Challenges in Demonstrating the Impact of Overconfidence in M&A Activity

Financial Economics,

The Supreme Court As Risk Manager: An Analysis of Skinner

Examining a recent case in which the U.S. Supreme Court approved the collection of blood and urine samples from railroad employees, the authors conclude that, in attempting to improve railroad safety, both majority and minority opinions reflected undue emphasis on technical issues and inadequate attention to the intangible social values underlying traditional Constitutional rights to privacy

Increasing Spectrum for Broadband: What Are The Options?

The growth of wireless broadband is a bright spot in the U.S. economy, but a shortage of flexibly licensed spectrum rights could put a crimp on this expansion. Freeing up spectrum from other uses would allow greater expansion of wireless broadband and would bring substantial gains—likely in the hundreds of billions of dollars—for U.S. consumers, businesses, and the federal treasury. ... U.S. experience suggests that it takes at least six years, and possibly over a decade, to complete any large-scale reallocation of spectrum. Thus, for policymakers, the ?projected? need is actually here today. This paper makes three proposals to increase spectrum available for wireless broadband under a flexibly licensed, market-based regime.

Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuations of the Coma Elliptical NGC 4874 and the Value of the Hubble Constant

We have used the Keck I Telescope to measure K-band surface brightness fluctuations (SBFs) of NGC 4874, the dominant elliptical galaxy in the Coma cluster. We use deep HST WFPC2 optical imaging to account for the contamination due to faint globular clusters and improved analysis techniques to derive measurements of the SBF apparent magnitude. Using a new SBF calibration which accounts for the dependence of K-band SBFs on the integrated color of the stellar population, we measure a distance modulus of 34.99+/-0.21 mag (100+/-10 Mpc) for the Coma cluster. The resulting value of the Hubble constant is 71+/-8 km/s/Mpc, not including any systematic error in the HST Cepheid distance scale.Comment: ApJ Letters, in press. Uses emulateapj5.st

Edinoverie and official Orthodoxy: the failure of unity in ceremonial practice (1900–1913)

The article was submitted on 23.04.2015.Translated by Alexander Palkin.This article examines the way in which the Russian Orthodox Church used ceremonies between 1900 and 1913 to show unity with edinoverie, a century-old uniate movement for Old Believer converts. Edinoverie was a compromise movement that allowed these converts to keep their rituals in exchange for loyalty to the Orthodox hierarchy. The early twentieth-century ceremonies were spectacles which aimed to convince the edinovercy' that they were fully part of the Orthodox Church, to reduce tension and criticism, and defend the Church’s authority. However, Old Believers, secular journalists, and yedinoverie separatists appropriated the ceremonies to serve their own goals. In particular, the alternative vision of an autonomous and inviolable edinoverie offered by the separatists led to infighting during the ceremonies, disrupting any sense of unity. As a result, the ceremonies failed and edinoverie separatism remained strong until at least 1918. These ceremonies considered within this article include the centenary of edinoverie’s existence in 1900 in several cities, the opening of edinoverie congresses between 1905 and 1912, the canonisation of Anna of Kashin in 1909, and the visit of the Patriarch of Antioch to Russia in 1913. This article is principally based on descriptions of ceremonies found in a variety of articles and books from both edinovercy' and Orthodox believers. Old Believer and secular journals have also been examined to find interpretations of the ceremonies that were opposed to the messages that the Church intended to spread through the ceremonies. Some archival evidence has also been considered. The article employs semiotic analysis of the ceremonies in order to demonstrate their explicit and implicit messages. It also conceptualises the ceremonies as stages where the Church’s authority was confirmed through collective rituals. However, it also notes that these stages offered rival groups the opportunity to resist this demonstration of power, challenge the legitimacy of the Holy Synod, and appropriate the performances for their own ideological aims. In doing so, the article adapts recent insights from ritual studies to innovate the historiography surrounding edinoverie and provide a different perspective on the fate of religious compromise movements at the dawn of the twentieth century.В статье рассматривается, каким образом Русская православная церковь использовала церемонии 1900‒1913 гг., чтобы продемонстрировать единство с единоверием (к тому времени столетним движением, ориентированным на единение обращенных старообрядцев с официальным православием). Единоверие было компромиссным движением, которое позволяло обращенным староверам сохранять свои обряды в обмен на лояльность к православной иерархии. Церемонии начала XX в. представляли собой действа, целью которых было убедить единоверцев, что они являются полноценной частью православной церкви, уменьшить напряженность взаимоотношений и критику с их стороны, а также укрепить власть церкви. В то же время старообрядцы, светские журналисты и единоверческие «сепаратисты» пытались использовать церемонии в своих целях. Однако альтернативное видение автономного и неприкосновенного единоверия, предлагавшееся «сепаратистами», вело к распрям во время церемоний и подрывало пафос единства. В результате церемонии не выполнили свою задачу, и единоверческий «сепаратизм» оставался в силе по меньшей мере до 1918 г. Рассматриваемые в статье церемонии включали празднование столетнего юбилея единоверия в 1900 г. в нескольких городах, открытие единоверческих съездов в 1905‒1912 гг., канонизацию Анны Кашинской в 1909 г. и визит Антиохийского патриарха в Россию в 1913 г. Источниковедческой основой послужили: описание церемоний, опубликованные как единоверцами, так и православными; старообрядческие и светские журналы оппозиционного характера, а также архивные материалы. В статье проводится семиотический анализ церемоний с целью демонстрации их эксплицитного и имплицитного обращений. Церемонии рассматриваются как «сцены», на которых через общественные ритуалы утверждалась власть церкви. Церемонии в то же время предоставляли возможность соперничавшим группам противостоять этой демонстрации власти, бросать вызов легитимности Святейшего синода и использовать описанные события в собственных идеологических целях. В статье используются современные концепции изучения ритуалов с целью дополнить историографию проблемы и взглянуть в другом контексте на возможности достижения религиозного компромисса в начале XX в

Healthcare Price Transparency: Policy Approaches and Estimated Impacts on Spending

Healthcare price transparency discussions typically focus on increasing patients' access to information about their out-of-pocket costs, but that focus is too narrow and should include other audiences -- physicians, employers, health plans and policymakers -- each with distinct needs and uses for healthcare price information. Greater price transparency can reduce U.S. healthcare spending.For example, an estimated $100 billion could be saved over the next 10 years if three select interventions were undertaken. However, most of the projected savings come from making price information available to employers and physicians, according to an analysis by researchers at the former Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). Based on the current availability and modest impact of plan-based transparency tools, requiring all private plans to provide personalized out-of-pocket price data to enrollees would reduce total health spending by an estimated$18 billion over the next decade. While $18 billion is a substantial dollar amount, it is less than a tenth of a percent of the$40 trillionin total projected health spending over the same period. In contrast, using state all-payer claims databases to gather and report hospital-specific prices might reduce spending by an estimated $61 billion over 10 years.The effects of price transparency depend critically on the intended audience, the decision-making context and how prices are presented. And the impact of price transparency can be greatly amplified if target audiences are able and motivated to act on the information. Simply providing prices is insufficient to control spending without other shifts in healthcare financing, including changes in benefit design to make patients more sensitive to price differences among providers and alternative treatments. Other reforms that can amplify the impact of price transparency include shifting from fee-for-service payments that reward providers for volume to payment methods that put providers at risk for spending for episodes of care or defined patient populations. While price transparency alone seems unlikely to transform the healthcare system, it can play a needed role in enabling effective reforms in value-based benefit design and provider payment