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Plaintiffs' lawyers in the United States play a key role in combating corporate fraud. Shareholders who lose money as a result of fraud can file securities class actions to recover their losses, but most shareholders do not have enough money at stake to justify overseeing the cases filed on their behalf. As a result, plaintiffs' lawyers control these cases, deciding which cases to file and how to litigate them. Recognizing the agency costs inherent in this model, the legal system relies on lead plaintiffs and judges to monitor these lawyers and protect the best interests of absent class members. Yet there is remarkably little data on the business of securities class action lawyers, leaving lead plaintiffs and judges to oversee this area without the tools to understand how it works. This Article looks inside the black box of securities class action lawyering to explore the business behind these cases. Our study includes hand-collected data on all securities fraud class actions against public corporations filed between 2005 and 2018, a total of nearly 2500 cases. We find that the business of securities class action lawyering is far more complex than prior scholarship has recognized. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there are not two tiers of plaintiffs' law firms; instead, there are multiple tiers of firms, each with its own client base, litigation patterns, and revenue model. Our study gives lead plaintiffs and judges the data and tools they need to understand these tiers and to compare the performance of the law firms within them. We also examine how these law firms are compensated, finding that judges' fee awards fail to account for the difficulty of cases or the risk of nonrecovery in any systematic way. These fees are crucial to ensuring that law firms pursue the right cases on behalf of shareholders, so we suggest ways that judges can use data to improve fee awards. As we will see, the path to reforming securities class actions starts with understanding the business behind them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different areas of transactional practice, such as M&A or highyield bonds and sovereign bonds, vary in terms of the degree to which they are afflicted by agency problems. In some areas, clients are actively involved in deal making, and in others they are not present until well after the deal is done. If vulnerability to agency problems differs, and these agency problems impact the quality of contract production, one would expect those differences to appear when comparing contract production across practice areas. This Article compares one feature of contract production—the problems of encrusted and sticky boilerplate—across four different deal types where the degree of agency problems is likely to vary. We find that private equity M&A lawyers, who have the highest degree of client monitoring, innovate in order to repair problems in the deal documents more rapidly than do the other deal types. However, we also find that these private equity M&A contracts have more obsolete and encrusted terms than do corporate or sovereign bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both theorists and courts commonly assume that high-dollar financial contracts between sophisticated parties are free of linguistic errors: sophisticated parties, the thinking goes, will carefully express their shared intentions and eliminate any troublesome gaps and glitches. Consistent with this assumption, most courts interpret the language of commercial contracts literally according to the plain or ordinary meaning of the words in the agreement. An examination of contracts governing Russian bonds outstanding in 2022, however, reveals a large number of potentially troublesome contractual gaps and glitches. We refer to these linguistic irregularities as 'howlers' in order to highlight the significant litigation risks they create. In this article, we use interviews with market participants to assess the causes of the contractual howlers we observe in the Russian bonds. The presence of howlers undermines the core assumption that justifies the literal interpretive approach used by courts for contracts between sophisticated parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contract scholarship has devoted considerable attention to how contract terms are designed to incentivize parties to fulfill their obligations. Less attention has been paid to the production of contracts and the tradeoffs between using boilerplate terms and designing bespoke provisions. In thick markets everyone uses the standard form despite the known drawbacks of boilerplate. But in thinner markets, such as the private deal M&A world, parties trade off costs and benefits of using standard provisions and customizing clauses. This Article reports on a case study of contract production in the M&A markets. We find evidence of an informal information network that transforms bespoke changes in contract terms into industry-wide standard provisions. This organic coordination structure leads to both market-wide coordination as well as a diversity in this response as individual actors implement bespoke variations of the new standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an urgent need for exploring new actionable targets other than androgen receptor to improve outcome from lethal castration-resistant prostate cancer. Tumor metabolism has reemerged as a hallmark of cancer that drives and supports oncogenesis. In this regard, it is important to understand the relationship between distinctive metabolic features, androgen receptor signaling, genetic drivers in prostate cancer, and the tumor microenvironment (symbiotic and competitive metabolic interactions) to identify metabolic vulnerabilities. We explore the links between metabolism and gene regulation, and thus the unique metabolic signatures that define the malignant phenotypes at given stages of prostate tumor progression. We also provide an overview of current metabolism-based pharmacological strategies to be developed or repurposed for metabolism-based therapeutics for castration-resistant prostate cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let f ∈ Z [ x ] and ℓ ∈ N. Consider the set of all (a 0 , a 1 , ... , a ℓ) ∈ N ℓ + 1 with a i < a i + 1 and f (a i) | f (a i + 1) for all 0 ≤ i ≤ ℓ − 1. We say that f satisfies the gap principle of order ℓ if lim ⁡ a ℓ / a 0 = ∞ as a 0 → ∞. We also define the gap order of f (x) to be the smallest positive integer ℓ such that f (x) satisfies the gap principle of order ℓ. If such ℓ does not exist, we say that f (x) does not satisfy the gap principle. In this article, we prove a conjecture by Chan, Choi and Lam that f (x) does not satisfy the gap principle if and only if f (x) is in the form of f (x) = A (B x + C) n for some A , B , C ∈ Z. Moreover, we completely determine the gap order of any polynomial. We will show that if f (x) is not in the form of A (B x + C) n , then f (x) has gap order 2 if f (x) is a quadratic polynomial or a power of a quadratic polynomial; and has gap order 1 otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A creditor who asks for stronger enforcement rights upon its debtor's default will rationally accept a lower interest rate reflecting the greater expected recovery the exercise of those rights provides. Over a dozen studies, however, have failed to document this basic relationship in the context of the collective action clause, a key provision in sovereign bonds. We conjecture that this failure is because enforcing the rights in question requires collective decision-making among anonymous creditors with different interests, impeding market predictions regarding future price effects. The pricing of rights that require collective enforcement thus turns on whether the market observes an activist creditor willing to serve as a collectivizing agent to enforce the relevant rights in litigation. When activist creditors, intent on litigating, hide from the market in order to enhance their returns, the market lacks the information to price the collective rights accurately. In this Article, we use data from Venezuela's ongoing debt crisis to test this collective action story. Our data provides evidence of the absence of price differences in contract terms that require collective decision-making for enforcement. Conversely, we find that in those situations where the market identifies the presence of an activist creditor, the relevant rights do get priced. This evidence sheds light on how the absence of efficient pricing of terms in these collective markets can impede efforts by defaulting sovereign debtors, like Venezuela, to restructure their obligations. Moreover, the timing of when such terms are priced is critical for social welfare. Because collective action clauses that provide strong enforcement rights are not priced at the time the sovereign issues bonds, sovereigns are not given the right incentives to adopt these terms at the outset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Development of neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC) is emerging as a major problem in clinical management of advanced prostate cancer (PCa). As increasingly potent androgen receptor (AR)‐targeting antiandrogens are more widely used, PCa transdifferentiation into AR‐independent NEPC as a mechanism of treatment resistance becomes more common and precarious, since NEPC is a lethal PCa subtype urgently requiring effective therapy. Reprogrammed glucose metabolism of cancers, that is elevated aerobic glycolysis involving increased lactic acid production/secretion, plays a key role in multiple cancer‐promoting processes and has been implicated in therapeutics development. Here, we examined NEPC glucose metabolism using our unique panel of patient‐derived xenograft PCa models and patient tumors. By calculating metabolic pathway scores using gene expression data, we found that elevated glycolysis coupled to increased lactic acid production/secretion is an important metabolic feature of NEPC. Specific inhibition of expression of MCT4 (a plasma membrane lactic acid transporter) by antisense oligonucleotides led to reduced lactic acid secretion as well as reduced glucose metabolism and NEPC cell proliferation. Taken together, our results indicate that elevated glycolysis coupled to excessive MCT4‐mediated lactic acid secretion is clinically relevant and functionally important to NEPC. Inhibition of MCT4 expression appears to be a promising therapeutic strategy for NEPC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a gap principle when a 2 − 1 | b 2 − 1 | c 2 − 1 with 1 < a < b < c . As a byproduct, we are led to determine the complete set of pairs of positive integers 1 ≤ u ≤ v ≤ x such that u | v 2 − 1 and v | u 2 − 1 and the diophantine equation u 2 + v 2 − 1 = m u v . We also generalize our main theorems to the polynomial f ( n ) = A ( n + B ) 2 + C . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the authors' views about whether politicians or trained professionals are better equipped to run death examination offices in America, and it mentions the differences between appointed and elected judges in the U.S., as well as information about the investigative roles of death examiners. Decisions regarding autopsies and evaluations of dead bodies are examined, along with America's National Association of Medical Examiners and board-certified pathologists.

Rote use of a standard-form contract term can erode its meaning, a phenomenon made worse when the process of encrustation introduces various formulations of the term. When they occur, rote usage and encrustation weaken the communicative properties of boilerplate terms, leading some terms to lose much, if not all, meaning. In theory, if a clause is emptied of meaning, it can create a contractual black hole in which, as the term loses meaning, random variations in language appear and persist. What, then, are the consequences if parties exploit these variations in language by successfully advancing an interpretation the market disavows? Traditional doctrine holds that even if the court errs in the meaning it gives to a clause, parties have an incentive promptly to revise the standard language to exclude the aberrant interpretation. But what if the assumptions about the costs and motivations to revise this type of boilerplate are wrong? We seek purchase on this question with a study of the pari passu clause, a standard provision in sovereign debt contracts that almost no one seems to understand. This clause gained fame in 2011 because of a series of court decisions in New York arguably misinterpreting a particular variation of the clause. Even though the courts' interpretation put at risk a multitrillion dollar debt market, meaningful revisions to the language of the boilerplate term did not begin to appear until late 2014. In the interim, trillions of dollars in bonds were issued with an uncorrected version of the term. Market forces, in other words, worked slowly to remedy a systemic problem that caused substantial costs. We ask whether the state could do more to avoid the problem at the front end rather than depend on market forces to correct court error at the back end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Interstitial brachytherapy (ISBT) has advantages over the intracavitary techniques in the treatment of gynecological malignancies. The insertion of catheters into tumor enables higher dose conformality and normal tissue sparing. However ISBT can be associated with pain due its invasiveness. The goal of this study is to assess pain and opioid consumption of patients implanted with a perineal ISBT applicator. Methods and Materials Forty-eight patients were treated with ISBT from September 2014 to April 2016. Mean age was 63. Malignancies included 18 cervical cancers, 12 vaginal, 14 recurrent endometrial, and four others. Patient characteristics and technical ISBT data were collected. Opioid consumption was quantified as oral morphine equivalent per day (OMEq/day) from postimplant until removal. Pain score levels were collected by using an 11-point scoring system. Results Twenty-three patients had a single ISBT implantation, whereas 25 had a second. Twenty-eight patients required IV-patient-controlled analgesia. Mean OMEq/day for the first insertion was 55 mg. In the second insertion, an increase of 22 mg was seen ( p = 0.0004). Patients with IV-patient-controlled analgesia had higher opioid consumption (OMEq/day 69.8 mg vs 32.1 mg, p = 0.001) and maximum pain scores (5.5 vs 3.4, p = 0.007) as compared with patients on oral opioids. Higher levels of pain were detected in the first hours postimplant. Previous opioids and age were associated with increased opioid consumption. Conclusions Pain from perineal-ISBT can be managed with oral opioids in a select group of patients. For repeat insertions, there may be an increase in opioid consumption. While age and previous opioids affected opioid requirements, other factors such as number of needles and insertion depth were not associated factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Interscalene brachial plexus (ISB) block is routinely used to provide anesthesia and analgesia for shoulder surgery. Traditional local anesthetic volumes for ISB result in near universal ipsilateral phrenic nerve paresis potentially including oxygenation and ventilation. Aims: The purpose of this study was to determine the lowest minimal effective anesthetic volume in 95% of patients (MEAV 95) of ropivacaine 0.75% for ISB that provides surgical anesthesia for arthroscopic shoulder surgery. Methods: Prospective observational cohort study in patients undergoing arthroscopic shoulder surgery under ISB (C6 level) with sedation. The dose finding protocol used the Narayana rule for up/down sequential allocation to estimate the MEAV 95 of ropivacaine 0.75%. Successful ISB was defined as complete absence of pinprick sensation in the C5 and C6 dermatomes 30 min postblock. Secondary outcomes assessed included ability to complete surgery with propofol sedation, change in slow vital capacity, room air oxygen saturation postblock, block duration, ISB complications, and numeric rating scale for pain immediately after surgery. Results: The study was stopped early due to futility. Among 225 participants approached, 54 consented to participate. The MEAV 95 for ultrasound-guided ISB of ropivacaine 0.75% for shoulder surgery was unable to be accurately estimated. Local anesthetic volumes between 5 and 20 ml did not influence any of the predefined secondary outcomes. Conclusions: The MEAV 95 (at 30 min) of ropivacaine 0.75% for ultrasound-guided ISB exceeds the local anesthetic volumes that consistently produces hemidiaphragmatic impairment. ISB cannot be guaranteed to provide surgical anesthesia at 30 min without the potential for concomitant phrenic nerve block. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directors have traditionally been elected by a plurality of the votes cast. This means that in uncontested elections, a candidate who receives even a single vote is elected. Proponents of shareholder democracy have advocated a shift to a majority voting rule, in which a candidate must receive a majority of the votes cast to be elected. Over the past decade, they have been successful, and the shift to majority voting has been one of the most popular and successful governance reforms. Yet critics are skeptical as to whether majority voting improves board accountability. Tellingly, directors of companies with majority voting rarely fail to receive majority approval--even more rarely than directors of companies with plurality voting. Even when such directors fail to receive majority approval, they are unlikely to be forced to leave the board. This poses a puzzle: Why do firms switch to majority voting, and what effect, if any, does the switch have on director behavior ?. We empirically examine the adoption and impact of a majority voting rule using a sample of uncontested director elections from 2007 to 2013. We test and find partial support for four hypotheses that could explain why directors of majority voting firms so rarely fail to receive majority support: selection, deterrence or accountability, electioneering by firms, and restraint by shareholders. Our results further suggest that the reasons for and effects of adopting majority voting may differ between early and late adopters. We find that early adopters of majority voting were more shareholder responsive than other firms, even before they adopted majority voting. These firms seem to have adopted majority voting voluntarily, and the adoption of majority voting has made little difference in their responsiveness to shareholders going forward. By contrast, for late adopters we find no evidence that they were more shareholder responsive than other firms before they adopted majority voting, but we find strong evidence that they became more responsive after adopting majority voting. Differences between early and late adopters can have important implications for understanding the spread of corporate governance reforms and evaluating their effects on firms. Rather than targeting the firms that, by their measures, are most in need of reform, reform advocates instead seem to have targeted the firms that were already the most responsive. These advocates may then have used the widespread adoption of majority voting to create pressure on the nonadopting firms to conform. Empirical studies of the effects of governance changes thus need to be sensitive to the possibility that early adopters and late adopters of reforms differ from each other and that the reforms may have different effects on these two groups of firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Hollow Co-CeO 2 nanospheres (∼55 nm) are prepared derived from Kirkendall effect. • Both SDT effect and GOx activity realize intracellular H 2 O 2 di-replenishment. • The cascade-nanozyme behaviors (POD, CAT, and GOx) facilitate CDT. • The doping of Co introduces new bands and oxygen vacancies to improve SDT. • Synergetic SDT/CDT/starvation therapy arouses immune response for metastasis inhibition. The limited H 2 O 2 level in tumor microenvironment (TEM) constrains the effect of chemodynamic therapy (CDT). Herein, Co-CeO 2 @PEG hollow nanospheres are synthesized for two strategies of H 2 O 2 -supply. By varying hydrothermal times, hollow Co-CeO 2 nanospheres (∼55 nm) are prepared derived from Ostwald ripening. Under ultrasound (US) irradiation, reactive oxygen species (ROS) are generated due to cavitation effect. ESR and capturing experiments reveal the US energy transfer (1O 2) and US-generated electrons/dissolved O 2 (H 2 O 2) to determine ROS production. The doping of Co increases oxygen vacancy, which is in favor of O 2 adsorption and ROS generation. Both density functional theory (DFT) calculation and experimental measurement reveal the decreased band gap of Co-CeO 2. The emerging new energy band improves the separation/transfer of electron-hole and ROS production. Besides, hollow structure is significant to introduce extra cavitation nucleus, promoting cavitation effect and ROS generation. Furthermore, Co-CeO 2 @PEG nanospheres reveal glucose oxidase (GOx) activity, which not only can consume endogenous glucose to introduce starvation therapy but also to produce H 2 O 2. The above two ways can realize intracellular H 2 O 2 replenishment. In addition, Co-CeO 2 @PEG also show mimic peroxidase (POD) and catalase (CAT) behavior to introduce CDT and O 2 -supplementation. In comparison with pure CeO 2 @PEG, the greater nanozyme activity of Co-CeO 2 @PEG is ascribed to the lower resistance of charge transfer that is further testified by DFT and electrochemical analysis. Synergetic CDT/starvation/sonodynamic therapy (SDT) reveals noteworthy anticancer efficiency and also arouses immune response for metastasis inhibition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider an Ehrenfest approximation for a particle in a double-well potential in the presence of an external environment schematized as a finite resource heat bath. This allows us to explore how the limitations in the applicability of Ehrenfest dynamics to nonlinear systems are modified in an open system setting. Within this framework, we have identified an environment-induced spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism, and we argue that the Ehrenfest approximation becomes increasingly valid in the limit of strong coupling to the external reservoir, either in the form of an increasing number of oscillators or increasing temperature. The analysis also suggests a rather intuitive picture for the general phenomenon of quantum tunneling and its interplay with classical thermal activation processes, which may be of relevance in physical chemistry, ultracold atom physics, and fast-switching dynamics such as in superconducting digital electronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For n ≥ 1 let A n ≔ { P : P ( z ) = ∑ j = 1 n z k j : 0 ≤ k 1 < k 2 < ⋯ < k n , k j ∈ Z } , that is, A n is the collection of all sums of n distinct monomials. These polynomials are also called Newman polynomials. If α < β are real numbers then the Mahler measure M 0 ( Q , [ α , β ] ) is defined for bounded measurable functions Q ( e i t ) on [ α , β ] as M 0 ( Q , [ α , β ] ) ≔ exp ( 1 β − α ∫ α β log | Q ( e i t ) | d t ) . Let I ≔ [ α , β ] . In this paper we examine the quantities L n 0 ( I ) ≔ sup P ∈ A n M 0 ( P , I ) n and L 0 ( I ) ≔ lim inf n → ∞ L n 0 ( I ) with 0 < | I | ≔ β − α ≤ 2 π . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Littlewood polynomials are polynomials with each of their coefficients in the set {-1, 1}. We compute asymptotic formulas for the arithmetic mean values of the Mahler's measure and the Lp norms of Littlewood polynomials of degree n - 1. We show that the arithmetic means of the Mahler's measure and the Lp norms of Littlewood polynomials of degree n - 1 are asymptotically e-?/2 vn and G(1+p/2)1/p vn, respectively, as n grows large. Here ? is Euler's constant. We also compute asymptotic formulas for the power means Ma of the Lp norms of Littlewood polynomials of degree n -1 for any p > 0 and a > 0. We are able to compute asymptotic formulas for the geometric means of the Mahler's measure of the "truncated" Littlewood polynomials f defined by f(z) := min{|f(z)|, 1/n} associated with Littlewood polynomials f of degree n - 1. These "truncated" Littlewood polynomials have the same limiting distribution functions as the Littlewood polynomials. Analogous results for the unimodular polynomials, i.e., with complex coefficients of modulus 1, were proved before. Our results for Littlewood polynomials were expected for a long time but looked beyond reach, as a result of Fielding known for means of unimodular polynomials was not available for means of Littlewood polynomials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the kidney exchanges and the transplantable kidney shortage in the U.S. in 2014. Topics include the law governing organ donation in the U.S., the U.S. Charlie W. Norwood Living Organ Donation Act, and the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) of 1984. Information is provided on the black market for organs in the U.S.

In the present paper, we study the class LPn which consists of Laurent polynomials ... with all coefficients ck equal to -1 or 1. Such polynomials arise in the study of Barker sequences of even length -- binary sequences with minimal possible autocorrelations. By using an elementary (but not trivial) analytic argument, we prove that polynomials Rn(z) with all coefficients ck = 1 have minimal Mahler measures in the class LPn. In conjunction with an estimate M(Rn) > n - 2/πlogn + O(1) proved in an earlier paper, we deduce that polynomials whose coefficients form a Barker sequence would possess unlikely large Mahler measures. A generalization of this result to Ls norms is also given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contract scholarship has given little attention to the production process for contracts. The usual assumption is that the parties will construct the contract ex nihilo, choosing all the terms so that they will maximize the surplus from the contract. In fact, parties draft most contracts by slightly modifying the terms of contracts that they have used in the past, or that other parties have used in related transactions. A small literature on boilerplate recognizes this phenomenon, but little empirical work examines the process. This Article provides an empirical analysis by drawing on a dataset of sovereign bonds. We show that exogenous factors are key determinants in the evolution of these contracts. We find an evolutionary pattern that roughly separates into three stages: stage one when a particular standard form dominates in the absence of external shocks; stage two when there are external shocks and marginal players experimenting with deviations from the standard form; and stage three when a new standard emerges. We find that more marginal law firms are likely to be leaders in innovation at early stages of the innovation cycle but that dominant law firms are leaders at later stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For an odd integer n > 0, we introduce the class LPn of Laurent polynomials Due to image rights restrictions, multiple line equation(s) cannot be graphically displayed. with all coefficients ck equal to -1 or 1. Such polynomials arise in the study of Barker sequences of even length, i.e., integer sequences having minimal possible autocorrelations. We prove that polynomials P ε LPn have large Mahler measures, namely, M(P) > (n + 1)/2. We conjecture that minimal Mahler measures in the class LPn are attained by the polynomials Rn(z) and Rn(-z), where Due to image rights restrictions, multiple line equation(s) cannot be graphically displayed. is a polynomial with all the coefficients ck = 1. We prove that Due to image rights restrictions, multiple line equation(s) cannot be graphically displayed. The results of experimental computations on polynomials in the class LPn suggest two conjectures which could shed light on the long-standing Barker problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent regulatory changes increasing shareholder voting authority have focused attention on the role of proxy advisors. In particular, greater shareholder empowerment raises the question of how much proxy advisors influence voting outcomes. This Article analyzes the significance of voting recommendations issued by four proxy advisory firms in connection with uncontested director elections. We find, consistent with press reports, that Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) is the most powerful proxy advisor and that, of the others, only Glass, Lewis & Co. seems to have a meaningful impact on shareholder voting. This Article also attempts to measure the impact of voting recommendations on voting outcomes. Unlike prior literature, it distinguishes correlation from causality by examining both the recommendation itself and the underlying factors that may influence a shareholder's vote. Using several different tests, we conclude that popular accounts substantially overstate the influence of ISS. Our findings reveal that the impact of an ISS recommendation is reduced greatly once company- and firm-specific factors important to investors are taken into consideration. Overall, we estimate that an ISS recommendation shifts 6%-10% of shareholder votes. We also determine that a major component of ISS's influence stems from its role as an information agent, aggregating factors that its subscribers consider important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Judges and courts get evaluated and ranked in a variety of contexts. The President implicitly ranks lower-court judges when he picks some rather than others to be promoted within the federal judiciary. The ABA and other organizations evaluate and rank these same judges. For the state courts, governors and legislatures do similar rankings and evaluations, as do interest groups. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, produces an annual ranking of the state courts that is based on surveys of business lawyers. These various rankings and evaluations are often made on the basis of subjective information and opaque criteria. The secretive nature of these evaluations potentially allows organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce to use rankings to advance their own specific agenda. Our Article rests on the premise that these organizations that do their rankings based on opaque data and criteria need competition. Competition will force competing metrics to make transparent the underlying measures on which they are based and thereby foster the generation of higher quality metrics to rank judges. Using publicly available information and easy to reproduce measures, we construct an alternate set of rankings of the state courts that we then match up against the rankings from the Chamber of Commerce. Our measures are admittedly coarse. Nevertheless, to the extent they are credible, transparent, and significantly different from those of organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, the hope is that they will force those organizations to better explain the methods and information that underlie their rankings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this article, we study the cyclotomic polynomials of degree with coefficients restricted to the set . By a cyclotomic polynomial we mean any monic polynomial with integer coefficients and all roots of modulus 1. By a careful analysis of the effect of Graeffe''s root squaring algorithm on cyclotomic polynomials, P. Borwein and K.K. Choi gave a complete characterization of all cyclotomic polynomials with odd coefficients. They also proved that a polynomial with coefficients ±1 of even degree is cyclotomic if and only if , where and the are primes, not necessarily distinct. Here is the pth cyclotomic polynomial. Based on substantial computation, they also conjectured that this characterization also holds for polynomials of odd degree with ±1 coefficients. We consider the conjecture for odd degree here. Using Ramanujan''s sums, we solve the problem for some special cases. We prove that the conjecture is true for polynomials of degree with odd prime p or separable polynomials of any odd degree. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article examines the emerging role of public pension funds in corporate governance and the underlying factors that cause public funds to engage in activism. It cites the case of California Pension Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) that served as a model of institutional activism and a powerful shareholder force in an institution, bringing more advocates on the activism. In this regard, it examines several public pension funds to understand the theory of institutional activism and provides status reports on the factors that results on the engagement of public pension funds in activism.

The article focuses on a study on the market penalty for mutual fund scandals in the U.S. It examines the impact of mutual fund scandals on the flows coming in and out of open-end mutual funds associated with the scandal. It notes that the scandals considered in the study were taken from the "Wall Street Journal" database. It recommends the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other governmental entities to allocate more resources on the detection of scandals as third parties tend to be harmed and not fund investors.

Congress enacted the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA, Act) to address problems plaguing securities class action litigation. This study surveys the empirical evidence on the impact of the PSLRA, examining the specific categories of reforms introduced by the Act. We look at the existing evidence relating to three areas of study: substantive changes in the definition of fraud necessary to bring a securities class action; the congressional effort to empower lead plaintiffs relative to the plaintiffs' bar; and the direct sanctioning of lawyers authorized in the Act. Given the PSLRA's focus on changing the incentives and behavior of plaintiffs' lawyers, we also provide preliminary data on the role of the lead plaintiff law firm. We report that few plaintiff law firms either entered or exited the market after the enactment of the PSLRA. Furthermore, individual law firms' market shares, which were determined by settlement amounts, suffered no appreciable change in the wake of the PSLRA. However, the tendency of top-tier law firms to associate with lower-tier firms did increase significantly in the post-PSLRA period. We also report that institutional investors taking on the role of lead plaintiffs in the post-PSLRA period tended to develop repeat relationships with select top-tier law firms. Our survey of the existing evidence and study of new evidence relating to the role of plaintiff law firms leads us to raise several questions for possible new lines of research into the effectiveness of the PSLRA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looks at the interpretation of standardized contracts as statute. Examples of standardized terms drawn from the sovereign bond and privately negotiated derivatives market; Analysis of the problems with standardized contracts; Explanation on a theory of interpreting such contracts.

In many job settings, there will be some promotion criteria that are less amenable to measurement than others. Often, what is difficult to measure is more important. For example, possessing "good judgment" under pressure may be a better predictor of success as a law firm partner than the ability to bill a vast amount of hours. The first puzzle that this essay explores is why, in some promotion settings, organizations appear to focus on less important, but measurable, criteria such as hours billed. The answer lies in the relationship between the objectively measurable criteria, on the one hand, and the subjective and less visible (but more important) attributes on the other hand. Under certain circumstances, a competition over the measurable criteria, such as hours billed or number of deals accomplished, can force the revelation of information on hard-to-measure subjective attributes of the candidate such as judgment or collegiality. For example, it is easier to evaluate the judgment of an associate who has amassed a number of deals than one who has not. Some information about the associate's good and bad judgment is likely to be generated from the deals. So, while it makes little sense to promote associates based solely on billable hours, making billable hours the goal of the first round of a tournament, where the winners are awarded eligibility for consideration for partnership, can generate information more relevant to the second-round partner selection decision. Explaining the first puzzle leads to a second puzzle. If promotion tournaments over measurable criteria can be effectively utilized in the private sector to force information about candidate traits, why do we not see revelation tournaments elsewhere, where competition may generate information useful in evaluating candidates for promotion? The answer, we suggest, has to do at least in part with agency problems. Promotion tournaments based on measurable criteria limit the discretion of agents making the promotion decisions. When decision makers have less discretion, the return to currying favor with those decision makers falls. As a result, decision makers with less discretion earn less "rent." Decision makers acting as agents also enjoy a reduced ability to make promotion decisions according to their own preferences separate from the goals of their principals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the evidence on securities class actions. Shareholders of large publicly held corporations face a well-known collective action problem. To the extent an individual shareholder bears all the costs of activities that benefit the entire group of shareholders (giving the individual shareholder only a fraction of the benefits), the individual shareholder will have marginal incentive to pursue such collective activities. Corporations owe their shareholders specific duties and rights.

Let b1,⋯,b5 be non-zero integers satisfying gcd(bi,bj,bk)=1, for 1⩽i and |bj|⩽|b5| for 1⩽j⩽5 and n an integer satisfying b1+⋯+b5≡n (mod 24). In this paper we improve earlier work by M.C. Liu and Tsang and by the first author and J.Y. Liu. In particular, we prove that if bj are not all of the same sign, then the quadratic equationhas prime solutions satisfying pj||√ of |n|+|b1⋯b4|2+#x03B5;. If all bj are positive then the above equation is soluble provided that n≫b5(b1⋯b4)4+#x03B5;. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Presents evidence that (1) standardization of sovereign bond offerings may lead parties to adopt provisions not necessarily out of preference and (2) standards, nonetheless, may change. Interpretation of standardized contracts; Modification of payment terms with less than unanimous consent; Evidence that investment banks' attorneys dealing with a high volume of sovereign offerings were the driving factor behind the delayed, large shift in contract terms.

We suggest a Tournament of Judges where the reward to the winner is elevation to the Supreme Court. Politics (and ideology) surely has a role to play in the selection of justices. However, the present level of partisan bickering has resulted in delays in judicial appointments as well as undermined the public's confidence in the objectivity of justices selected through such a process. More significantly, much of the politicking is not transparent, often obscured with statements on a particular candidate 'a "merit "-casting a taint on all those who make their way through the judicial nomination process. We argue that the benefits from introducing more (and objective) competition among judges are potentially significant and the likely damage to judicial independence negligible. Among the criteria that could be used are opinion publication rates, citations of opinions by other courts, citations by the Supreme Court, citations by academics, dissent rates, and speed of disposition of cases. Where political motivations drive the selection of an alternative candidate, our proposed system of objective criteria will make it more likely that such motivations are made transparent to the public. Just as important, a judicial tournament for selection to the Supreme Court will serve not only to select effective justices, but also to provide incentives existing judges to exert effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investors face a difficult task when they value a particular securities investment. They typically put money into an investment with the expectation of taking out even more money sometime in the future. The core problem for intermediaries is to obtain sufficient and unbiased funding. Money spent by the issuer to increase investor information and improve monitoring redounds to the benefit of all investors. Improved monitoring can lead to more shareholder-oriented management decisions, increasing corporate revenues and profits.

Argues that regulations designed to remove investment choices from individual decision making require very strong justification. Behavioral approach to securities regulation; Behavioral biases within the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); Framework for comparing SEC and market-based responses to cognitive biases.

Comments on an article which deals with the exercise of contract freedom in the making of commercial arbitration agreements. Critical analysis of the article; Discussion on arbitration; Recommendations.

Analyzes the impact of information advantages in the market and proposes a unified approach to regulating such advantages in the U.S. Internalization model of informational disparity; Regulation on outsider trading; Proposal on the role of the market in determining the level of permissible information advantages among investors.

Provides information on a study which assessed the essay `A New Approach to Takeover Law and Regulatory Competition,' by Lucian Bebchuk and Allen Ferrell, which is about the federal intervention in corporate law. Distinct component of the proposal by Bebchuk and Ferrell; Economies of scale and divisibility in corporate law; Description of the shareholder-only opt-in-rule; Conclusion.

Regulation S provides U.S. issuers with an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933 to the extent that securities are offered and sold solely outside the United States. Through resales back into the United States, however, U.S. investors may become exposed to unregistered securities initially distributed abroad through Regulation S. This Article identifies two distinct risks from an offshore securities offering. First, issuers may conduct an offering under Regulation S as a means to sell securities indirectly into the United States through resales in situations where the U.S. secondary market overvalues the issuer's securities. Second, even where the U.S. secondary market does not overvalue an issuer's securities, the managers of the issuer may utilize Regulation S to engage in selfdealing and other opportunistic behavior for their own private benefit at the expense of U.S. investors. Employing a dataset of 701 offerings conducted pursuant to Regulation S from 1993 to 1997, this Article presents evidence that insider self-dealing may result in a greater offering discount for certain overseas offerings. Given the specific risks facing U.S. investors, the Article then argues that the SEC's 1998 re- forms to Regulation S represent only an untailored response. Instead, the Article recommends specific reforms that both reduce the risk facing U.S. investors and lessen the regulatory burden on offshore securities offerings that pose little risk of investor abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that United States securities regulators, who focused on investor protectionism as of March 2000, should instead regulate investors. Level of information investors possess on securities market participants; Assessment of alternative reform proposals.

Analyzes the company registration system and the antifraud liability system in the United States. Milton Cohen's call for the reform of the securities regime and the drafting of a model federal securities code; Status-based antifraud liability and the Litigation Reform Act; Elements of status-based antifraud liability; Status-based registration and disclosure; Market-based antifraud mechanisms.

Immune evasion and altered metabolism, where glucose utilization is diverted to increased lactic acid production, are two fundamental hallmarks of cancer. Although lactic acid has long been considered a waste product of this alteration, it is now well accepted that increased lactic acid production and the resultant acidification of the tumor microenvironment (TME) promotes multiple critical oncogenic processes including angiogenesis, tissue invasion/metastasis, and drug resistance. We and others have hypothesized that excess lactic acid in the TME is responsible for suppressing anticancer immunity. Recent studies support this hypothesis and provide mechanistic evidence explaining how lactic acid and the acidic TME impede immune cell functions. In this review, we consider lactic acid's role as a critical immunoregulatory molecule involved in suppressing immune effector cell proliferation and inducing immune cell de-differentiation. This results in the inhibition of antitumor immune responses and the activation of potent, negative regulators of innate and adaptive immune cells. We also consider the role of an acidic TME in suppressing anticancer immunity. Finally, we provide insights to help translate this new knowledge into impactful anticancer immune therapies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]