The Concept of Substantial Proportionality in Title IX Athletics Cases

I. Introduction In the past several years, four federal court decisions interpreting Title IX 1 have sent tremors through the collegiate athletic establishment. 2 In all of these cases, the courts found the universities to have failed to provide effec- tive accommodation for the athletic interests and abilities of their women students, as required by the regulations issued pursuant to Title IX. 3 Al- though the regulations state that such accommodation is only one of the factors to be considered in determining compliance with Title IX, it was because of deficiencies in this area that courts found the institutions in viola- tion of the statute. In particular, courts asserted that the universities did not provide participation opportunities to women and men in numbers substan- tially proportionate to their respective enrollments. Unfortunately, the courts failed to supply guidance as to the precise meaning of substantially propor- tionate. This Article suggests a statistical framework for such guidance. II. Statutory Background A. The Title IX Statute and Regulations Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 requires that institutions not discriminate on the basis of sex in their athletics programs, including intercollegiate athletics. 4 When Congress originally enacted Title IX, it pro- vided that the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare issue regula- tions that would assist educational institutions in complying with the stat- ute. 5 After the Title IX regulations were promulgated, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of Education issued a Policy Interpretation Manual ..

Issues in income tax reform in developing countries

Of all taxes, income taxes are the most difficult to implement. Developing countries are usually able to generate large amounts of income tax revenue only from large corporations or foreign investments. They are rarely effective in taxing wealthy individuals or small or medium-size businesses. Using recent tax reforms in Jamaica, Indonesia, and elsewhere as examples, the paper discusses the pros and cons of specific tax reform elements. It summarizes the major issues typically faced in reforming income taxes in developing countries. More revenue, increased efficiency, and a better distribution of the tax burden are usually the underlying goals. Improving enforcement and compliance by simplifying the tax structure and increasing the legitimacy of the tax process is usually the major challenge.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Tax Law

Book Review

Industrial Organization,

Functional expansion representations of artificial neural networks

In the past few years, significant interest has developed in using artificial neural networks to model and control nonlinear dynamical systems. While there exists many proposed schemes for accomplishing this and a wealth of supporting empirical results, most approaches to date tend to be ad hoc in nature and rely mainly on heuristic justifications. The purpose of this project was to further develop some analytical tools for representing nonlinear discrete-time input-output systems, which when applied to neural networks would give insight on architecture selection, pruning strategies, and learning algorithms. A long term goal is to determine in what sense, if any, a neural network can be used as a universal approximator for nonliner input-output maps with memory (i.e., realized by a dynamical system). This property is well known for the case of static or memoryless input-output maps. The general architecture under consideration in this project was a single-input, single-output recurrent feedforward network

In search of owners : lessons of experience with privatization and corporate governance in transition economies

The author reviews the goals of privatization and evaluates various methods used to achieve them in different transition settings. The task is not only to change ownership but to create corporate governance and to further the development of legal norms and supporting institutions needed in full-fledged market economies. Initial results of privatization programs are only part of the picture. How they foster further evolution of ownership is equally important. Experiments in privatization abound, from extensive efforts at sales to strategic owners (as in Estonia and Hungary), to programs based primarily on insider buyouts (as in Russia and Slovenia), to innovative mass privatization programs involving the creation of large and powerful new financial intermediaries (as in the Czech and Slovak Republics and Poland). Each approach has inherent strengths and risks. But if the objectives are to severe the links between the state and the enterprise, to school the population in market basics, and to foster further ownership change, the initial weight of evidence seems to favor significant reliance on voucher privatization, especially given the difficulty most countries have finding willing cash investors. Formal programs of enterprise privatization are often only a small part of the picture, although they get the most attention. Even where formal privatization has been slow (as in Bulgaria and the Ukraine), a process of asset"recombination"is occurring, often behind the scenes - whether a recombination from state to private firms or from some private firms to others. In the Czech Republic, for example, the ownership of enterprise shares by funds or fund shares by individuals will change through formal and informal trading, but the ownership of enterprise assets may also shift to some extent as owners or managers sell or spin-off assets into new companies. In Russia, this shifting of assets to new, more closely held firms may be quite widespread, as managers with small minority ownership stakes in newly privatized firms try to gain greater control over assets. As one Hungarian observer noted, this is the period of"primitive capital accumulation"in the post-socialist world. Formal programs may lay important ground rules but uncertainties of every type overwhelm most formal efforts at privatization. The final outcome is far from predictable.Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Municipal Financial Management,Economic Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring

Legal process and economic development : a case study of Indonesia

Westeners often complain that laws are not enforced in developing countries."Good"laws are on the books, but in reality individuals and firms evade them with impunity. For example taxes are uncollected, bankruptcy laws unenforced, environmental controls ignored and trade restrictions evaded. Furthermore, corruption often flourishes in government despite repeated condemnation by public leaders. This paper tries to unravel the nature of legal processes in developing countries and explain how and why they may differ from legal processes in more advanced nations. It identifies three broad functions of a legal system and introduces the central theme of the paper - how risk and information costs affect many of the characteristics of the legal process. Next, it proposes two opposing models, the formal and informal, to illustrate different means by which legal functions can be handled. While these models are presented as contrasting alternatives for purposes of exposition, neither pure prototype exists in practice. Real life is always some mixture of the two, with the balance shifting from country to country. The paper then describes formal and informal legal processes in Indonesia, using the Indonesian tax system as a case study.National Governance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Legal Products,Health Economics&Finance,Insurance&Risk Mitigation

Tax systems in the reforming socialist economies of Europe

As socialist countries move toward market systems, fiscal policy is an important part of their reform agenda. First, they need to reorient public spending to focus more on the provision of"public"goods. Second, they need to adopt more selective, predictable, and nondiscretionary means to finance such spending. The goal of this paper is to lay out some of the broad trends and issues now emerging as socialist economies attempt to reform their systems of taxation. The primary focus is on Eastern Europe, although many of the same trends and issues arise in the reforming socialized countries of Asia and Africa. Particular attention is paid to Hungary and Poland, which are most advanced in the tax reform process. The experiences they have had and the problems they are facing provide valuable lessons for those countries just starting on the reform process.Public Sector Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management

The legal framework for private sector activity in the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic

Since its velvet revolution in late 1989, the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR) has moved steadily to create the conditions for developing a private market economy. Not only has the CSFR freed up the conditions for entry of new private firms, but it has also taken far-reaching steps to return property to former owners and to privatize large parts of its state-owned industry. For this emerging private sector to thrive, there must be a clear legal framework to provide decentralized rules of the game. The author describes the evolving legal framework in the CSFR in several key areas: property, contract, company law, foreign investment, bankruptcy, and antimonopoly law. Essentially the same legal framework exists in the Czech and Slovak republics, although the legal frameworks of the two could diverge considerably in the coming months and years if the country separates, as is expected. The CSFR differs somewhat from its Central and Eastern European neighbors, especially Poland and Hungary, in that its pre-war legal system was more thoroughly abrogated during the socialist period. So, fewer people are familiar with market-oriented legal principles and practices. On the other hand, in 1989 the CSFR had the advantage of starting with a relatively clean slate on which to craft modern laws. In some areas of law - such as company, contract, and antimonopoly law - legal reform in the CSFR is relatively well-advanced and could to some degree serve as a model for other reforming socialist economies. In others - including constitutional and real property law - legal reform is embroiled in political controversy and is lagging behind developments in some neighboring countries. The interests of former property owners are clashing with those of current tenants, creating a surge of new disputes entering the courts. The surge in cases is likely to be exacerbated as the current moratorium on bankruptcy claims against state enterprises expires in 1993, and as cases under the new intellectual property laws and commercial code come onstream. The CSFR's judicial system, suffering from recent purges of judges compromised by the former regime as well as generally low pay and prestige, appears to be relatively ill-prepared to cope with the skyrocketing demands expected in the newly reformed system. All in all, it is a time of great progress, great confusion, and great challenge.Legal Products,National Governance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Legal Institutions of the Market Economy,Judicial System Reform

Membership: an Organizational View

This study examines the membership structure of a large centralized cooperative from an organizational workability view. Structure is created by dividing membership organizationally, i.e., assigning different roles and tasks to different groups of members, as well as to individual members, and bringing coordination to these differentiations. The membership structure of the case cooperative was found large in number of members, highly differentiated, and well coordinated. The structuring, i.e., creating a division of labor among the membership, and the coordinating of these divisions is done in response to conditions in the membership environment.Cooperative, organization, paradigm, specialization, coordination, complexity, stability/instability, Agribusiness,