Direct Claims Against the Parent Company 436 3. States' Non-Assumption of Jurisdiction over Foreign Nation als 4 3 7 4. The Many Veils of the Alfa Group 438 i. Crown Resources Inc.'s Legal Ownership Chain 439 ii. Crown Resources Inc.'s Role in the Alfa Group 440 iii. The Alfa Group's Liability Minimization in Action ....... 441 III. EXPLANATIONS FOR MNE LIABILITY MINIMIZATION 442 A. The Eclectic Paradigm 443 1. Internalization Advantage 443 2. Ownership Advantage 445 B. The International Value Chain 445 C. The Obsolescing Bargain 447 D. The Law of Uneven Development 447 IV . C ONCLU SION 44 9 http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/bjil/vol26/iss2/4 DOI: doi:10.15779/Z38RH24 412 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
Welfare Reform, Saving, and Vehicle Ownership Do Asset Limits and Vehicle Exemptions Matter?

Eligibility rules for the AFDC/TANF program prohibit recipients from accumulating wealth in excess of certain thresholds. These asset restrictions place high implicit tax rates on asset holdings, and may also affect asset allocation decisions, because some assets such as vehicles are partially exempt. This paper examines whether asset restrictions for eligibility under the AFDC/TANF program affect the asset holdings of low-educated single mothers . Using nationally representative family-level data, I examine the impact of these restrictions on both liquid and vehicle assets , exploiting variation in asset limits and exemptions across states and over time. There are important reasons to examine vehicle assets in this context. First, vehicles make up a very significant share of total wealth for poor families. Families with limited resources are more likely to have vehicle equity than any other type of asset. Second, the variation in vehicle exemptions over time and across states far exceeds the variation in asset limits, suggesting that policy changes are particularly important for vehicle equity. Nevertheless, there is little research that examines the effects of asset restrictions on vehicle assets . Consistent with other recent research, I find little evidence that asset limits have an effect on the amount of liquid assets that single mothers hold. However, I find evidence that vehicle exemptions do have an important effect on vehicle assets. The findings suggest that moving from a $1500 vehicle exemption to a full vehicle exemption increases the probability of owning a car by 20 percentage points for low-educated single mothers relative to a comparison group. There is also evidence that more generous vehicle exemptions result in greater vehicle equity. The results indicate that single mothers are not substituting vehicle equity for liquid assets in response to more relaxed restrictions on vehicles . In addition, the findings suggest that total wealth increases in response to more generous vehicle exemptions.
Beyond Sindell: Relaxation of Cause-in-Fact Rules for Indeterminate Plaintiffs

Discusses a doctrine (the Sindell rule) enabling plaintiffs to shift the burden of proof onto several defendants when all of them have exposed him or her to a risk which has eventuated, but the plaintiff is uncertain which one is to blame for the injury. Proposes extending this rule in the miror-image case when an "indeterminate plaintiff" is one of several living in a locality who have suffered similar injuries, some of which may be due to natural causes but others of which are known to be attributable to the defendant, such as a polluter who has caused an increase in the number of asthma or cancer cases. Evaluates policy grounds for the extension and points out particular scenarios where extension of the Sindell rule to the case of indeterminate plaintiffs (rather than defendants) makes sense. Anticipates objections to the proposal and responds to them.
Declining Wealth and Work among Male Veterans in the Health and Retirement Study

The composition, wealth, and employment of male veterans and nonveterans are analyzed for four cohorts from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), those aged 51–56 in 1992, 1998, 2004, and 2010. Half of the men in the two oldest cohorts served in the military. Only 16% of the men in the youngest cohort, the only cohort subject to the all-volunteer military, served. One-fifth to one-third of the members of each cohort who served saw combat, mainly in Vietnam and the First Gulf War. Among those aged 51–56 in 1992, veterans were better educated, healthier, wealthier, and more likely to be working than nonveterans. By the 2010 cohort, 51- to 56-year-old veterans lost their educational advantage over nonveterans and were less healthy, less wealthy, and less likely to be working. After standardizing in multiple regressions for the influence of major observable characteristics, for the original 1992 HRS cohort, the wealth of veterans is no longer higher than the wealth of nonveterans. In contrast, the wealth of veterans from the youngest cohort, those 51–56 in 2010, remains about 10%–13% lower than the wealth of nonveterans from that cohort. There also is a decline from older to younger cohorts of veterans compared to nonveterans in the probability of not being retired, working more than 35 hours per week, and holding a job for more than 10 years.
Dynamic incentives and responsibility accounting

Abstract In dynamic principal–agent relationships, unless a principal can commit to a multiperiod contract, incentives are affected by a problem known as the ratchet effect. We present a two-period agency model to show that the use of more aggregate performance measures and greater consolidation of responsibility helps mitigate the ratchet effect. For example, an aggregate measure may be preferred to a set of disaggregate measures to avoid aggravating the ratchet effect. Similarly, it may be preferable to consolidate responsibility for two activities in the hands of one agent despite the potential loss of performance evaluation information implied by consolidation.
The Critical Promise of the New History of European Law

The articles in this special issue test a range of historiographical assumptions – for example, about periodisation (most importantly when legal integration ‘began’) as well as about the definition of the purported object of study (the seemingly ‘constitutional’ character of the process of European legal integration) – which have been central to the interpretative baseline established by legal scholars and political scientists over the last several decades. Building on a similar critique of that baseline, this article argues that integration can profitably be understood, in legal-historical terms, as a denationalised expression of diffuse and fragmented (that is, ‘administrative’) governance. The basic elements of that governance emerged in Western Europe over the course of the inter-war and post-war decades, and these elements have continued to shape EU legal history up to the present.
Hoist with their Own Petard

In 2003, Congress and the Department of Justice tried to increase their control over the United States Sentencing Commission and federal sentencing generally. Congress appeared to have achieved this goal when it passed the Prosecutorial Remedies and Tools Against the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003 (“PROTECT Act”), which resulted in reduced grounds for downward departures, Congressionally-revised text of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and a constrained Sentencing Commission potentially devoid of judges. Yet progovernment interpretations of the PROTECT Act may have been premature because the Supreme Court has now struck down parts of Washington State’s legislativelyenacted sentencing guidelines in Blakely v. Washington. In an effort to save the Federal Sentencing Guidelines from Blakely’s grasp, the Department of Justice has emphasized that they are administratively enacted, in contrast to Washington’s legislatively-enacted guidelines. As a factual matter, however, the PROTECT Act blurred the federal administrative versus legislative distinction. Thus, Congress and the Department – the architects of the PROTECT Act – may find themselves hoist with their own petard.
On the Correlation Structure of Microstructure Noise: A Financial Economic Approach

We introduce the financial economics of market microstructure to the financial econometrics of asset return volatility estimation. In particular, we derive the crosscorrelation function between latent returns and market microstructure noise in several leading microstructure environments. We propose and illustrate several corresponding theory-inspired volatility estimators, which we apply to stock and oil prices. Our analysis and results are useful for assessing the validity of the frequently-assumed independence of latent price and microstructure noise, for explaining observed cross-correlation patterns, for predicting as-yet undiscovered patterns, and most importantly, for promoting improved microstructure-based volatility empirics and improved empirical microstructure studies. Simultaneously and conversely, our analysis is far from the last word on the subject, as it is based on stylized benchmark models; it comes with a “call to action” for development and use of richer microstructure models in volatility estimation and beyond.
Fair Value Measurements and Audit Fees: Evidence from the Banking Industry

SUMMARY: Using publicly traded bank holding company data from 2008 through 2011, this paper documents that the proportions of fair-valued assets held by banks are positively associated with audit f...
Democratic solidarity: Rethinking democracy promotion in the New Middle East

This article aims to temper the cross-disciplinary enthusiasm for democracy-promotion programs in the light of the recent anti-authoritarian upheavals in the Middle East. It offers a wide-ranging c...
The Three C’s of Jurisdiction Over Human Rights Claims in U.S. Courts

Debates about the proper role of U.S. courts in transnational human rights cases often focus on whether or not “universal civil jurisdiction” exists over the most egregious forms of internationally wrongful conduct. This Essay urges courts and scholars to resist this all-or-nothing approach. Instead, we should conceptualize the transnational enforcement of human rights norms as part of an emerging regime of “bounded universality” delineated by three basic principles: consensus on conduct, connection to the forum, and complementarity (“the three c’s”). Descriptively, viewing human rights litigation through the lens of bounded universality reveals that the current role of U.S. courts is both narrower than some advocates might like and broader than some critics allege. Normatively, using the three c’s as a touchstone for the assertion of U.S. jurisdiction over human rights claims arising in other countries can help strike a balance between concerns about U.S. legal imperialism, on the one hand, and providing a safe haven for human rights violators, on the other. This Essay illustrates how the three c’s have been, and can be, invoked to delineate this middle ground.