From creating to confronting racial hierarchies: The evolving role of the US state in land policy

From systemically dispossessing Indigenous people of their territory for Euro-American settlement to routinely denying African American farmers operating loans in the 20th century, the US government's complicity in creating racial hierarchies in terms of land access is well documented. Less understood is how land policies oriented towards racial equity, namely, the Justice for Black Farmers Act (JBFA), and other initiatives that deal with land access as well as addressing racism more broadly, emerged during recent decades. In this article, we argue that such initiatives resulted from Black-led organizations and other farmer advocacy allies responding to neoliberal policy reforms. Concretely, even as these reforms destabilized farm economies, they also led to a decentralization of agricultural policy administration, which, in turn, created opportunities for community-based organizations to influence land governance. We make this argument after presenting a three-part periodization of the evolution of US land policy, starting with the emergence of racial hierarchies, then the period of partial reforms that began during the New Deal and, finally, the era of neoliberal reform.     

Skin-in-the-game in ABS transactions: A critical review of policy options

Relying on a hand-collected data set of European asset securitizations, we analyze risk retention, a key regulatory reform requirement after the global financial crisis. We find today’s ABS markets to be characterized by significant retention opacity, caused by differences in legal retention options and retained portions. To improve the transparency of effective, rather than nominal, risk retention in the market, we propose a new, simple metric that captures the share of expected loss retained by the issuer. As to policy conclusions, we suggest to change the existing regulation by dropping the mandatory minimum retention and replacing it with a requirement for full transparency about effective risk retention.     

Internal control material weakness disclosure and misstatement duration

Only a small proportion of companies that announce restatements disclose existing internal control material weaknesses (ICMWs) over financial reporting during misstatement periods. Using a sample of 1939 restatements related to misstatements between 2003 and 2015, we find that misstatement duration decreases with the disclosure of ICMWs during misstatement periods. Our results are robust to different samples and different measures of the dependent and test variables. We also find that the number of ICMWs disclosed is negatively related to misstatement duration. The disclosure of both entity-level and process-level ICMWs is associated with misstatements of shorter duration. Moreover, we find that the negative association between ICMW disclosure frequency and misstatement duration is more salient when restatements are intentional. Despite the negative consequences of reporting existing ICMWs found in prior studies, our results suggest that the disclosure of ICMWs can shorten the duration of misstatement periods, leading to more timely improvement in financial reporting. Hence, our evidence provides context and complements prior research suggesting that companies are penalized for disclosing ICMWs.     

我国间接识别个人信息规制机制的检视与完善

我国在多年的立法实践中将"可识别性"确立为个人信息的识别标准,并在个人信息的规制方面借鉴了欧盟《一般数据保护条例》,对直接识别个人信息与间接识别个人信息一体适用了较高标准。但我国现行立法并未对间接识别个人信息的内涵及外延作出明确阐释,从而给相关立法的适用带来了较大障碍,其成因在于法院相关认知能力的不足、既有信息处理秩序的限制与我国传统价值观念的制约。今后,我国个人信息保护立法应从间接识别个人信息的内涵与外延两个层面,对间接识别个人信息的识别与规制机制予以完善。     

遗赠物上代位推定的教义构造与适用甄别

根据遗嘱处分的标的物不同，遗赠区分为物权类遗赠和债权类遗赠。无论何种类型，若在继承开始前特定遗赠标的物不存在，皆可能引致受遗赠人能否对代位物主张遗赠之问题。虽然遗赠在遗嘱人与受遗赠人之间形成债权债务关系，但照搬合同嗣后给付不能的解决思路难以完全契合遗赠具备的身份性特质，故通过对物上代位基础性权利的扩张解释，肯定遗赠物上代位推定的教义构造，不失为合适的切入路径。根据导致遗嘱处分标的物不存在的原因事实差异，限定遗赠物上代位推定的适用前提为非基于遗嘱人自愿行为的法律事实之情形，并与遗嘱人意思自治下的相反行为进行区分，后者具备撤回遗嘱、使其不发生效力的功能。又因某些原因性法律事实中交织“客观”与“自愿”，在难以明确法律适用时，可借助“遗嘱解释的客观化”缓和遗赠物上代位推定与相反行为的甄别困难。     

The 2020 US Presidential election and Trump’s wars on trade and health insurance

The trade war initiated by the Trump administration is the largest since the US imposed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the 1930s and was still raging when he left office. We analyze how the trade war impacted the 2020 US Presidential election. Our results highlight the political salience of the trade war: US trade war tariffs boosted Trump’s support but foreign retaliation hurt Trump. In particular, the pro-Trump effects of US trade war tariffs were crucial for Trump crossing the recount thresholds in Georgia and Wisconsin. Even more important politically, voters abandoned Trump in counties with large expansions of health insurance coverage since the Affordable Care Act, presumably fearing the roll-back of such expansion. Absent this anti-Trump effect, Trump would have been on the precipice of re-election by winning Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and only losing Wisconsin by a few thousand votes. These effects of the trade war and health insurance coverage expansion cross political and racial lines, suggesting the mechanism operates through the impact on local economies rather than political polarization.     

Does a Government Mandate Crowd Out Voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility? Evidence from India

This study investigates the implementation of a Government of India mandate that requires firms to spend at least 2% of their profits on corporate social responsibility (CSR). The results show that qualifying firms that voluntarily engaged in CSR before the mandate reduce their CSR spending afterward. Despite increasing advertisement expenditure likely to offset the lost signaling value of voluntary CSR, stock prices and operating performance of former voluntary CSR spenders who qualify under the law decline. Our results suggest that regulatory intervention in CSR can both diminish its signaling value and lead to a reduction in voluntary CSR spending.