Referring to Somebody:Generic Person Reference as an Interactional Resource

A growing body of research, examining a wide spectrum of reference forms across diverse languages, cultures, and identities, has shown how references to persons can be selected for context-specific interactional outcomes. This report describes how even such simple forms of person reference as somebody (along with someone and a/the person) can be selected on the basis of their relevance for the specific interactional context in which they are employed. We consider how the particular circumstances of some person reference occasions can make these generic person reference forms specially relevant (even when other, more elaborated forms of reference, either recognitional or non-recognitional, were evidently available to the speaker), and we demonstrate how even these barest forms of person reference can be called on to perform delicate, context-sensitive interactional work. Specifically, we show that speakers can select these generic reference forms for non-recognitional references that a) contribute to the formation of the action of a turn, and, when used in a story, b) contribute to the story’s telling. Finally, we show how a generic person reference can be selected in place of a recognitional reference, thereby openly concealing a referent’s identity

What Drives Venture Capital Fundraising?

We examine the determinants of venture capital fundraising in the U.S. over the past twenty-five years. We study industry aggregate, state-level, and firm-specific fundraising to determine if macroeconomic, regulatory, or performance factors affect venture capital activity. We find that shifts in demand for venture capital appear to have a positive and important impact on commitments to new venture capital funds. Commitments by taxable and tax-exempt investors seem equally sensitive to changes in capital gains tax rates that decreases in capital gains tax rates increase the demand for venture capital as more workers are incented to become entrepreneurs. Aggregate and state level venture fundraising are positively affected by easing of pension investment restrictions as well as industrial and academic R&D expenditures. Fund performance and reputation also lead to greater fundraising by venture organizations.

The Really Long-Run Performance of Initial Public Offerings: The Pre-NASDAQ Evidence

Financial economists in recent years have closely examined and intensely debated the performance of initial public offerings using data after the formation of NASDAQ. The paper seeks to shed light on this controversy by undertaking a large, out-of-sample study: we examine the performance for up to five years after listing of nearly 3,661 initial public offerings in the United States from 1935 to 1972. The sample displays some evidence of underperformance when event-time buy-and-hold abnormal returns are used. The underperformance disappears, however, when cumulative abnormal returns are utilized. A calendar-time analysis also shows that over the entire sample period i.e., from 1935 to 1976 IPOs return as much as the market. Finally, the intercepts in CAPM and Fama-French three-factor regressions are insignificantly different from zero suggesting no abnormal performance.

Superfluidity of "dirty" indirect excitons and magnetoexcitons in two-dimensional trap

The superfluid phase transition of bosons in a two-dimensional (2D) system with disorder and an external parabolic potential is studied. The theory is applied to experiments on indirect excitons in coupled quantum wells. The random field is allowed to be large compared to the dipole-dipole repulsion between excitons. The slope of the external parabolic trap is assumed to change slowly enough to apply the local density approximation (LDA) for the superfluid density, which allows us to calculate the Kosterlitz-Thouless temperature $T_{c}(n(r))$ at each local point $r$ of the trap. The superfluid phase occurs around the center of the trap ($\mathbf{r}=0$) with the normal phase outside this area. As temperature increases, the superfluid area shrinks and disappears at temperature $T_{c}(n(r=0))$. Disorder acts to deplete the condensate; the minimal total number of excitons for which superfluidity exists increases with disorder at fixed temperature. If the disorder is large enough, it can destroy the superfluid entirely. The effect of magnetic field is also calculated for the case of indirect excitons. In a strong magnetic field $H$, the superfluid component decreases, primarily due to the change of the exciton effective mass.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

The Level Spacing Distribution Near the Anderson Transition

For a disordered system near the Anderson transition we show that the nearest-level-spacing distribution has the asymptotics $P(s)\propto \exp(-A s^{2-\gamma })$ for s\gg \av{s}\equiv 1 which is universal and intermediate between the Gaussian asymptotics in a metal and the Poisson in an insulator. (Here the critical exponent $0<\gamma<1$ and the numerical coefficient $A$ depend only on the dimensionality $d>2$). It is obtained by mapping the energy level distribution to the Gibbs distribution for a classical one-dimensional gas with a pairwise interaction. The interaction, consistent with the universal asymptotics of the two-level correlation function found previously, is proved to be the power-law repulsion with the exponent $-\gamma$.Comment: REVTeX, 8 pages, no figure