187 research outputs found
Inequality and regressivity in Italian waste taxation. Is there an alternative route?
The Italian financing system for waste collection and disposal services, still far from a price-based system at the national level, is similar to a real property tax system. Among other concerns, this raises equity issues. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, the structure of the waste tax in its components (i.e., fixed and variable) is analysed at the provincial level. This allows to investigate the magnitude of the two tax components in Italian provinces, while showing the differences among macro-areas in the financing system for waste collection and disposal services. Second, the regressivity (progressivity) of the tax system adopted is investigated, so as to highlight the differences among geographical areas. Third, an alternative base for the waste tax is proposed, in order to avoid regressivity and achieve higher equality. For these purposes, official data referring to 2017 are used and a Geographically Weighted Regression is implemented. The results highlight the importance of an alternative base of the waste tax to design an equal and non-regressive tax, more similar to a Pay-As-You-Throw scheme
The separate collection of recyclable waste materials as a fywheel for the circular economy: the role of institutional quality and socio‑economic factors
The separate collection of individual recyclable waste materials is the basis for any recycling process. This produces important advantages, especially in terms of resource savings. This paper investigates the drivers of the separate collection process of recyclable materials (i.e., organic, paper, glass, plastic) and its total in the 103 Italian provinces (NUTS-3), in the years 2004–2011. Results show that the pillars of institutional quality (such as, voice and accountability, rule of law and regulatory quality), value added per capita and participation to ecological associations are important factors for an effective implementation of the waste separation process. In particular, these factors do matter for an effective collection of organic waste, paper, glass and plastic. Furthermore, the analysis shows marked differences among macro-areas (North, Central and Southern Italy). Policy considerations are discussed
Open string wavefunctions in flux compactifications
We consider compactifications of type I supergravity on manifolds with SU(3)
structure, in the presence of RR fluxes and magnetized D9-branes, and analyze
the generalized Dirac and Laplace-Beltrami operators associated to the D9-brane
worldvolume fields. These compactifications are T-dual to standard type IIB
toroidal orientifolds with NSNS and RR 3-form fluxes and D3/D7 branes. By using
techniques of representation theory and harmonic analysis, the spectrum of open
string wavefunctions can be computed for Lie groups and their quotients, as we
illustrate with explicit twisted tori examples. We find a correspondence
between irreducible unitary representations of the Kaloper-Myers algebra and
families of Kaluza-Klein excitations. We perform the computation of 2- and
3-point couplings for matter fields in the above flux compactifications, and
compare our results with those of 4d effective supergravity.Comment: 89 pages, 4 figures. v3: more typos corrected, version published in
JHE
Intersecting Brane World from Type I Compactification
We elaborate that general intersecting brane models on orbifolds are obtained
from type I string compactifications and their T-duals. Symmetry breaking and
restoration occur via recombination and parallel separation of branes,
preserving supersymmetry. The Ramond-Ramond tadpole cancelation and the toron
quantization constrain the spectrum as a branching of the adjoints of SO(32),
up to orbifold projections. Since the recombination changes the gauge coupling,
the single gauge coupling of type I could give rise to different coupling below
the unification scale. This is due to the nonlocal properties of the
Dirac-Born-Infeld action. The weak mixing angle sin^2 theta_W = 3/8 is
naturally explained by embedding the quantum numbers to those of SO(10).Comment: 31 pages, 5 figure
Building MSSM Flux Vacua
We construct N=1 and N=0 chiral four-dimensional vacua of flux
compactification in Type IIB string theory. These vacua have the common
features that they are free of tadpole instabilities (both NSNS and RR) even
for models with N=0 supersymmetry. In addition, the dilaton/complex structure
moduli are stabilised and the supergravity background metric is warped. We
present an example in which the low energy spectrum contains the MSSM spectrum
with three generations of chiral matter. In the N=0 models, the background
fluxes which stabilise the moduli also induce soft supersymmetry breaking terms
in the gauge and chiral sectors of the theory, while satisfying the equation of
motion. We also discuss some phenomenological features of these three
generation MSSM flux vacua. Our techniques apply to other closed string
backgrounds as well and, in fact, also allow to find new N=1 D-brane models
which were believed not to exist. Finally, we discuss in detail the consistency
conditions of these flux compactifications. Cancellation of K-theory charges
puts additional constraints on the consistency of the models, which render some
chiral D-brane models in the literature inconsistent.Comment: 33 pages, 1 figure. Minor correction
Fractional branes, warped compactifications and backreacted orientifold planes
The standard extremal p-brane solutions in supergravity are known to allow
for a generalisation which consists of adding a linear dependence on the
world-volume coordinates to the usual harmonic function. In this note we
demonstrate that remarkably this generalisation goes through in exactly the
same way for p-branes with fluxes added to it that correspond to fractional
p-branes. We relate this to warped orientifold compactifications by trading the
Dp-branes for Op-planes that solve the RR tadpole condition. This allows us to
interpret the worldvolume dependence as due to lower-dimensional scalars that
flow along the massless directions in the no-scale potential. Depending on the
details of the fluxes these flows can be supersymmetric domain wall flows. Our
solutions provide explicit examples of backreacted orientifold planes in
compactifications with non-constant moduli.Comment: 20 pages, incl. references. v2: small changes required for JHEP
publication. v3: few equation typos correcte
D6-branes and torsion
The D6-brane spectrum of type IIA vacua based on twisted tori and RR
background fluxes is analyzed. In particular, we compute the torsion factors of
the (co)homology groups H_n and describe the effect that they have on D6-brane
physics. For instance, the fact that H_3 contains Z_N subgroups explains why RR
tadpole conditions are affected by geometric fluxes. In addition, the presence
of torsional (co)homology shows why some D6-brane moduli are lifted, and it
suggests how the D-brane discretum appears in type IIA flux compactifications.
Finally, we give a clear, geometrical understanding of the Freed-Witten anomaly
in the present type IIA setup, and discuss its consequences for the
construction of semi-realistic flux vacua.Comment: 35 pages, 1 figure. One reference adde
A second look at N=1 supersymmetric AdS_4 vacua of type IIA supergravity
We show that a class of type IIA vacua recently found within the N=4
effective approach corresponds to compactification on Ads_4 \times S^3 \times
S^3/Z_2^3. The results obtained using the effective method completely match the
general ten-dimensional analysis for the existence of N=1 warped
compactifications on Ads_4 \times M_6. In particular, we verify that the
internal metric is nearly-Kahler and that for specific values of the parameters
the Bianchi identity of the RR 2-form is fulfilled without sources. For another
range of parameters, including the massless case, the Bianchi identity is
satisfied when D6-branes are introduced. Solving the tadpole cancellation
conditions in D=4 we are able to find examples of appropriate sets of branes.
In the second part of this paper we describe how an example with internal space
CP^3 but with non nearly-Kahler metric fits into the general analysis of flux
vacua.Comment: Latex file, 35 pages, no figures. Reference added, minor corrections
adde
Open String Wavefunctions in Warped Compactifications
We analyze the wavefunctions for open strings in warped compactifications,
and compute the warped Kahler potential for the light modes of a probe D-brane.
This analysis not only applies to the dynamics of D-branes in warped
backgrounds, but also allows to deduce warping corrections to the closed string
Kahler metrics via their couplings to open strings. We consider in particular
the spectrum of D7-branes in warped Calabi-Yau orientifolds, which provide a
string theory realizations of the Randall-Sundrum scenario. We find that
certain background fluxes, necessary in the presence of warping, couple to the
fermionic wavefunctions and qualitatively change their behavior. This modified
dependence of the wavefunctions are needed for consistency with supersymmetry,
though it is present in non-supersymmetric vacua as well. We discuss the
deviations of our setup from the RS scenario and, as an application of our
results, compute the warping corrections to Yukawa couplings in a simple model.
Our analysis is performed both with and without the presence of D-brane
world-volume flux, as well as for the case of backgrounds with varying dilaton.Comment: 52 pages, refs. added, minor correction
Inflation, moduli (de)stabilization and supersymmetry breaking
We study the cosmological inflation from the viewpoint of the moduli
stabilization. We study the scenario that the superpotential has a large value
during the inflation era enough to stabilize moduli, but it is small in the
true vacuum. This scenario is discussed by using a simple model, one type of
hybrid models.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure
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