Search

Prior research generally finds that using numbers in financial disclosure is beneficial. However, numbers can also be strategically proffered due to their perceived precision and informativeness. We hypothesize that firms use undercontextualized numbers to create a false impression of certainty and transparency. We find that the use of undercontextualized numbers in earnings conference calls is associated with short-term benefits but negative longer-term consequences. Specifically, undercontextualization is associated with a short-term positive market return, positive analysts’ forecast revisions, and more positive analysts’ tone on the call. Furthermore, undercontextualization is associated with a longer-term negative market return, a decrease in year-over-year earnings, and a higher incidence of restatements. In additional analyses, we find that undercontextualization appears to be intentional as it is associated with conference call casting and insider trading. Given the uniqueness of our undercontextualization measure, we also document its association with analyst scrutiny and other proxies for strategic call behavior.

Complexity and uncertainty define our world, now more than ever. Scholars and practitioners celebrate modular contract design as an especially effective tool to manage these challenges. Modularity divides complex structures into relatively discrete, independent components with simple connections. The benefits of this fundamental drafting approach are intuitive. Lawyers divide contracts into sections and provisions to make them easier to understand and reduce uncertainty. Dealmakers constructing complex transactions use portable agreements as building blocks to reduce drafting costs and enable innovation. Little attention, however, has been paid to the risks introduced by modularity in contracts. This Article demonstrates how this touted and now-ingrained drafting approach introduces new forms of the very costs it seeks to minimize. The Article is the first to identify the types of risks introduced by modularity at the intra-contract level, among provisions, and the inter-contract level, among agreements that constitute deals. The Article groups these risks into three categories: First, “intertextualism,” which occurs when the operation of a discrete, or even standard, provision seems clear in isolation but is made uncertain by the presence of other discrete terms. Second, “modular drift,” which occurs when drafters transplant provisions specific to one transactional context into another transactional context, introducing uncertainty. Third, “latent triggers,” which occur when compartmentalization invites error or obscures a nuance in the interaction among discrete provisions. The Article urges courts to articulate distinctions between contract types and offers tools to contract drafters to mitigate uncertainty. It also makes a theoretical contribution with implications for contract doctrine and contract innovation. It shows how modularity can disrupt seemingly stable, standardized provisions, diminishing their certainty and imposing information costs on future drafters who seek to rely on precedent provisions or agreements. It thereby identifies a critical dimension of contract risk that complicates the balancing of standardization and private choice in contracts.

Financial statement preparers often make accounting judgments with considerable uncertainty about what future accounting standards will require. We conduct a study in the experimental economics tradition to investigate how such uncertainty affects preparers’ current period accounting estimates. Compared to preparers who know with certainty that future standards will allow them to benefit from reporting a biased accounting estimate in the present, we find that preparers who face uncertainty about future standards arrive at less biased estimates. We further find that this reduction in bias reflects a behavioral response from preparers that is in conflict with their wealth-maximizing financial incentives. Moreover, we find evidence that uncertainty about future standards causes preparers to rely more on their unbiased private information about estimate value, and focus less on the potential benefits of biased reporting. Although uncertainty associated with standard setting is often criticized, our theory and results suggest that increased financial reporting quality is an unanticipated benefit of the uncertainty that naturally arises from a deliberative and inclusive standard setting process.

While the debate continues how old our world is; it is a certainty that the oldest witness of all the events that have transpired along the way have been our oceans. Their existence has remained constant throughout history and has played key parts in the formation of both facts and fiction. Though there may be skeptics about the existence of certain civilizations, entities, and life-forms; they all agree that our oceans and water-bodies are the only remnants that can confirm the truth. Hence, it is no secret that our oceans hold a hoard of riches and mysteries. With the National Ocean Service claiming that only 5% of our Oceans have been explored; in reality, we haven’t even begun to comprehend the values that our surface water-bodies may contain. According to a commonwealth survey, the average revenue of 1.5 Trillion USD/year is already being generated from the maritime sector along with the incorporation of 500 Million jobs. Thus, the blue sector is already blessing us with opportunities, from just scratching its surface. What happens if we dig further?

We investigate collusive pricing in laboratory markets when human players interact with an algorithm. We compare the degree of (tacit) collusion when exclusively humans interact to the case of one firm in the market delegating its decisions to an algorithm. We further vary whether participants know about the presence of the algorithm. We find that three-firm markets involving an algorithmic player are significantly more collusive than human-only markets. Firms employing an algorithm earn significantly less profit than their rivals. For four-firm markets, we find no significant differences. (Un)certainty about the actual presence of an algorithm does not significantly affect collusion.

The term „language game‟ was first used in linguistic philosophy at 20th century. Wittgenstein‟s theory of language game gives outstanding contribution to the analytical philosophy. He describes mainly Seventy three (73) examples of language games in his Brown book (1938). Every language game described predicted situation. Further analysis of language game elaborated in his two main work- “Philosophical Investigation” and “On Certainty”. According to him, language is a kind of game, which we play through language. Through language we can describe the picture of the world, which is elaborated in his „Tractatus‟, but later in his Philosophical Investigation, he tried to analyse „language has no singles essence‟. Language is a kind of game, and words or sentences are the tools of language. In Philosophical Investigation, he rejected three assumptions, i.e. language is used for presenting of facts in one purpose; through picturing the sentence acquires meaning in one way; in logical calculus that language has a clear and distinct structure. The major objective of this paper is to interpret the Wittgenstein‟s view of „Language game

Interpretation is the art of discovering the true meaning of a law by giving the words of the law their natural and ordinary meaning. It is the process of determining the true meaning of the words used in a law. The Court is not expected to interpret arbitrarily and, as a result, certain principles have emerged from the continued practice of the courts. These principles are sometimes called "rules of interpretation." The court relies on any of the rules that produce an outcome that satisfies its sense of justice in the case before it. While the literal rule is the one most often mentioned in express terms, the courts consider all three to be valid and cite them as ad hoc requirements, but of course they do not give any reason for choosing one over the other. For example, in some cases the literal rule would be preferred over the fatal rule, and in other cases the opposite would be the case. It was not possible to predict with certainty which approach would be followed in a particular case.

This paper extends the robust mean-variance analysis of Maccheroni et al. (2013) by investigating the contribution of ambiguity prudence to the optimal stock allocation when the investor evaluates portfolio compositions as described by the smooth model under ambiguity criterion. Ambiguity prudence captures an aversion towards model uncertainty that increases the more the investor believes that unfavourable events are likely to realise. I derive a higher-order approximation of the certainty equivalent to disentangle the contribution of preferences and beliefs. I analyse two relevant portfolio problems to show that ambiguity prudence puts non-linearities into the investor's valuation that induce sizeable variations from the robust mean-variance solution.

The law of evidence has changed dramatically in recent years, with different types of evidence now deemed admissible by a court. This change has also come to India with various changes to the existing legislation. Pursuant to India's obligation to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), the Information Technology Act 2000 (hereinafter the Information Technology Act) entered into force. This act legitimized and encouraged electronic commerce in the global marketplace and amended the Indian Evidence Act of 1872 (referred to here as the Evidence Act) to include provisions on electronic evidence. The Evidence Law requires that primary evidence be proven under section 64, while secondary evidence must be proven under section 65. Primary evidence is the type of evidence that is considered to have the highest factual certainty in question. Any evidence excluded from this category is considered secondary evidence. The burden of proof to demonstrate the admissibility of secondary evidence rests with the party presenting the evidence. Section 65A of the Evidence Act requires that electronic evidence be proven in accordance with the provisions of Section 65B. Section 65B was added to the Evidence Act by virtue of Schedule II of the TI Act. It is a provision regarding the admissibility of electronic evidence. It establishes that any information contained in an electronic document is considered a document admissible as evidence and original, provided that it meets the conditions established in sections 65B (2) to 65B (5). Therefore, each piece of electronic evidence must be accompanied by a certificate issued after the checklist provided for in section 65B has been completed.

One of the critical issues arising from the intersection of international investment law and human rights is the question of whether investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) holds any potency for access to justice for local and indigenous communities. It is a given that ISDS offers an aggrieved foreign investor the avenue to approach an international arbitral tribunal to seek compensation from the host state, in furtherance of a claim of breach of a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) provision by the latter. With this, a foreign investor can rest assured of one thing: there is always a forum out there to intervene without thinking of suffering any victimization before the local courts or system of the host state. Howbeit, the same cannot be said of the local and indigenous communities, taking into consideration the normative character of the ISDS, which does not permit indigenous communities to institute claims directly save through the host states. As a result, it is left to be ascertained, the extent to which indigenous communities access justice under the ISDS mechanism – an issue which this research work is focused on addressing. As is indicated later in the conclusion herein, despite the introduction of certain mechanisms like amicus curiae and contributory fault into ISDS, indigenous communities are still limited in their ability to access justice, and there is no certainty that things will get better in the coming future if the needed changes are not introduced into the system.

Nearly every important issue in trademark litigation turns on the question of what consumers in the marketplace subjectively believe to be true. To address this question, litigants frequently present consumer survey evidence, which can play a decisive role in driving the outcomes of disputes. But trademark survey evidence has proven to be highly controversial, not least because it is notoriously prone to expert manipulation. In this Article, we identify and present empirical evidence of a related, but more fundamental problem with trademark survey evidence: while all the leading survey formats in trademark law test for whether consumers hold a particular belief, they do not test for the strength or the varying degrees of certainty with which consumers hold that belief. In short, by treating the question of consumer beliefs as essentially binary, the formats do not test for belief strength. Yet as the social science literature has long recognized, the strength with which consumers hold particular beliefs shapes their behavior in the marketplace, and thus it should also shape, we believe, how trademark disputes play out in the courtroom. Through a series of experiments using the three leading trademark survey formats (the so-called Teflon, Eveready, and Squirt formats), we show the remarkable degree to which these formats as conventionally designed overlook—or suppress—crucial information about consumer uncertainty. We further demonstrate how a low-cost, easily-administered, and relatively simple modification in these formats can reveal that information. We discuss both the practical and theoretical implications of our findings. As a practical matter, trademark survey evidence that shows only weakly-held beliefs (or that does not even test for belief strength) should not, without more, satisfy a litigant’s burden of persuasion on the issue addressed by the survey. Furthermore, in line with courts’ growing efforts in intellectual property cases to tailor injunctive relief, survey evidence showing only weakly-held mistaken beliefs may provide courts with the opportunity to fashion more limited forms of relief short of an outright injunction. As a theoretical matter, we explain how trademark survey formats that reveal the true extent of consumer uncertainty in the marketplace may finally force trademark law and policy to confront normative questions it has long left unanswered going to exactly what kind of harm trademark law is meant to forestall.

After 13 years of operation, it is possible to assess important elements of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic) for their certainty and coherence. This is a worthwhile exercise because the Charter has been emulated in Queensland and may be emulated at the national Australian level. The important elements selected are the general methodological approach, the content and meaning of human rights (scope) and the interpretation of human rights. The examination reveals that with certain exceptions the Charter has operated with certainty and coherence in these respects. Observations are made about the significance when applying and interpreting human rights of identifying the underlying values embodied and interests protected and what is personally at stake for the individual.

The book is on a very important constitutional value and topic of great interest to the society as a whole. Rule of law is abstract term at one side, while it is to provide procedural fairness to all who interact with the justice system, on the other. It is to ensure that everyone is treated in accordance with law. Rule of law means it is not rule of men or women. It means certainty, it means clarity, it means consistency, it means equality, it means fairness, it means balance, it means a level playing field. Not the ordinary person but the State as the greatest might is to be controlled and ruled under the laws of the land. No one is above the law. The book has covered many of the above dimensions and dynamic of the term ‘rule of law’. It has been written in the fashion of authentic quotes from the philosophers, jurists, judges, writers and thinkers to make it an authentic piece of writing. It is brief at one side but deep at the other. It is addition into the existing literature in an academic setting. The author is well deserving to write on this topic keeping in view his studies, orientation, writings and research. He has laid his hands on treatise, texts, judgments and literature that was relevant and suitable for the book in hand.

This paper addresses similarities and differences between the US law and Islamic law, and considers how each system might benefit from the other. Within the scope of limitations on remedies, the paper explores foreseeability, causation, mitigation, and certainty. How the two systems understand the concepts is described, and the concepts are examined through the lens of fairness. A comparative analysis follows, investigating similarities, divergences, and possible enhancements to the law. The foundation of morality, set in the context of the two systems, establishes grounds for the potential merger of morality and the limitations on remedies.

Entrepreneurship researches have been curiously silent on luck since luck, itself is elusive and cannot be systematically quantified in any meaningful measurement. An explicit and systematic evaluation of where luck is situated along the spectrum of certainty to absolute uncertainty will be undertaken in this paper. Exploration on the social construction of luck, effect of luck, human interventions relating to luck; the discussion on the operationalization of luck will open potentially rich veins of theoretical inquiry premising on quantum uncertainties, chaos theory, Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Weick’s sensemaking. Heisenberg uncertainty principle or Knightian’s uncertainty or the chaos theory, they are not competing alternatives and irreconcilable as they are not dealing with the same aspect of the indeterministic phenomenon. This paper will explore the indeterminacy of luck along the processual pathway of entrepreneurial venturing. It concludes by offering a compelling proposition on opportunistic and propitious timing with regards to the eventual rewards.

Experts generally agree that risk-taking is necessary for progress and innovation, however, the current research finds that consumers penalize nonprofit organizations for taking risks. Five studies document that people judge nonprofit organizations, relative to for-profit organizations, more negatively for choosing high-risk ventures even when the risks are linked to high expected returns. Process evidence shows that these patterns occur because nonprofit organizations are viewed as existing in a moral domain, rendering their decision to take risks as morally questionable; by contrast, risk-taking by for-profit companies is not similarly viewed as morally problematic. Follow-up studies demonstrate important implications for these findings, including that when for-profit companies operate in a moral domain, they too are penalized for risk-taking. In addition, individuals are less likely to financially support nonprofits, but not for-profits, after they choose risky ventures. These findings demonstrate that people exhibit different risk tolerances for nonprofit versus for-profit companies in ways that can limit innovation and growth in charitable and other morally-relevant domains.

We study implications of asymmetries in both preferences and fundamentals for put option demand across investors and the resulting market behavior. A heterogenous-agent model populated by investors with asymmetric preferences alongside standard risk-averse agents rationalizes the size and the dynamics of the put option market, the expensiveness of put options, and the link between put option demand and the stock market in equilibrium. Disappointment-averse investors take long positions in put options, but only if their reference point is lower than the certainty equivalent. In the cross-section of options with multiple strikes, disappointment-averse investors’ open interest peaks for the at-the-money contracts.

The autonomous vehicle (“AV”) industry faces the following ethical question: “How do we know when our AV technology is safe enough to deploy at scale?” The search for an answer to this question is the “AV Problem.” This essay examines that question through the lens of the July 15, 2021 filing on Form S-4 with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the going public transaction for Aurora Inventions, Inc. The filing reveals that successful implementation of Aurora’s business plan in the long term depends on the truth of the following proposition: A vehicle controlled by a machine driver is safer than a vehicle controlled by a human driver (the “Safety Proposition”). In a material omission for which securities law liability may attach, the S-4 fails to state Aurora’s position on deployment: will Aurora delay deployment until such time as it believes the Safety Proposition is true to a reasonable certainty or will it deploy at scale earlier in the hope that increased current losses will be offset by anticipated future safety gains? The Safety Proposition is a statement about physical probability which is either true or false. For success, AV companies need the public to believe the Safety Proposition, yet belief is not the same as truth. The difference between truth and belief creates tension in the S-4 because the filing both fosters a belief in the Safety Proposition while at the same time making clear there is insufficient evidence to support the truth of the Safety Proposition. A moral hazard results when financial pressures push for early deployment of AV systems before evidence shows that the Safety Proposition is true to a reasonable certainty. This problem is analyzed by comparison with the famous trolley problem in ethics and consideration of corporate governance techniques which an AV company might use to ensure the integrity of its decision process for deployment. The AV industry works to promote belief in the safety proposition in the hope that the public will accept that AV technology has benefits, thus avoiding the need to confront the truth of the Safety Proposition directly. This hinders a meaningful public debate about the merits and timing of deployment of AV technology, raising the question of whether there is a place for meaningful government regulation.

Online Marketing is a challenge for tour leaders to market their products. Administration & Reservation System becomes a major problem in the world of Tour & Travel. Besides that, Price becomes an important variable for customers in online travel Distribution Channels are very important in marketing a tour. Trust issues in open trip (Online) is not enough to be the base for choosing an open trip. Then, Varied prices, makes it difficult to choose. There is no certainty &clear testimony about the tour itself. Related to travelling ecosystem, Food is a basic human need. Based on data obtained that every year there is an increase of 15% of Indonesian people buying goods and services online, including food. It can be said that the current behavior of the public is to like the ease of ordering and transactions. Therefore we want to create a portal that makes it easy for consumers to find reviews of places to eat, can make reservations and food and delivery and even plan a small party .Recent food bloggers have to write the blog about the restaurant review and the food review. as a replacement, the restaurant owners give them fee, and the impact is non-netrallity on their review and misjudge. The purpose of the research is to integrate some entities in order to solve this phenomenon and efficiency. We use literature study method, look the phenomenon that happens in Indonesia, and finally propose the ESB design based on SOA approach. The result are the SOA layer integration, ESB design, and the user pages interface

This paper sets out some of the main areas of legal uncertainty in accommodating digital assets within Scots private law. It suggests some analyses for fitting them within existing legal principles and areas where reform might be needed to allow that fit or give certainty to the commercial actors who use them. The paper builds on work done by the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (“UKJT”) in their “Legal statement on cryptoassets and smart contracts” (2019) and by the Law Commission of England and Wales in their ongoing project on electronic trade documents and digital assets. It proposes that digital assets are best analysed as species of corporeal thing in Scots property law.

In this paper, we investigate the acceptance by taxpayers and tax auditors of voluntary e-audits, i.e., online-based, automated tax audits. Further, we analyze the effects of e-audits on trust in and power of tax authorities. Perceived benefits and shortcomings of e-audits for taxpayers and tax auditors may depend on the specific features of e-audits, which may not only affect adoption and endorsement but also influence the trust-power balance between taxpayers and tax authorities, ultimately affecting tax compliance. In an experimental survey among taxpayers and tax auditors, we focus on four specific features: data privacy, audit certainty, transparency, and independence from tax intermediaries. Results from multilevel models suggest that taxpayers’ acceptance indeed depends on these features, particularly on audit certainty, i.e., that an e-audit cannot be followed by a subsequent conventional tax audit of the same period. While these features appear to increase acceptance and trust by taxpayers, the same features cause concerns of tax auditors, who react with less support for e-audits and a perceived loss in power. These results indicate a mismatch between taxpayers’ and tax auditors’ perceptions about e-audits and tax compliance. Our study is among the first to investigate the effects of digitalization in tax administration and to include tax auditors’ views. Results are relevant to policymakers who wish to promote digitalization to foster tax compliance. Specifically, our study suggests that tax authorities should incorporate safeguards into e-audits and educate about the importance of a trusting relationship between taxpayers and tax auditors.

This essay examines several metrics of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decisionmaking that may be updated on a regular basis over time using publicly available data to give a picture of how SEC decisionmaking changes over time. I focus on SEC actions against public companies and subsidiaries of public companies and use data from the 2005 to 2018 period. The metrics include: the number of SEC actions per year and per month, the ratio of SEC actions to securities class actions by year, the mean abnormal return from an event study of the first public announcement of the problem that led to the eventual SEC enforcement action by year, the fraction of SEC actions with prior disclosure of the underlying violation by year, and the variability of the market response to the initiation of a SEC action by year. The metrics cannot demonstrate with certainty what motivates internal SEC enforcement decisions but may raise questions that guide future research.

This paper elaborates on different conceptions of justice. Economic justice aims at correcting market outcomes to warrant a fair distribution of resources, whereas tax justice focuses on the fair distribution of the tax burden. Both elements of distributive justice have their own ‘domain-specific’ principles. These principles may collide. Hence, balancing both elements of distributive justice is necessary. However, a balance also has to be sought between economic justice and legal justice and its core principles, such as legal equality, legal certainty and proportionality. Legal justice and economic justice pose diverging demands which the legislature should carefully balance. Unfortunately, hasty parliamentary decisions and political decisiveness often seem to prevail over respect for legal values and principles, such as legal certainty and equality. This has been explained with an example of Dutch tax legislation: the (rapid) evolvement of an instrumental incentive in the tax regulation for homeownership. Tax regulations therefore require a more careful political reflection on the fundamental tension between the focus on ends which are external to the law and legal principles. Moreover, the use of tax legislation for external ends should also be balanced with tax law’s internal values and principles of tax fairness – foremost the ability-to-pay principle.

A human’s life is characterized by the acquisition of several properties which are material in nature and thus are left behind in the unlikely event of death. The death of a person who leaves property behind comes with its own issues. One of such is the need to ensure that the personal representatives of the deceased are clothed with the power to administer the estate of the deceased in favor of the named or intended beneficiaries. The grant of probate or letters of administration is very necessary in order for a personal representative to commence the distribution of the Estate. There are instances where a deceased person acquired properties in Ghana as well as in other countries of the world. As a result, it is common that named executors of that deceased person’s Will or in the case of one who died intestate, the administrators, would after applying for and being granted probate or letters of administration in the foreign country take steps to have the grant re-sealed in Ghana. This Article seeks to give the legal rules, practice and procedures governing the effect and enforceability, in Ghana, of the grant of probate or letters of administration made by foreign courts. This Article would employ a prescriptive and descriptive approach to assess the process in Ghana by which a grant of probate or letters of administration obtained outside Ghana is re-sealed in Ghana. Thereafter, the Article would make some recommendations that would ensure that certainty is brought to the process of re-sealing in Ghana and would make the process simpler and straightforward.

We study dynamic portfolio choice of a long-horizon investor who uses deep learning methods to predict equity returns when forming optimal portfolios. Our results show statistically and economically significant benefits from using deep learning to form optimal portfolios through certainty equivalent returns and Sharpe ratios. We demonstrate that a long-short-term-memory recurrent neural network, which excels in learning complex time-series dependencies, generates a superior performance among a variety of networks considered. Return predictability via deep learning generates substantially improved portfolio performance across different subsamples, particularly during recessionary periods. These gains are robust to including transaction costs, short-selling and borrowing constraints.

In a world where financially valuable assets are increasingly being stored in digital form, questions arise as to the legal categorisation of such assets. The question of whether crypto-assets can constitute property has been the subject of some recent litigation and thus legal analysis. If the answer to such question is in the affirmative, as the recent Cryptopia case suggests, this raises a plethora of further questions that need to be resolved by the courts before investors, regulators and accountants alike can approach digital assets with a sufficient degree of legal certainty. One such question, on which this paper focuses, concerns the relationship between a crypto-asset intermediary (such as a crypto-asset stock exchange or custodian), and its clients that store crypto-currencies or crypto-securities (‘clients’). This question is of practical importance because the vast majority of crypto-assets are kept by intermediaries, yet we simply do not know with any reasonable certainty the basis on which these assets are being held. Most agreements between clients and intermediaries are extremely vague, and are silent as to the legal relationship between the parties. Yet, since common law courts will have to determine the legal category into which the agreement falls, they should be guided by a consistent set of principles that allow them to characterise agreements with a degree of certainty and practical justice that is acceptable to commercial parties. This is essential for the determination of clients’ entitlements on the intermediary’s insolvency, a question of high public policy importance which has arisen frequently in recent litigation. In addition, as crypto-assets are (at least at present) not subject to extensive regulation, intermediaries of such assets will not be constrained by many regulatory requirements in relation to investor protection. The determination of the precise legal relationship between the parties, therefore, becomes of even greater public policy importance. This paper addresses the situation where the applicable law to the question of the proprietary characterisation of the client-intermediary relationship is the common law. This paper argues that the most likely (default) relationship between a crypto-asset intermediary and a client is one of trustee and beneficiary, although there are also other possible legal characterisations, namely outright title transfer, ‘quasi-bailment’, and mere obligations sounding in contract. Ultimately, in a particular case, the legal characterisation of the relationship, as well as the precise obligations undertaken by the intermediary, will depend on the client-intermediary agreement itself. In many cases it is difficult to determine whether a particular client-intermediary agreement gives rise to one type of legal relationship or another, but all turns on the interpretation of the agreement in accordance with settled principles of construction and characterisation. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether the law will develop in a way such that bailment analysis will be accepted in the context of crypto-assets, for the objections relating to possession, transmission and (possibly) exclusivity would need to be surmounted before the concept can be applied. In the final analysis, it is concluded that the most likely type of legal relationship that would appear in practice is the trust, because this accords with the objective intention of the parties who wish to have commercial certainty, and (possibly) wish to comply with the relevant regulatory requirements within the particular jurisdiction in question.

In spite of its scientific veneer, fate is a patently unscientific superstition. Determinists admit that in order to predict future events with 100% certainty, an observer would need to be endowed with some form of superhuman omniscience.

Forthcoming, Dalhousie Law Journal. A lawyer should be a loyal ally for each client, and should never exploit a client for personal gain. Legal services regulation should prevent such exploitation. It should also create certainty, and foster trust in every lawyer-client alliance. When it comes to time-based legal fees, Canadian legal services regulation is not yet doing its job. Throughout Canada, rules say that legal fees must be “fair and reasonable,” and “disclosed in a timely fashion.”1 These fine sentiments are supported by long lists of factors to be considered when a legal fee is called into question and then assessed retrospectively. That is, more or less, all that the codes of conduct have to say about time-based legal fees. What we lack are clear rules and efficient procedures to determine what specific billing and disclosure practices are -- and are not -- “fair,” “reasonable,” and “timely.” The status quo gives unethical lawyers room to take advantage of inexperienced clients in niches such as family law, estate law, and employment law, in which time-based billing is common.2 It also subjects ethical lawyers, and their clients, to unnecessary distrust and disputes regarding fees. Reconciling the obvious need to charge and collect fees with the ethical obligation to practice “honourably and with integrity” raises complicated ethical issues,3 for which regulators should offer more concrete guidance. Without fixing prices or curtailing flexibility in billing arrangements, regulatory reform can create a much fairer field for agreements between lawyers and clients about time-based fees. Part 1 of this article considers first the beginning, then the middle, and finally the end of a typical retainer involving time-based billing and an inexperienced client. At each of these three junctures, we find ethical ambiguity creating both opportunities for exploitation and conflicts of interest. The vagueness of the rules requires a lawyer to unilaterally make decisions that increase or decrease the client’s bill. This creates a conflict between the lawyer’s financial self-interest, and their fiduciary obligation to put the client’s interest first. Part 2 argues for more detailed regulation of time-based legal fees, in order to prevent exploitation, create certainty, and eliminate fee-related conflicts of interest that undermine trust in the lawyer-client relationship. Wherever possible, the best practices for time-based billing already used by ethical and conscientious lawyers should be enshrined in regulation. Drawing on regulatory theory, I argue that a move from the current vague standard to more precise rules would create certainty, without significantly constraining flexibility. Part 3 turns from the rules to the procedure that is meant to enforce them. I argue that the court-based process for identifying and remedying unethical billing is inaccessible, inconsistent, and vulnerable to strategic abuse by both lawyers and clients. Making law societies fully responsible for regulating legal fees would make the system more holistic, accessible, and consistent.

The flow of information is vital for the smooth functioning and certainty of the successful outcome of a resolution procedure during resolution planning and execution. As a result, the exchange of relevant information has become highly influential in current debates. This article will focus on the exchange of information between the Single Resolution Board (SRB) and the European Central Bank (ECB). Firstly, the Authorities decided to arrange the rules for sharing information bilaterally in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). While this framework of cooperation and exchange of information between the SRB and the ECB constitutes an obligation under Article 30(7) of the Single Resolution Mechanism Regulation (SRMR), it was drafted in the non-binding form of an MoU. The general purpose of an MoU is to establish the basis for cooperation and convergence of intentions. Such foundations aim to strengthen the resolution procedure by joining forces to obtain more accurate and complete data with better coordination of tasks and resources in order to achieve the most solid result possible within a tighter timeframe.

Using a large sample of quarterly earnings conference call transcripts, we investigate gender issues in interactions between two high-profile professions—sell-side analysts and public firm executives. We find that women are generally less “visible” on conference calls. Specifically, female analysts have fewer conference call participation opportunities. Conditional on participation, female analysts are allowed fewer opportunities to ask follow-up questions and speak less compared with male counterparts. Female analysts speak with more positive tone, less uncertainty, less numerical content, fewer speech hesitations, and fewer back and forth conversations with firm management. Female executives have shorter discourses and receive more rounds of questions from analysts. However, female executives exhibit more certainty and hesitate less, indicating superior abilities in answering analysts’ questions. Our analysis of speech interruptions finds that female analysts are interrupted less by female, but not male, executives. Female executives receive more interruptions from both male analysts and executives and are more likely to be challenged by male subordinates. The equity market also discounts female analysts’ participation. Overall, our results are consistent with gender-based discrimination.

Society is riddled with uncertainty, but uncertainty is often poorly communicated to decision-makers. Novice investors are particularly vulnerable to this as they are often shown future returns with misleadingly high levels of precision. We test the hypothesis that consumers are impressed by numbers – i.e. offset the uncertainty in investment decisions by over-relying on precise numerical information. Six incentivized experiments compared decisions when expected growth is presented in point estimates as opposed to ranges. Consumers prefer and invest more in point estimates, particularly when the range features a larger width or a potential loss. This is because point estimates are associated with certainty and therefore give consumers more confidence. This effect holds when consumers are made aware that performance is variable and expected growth is not guaranteed, which shows the limits of current financial communications. On the other hand, experiencing discrepancies between expected and actual growth dissipates the preference for point estimates. Although consumers favor seemingly precise numerical information, we find conditions under which this bias can be alleviated and open promising avenues for effective interventions.

We propose a new way to quantify the restrictiveness of an economic model, based on how well the model fits simulated, hypothetical data sets. The data sets are drawn at random from a distribution that satisfies some application-dependent content restrictions (such as that people prefer more money to less). Models that can fit almost all hypothetical data well are not restrictive. To illustrate our approach, we evaluate the restrictiveness of popular behavioral models in two experimental settings|certainty equivalents and initial play| and explain how restrictiveness reveals new insights about each of the models.

The media has often highlighted the devastating toll COVID-19 has taken in many parts of Indian country – and that, to be sure, is part of the story. But there are other aspects of the picture as well. On the one hand, tribes have taken resourceful and creative measures to combat COVID-19. On the other, a troublesome doctrinal landscape has complicated their efforts to do so. The judicially crafted Montana framework severely restricts tribal civil regulatory power over nonmembers – a particular problem during the COVID-19 pandemic, when nonmembers have defied tribal curfews, camped in prohibited areas, and opened businesses on reservations despite closure orders. While Montana nominally contains a “health and welfare” exception allowing tribes to exercise power over nonmembers in emergencies, its contours are too ambiguous and fact-specific to allow tribes to act with the certainty and speed they require. The pandemic thus provides a vivid illustration of the way in which Montana hinders effective tribal governance. Further, the pandemic has occurred at a moment when the Court may be more receptive than it has been in the past to arguments favoring tribal sovereignty – and at a time when many of the concerns about tribal regulation that motivated the Court four decades ago in Montana seem increasingly distant both from current doctrine and contemporary tribal realities. As a result, it is time, at a minimum, for the Court to expand Montana’s “health and welfare” exception to resemble something closer to the powers states possess to safeguard public health.

Why the cosmos and universe exist is another view of the Count Theory, not from the study of zero and one, but the view of the possibility. The current scrutiny aims to show a possibility that tends to zero (but it is not zero), corresponds to a certainty for the creation of the world.

The global crisis of 2008 associated with the failure of Lehman Brothers revealed the fragility of the financial system. In its aftermath, policy makers created many new rules to address the perceived causes of the crisis and to enhance financial stability. Nearly all of these rules have now been implemented, and regulators’ focus has moved to policy review and revision. This phase of the regulatory cycle offers a golden opportunity to consider how these processes should be conducted, given the volume of rules written and their importance. This paper introduces mandatory clearing of over-the-counter derivatives as a case study of the issues in the review of post-crisis regulation. This example highlights a number of questions which regulatory review should address. These include the goals of the regulation; its proportionality; whether alternative policies could meet the same goal with lower cost, higher benefit, more certainty and/or fewer side effects; the size and allocation of redistributional effects; and the calibration of the policy. Insights from regulatory theory are used to illuminate these issues and to suggest how a thorough review of financial regulation might proceed. In the case of mandatory client clearing, this leads to suggestions both for the design of the policy and for potential improvements in the rule making process.

This note comments on the economic impacts of the CUSMA, the implications for business certainty, and its readiness for the knowledge based and data-driven economy. Relative to the status quo, the CUSMA impacts negatively on economic efficiency and welfare, and leaves unaddressed the major new sources of uncertainty for business concerning market access in North America. While the CUSMA has been billed as a twenty-first-century agreement, the twenty-first century for which the CUSMA was designed is effectively already over. Given the regulatory ferment currently underway, data is not treaty ready — and the CUSMA is not data ready.

In this paper we use the property that certainty equivalence, as implied by a first-order approximation to the solution of stochastic discrete-time models, breaks in its equivalent continuous-time version. We study the extent to which a first-order approximated solution built by perturbation methods accounts for risk. We show that risk matters economically in a real business cycle (RBC) model with habit formation, and capital adjustment costs and that neglecting risk leads to substantial pricing errors. A first-order approximation in continuous time reduces pricing errors by 90 percent relative to the certainty equivalent linear solution.

I derive an approximation for the welfare change between two risky income prospects. For two special cases, constant absolute risk-aversion and constant relative risk-aversion, one can give an exact expression for the welfare change. At core, the exact and the approximate expressions for the welfare change build on the change in the certainty equivalent between the two risky income prospects. These results are useful for both theoretical and empirical work on risk valuation, as they provide simple and easy-to-use proxies.

Keynes discovered in correspondence with Joan Robinson in the September-October-November, 1936 time period that she did not have the technical knowledge of economics or mathematics that was needed in order to be able to grasp and understand his General Theory, which revolved around his Liquidity Preference theory of the rate of interest. Joan Robinson could understand simple constructs like q = f(p), M=L(r) , I=f(r) or if Y=C +I and Y= C+S, then I=S. However, she could not follow Keynes’s liquidity preference equation on page 199, that M=M1+M2=L1 (r)+L2 (Y)=L, the logical theory of the multiplier on pages 122-123 or the preliminary mathematical presentations on pages 114-115, 137, the definition of uncertainty as an inverse function of the weight of the argument from chapter 6 of the A Treatise on Probability, or the Appendix to chapter 19, chapter 20, or chapter 21 of the General Theory. Joan Robinson repeatedly claimed that because she knew no mathematics, she had to think for herself. However, this claim simply ignores the fact that mathematics or logic is an aid that helps one to think for oneself. In order to avoid questions about Keynes’s D-Z or IS-LM models, she created an “interpretation“ of Keynes that involved a complete misinterpretation of Keynes’s views on uncertainty, so that uncertainty became a state of complete and total uncertainty of the future that meant that no mathematical or statistical modeling was possible. Since it was impossible to mathematically define equations, equilibrium was impossible so that no quantitative, determinate, numerical, equilibrium answer was possible for any system of simultaneous equations concerning the macro economy.The best one could do was to do a ceteris paribus, partial equilibrium, Marshallian approach. G L S Shackle used these ideas from Joan Robinson to create his own approach to decision making based on a Knowledge, Unknowledge-Certainty, Uncertainty dual ,binary concept that was an all or nothing approach. Either there was a situation of complete certainty, which was knowledge or there was a situation of no knowledge or complete uncertainty. This completely rejects Keynes’s logical construct of the weight of the argument and the existence of probable knowledge, so that both Robinson and Shackle, as well as all heterodox schools of thought, completely rejected Keynes’s own definition of uncertainty that he provided on page 148 in footnote 1 in chapter 12 of the General Theory. Contrary to Keynes ,probability was not the guide to life for Robinson simply because no probabilities existed because there was no probable knowledge of the future.

This paper suggests that insurance represents a quid pro quo transaction across states of the world and is purchased because consumers desire to transfer income to a state where it is more valued. Preferences for certainty have little to do with the demand for insurance, but uncertainty itself plays a large role because it operates mechanically to make the payout a multiple of the premium. It also suggests that casino and other forms of institutional gambling represent a similar quid pro quo transaction across states of the world and that consumers gamble to transfer income to a state where it is less costly to obtain. Again, preferences for uncertainty do not motivate gambling, but uncertainty does allow for the augmentation of the payout compared to the wager. These motivations do not conflict with the empirical evidence supporting prospect theory and can accommodate the insurance-purchasing gambler. Both the demand and supply sides are included in the definitions of insurance and gambling presented herein.

The article considers the place of the neoclassical equilibrium model as the basis for current views of markets as fair, efficient, or both. It also points to three threats the model poses for democracy and justice: it ignores the problem of inequality, it suppresses the socio-economic significance of uncertainty, and it conceals its own tradeoff between certainty and equality. Instead, the article lays out Frank Knight’s critical assessment of real markets, which rely on the tacit agreement between a handful of “daring” entrepreneurs and the “risk-averse” masses to bear the uncertainties of business-life in return for a substantially larger share of its direction and rewards. Knight’s influential conclusion, that this agreement mandates a nonmeritocratic social inequality and substantively divides humanity into leaders and followers, should be critically examined.

A key motivation underlying the October 2020 OECD Pillar One and Pillar Two Blueprints is the goal of reducing tax complexity for taxpayers and tax authorities. In this article, we assess the tax complexity of the Blueprints relative to the 2017 OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines (TPG) and the 2017 United Nations Transfer Pricing Manual (TPM). We focus on one form of tax complexity, rule complexity, which measures the problems faced by taxpayers when interpreting written and unwritten tax rules. We use a novel method drawn from the literature on the complexity of algorithms and software to assess the tax complexity of the Blueprints relative to the TPG and TPM. Our analysis shows that, overall, both Blueprints exhibit greater tax complexity than either the TPG or TPM, with Pillar One being the most complex and the TPG the least complex of the four documents. We conclude with some policy recommendations for reducing tax complexity. This article is a revised version of "Tax Complexity, Tax Certainty, and the Pillar One and Two Blueprints", which was submitted by the authors to the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration in response to the Public Consultation Document on the Reports on the Pillar One and Pillar Two Blueprints on December 14,2020.

Uncertainty motivates a wide range of human behavior, as individuals are disposed to pursue a feeling of certainty. We propose that uncertainty motivates morality, and test the hypothesis by examining moral decisions when individuals face an uncertain situation compared with all degenerate certain situations. We find that uncertainty drives individuals to share more in a dictator game experiment and lie less in a dice game experiment. As standard models of choice under uncertainty cannot accommodate these observations, we propose a theoretical framework whereby individuals perceive a connection between the morality of their behavior and the outcome resulting from uncertainty.

What do we want “coherence” to do in legal reasoning? That is, when we use “coherence”, what are we trying to achieve by its use rather than by using another idea? Lawyers should ask and answer a question like that about many concepts, such as “reasonableness”, “duty”, “foreseeability”, “wrongfulness”, but they have particular importance when seeking to understand how a legal system structures or holds itself together. Often this question is simply not asked, or not asked with any time or context to find a serious answer. Many judges use ‘coherence’ with good reason, but without the resources, particularly time and a setting to investigate. Many academics too call in aid the term to add weight to an argument, without detail. Poorly reasoned coherence risks other key values of a legal system, such as intellectual robustness, fairness and certainty. Coherence requires a full understanding of the institutions, reasoning, norms, substantive rules, procedures and outcomes in the objects connected to each other. This work feeds into a wider project trying to understand how and why legal systems change, particularly drawing on examples across tort law and criminal law. This paper: (1) introduces a recent example of coherence; (2) shows the objects of coherence reasoning: what is being made coherent with what; (3) analyses the group of purposes which coherence is part of; and then turns to applying coherence reasoning within the context of claims in tort which are alleged to be incoherent with a criminal prohibition, in particular “sanction shifting” from a person convicted of a crime to a tortfeasor connected to the crime.

The Intellectual Property Law No. 4 of 2019 (IPL’19) as enacted in the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) has led to creation of an office of Commissioner of Intellectual Property (CIP) which increases the uniformity in remedies of deterrent fines for intellectual property (IP) rights infringements that may occur in DIFC. Likewise, IPL’19 has also delegated jurisdiction with DIFC Courts to adjudicate on the remedies of damages and injunctions for IP rights claims brings about certainty in venue for lodging such claims. Consistency in litigation is important because it reduces uncertainty and increases the predictability of case outcomes. This reduces litigation, as it becomes clearer to potential litigants when a case is without merit. Businesses have greater confidence that their investments in innovation will be protected, allowing them to better plan their business strategy, spurring economic growth. IPL’19 applies to any person who owns or claims ownership, uses or attempts to use, or who seeks to enforce or protect an intellectual property right, or any part thereof, in DIFC. This article provides an overview as to the remedies that DIFC Courts and CIP can provide against IP rights violations in DIFC. For convenient reading the body of this article has been arranged into five parts as below. The first serves as the introduction to subject matter of this article, the second part notes the thresholds identifying the respective jurisdiction of DIFC Courts and CIP, the third part identifies the IP rights claims that have expressly been included in the original jurisdiction of DIFC Courts and CIP, the fourth part analyses the causes of action that DIFC Courts can try in its capacity as a civil court, and the final fifth part serves as the conclusion to this article.

States and nonstate actors often conduct unclaimed coercive attacks. Regarding these attacks, commentators and scholars commonly observe that targets know the identity of the perpetrator, which allows the coercive message to go through, and that anonymity grants perpetrators plausible deniability, shielding them from retaliation by targets and third parties. The literature has neglected the puzzle of actors reaching diverging assessments about the identity of the perpetrator of anonymous attacks while having the same information. We address the puzzle by theorizing that targets of unclaimed attacks and third parties may reach different attribution judgments due to distinct emotional reactions: targets are more likely to feel angry, which induces a sense of certainty and a desire to blame someone, prompting confident attribution to a plausible culprit despite objective evidentiary gaps. We test our argument with a vignette experiment describing a fictional attack, randomizing whether the attack was claimed by a terrorist organization or remained unclaimed, and whether the respondents’ country or some other country was targeted. The analysis confirms that anonymity suppresses confident attribution for subjects from another country but not for those from the target; anger mediates the tendency for subjects from the target country to confidently attribute anonymous attacks more frequently.

Two notions of fractional stochastic dominance are recently proposed by Muller et al. (2017) and Huang et al. (2020), respectively. Our main objective is to understand the comparative advantages of the two notions, as well as their suitability in different contexts, by establishing several new technical results. For a more comprehensive comparison, we further include a third natural notion of fractional stochastic dominance based on the coefficient of relative risk aversion. Among the three notions, it turns out that one can be seen as a logarithmic version of second-order stochastic dominance (SSD), another one can be seen as a power version of SSD, whereas there does not exist a transformation to associate the last one with SSD. We find that these notions of fractional stochastic dominance are naturally connected to five classes of risk measures, including Value-at-Risk, Expected Shortfall, expectiles, entropic risk measures, and loss certainty equivalents. The three notions are further characterized in the contexts of the rank-dependent utility model and the cumulative prospect theory. We make some recommendations on which notion to use in specific situations, as they all have their own merits.

The present interview study, with consumers living in Washington state, USA, set out to explore consumers’ perceptions of quality, safety and transparency and see how these influence shopping preferences. The results indicate that consumers are guided by subjective perceptions of food quality, as well as concerns driven by personal values and ethical and environmental considerations. Food safety was found to be confusing for almost all of the consumers in this study, with many expecting stores to provide safe foods. The study also utilized a concept testing method, to evaluate the concept of food transparency and examine how it compares against the established food certifications (organic and free range). Consumers exhibited trust in organic labels, expecting organic farming to ensure good farming practices and quality of life for animals reared for consumption, however they were also aware that this trust is based on assumptions. As a result, they were receptive to more accurate and informative solutions, such as transparency, that could guide their decisions and give them more certainty. Transparency was seen as a useful tool in identifying quality products, which align with personal values and as such, it was received well with consumers in the present study.

Contract Labourers (CLs) in Indian Industries are mostly engaged as skilled and unskilled workers. It is also a common feature seen in agriculture and similar operations and to some area considering service sectors. A workman who is employed as contract labours deem to be hired in association with the work of any enterprise by or throughout a contractor. CLs are individuals those are employed, administered and rewarded by a contractor, sequentially, are settling up with the establishment. Inferior status of labour, employment relaxed behaviour, require of job certainty and poor economic circumstances are the main features of CLs. At the same time as Economic Factors (EF) for example the cost efficiency may give good reason for engagement of CLs, whereas consideration of social justice calls for its abolitions and regulations. Main purpose of this acquisition of this paper is to know different provisions of law and how this provision differs from those of the regular workers in organizations.