Forgiveness and the Law - A Redemptive Opportunity

A discussion of the role of forgiveness in criminal law. The author relates the approach of the Georgia Justice Project, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide justice to indigent criminal defendants and help them become productive citizens

Multilevel Clustering Fault Model for IC Manufacture

A hierarchical approach to the construction of compound distributions for process-induced faults in IC manufacture is proposed. Within this framework, the negative binomial distribution is treated as level-1 models. The hierarchical approach to fault distribution offers an integrated picture of how fault density varies from region to region within a wafer, from wafer to wafer within a batch, and so on. A theory of compound-distribution hierarchies is developed by means of generating functions. A study of correlations, which naturally appears in microelectronics due to the batch character of IC manufacture, is proposed. Taking these correlations into account is of significant importance for developing procedures for statistical quality control in IC manufacture. With respect to applications, hierarchies of yield means and yield probability-density functions are considered.Comment: 10 pages, the International Conference "Micro- and Nanoelectronics- 2003" (ICMNE-2003),Zvenigorod, Moscow district, Russia, October 6-10, 200

Groping and Coping in the Shadow of Murphy\u27s Law: Bankruptcy Theory and the Elementary Economics of Failure

Part I briefly examines the conventional explanation for bankruptcy\u27s defining characteristic, its default distributional rule. It concludes that the conventional explanation is insufficiently informative for us to tell whether the Bankruptcy Code (Code) is actually working or not. Part II argues that the only existing systematic attempt to explain bankruptcy law, the so-called Creditors\u27 Bargain Theory, is inadequate for two reasons. First, the predictions it generates are belied by real-world events. Second, it is mistaken on theoretical grounds, primarily because it ignores how debtors are likely to manage their assets. Part III presents the Murphian theory of failing behavior, the hypothesis that the debtors are efficient liquidators of their own declining affairs. This Part shows how both solvent and insolvent debtors faced with losses can be expected to manage their assets in optimal ways without bankruptcy legislation. Part IV summarizes the conclusions drawn from elementary Murphian theory and suggests another weakness in the Creditors\u27 Bargain model: it disregards the benefits of having debtors distribute their own assets. From the existing theory, it projects reasons for believing that optimal distributions are likely to occur without the intervention of bankruptcy. It ends by speculating on why we are tempted to adopt and then tinker with bankruptcy law, even in the face of the O\u27Conner Construct ( You can\u27t fine-tune a mess )

The Economics of wages and wages policy in the depression and recovery period: distinctive elements in the New Zealand debate, 1931- 1936

This article discusses distinctive features of the New Zealand debate on the economics of wages and wages policy from 1931 up to the restoration of compulsory arbitration in 1936. Local economic orthodoxy proffered advice which, consistent with Keynes (1936), turned on the need for a general real wage reduction effected mostly through currency devaluation, rather than through further money wage cuts. Dissenters were critical of currency devaluation; they stressed excessively generous unemployment relief, real wage 'overhang' and structural real wage distorttons. Tentative estimates of both aggregate real product wage and labour productivity changes demonstrate, prima facie, that at least one strand in the dissenting argument was defensible