Securities Class Actions as Pragmatic Ex Post Regulation

Securities class actions are on the chopping block-again. Traditional commentators continue to view class actions with suspicion; they see class suits as nonmeritorious byproducts of self-interest and the attorneys who bring them as rent-seekers. Their conventional approach has popularized securities class actions\u27 negative effects. High-profile commissions capitalizing on this rhetoric, such as the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, have recently recommended eliminating or severely curtailing securities class actions. But this approach misses the point: in the ongoing push and pull of securities regulation, corporations are winning the battle. Thus, understanding the full picture and texture of securities class actions necessitates a positive pragmatic account. This Article provides that account and thus fills a significant gap in the benefit side of academic cost-benefit literature. To do so, however, it self-consciously begins from a controversial assumption: namely, that securities class actions provide a public good. Integrating both public and private actors into ex post enforcement diminishes collective action dilemmas, agency inaction, and private resolution of public law matters through arbitration. Moreover, by supplementing ex post enforcement, securities class actions produce positive externalities, spillover effects that confer public advantages such as: innovation, cost-reduction through information sharing, deterrence, transparent judicial process, and both corporate and enforcement accountability. So, while I harbor no illusion that the securities class action always functions optimally and have a number of lingering doctrinal and jurisprudential concerns about its operation, I also recognize its comparative institutional capability to make transparent an increasingly opaque process, craft decisional rules and interpretations that guide future behavior, cultivate innovation, deter fraud, and hold corporations, exchanges, and the SEC publicly accountable. This piece thus envisions the ramifications of eliminating securities class actions by imagining a world with government-centric securities enforcement. That world, I contend, is one steeped in bureaucracy, one failing to produce behavior-guiding precedent, one filled with closed-door arbitrations, one neglecting nonprioritized misconduct, and one ignoring litigant preference for judicial process. In short, it is a world less preferable than our current system-flawed though it is

An investigation of the relationship between life musical experiences and primary teachers' confidence to teach music

This study examines why so many generalist primary teachers lack confidence in teaching music, what contributes to this lack of confidence in some, and what creates confidence in others. Current thinking on musical identities, musical knowledge, learning and teaching is examined, and through the use of recorded semi-structured interviews, the life-musical experiences of a group of fifteen primary teachers are documented and categorised initially in a negative to positive range. Singing is remembered by all the interviewees as the most positive experience, and it is also the most confident area of their current music teaching. Negative remarks about performance, some of which caused humiliation, are revealed to be highly influential in forming a poor musical identity. Little or no memory of ITE curriculum music is common, with few participants observing music teaching or lesson planning before qualifying

APPLICATIONS OF MACHINE LEARNING IN MICROBIAL FORENSICS

Microbial ecosystems are complex, with hundreds of members interacting with each other and the environment. The intricate and hidden behaviors underlying these interactions make research questions challenging – but can be better understood through machine learning. However, most machine learning that is used in microbiome work is a black box form of investigation, where accurate predictions can be made, but the inner logic behind what is driving prediction is hidden behind nontransparent layers of complexity. Accordingly, the goal of this dissertation is to provide an interpretable and in-depth machine learning approach to investigate microbial biogeography and to use micro-organisms as novel tools to detect geospatial location and object provenance (previous known origin). These contributions follow with a framework that allows extraction of interpretable metrics and actionable insights from microbiome-based machine learning models. The first part of this work provides an overview of machine learning in the context of microbial ecology, human microbiome studies and environmental monitoring – outlining common practice and shortcomings. The second part of this work demonstrates a field study to demonstrate how machine learning can be used to characterize patterns in microbial biogeography globally – using microbes from ports located around the world. The third part of this work studies the persistence and stability of natural microbial communities from the environment that have colonized objects (vessels) and stay attached as they travel through the water. Finally, the last part of this dissertation provides a robust framework for investigating the microbiome. This framework provides a reasonable understanding of the data being used in microbiome-based machine learning and allows researchers to better apprehend and interpret results. Together, these extensive experiments assist an understanding of how to carry an in-silico design that characterizes candidate microbial biomarkers from real world settings to a rapid, field deployable diagnostic assay. The work presented here provides evidence for the use of microbial forensics as a toolkit to expand our basic understanding of microbial biogeography, microbial community stability and persistence in complex systems, and the ability of machine learning to be applied to downstream molecular detection platforms for rapid and accurate detection

Endogenous development: a model for the process of man-environment transaction

Iran is currently subject to a number of adverse factors affecting good development in the built environment: population explosion, oil- dependent economy, finite resources, war and natural disasters, etc. The object of the study is to research a development model appropriate to the Country's needs for a proactive system of building environment. This model is not specific to Iran and, as the case studies and the discourse of the thesis indicate, is universal. However, the author suggests that the validity of development approaches will not be determined as a result of theoretical and ideological debate but in the realm of practice. Therefore, he has explored diverse ways in which professionals in the built environment can provide an analytical survey of the problems that beset them. An attempt has been made to bring these various elements into perspective and offer a model of 'endogenous development'.The process for achieving a viable, exciting and humane built environment is very complex and calls for contributions from many individuals and small multi -disciplinary groups. Beside professionals contributions (which is accomplished by deduction inference), there is a need for people's participation in design process (which is accomplished either by deduction or by abduction inferences). This participatory approach can also help shifting the process of design towards a wider domain that of the 'production process' (which is accomplished by abduction and induction inferences). Production process is the first paradigm of the model of endogenous development and is a manifestation of a feedback mechanism and acts as an open - ended living system. The second is 'supply- demand' paradigm which shows the relationships between the components of a system or between different systems in surface- structuresThis model is directed at society's development, not just its economic growth, but it does not preclude the possibility of such growth. The reduction of the problems' effect in an endogenous development is viewed more as a way of improving the quality of life than of increasing the standard of living. Nowadays, people are passive recipients in the consumer society and are totally dependent on others for their survival. This style of living is assumed to project an image of economic development and higher productivity, but there is a confrontation of preadjusted commodities which are the products of others. That is because the process of production is not natural (i.e. a closed loop cyclic process via feedback control). It is artificial (i.e. an open -loop linear process via a feed -forward control) which may not help satisfying the user's needs and wants entirely. In the built environment, the great majority have no say in the planning and design of their homes or places of work.Accordingly, endogenous development offers a framework within which the necessity of employing the people's creative power in building their environment is explained. It is based on the assumption that each individual and society's knowledge and experiences play a central and mediating role between professionals' perceptions of the environment and a series of preferences judgements or choices they might make towards and within that environment. Indigenous knowledge and cultural attributes of traditional societies and the organizational capabilities of traditional polities are essential in qualification of the development plans, which are also evaluated and assessed by this proposed framework

At the margins of the market: conceptions of the market and market economics in Soviet economic theory during the new economic policy, 1921-1929

The period of the New Economic Policy was a time when the Bolshevik government was forced to reconsider its attitude towards the market, as NEP involved the introduction of market elements into Soviet society. This thesis is a comparative study of eleven Soviet economic theorists from this period; Bukharin, Preobrazhenskii, Strumilin, Bazarov, Groman, Kondrat'ev, Oparin, Sokol'nikov, Yurovskii, Chayanov, and Blyumin. It asks two basic questions: how did each theorist conceive of the market, and how did they relate this conception to socialism? The primary source material used is the works of these theorists, and in many cases this material has not been previously discussed by scholars. A theoretical framework places these conceptions into a historical context. The basic result obtained is that there were many diverse conceptions of the market prevalent in this period. The bulk of the thesis investigates these various conceptions, and suggests that their theoretical roots lie in various currents of economic thought: classical, neo-classical, Marxist, and socialist. During NEP these currents were allowed to mix freely to a certain extent, although pressure to censor them began to build towards the end of the 1920s

Entrepreneurship and community economic development : exploring the link.

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