Following on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: The Dynamic Shareholder Derivative Suit

Corporations that have allegedly violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) increasingly face a new threat of liability: cases brought by private plaintiffs in follow-on derivative suits. These derivative suits for breaches of fiduciary duty focus on whether directors provided the necessary oversight through compliance systems designed to detect and prevent FCPA violations. The demand requirement, a procedural hurdle of derivative suits, has stymied plaintiffs that are unable to show that directors cannot disinterestedly assess whether to pursue a claim for violations. This Note proposes a framework that systematizes the factual scenarios under which the demand requirement could be excused. Using other instances of regulatory violations as a lens, courts can infer that directors knew of FCPA violations based on patterns of bribes and the importance of bribery to the overall business of the corporation. Only plaintiffs that have utilized procedural devices to inspect corporate books and records, however, can expect courts to reach this inference of director knowledge. Despite being much maligned, the follow-on derivative suit may actually clarify the duties of directors in FCPA compliance and advance the corporate governance reforms of corporations, separately from the deterrent effect of government enforcement

Advanced Distance Sampling: Estimating Abundance of Biological Populations

This book is edited by recognized leading experts in the field. Distance sampling methodology has been rapidly evolving since 1993 when the first four editors (STB, DRA, KPB, and JLL) published the book Distance Sampling. Estimating Abundance of Biological Populations. An updated version was published in 2001, entitled Introduction to Distance Sampling. Estimating Abundance of Biological Populations, also co-authored by the other two editors of the present volume (DLB and LT). Alpizar-Jara, R. (2006). Advanced Distance Sampling: Estimating Abundance of Biological Populations Edited by S. T. Buckland, D. R. Anderson, K. P. Burnham, J. L. Laake, D. L. Borchers, and L. Thomas. Biometrics, 62: 940–941. doi: 10.1111/j.1541-0420.2006.00588_1.x, Book Revie

Finite-dimensional approximation for the diffusion coefficient in the simple exclusion process

We show that for the mean zero simple exclusion process in $\mathbb {Z}^d$ and for the asymmetric simple exclusion process in $\mathbb{Z}^d$ for $d\geq3$, the self-diffusion coefficient of a tagged particle is stable when approximated by simple exclusion processes on large periodic lattices. The proof depends on a similar stability property of the Sobolev inner product associated with the operator.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009117906000000449 in the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Regularization by noise and stochastic Burgers equations

We study a generalized 1d periodic SPDE of Burgers type: $$\partial_t u =- A^\theta u + \partial_x u^2 + A^{\theta/2} \xi$$ where $\theta > 1/2$, $-A$ is the 1d Laplacian, $\xi$ is a space-time white noise and the initial condition $u_0$ is taken to be (space) white noise. We introduce a notion of weak solution for this equation in the stationary setting. For these solutions we point out how the noise provide a regularizing effect allowing to prove existence and suitable estimates when $\theta>1/2$. When $\theta>5/4$ we obtain pathwise uniqueness. We discuss the use of the same method to study different approximations of the same equation and for a model of stationary 2d stochastic Navier-Stokes evolution.Comment: clarifications and small correction