On the spatial stickiness of UK new firm formation rates

This research explores persistence of new firm formation at the UK NUTS II level for the 1994–2007 period. The results obtained herewith suggest that interregional differences in new firm formation and their determinants are time persistent. The evidence produced shows that past new firm formation rates determine future ones and that, depending on the econometric specification, human capital, local industry structure, sources of external economies and local economic conditions and wealth are significant determinants. The analysis of new firm formation distribution dynamics suggests that whatever changes may arise in the external shape of distribution are not significant and intra-distribution mobility is limited

Examining sustainability performance in the supply chain: The case of the Greek dairy sector

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Industrial Marketing Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.This paper evaluates the sustainability performance of the Greek dairy chain and the performance of its individual members by using key indicators in relation to efficiency, flexibility, responsiveness and product quality. We assessed the importance of these indicators based on the relevant perceptions of key members of this chain. A structured questionnaire was developed where nineteen sustainability-related issues were examined. Two hundred and fifty three members of the Greek dairy supply chain responded including breeders, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and catering companies. Our findings illustrate the immediate need for improvement in many key sustainability performance indicators. They also show the critical role of large dairy manufacturers who are the “sustainability performance champions” in this chain and are the driving force for the implementation of many sustainability initiatives.European Unio

On manifolds admitting the consistent Lagrangian formulation for higher spin fields

We study a possibility of Lagrangian formulation for free higher spin bosonic totally symmetric tensor field on the background manifold characterizing by the arbitrary metric, vector and third rank tensor fields in framework of BRST approach. Assuming existence of massless and flat limits in the Lagrangian and using the most general form of the operators of constraints we show that the algebra generated by these operators will be closed only for constant curvature space with no nontrivial coupling to the third rank tensor and the strength of the vector fields. This result finally proves that the consistent Lagrangian formulation at the conditions under consideration is possible only in constant curvature Riemann space.Comment: 11 pages; v2: minor typos corrected, a reference adde

Spin 3 cubic vertices in a frame-like formalism

Till now most of the results on interaction vertices for massless higher spin fields were obtained in a metric-like formalism using completely symmetric (spin-)tensors. In this, the Lagrangians turn out to be very complicated and the main reason is that the higher the spin one want to consider the more derivatives one has to introduce. In this paper we show that such investigations can be greatly simplified if one works in a frame-like formalism. As an illustration we consider massless spin 3 particle and reconstruct a number of vertices describing its interactions with lower spin 2, 1 and 0 ones. In all cases considered we give explicit expressions for the Lagrangians and gauge transformations and check that the algebra of gauge transformations is indeed closed.Comment: 17 pades, no figure

Higher spin interactions with scalar matter on constant curvature spacetimes: conserved current and cubic coupling generating functions

Cubic couplings between a complex scalar field and a tower of symmetric tensor gauge fields of all ranks are investigated on any constant curvature spacetime of dimension d>2. Following Noether's method, the gauge fields interact with the scalar field via minimal coupling to the conserved currents. A symmetric conserved current, bilinear in the scalar field and containing up to r derivatives, is obtained for any rank r from its flat spacetime counterpart in dimension d+1, via a radial dimensional reduction valid precisely for the mass-square domain of unitarity in (anti) de Sitter spacetime of dimension d. The infinite collection of conserved currents and cubic vertices are summarized in a compact form by making use of generating functions and of the Weyl/Wigner quantization on constant curvature spaces.Comment: 35+1 pages, v2: two references added, typos corrected, enlarged discussions in Subsection 5.2 and in Conclusion, to appear in JHE

Induced Gravity on RS Branes

It is shown that a localized four-dimensional Einstein term, induced by quantum corrections, modifies significantly the law of gravity in a Randall-Sundrum brane world. In particular, the short-distance behavior of gravity changes from five- to four-dimensional, while, depending on the values of parameters, there can be an intermediate range where gravity behaves as in five dimensions. The spectrum of graviton fluctuations around the brane, their relative importance for the gravitational force, and the relevance of their emission in the bulk for the brane cosmology are analysed. Finally, constraints on parameters are derived from energy loss in astrophysical and particle physics processes.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure, JHEP.cl

Thermodynamics of the localized D2-D6 system

An exact fully-localized extremal supergravity solution for N_2 D2 branes and N_6 D6 branes, which is dual to 3-dimensional supersymmetric SU(N_2) gauge theory with N_6 fundamentals, was found by Cherkis and Hashimoto. In order to consider the thermal properties of the gauge theory we present the non-extremal extension of this solution to first order in an expansion near the core of the D6 branes. We compute the Hawking temperature and the black brane horizon area/entropy. The leading order entropy, which is proportional to N_2^{3/2} N_6^{1/2} T_H^2, is not corrected to first order in the expansion. This result is consistent with the analogous weak-coupling result at the correspondence point N_2 ~ N_6.Comment: 14 page