14,533 research outputs found
FOOD PROCESSING FIRMS AND FOREIGN PRODUCTION INCENTIVES
As the practice of a firm in one country owning production facilities in another has increased, several theories have developed to explain why production facilities do not always have local owners who would presumably be more familiar with local business conditions. A transaction cost explanation is that a firm may have intangible assets that are sought in another country but that cannot be economically sold on account of market failure. In such a case the firm's expansion into the foreign country may be the most economical way for the foreign country to gain access to those assets. A few studies have identified firm characteristics and firm-specific assets associated with the international growth of food firms. The present paper expands on this work by interviewing executives in two product areas (processed meats and preserved fruit/vegetable products) to discover which assets the executives perceive as important and nontransferable through market channels (and thus applicable to the transaction cost approach). The assets of product development expertise, process management knowledge, and reputation appear to be key intangible assets associated with foreign production. A regression analysis tests determinants of foreign production of the two product categories by 17 US firms in 9 global regions, yielding results consistent with the interviews. That is, the probability of having foreign production plants is significantly enhanced by higher total firm sales, being in the processed fruits and vegetables business as opposed to processed meats and locating in higher income, Western Hemisphere and European Countries.Agribusiness, Industrial Organization,
CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF FOOD RETAILING INNOVATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: SUPERMARKETS IN VIETNAM
Modernization of food retailing in developing economies,focusing on the early stages of retail modernization in Vietnam is examined. This modernization represents innovation that is sought by the host country and that depends on knowledge transfer. Retail modernization has profound effects on the host country and its food system. Innovation at the consumption (retail) end of the food supply chain warrants attention similar to that devoted to knowledge transfer at the production (farming) end of the chain.Marketing, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,
Spin and Statistics in Galilean Covariant Field Theory
The existence of a possible connection between spin and statistics is
explored within the framework of Galilean covariant field theory. To this end
fields of arbitrary spin are constructed and admissible interaction terms
introduced. By explicitly solving such a model in the two particle sector it is
shown that no spin and statistics connection can be established
On the unitary equivalence of absolutely continuous parts of self-adjoint extensions
The classical Weyl-von Neumann theorem states that for any self-adjoint
operator in a separable Hilbert space there exists a
(non-unique) Hilbert-Schmidt operator such that the perturbed
operator has purely point spectrum. We are interesting whether this
result remains valid for non-additive perturbations by considering self-adjoint
extensions of a given densely defined symmetric operator in
and fixing an extension . We show that for a wide class of
symmetric operators the absolutely continuous parts of extensions and are unitarily equivalent provided that their
resolvent difference is a compact operator. Namely, we show that this is true
whenever the Weyl function of a pair admits bounded
limits M(t) := \wlim_{y\to+0}M(t+iy) for a.e. . This result
is applied to direct sums of symmetric operators and Sturm-Liouville operators
with operator potentials
Gamow shell-model calculations of drip-line oxygen isotopes
We employ the Gamow shell model (GSM) to describe low-lying states of the
oxygen isotopes 24O and 25O. The many-body Schrodinger equation is solved
starting from a two-body Hamiltonian defined by a renormalized low-momentum
nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction, and a spherical Berggren basis. The Berggren
basis treats bound, resonant, and continuum states on an equal footing, and is
therefore an appropriate representation of loosely bound and unbound nuclear
states near threshold. We show that such a basis is necessary in order to
obtain a detailed and correct description of the low-lying 1+ and 2+ excited
states in 24O. On the other hand, we find that a correct description of binding
energy systematics of the ground states is driven by proper treatment and
inclusion of many-body correlation effects. This is supported by the fact that
we get 25O unstable with respect to 24O in both oscillator and Berggren
representations starting from a 22O core. Furthermore, we show that the
structure of these loosely bound or unbound isotopes are strongly influenced by
the 1S0 component of the NN interaction. This has important consequences for
our understanding of nuclear stability.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Perturbative Expansion in the Galilean Invariant Spin One-Half Chern-Simons Field Theory
A Galilean Chern-Simons field theory is formulated for the case of two
interacting spin-1/2 fields of distinct masses M and M'. A method for the
construction of states containing N particles of mass M and N' particles of
mass M' is given which is subsequently used to display equivalence to the
spin-1/2 Aharonov-Bohm effect in the N = N' =1 sector of the model. The latter
is then studied in perturbation theory to determine whether there are
divergences in the fourth order (one loop) diagram. It is found that the
contribution of that order is finite (and vanishing) for the case of parallel
spin projections while the antiparallel case displays divergences which are
known to characterize the spin zero case in field theory as well as in quantum
mechanics.Comment: 14 pages LaTeX, including 2 figures using eps
Panel collapse and its applications
We describe a procedure called panel collapse for replacing a CAT(0) cube
complex by a "lower complexity" CAT(0) cube complex
whenever contains a codimension- hyperplane that is extremal in one
of the codimension- hyperplanes containing it. Although is
not in general a subcomplex of , it is a subspace consisting of a
subcomplex together with some cubes that sit inside "diagonally". The
hyperplanes of extend to hyperplanes of . Applying this
procedure, we prove: if a group acts cocompactly on a CAT(0) cube complex
, then there is a CAT(0) cube complex so that acts
cocompactly on and for each hyperplane of , the stabiliser
in of acts on essentially.
Using panel collapse, we obtain a new proof of Stallings's theorem on groups
with more than one end. As another illustrative example, we show that panel
collapse applies to the exotic cubulations of free groups constructed by Wise.
Next, we show that the CAT(0) cube complexes constructed by Cashen-Macura can
be collapsed to trees while preserving all of the necessary group actions. (It
also illustrates that our result applies to actions of some non-discrete
groups.) We also discuss possible applications to quasi-isometric rigidity for
certain classes of graphs of free groups with cyclic edge groups. Panel
collapse is also used in forthcoming work of the first-named author and Wilton
to study fixed-point sets of finite subgroups of on the
free splitting complex. Finally, we apply panel collapse to a conjecture of
Kropholler, obtaining a short proof under a natural extra hypothesis.Comment: Revised according to referee comments. This version accepted in
"Groups, Geometry, and Dynamics
Scattering matrices and Weyl functions
For a scattering system consisting of selfadjoint
extensions and of a symmetric operator with finite
deficiency indices, the scattering matrix \{S_\gT(\gl)\} and a spectral shift
function are calculated in terms of the Weyl function associated
with the boundary triplet for and a simple proof of the Krein-Birman
formula is given. The results are applied to singular Sturm-Liouville operators
with scalar and matrix potentials, to Dirac operators and to Schr\"odinger
operators with point interactions.Comment: 39 page
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