University of Southern California Center for Law & Social Science (CLASS) Political Science Research Paper Series最新文献

{"title":"Caught in the Act but Not Punished: On Elite Rule of Law and Deterrence","authors":"Francesca R. Jensenius, A. Wood","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1633048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1633048","url":null,"abstract":"Most literature on criminal deterrence in law, economics, and criminology assumes that people who are caught for a crime will be punished. The literature focuses on how the size of sanctions and probability of being caught affect criminal behavior. However, in many countries entire groups of people are “above the law” in the sense that they are able to evade punishment even if caught violating the law. In this paper we argue that both the perceived probability of being punished if caught and the cultural acceptance of elites evading punishment are important parts of theorizing about deterrence, particularly about corruption among political elites. Looking at data on parking violations among diplomats in New York City 1997–2002, we explore how diplomats from different rule-of-law cultures respond to sudden legal immunity. The empirical observations provide clear evidence of both the stickiness and the gradual weakening of cultural constraints.","PeriodicalId":191430,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Center for Law & Social Science (CLASS) Political Science Research Paper Series","volume":"174 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131362814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Corporate Inversions and the Unbundling of Regulatory Competition","authors":"E. Talley","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2511723","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2511723","url":null,"abstract":"A sizable number of US public companies have recently executed “tax inversions” – acquisitions that move a corporation’s residency abroad while maintaining its listing in domestic securities markets. When appropriately structured, inversions replace American with foreign tax treatment of extraterritorial earnings, often at far lower effective rates. Regulators and politicians have reacted with alarm to the “inversionitis” pandemic, with many championing radical tax reforms. This paper questions the prudence of such extreme reactions, both on practical and on conceptual grounds. Practically, I argue that inversions are simply not a viable strategy for many firms, and thus the ongoing wave may abate naturally (or with only modest tax reforms). Conceptually, I assess the inversion trend through the lens of regulatory competition theory, in which jurisdictions compete not only in tax policy, but also along other dimensions, such as the quality of their corporate law and governance rules. I argue that just as US companies have a strong aversion to high tax rates, they have an affinity for robust corporate governance rules – a traditional strength of American corporate law. This affinity has historically given the US enough market power to impose tax premiums with dampened fear of chasing off incorporations, because US law specifically bundles tax residency and state corporate law into a conjoined regulatory package. To the extent this market power remains durable, radical tax overhauls would be unhelpful (and even counterproductive). A more blameworthy culprit for inversionitis, I argue, can be found in an unlikely source: Securities Law. Over the last fifteen years, financial regulators have progressively suffused US securities regulations with mandates relating to internal corporate governance matters – traditionally the domain of state law. Those federal mandates, in turn, have displaced and/or preempted state law as a primary source of governance regulation for US-traded issuers. And, because US securities law applies to all listed issuers (regardless of tax residence), this displacement has gradually “unbundled” domestic tax law from corporate governance, eroding the US’s market power in regulatory competition. A potential elixir for this erosion, then, may also lie in securities regulation. I propose two alternative reform paths: (a) domestic exchanges should charge listed foreign issuers for their consumption of federal corporate governance policies; and/or (b) federal law should cede corporate governance back to the states by rolling back many of the governance mandates promulgated over the last fifteen years.","PeriodicalId":191430,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Center for Law & Social Science (CLASS) Political Science Research Paper Series","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125820520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ballot Order Effects in Referendum Elections","authors":"J. Matsusaka","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2394462","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2394462","url":null,"abstract":"Many political practitioners believe that voters are more likely to approve propositions listed at the top than the bottom of the ballot, and this belief influences election laws across the country. A large body of research has shown that ballot structure matters for candidate elections, potentially distorting democratic decisions, but there is little evidence for ballot propositions. This paper offers two different strategies for identifying the causal effect of ballot order in proposition elections, and applies the methods to data from California during 1958-2014 and Texas during 1986-2013. The main finding is the absence of evidence that being listed at the top compared to the bottom of the ballot has any effect on approval. Approval rates are lower when there are more propositions on the ballot.","PeriodicalId":191430,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Center for Law & Social Science (CLASS) Political Science Research Paper Series","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130936475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Stateless Income and Its Remedies","authors":"Edward D. Kleinbard","doi":"10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198725343.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198725343.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This outline presentation (I) quickly reviews the current status of business tax reform efforts in the United States, with particular attention to the international treatment of foreign direct investment, (II) summarizes the economic predicates required for territorial tax systems to advance economic efficiency, (III) explains why the phenomenon of stateless income means that those predicates are not met today, and are unlikely to be met in the future, and (IV) analyzes current U.S. legislative international tax proposals. In doing the last of these, the presentation points out how the legislative proposal advanced by Dave Camp, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, might inadvertently operate to treat “good” operating income as subpart F income in a range of plausible cases.","PeriodicalId":191430,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Center for Law & Social Science (CLASS) Political Science Research Paper Series","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114146049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Constitutions as Coordinating Devices","authors":"Gillian K. Hadfield, Barry R. Weingast","doi":"10.1017/cbo9781107300361.009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781107300361.009","url":null,"abstract":"Why do successful constitutions have the attributes characteristically associated with the rule of law? Why do constitutions involve public reasoning? And, how is such a system sustained as an equilibrium? In this paper, we adapt the framework in our previous work on “what is law?” to the problem of constitutions and their enforcement (see Hadfield and Weingast 2012, 2013a,b). We present an account of constitutional law characterized by two features: a system of distinctive reasoning and process that is grounded in economic and political functionality; and a set of legal attributes such as generality, stability, publicity, clarity, non-contradictoriness, and consistency. We argue that constitutions have developed their distinctive structure, at least in part, to coordinate beliefs among diverse individuals and thus to improve the efficacy of decentralized rule enforcement mechanisms, the only way in which constitutions can be enforced. In our account, constitutions involve a specialized system of reasoning that seeks to converge on the categorization of actions as either “constitutional” – that is, acceptable – or not, the latter warranting punishment/action. We contend that a designated system of specialized reasoning helps coordinate beliefs by undertaking two tasks: reducing ambiguity and thus serving as a focal point around which people can coordinate their enforcement behavior; and providing a process of public reasoning that, among other things, extends and adapts existing rules to novel circumstances.","PeriodicalId":191430,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Center for Law & Social Science (CLASS) Political Science Research Paper Series","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130724976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Happiness and Domain Satisfaction: Theory and Evidence","authors":"R. Easterlin, Onnicha Sawangfa","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.961644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.961644","url":null,"abstract":"In the United States happiness, on average, varies positively with socio-economic status; is fairly constant over time; rises to midlife and then declines; and is lower among younger than older birth cohorts. These four patterns of mean happiness can be predicted rather closely from the mean satisfaction people report with each of four domains – finances, family life, work, and health. Even though the domain satisfaction patterns typically differ from each other and from that for happiness, they come together in a way that explains quite well the overall patterns of happiness. The importance of any given domain depends on the happiness relation under study (by socio-economic status, time, age or birth cohort), and no single domain is invariably the key to happiness.","PeriodicalId":191430,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Center for Law & Social Science (CLASS) Political Science Research Paper Series","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122826407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Outside Ownership as a Factor Input","authors":"Y. Kim","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.413864","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.413864","url":null,"abstract":"This paper demonstrates how the outside ownership of assets used in production can improve outcomes. If outside ownership improves outcomes, and assets which implement the gains from outside ownership are scarce, then assets can have value conditional on outside ownership. A framework with a continuous creation and destruction of such assets is developed in a model of firm entry and exit. Assets under outside ownership behave like a factor input which earns a periodic return. By mapping a reduced form version of my model to the canonical Hopenhayn (1992) model of firm entry and exit, a micro-foundation for such a model is provided.","PeriodicalId":191430,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Center for Law & Social Science (CLASS) Political Science Research Paper Series","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124249828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Interest Rates Linkages within the EMS: What Lies Ahead for the Euro","authors":"Engin Kucukkaya","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1961117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1961117","url":null,"abstract":"This paper applies multi-equation cointegration methodology to the short-term interest rate series of European Monetary System (EMS) member countries during the period from March 1979 to July 1998. The objective of the paper is to measure the degree to which the interest rates of EMS member countries moved together and whether they exhibited different trends over the period. The behavior of the interest rates provides a test of the EMS' performance in coordinating member country interest rates. The results based on the performance of the EMS yield information about future prospects for the Euro and about the future impacts of the single European currency on member countries. Our results show that interest rates of EMS member countries conformed to a long-term equilibrium relationship between 1979 and 1998. The equilibrium relationship is stronger before the 1992 crisis, and loses its strength after 1992. Based on the lack of coordination of interest rates under the EMS system, the introduction of the Euro will impact the credit markets of ECU members differently and complicate, monetary policy decision-making by the European Central Bank.","PeriodicalId":191430,"journal":{"name":"University of Southern California Center for Law & Social Science (CLASS) Political Science Research Paper Series","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1998-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123977523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}