a Department of Physics, University of Crete and Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas, P.O. Box 2208, 71003 Heraklion, Greece b Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Chile, Casilla 653, Santiago, Chile c Nonlinear Physics Center, Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0...

Many of the papers in this special issue are concerned with regulation and some with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). In this commentary, I will begin by summarizing the arguments for regulation that have been made in the literature.1 I will then consider whether these arguments apply to SOX. I will suggest that, rather than being based on sound principles, regulation often seems to be a consequen...

This article argues that it is doubtful that the fivefold increase in maximum fines under New Zealand’s Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Act 2002 will be successful in providing suitable precautionary incentives. Expected penalties remain at relatively low levels, with the continued use of capped fines along with substantial margins for deterrence of the most serious cases. On average,...

Can the President refuse to enforce a law he deems unconstitutional? Take the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court upheld the provision in the Act mandating that individuals purchase health insurance, but leading Republicans continue to press the view that the law is unconstitutional. Suppose one such Republican captures the presidency in 2016. His first act in office is to recommend legislat...

To help account for variability across studies in the predictive utility of conscientiousness, we proposed that conscientiousness and self-motivation mutually compensate for each other in predicting universitylevel academic performance. Consistent with this expectation, we found evidence of such mutual moderation in a sample of 377 college undergraduates. First, we found that conscientiousness ...

Current scholarship has not addressed the systemic problems that occur in the process of implementing healthcare reform, tending instead to focus on proposing single reform measures to cure specific problems or on constitutional problems related to the Affordable Care Act. 1 To address that gap, this article carefully analyzes a case study of Medicare‘s efforts to control unnecessary hospital a...

In order to know if new electronic voting systems truly represent a gain in usability, it is necessary to have information about the usability of more traditional voting methods. The usability of three different voting methods was evaluated using the metrics recommended by the National Institute of Standards and Technology: efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. Participants voted with tw...

Policy shocks affect the rent distribution in long-term contracts, which can lead to such contracts being renegotiated. We seek an understanding of what aspects of contract design, in the face of a substantial policy shock, affect the propensity to renegotiate. We test our hypotheses using data on U.S. coal contracts after the policy shock of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Contracts are div...

1111 BMJ VOLUME 316 11 APRIL 1998 www.bmj.com The largest study yet to be carried out on serum screening for Down’s syndrome has shown that it can be performed accurately during the first trimester of pregnancy, confirming previous findings and backing the opinion of many leading specialists that tests should be carried out earlier. The study, carried out in the United States, screened 4412 pre...