The market for lawyers: The value of information on the quality of legal services

We study the value of information on the quality of legal services by analyzing the incentives of litigants to hire high-quality lawyers, the incentives of lawyers to invest in quality-enhancing activities and the effect of legal representation on the decision-making behaviour of adjudicators. In a setting where adjudicators have reputational concerns, we show that better information over the quality of legal representation generates a tradeoff. On the one hand, it allows for a better match between the value of a legal dispute and the quality of the legal representation. This also has the effect of increasing the incentives of lawyers to invest in quality-enhancing training. On the other hand, better information over the quality of legal representation may induce adjudicators to bias their decisions in favour of the litigant with the highest-quality lawyer and this generates allocative inefficiency. We discuss the implications of these effects on the desirability of quality certification system (such as the Queen’s Counselor system) in the market for the legal professions

Is internet an acceleration factor in voluntary lifelong learning ?

IT Technologies are said to make access to learning easier and cheaper. Virtually all theorical knowledge is available in one form or another on the web, with possibilities for beginners as well as, in certain cases, for extremely sophisticated users.informal learning; lifelong learning; e-learning; Internet; Knowledge, quantitative methodology

Kinetic Antiferromagnetism in the Triangular Lattice

We show that the motion of a single hole in the infinite $U$ Hubbard model with frustrated hopping leads to weak metallic antiferromagnetism of kinetic origin. An intimate relationship is demonstrated between the simplest versions of this problem in 1 and 2 dimensions, and two of the most subtle many body problems, namely the Heisenberg Bethe ring in 1-d and the 2-dimensional triangular lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, 5 supplementary figures; Figures fixe

Discontinuous percolation transitions in real physical systems

We study discontinuous percolation transitions (PT) in the diffusion-limited cluster aggregation model of the sol-gel transition as an example of real physical systems, in which the number of aggregation events is regarded as the number of bonds occupied in the system. When particles are Brownian, in which cluster velocity depends on cluster size as $v_s \sim s^{\eta}$ with $\eta=-0.5$, a larger cluster has less probability to collide with other clusters because of its smaller mobility. Thus, the cluster is effectively more suppressed in growth of its size. Then the giant cluster size increases drastically by merging those suppressed clusters near the percolation threshold, exhibiting a discontinuous PT. We also study the tricritical behavior by controlling the parameter $\eta$, and the tricritical point is determined by introducing an asymmetric Smoluchowski equation.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Small Angle Scattering by Fractal Aggregates: A Numerical Investigation of the Crossover Between the Fractal Regime and the Porod Regime

Fractal aggregates are built on a computer using off-lattice cluster-cluster aggregation models. The aggregates are made of spherical particles of different sizes distributed according to a Gaussian-like distribution characterised by a mean $a_0$ and a standard deviation $\sigma$. The wave vector dependent scattered intensity $I(q)$ is computed in order to study the influence of the particle polydispersity on the crossover between the fractal regime and the Porod regime. It is shown that, given $a_0$, the location $q_c$ of the crossover decreases as $\sigma$ increases. The dependence of $q_c$ on $\sigma$ can be understood from the evolution of the shape of the center-to-center interparticle-distance distribution function.Comment: RevTex, 4 pages + 6 postscript figures, compressed using "uufiles", published in Phys. Rev. B 50, 1305 (1994

Pharmaceutical innovation, reference pricing and therapeutic classes

This paper is a first attempt to model the effects of reference pricing on the innovation effort of pharmaceutical firms. The model is based on a dynamic game involving three types of agents: pharmaceutical firms, consumers and a regulatory entity. The games includes research stages where the innovation efforts by the firms are determined and introductory stages where a price for a new medicament is fixed. We model the negotiation between the drug owner and the regulator to fix the price, first without legal constraint, second under the regime of reference pricing in therapeutic classes. We then solve the innovation game where the firms anticipate the results of the negotiation round on prices. We thus consider the effect of the therapeutic class regulation on both prices and the innovation pace. The final stage consists in calibrating the model with a small data on anti-statine in France and simulates the effect of the change in regulatory regime

Stochastic Model for the Motion of a Particle on an Inclined Rough Plane and the Onset of Viscous Friction

Experiments on the motion of a particle on an inclined rough plane have yielded some surprising results. For example, it was found that the frictional force acting on the ball is viscous, {\it i.e.} proportional to the velocity rather than the expected square of the velocity. It was also found that, for a given inclination of the plane, the velocity of the ball scales as a power of its radius. We present here a one dimensional stochastic model based on the microscopic equations of motion of the ball, which exhibits the same behaviour as the experiments. This model yields a mechanism for the origins of the viscous friction force and the scaling of the velocity with the radius. It also reproduces other aspects of the phase diagram of the motion which we will discuss.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 11 postscript figures in separate uuencoded fil

Kondo spin liquid and magnetically long-range ordered states in the Kondo necklace model

A simplified version of the symmetric Kondo lattice model, the Kondo necklace model, is studied by using a representation of impurity and conduction electron spins in terms of local Kondo singlet and triplet operators. Within a mean field theory, a spin gap always appears in the spin triplet excitation spectrum in 1D, leading to a Kondo spin liquid state for any finite values of coupling strength $t/J$ (with $t$ as hopping and $J$ as exchange); in 2D and 3D cubic lattices the spin gaps are found to vanish continuously around $(t/J)_c\approx 0.70$ and $(t/J)_c\approx 0.38$, respectively, where quantum phase transitions occur and the Kondo spin liquid state changes into an antiferromagnetically long-range ordered state. These results are in agreement with variational Monte Carlo, higher-order series expansion, and recent quantum Monte Carlo calculations for the symmetric Kondo lattice modelComment: Revtex, four pages, three figures; to be published in Physical Review B1, 1 July (2000

HIRA dependent H3.3 deposition is required for transcriptional reprogramming following nuclear transfer to Xenopus oocytes.

BACKGROUND: Nuclear reprogramming is potentially important as a route to cell replacement and drug discovery, but little is known about its mechanism. Nuclear transfer to eggs and oocytes attempts to identify the mechanism of this direct route towards reprogramming by natural components. Here we analyze how the reprogramming of nuclei transplanted to Xenopus oocytes exploits the incorporation of the histone variant H3.3. RESULTS: After nuclear transplantation, oocyte-derived H3.3 but not H3.2, is deposited on several regions of the genome including rDNA, major satellite repeats, and the regulatory regions of Oct4. This major H3.3 deposition occurs in absence of DNA replication, and is HIRA-and transcription-dependent. It is necessary for the shift from a somatic- to an oocyte-type of transcription after nuclear transfer. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that the incorporation of histone H3.3 is an early and necessary step in the direct reprogramming of somatic cell nuclei by oocyte. It suggests that the incorporation of histone H3.3 is necessary during global changes in transcription that accompany changes in cell fate.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are