Variation in Boilerplate: Rational Design or Random Mutation?

Standard contract doctrine presumes that sophisticated parties choose their terminology carefully because they want courts or counterparts to understand what they intended. The implication of this “Rational Design” model of rational behavior is that courts should pay careful attention to the precise phrasing of contracts. Using a study of the sovereign bond market, we examine the Rational Design model as applied to standard-form contracting. In NML v. Argentina, federal courts in New York attached importance to the precise phrasing of the boilerplate contracts at issue. The industry promptly condemned the decision for a supposedly erroneous interpretation of a variant of a hoary boilerplate clause. Utilizing data on how contracting practices responded to the decision, we ask whether the market response indicates that parties in fact intended for the small variations in their contract language to embody a particular meaning. We find the data supports a model closer to random mutation rather than rational design

RISK AVERSION, UNCERTAINTY AVERSION, AND VARIATION AVERSION IN APPLIED COMMODITY PRICE ANALYSIS

Standard models of hedging behavior assume that either hedgers wish to minimize net price variation or they wish to balance variation versus profits. These models treat variation as risk and fail to distinguish between variation that is random and variation that is not random over time. Newer models of decision making differentiate between random and nonrandom variation somewhat, but they inadequately distinguish variation from risk. This paper reviews the distinctions among variation, uncertainty, and risk and calculates optimal hedge ratios for two models addressing the distinction. Empirical optimal hedge ratios typically decline toward zero when variation aversion is included in the models. These results may help explain why hedgers commonly hedge less than recommended by the standard models.Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing,

A device-level characterization approach to quantify the impacts of different random variation sources in FinFET technology

A simple device-level characterization approach to quantitatively evaluate the impacts of different random variation sources in FinFETs is proposed. The impacts of random dopant fluctuation are negligible for FinFETs with lightly doped channel, leaving metal gate granularity and line-edge roughness as the two major random variation sources. The variations of Vth induced by these two major categories are theoretically decomposed based on the distinction in physical mechanisms and their influences on different electrical characteristics. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed through both TCAD simulations and experimental results. This letter can provide helpful guidelines for variation-aware technology development

Variance Analysis of Basis Weight Variation on the Pilot Machine

The purpose of this study was to determine the significance of the variations of the pilot machine of the Department of Paper Science and Engineering at Western Michigan University by variance analysis conducted on basis weight profiles obtained from the Industrial Nucleonics scanning basis weight gauge. The profiles obtained from the basis weight gauge were subjected to a computer program which computed the cross-direction, machine-direction, and random component variations and determined F-ratios. The F-ratio shows the significance of the component variation. Cross-direction variation was found to decrease with speed. Machine-direction variation showed no significant trend and the random variation decreased with speed. It was found that the F-ratio comparing the machine-direction component to the random component was significant at the one per cent confidence level and should be lessened if better operational efficiency for the pilot machine is desired