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Moonshots
Get PDFIn the last half-century, technological progress has stagnated. Rapid advances in information technology disguise the slow pace of productivity growth in other fields. Reigniting technological progress may require firms to invest in moonshots—long-term projects to commercialize innovations. Yet all but a few giant tech firms shy away from moonshots, even when the expected returns would justify the investment. The root of the problem is corporate structure. The process of developing a novel technology does not generate the kind of interim feedback that shareholders need to monitor managers and managers need to motivate employees. Managers who anticipate these agency problems invest in incremental innovations instead.
In the last few years, a new structure designed to commercialize long-term innovations has emerged—the venture carveout. A venture carveout is a private company with one or two public company parents, outside private investors, and employee ownership. The parents provide intellectual property and a long-term strategic commitment. The private investors supply patient capital that insulates the project from short-term shareholder pressure. The employees’ equity motivates them to bring a product to market. The first venture carveouts are attempting to commercialize autonomous vehicles. If they succeed, they will validate a new model for innovation. This Article argues that venture carveouts could enable more companies to invest in moonshots, compete with the tech giants that dominate our economy, and accelerate technological progress
Money and the Public Debt: Treasury Market Liquidity as a Legal Phenomenon
Get PDFThe market for U.S. government debt (Treasuries) forms the bedrock of the global financial system. The ability of investors to sell Treasuries quickly, cheaply, and at scale has led to an assumption, in many places enshrined in law, that Treasuries are nearly equivalent to cash. Yet in recent years Treasury market liquidity has evaporated on several occasions and, in 2020, the market’s near collapse led to the most aggressive central bank intervention in history.
This Article pieces together what went wrong and offers a new account of the relationship between money issue and debt issue as mechanisms of public finance. It argues that a high degree of convertibility between Treasuries and cash generally requires intermediaries that can augment the money supply, absorbing sales by expanding their balance sheets on both sides. The historical depth of the Treasury market was in large part the result of a concerted effort by policymakers to nurture and support such balance sheet capacity at a collection of nonbank broker-dealers. In 2008, the ability of theseintermediaries to augment the money supply became impaired as investors lost confidence in their money-like liabilities (known as repos). Subsequent changes to market structure pushed substantial Treasury dealing further beyond the bank regulatory perimeter, leaving public finance increasingly dependent on high-frequency traders and hedge funds—“shadow dealers.” The near money issued by these intermediaries proved highly unstable in 2020. Policy makers are now focused on reforming Treasury market structure so that Treasuries remain the world’s most liquid asset class. Successful reform likely requires a legal framework that, among other things, supports elastic intermediation capacity through balance sheets that can expand and contract as needed to meet market needs
Reconsidering Islām and Dīn in the Medinan Qurʾan
No full textThough the study of early Islamic identity continues to be a debated field, quite a few scholars have of late suggested that the processes of articulating a clear-cut identity distinct from those of other faiths were complex and took some time, with the year 700 CE or thereabouts often offered as a possible date for the parting of the ways between Muslims, on the one hand, and other religious communities, on the other. Related to the issue of dating is the question of group nomenclature: what did the Arabian believers call themselves, what were they called by outsiders, and how did the different naming practices affect their possible sense of distinctiveness? This article deals with the words islām, muslimūn, and dīn in the late layers of the Qurʾan and in the post-Qurʾanic evidence. I argue that in the Qurʾan, the word al-islām never specifies or names the religion of the believers and that the Qurʾanic word (al-)dīn is most naturally to be understood as “law” or “judgment,” depending on the context, rather than “religion.” Surveying the dated post-Qurʾanic documentary record, I suggest that the appearance of the reified sense of a distinct religion called Islam and its followers, called Muslims, should be dated no earlier than the early second/eighth century. Moreover, scholars have recently taken up the possibility of postprophetic additions in the Qurʾan, suggesting that verses such as 3:19 and 5:3 might contain such interpolations. However, my interpretation of the verses calls this suggestion into question
Impact Fees in New York City? Legal Authority, Constraints, and Potential Options
Get PDFNew York City, like many other cities, faces numerous practical, political, and legal challenges in raising the revenue it needs to support its growing population. Against this backdrop are ongoing concerns about how the City will finance the additional public services and infrastructure necessitated by new development, as well as the costs it incurs in mitigating adverse impacts on existing communities and the environment. In this context, some have called for the City to explore whether to adopt a local impact fee program.
Broadly defined, impact fees are one-time charges imposed on new development as a condition of approval to offset its impact on local infrastructure, services, and the environment. Employed widely in other major U.S. cities, New York City is a notable outlier in that it does not have an official impact fee policy. However, unlike many other cities, New York State law is unclear as to whether local governments have the requisite authority to adopt one.
This Article analyzes the question of whether New York City has the legal authority to impose impact fees on new development. It argues that, should the City wish to adopt impact fees, it could do so through either its constitutional home rule authority or through its mitigation authority under state environmental review laws. This Article also identifies a number of constitutional and statutory constraints that would likely restrict the design and scope of a local fee program, including limitations under the state’s doctrines on preemption and local taxation, and under the federal exactions jurisprudence
Postcolonial Critiques on Globalization and Privatization of Education in Pakistan
No full textGlobalization of education puts irrevocable marks on the national identity and sovereignty of post-colonial and low-income countries such as Pakistan. The education reform policies and knowledge production and dissemination through foreign aid and international organizations (IOs) usually move from Western countries to the Global south. These education policies and knowledge also travel along with western cultural hegemony, economic power and dependency, privatization, and neoliberal values. In this paper, I discuss the menace of globalization and privatization of education in the post-colonial country, Pakistan. In order to analyze the economic, cultural, and social implications of globalization and privatization I apply the post-colonial critique through a literature review of studies and analysis, I argue that the increasing role of global forces in education creates more privatization which fosters more inequality and marginalization in Pakistan’s education system. It should be balanced by increasing the state's role in education and strongly regulating the private sector in education.
 
Coloniality, Resistance, and Reimagining the Future: Exploring the Influence of Language Policies on Learner Identities in Pakistani Schools
No full textThis paper explores student experiences of language-in-education policies through the lens of colonial processes and traces such logic as they operate through educational institutions. Drawing on semi-structured interviews of high school seniors and recent graduates, I investigate how students in Pakistani secondary schools interact with intersecting modern/colonial structures that rationalize existing hierarchies of power along colonial, racial/ethnic, and gendered lines. The findings suggest that students have internalized dominant colonial ideologies and they also constitute key sites for decolonial resistance at the same time. Student experiences of colonial hierarchies in the school were mediated by their socioeconomic class, gender, ethnic and linguistic background. However, despite internalizing dominant hierarchies, many students understood their experiences through the framing of colonial power structures, which simultaneously positioned them as potential actors for decolonial resistance. In this paper, I analyze their experiences in detail, and in doing so, this study adds to the growing voices in the field of international and comparative education that critically examine the role of modern/colonial formations in the structuring of education globally
Antinomianism In Hasidism
Get PDFHasidism, the eighteenth century Jewish spiritual revivalist movement, was barraged with theological attacks from emergence. One of the critiques of the movement, which has remained prevalent in modernity, is Hasidism’s de-emphasis on Judaism’s commandments. There are few factors which justify this reputation, and its historical proximity to Sabbateanism, combined with its focus on mystic theology, likely lead the contemporaneous rabbinic leadership to take precautionary measures against the fledgling movement. Rabbi Elijah, one of the most influential eighteenth-century European rabbis, also came out heavily against the movement, sealing its fate as the “antinomian” Jewish movement for the next 200 years.