The Use and Abuse of Special-Purpose Entities in Public Finance

States increasingly are raising financing indirectly through special-purpose entities (SPEs), variously referred to as authorities, special authorities, or public authorities. Notwithstanding their long history and increasingly widespread use, relatively little is known or has been written about these entities. This article examines state SPEs and their functions, comparing them to SPEs used in corporate finance. States, even more than corporations, use these entities to reduce financial transparency and avoid public scrutiny, seriously threatening the integrity of public finance. The article analyzes how regulation could be designed in order to control that threat while maintaining the legitimate financing benefits provided by these state entities

Montana v. Wyoming: Sprinklers, Irrigation Water Use Efficiency and the Doctrine of Recapture

In 2007, Montana filed an original action with the United States Supreme Court asserting that certain water uses in Wyoming violated the Yellowstone River Compact (“Compact”). The litigation was triggered by severe drought in the basin between 2000 and 2006, during which period there was inadequate water available for Montana appropriators in the Tongue River and Powder River sub-basins. Montana raised four primary issues: irrigation of new acreage in Wyoming; new and expanded storage facilities; new groundwater pumping, especially associated with coalbed methane development; and increased consumption of water due to improved irrigation efficiency on existing irrigated acreage. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the first substantive issue in this litigation: “Is a switch to more efficient irrigation with less return flow within the extent of Wyoming’s pre-1950 users’ existing appropriative rights, or is it an improper enlargement of that right to the detriment of Montana’s pre-1950 water users?” The Court held that such improvements are permitted under the Compact. This Article takes a careful look at this decision. It begins with an introduction to the physical setting, focusing on the Tongue and Powder sub-basins within the Yellowstone basin. It discusses Montana’s arguments why the Compact precludes improved irrigation efficiency that increases consumption and the Special Master’s rejection of those arguments. Next, the Article looks at the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion. Finally, it offers some observations triggered by this litigation, critiques the doctrine of recapture in western water law, and supports the Court’s embrace of water use efficiency over protection of the status quo. We begin with a look at the Yellowstone River basin

Constitutional Analogies in the International Legal System

This Article explores issues at the frontier of international law and constitutional law. It considers five key structural and systemic challenges that the international legal system now faces: (1) decentralization and disaggregation; (2) normative and institutional hierarchies; (3) compliance and enforcement; (4) exit and escape; and (5) democracy and legitimacy. Each of these issues raises questions of governance, institutional design, and allocation of authority paralleling the questions that domestic legal systems have answered in constitutional terms. For each of these issues, I survey the international legal landscape and consider the salience of potential analogies to domestic constitutions, drawing upon and extending the writings of international legal scholars and international relations theorists. I also offer some preliminary thoughts about why some treaties and institutions, but not others, more readily lend themselves to analysis in constitutional terms. And I distinguish those legal and political issues that may generate useful insights for scholars studying the growing intersections of international and constitutional law from other areas that may be more resistant to constitutional analogies

Network synchronization: Optimal and Pessimal Scale-Free Topologies

By employing a recently introduced optimization algorithm we explicitely design optimally synchronizable (unweighted) networks for any given scale-free degree distribution. We explore how the optimization process affects degree-degree correlations and observe a generic tendency towards disassortativity. Still, we show that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between synchronizability and disassortativity. On the other hand, we study the nature of optimally un-synchronizable networks, that is, networks whose topology minimizes the range of stability of the synchronous state. The resulting ``pessimal networks'' turn out to have a highly assortative string-like structure. We also derive a rigorous lower bound for the Laplacian eigenvalue ratio controlling synchronizability, which helps understanding the impact of degree correlations on network synchronizability.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figs, submitted to J. Phys. A (proceedings of Complex Networks 2007

Femtoscopy of the system shape fluctuations in heavy ion collisions

Dipole, triangular, and higher harmonic flow that have an origin in the initial density fluctuations has gained a lot of attention as they can provide additional important information about the dynamical properties (e.g. viscosity) of the system. The fluctuations in the initial geometry should be also reflected in the detail shape and velocity field of the system at freeze-out. In this talk I discuss the possibility to measure such fluctuations by means of identical and non-identical particle interferometry.Comment: 4 pages, Proceedings of Quark Matter 2011 Conference, May 23 - May 28, Annecy, Franc

Probing the intrinsic state of a one-dimensional quantum well with a photon-assisted tunneling

The photon-assisted tunneling (PAT) through a single wall carbon nanotube quantum well (QW) under influence an external electromagnetic field for probing of the Tomonaga Luttinger liquid (TLL) state is suggested. The elementary TLL excitations inside the quantum well are density ($\rho_{\pm}$) and spin ($\sigma_{\pm}$) bosons. The bosons populate the quantized energy levels $\epsilon^{\rho +}_n =\Delta n/ g$ and $\epsilon^{\rho -(\sigma \pm)}_n = \Delta n$ where $\Delta = h v_F /L$ is the interlevel spacing, $n$ is an integer number, $L$ is the tube length, $g$ is the TLL parameter. Since the electromagnetic field acts on the $\rho_{+}$ bosons only while the neutral $\rho_{-}$ and $\sigma_{\pm}$ bosons remain unaffected, the PAT spectroscopy is able of identifying the $\rho_{+}$ levels in the QW setup. The spin $\epsilon_n^{\sigma+}$ boson levels in the same QW are recognized from Zeeman splitting when applying a d.c. magnetic field $H \neq 0$ field. Basic TLL parameters are readily extracted from the differential conductivity curves.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure