Copyright Protection and Cumulative Creation: Evidence from Early Twentieth-Century Music

This paper uses data from an online database of music sampling to estimate the effect of copyright protection on the cumulative use of music. Using unique panel data that link upstream and downstream music, I use regression analysis to examine the rates at which early 20th-century musical works were used throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The results suggest that copyright protection causes an upstream work to be used less than half as often as it would be if it were in the public domain after conditioning on upstream-song and downstream-year fixed effects. Placebo regressions in which the copyright expiration date is artificially shifted forward and backward in time by 2, 5, and 10 years suggest an immediate effect of copyright expiration on downstream use

Gender Favoritism among Criminal Prosecutors

Prosecutors enjoy wide discretion in the decisions they make but are largely unstudied by quantitative empirical scholars. This paper explores gender bias in prosecutorial decision-making. I find that male and female prosecutors exhibit small and statistically insignificant differences in their treatment of defendants overall but demonstrate relative leniency toward defendants of their own gender. Such favoritism at charging translates into a sentencing gap of roughly 5 months of incarceration for defendants who are paired with an own-gender prosecutor versus an opposite-gender prosecutor, which represents a roughly 8 percent reduction in sentence length at the mean. The estimates do not appear to be driven by differences in case assignments for male and female prosecutors

Copyright Protection and Cumulative Creation: Evidence from Early Twentieth-Century Music

This paper uses data from an online database of music sampling to estimate the effect of copyright protection on the cumulative use of music. Using unique panel data that link upstream and downstream music, I use regression analysis to examine the rates at which early 20th-century musical works were used throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The results suggest that copyright protection causes an upstream work to be used less than half as often as it would be if it were in the public domain after conditioning on upstream-song and downstream-year fixed effects. Placebo regressions in which the copyright expiration date is artificially shifted forward and backward in time by 2, 5, and 10 years suggest an immediate effect of copyright expiration on downstream use

Efficacy and Safety of Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy for Pediatric Malignancies: The LITE-SABR Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

PURPOSE: Limited data are currently available on clinical outcomes after stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) for pediatric and adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients with cancer. We aimed to perform a systematic review and study-level meta-analysis to characterize associated local control (LC), progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival, and toxicity after SBRT. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Relevant studies were queried using a Population, Intervention, Control, Outcomes, Study Design (PICOS)/Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA)/Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (MOOSE) selection criteria. Primary outcomes were 1-year and 2-year LC as well as incidence of acute and late grade 3 to 5 toxicities, with secondary outcomes of 1-year overall survival and 1-year PFS. Outcome effect sizes were estimated with weighted random effects meta-analyses. Mixed-effects weighted regression models were performed to examine potential correlations between biologically effective dose (BED10), LC, and toxicity incidence. RESULTS: Across 9 published studies, we identified 142 pediatric and AYA patients with 217 lesions that were treated with SBRT. Estimated 1-year and 2-year LC rates were 83.5% (95% confidence interval, 70.9%-96.2%) and 74.0% (95% CI, 64.6%-83.4%), respectively, with an estimated acute and late grade 3 to 5 toxicity rate of 2.9% (95% CI, 0.4%-5.4%; all grade 3). The estimated 1-year OS and PFS rates were 75.4% (95% CI, 54.5%-96.3%) and 27.1% (95% CI, 17.3%-37.0%), respectively. On meta-regression, higher BED10 was correlated with improved 2-year LC with every 10 Gy10 increase in BED10 associated with a 5% improvement in 2-year LC (P = .02) in sarcoma-predominant cohorts. CONCLUSIONS: SBRT provided durable LC for pediatric and AYA patients with cancer with minimal severe toxicities. Dose escalation may result in improved LC for sarcoma-predominant cohorts without a subsequent increase in toxicity. However, further investigations with patient-level data and prospective inquiries are indicated to better define the role of SBRT based on patient and tumor-specific characteristics