Regulating Eternal Inflation II: The Great Divide

In a previous paper, two of the authors presented a "regulated" picture of eternal inflation. This picture both suggested and drew support from a conjectured discontinuity in the amplitude for tunneling from positive to negative vacuum energy, as the positive vacuum energy was sent to zero; analytic and numerical arguments supporting this conjecture were given. Here we show that this conjecture is false, but in an interesting way. There are no cases where tunneling amplitudes are discontinuous at vanishing cosmological constant; rather, the space of potentials separates into two regions. In one region decay is strongly suppressed, and the proposed picture of eternal inflation remains viable; sending the (false) vacuum energy to zero in this region results in an absolutely stable asymptotically flat space. In the other region, we argue that the space-time at vanishing cosmological constant is unstable, but not asymptotically Minkowski. The consequences of our results for theories of supersymmetry breaking are unchanged.Comment: JHEP3, 19 Pages, 7 Figure

Towards a quantum theory of de Sitter space

We describe progress towards constructing a quantum theory of de Sitter space in four dimensions. In particular we indicate how both particle states and Schwarzschild de Sitter black holes can arise as excitations in a theory of a finite number of fermionic oscillators. The results about particle states depend on a conjecture about algebras of Grassmann variables, which we state, but do not prove.Comment: JHEP3 LaTex - 19 page

Dennis Walton\u27s Capital Wars

[Excerpt] If Steven Spielberg were to make a movie on how the building trades are using their pension funds to create work for their members, the film would be called Capital Wars and Dennis Walton would play the part of Han Solo, says Randy Barber, union advisor and director of the Washington-based Center on Economic Organizing. It\u27s been ten years since Barber co-authored with Jeremy Rifkin the eye-opening expose The North Will Rise Again: Pensions, Politics, and Power in the 1980\u27s, which became a best- seller in the labor movement. Since that time, trade unionists have become increasingly aware that if they sit idly by and let others manage the $1.3 trillion of union-negotiated pension funds, unions will in effect be financing their own destruction. Dennis Walton has become one of the most visible proponents in the labor movement of using this pension money as a weapon to further the union cause

IAM District 100 Vs. Eastern and the Banks

The story that follows is a story of how IAM District 100, step by step, escalated a struggle over almost every major issue facing the labor movement today: concessions, control of corporate investment decisions, the power of the financial industry, management- initiated employee involvement schemes, workers\u27 education, joint control over large corporate pension funds, and union leadership style. The Machinists at Eastern would begin this struggle on the shop floor and eventually take it to Eastern\u27s stockholders meetings and to the boardrooms of the world\u27s largest financial institutions. In this bleak period for labor, where unions are battling daily against corporate demands for concessions, IAM District 100 had the harder task of ending concessions that had already been granted

A configuration of 11-dimensional curved superspace as backgrounds for supermembrane

We calculate all of vielbein superfields up to second order in anticommuting coordinates in terms of the component fields of 11-dimensional on-shell supergravity by using `Gauge completion'. This configuration of superspace holds the $\kappa$-symmetry for supermembrane Lagrangian and represents 11-dimensional on-shell supergravity.Comment: 17 pages, ref. added in version

Wealth portfolios in the US and the UK

In this paper, we attempt to explain differences between the US and UK household wealth distributions, with an emphasis on the quite different porfolios held in stock and housing equities in the two countries. As a proportion of their total wealth, British households hold relatively small amounts of financial assets - including equities in stock - compared to American households. In contrast, British households appear to move into home ownership at relatively young ages and a large fraction of their household wealth is concentrated in houseing. Finally, the age gradient in home equity appears to be much steeper in the UK while US households exhibit a steeper age gradient in stock equity. We argue that the higher price housing price volatility in the UK combined with much younger entry into home ownership there are important factors accounting for the relatively small participation of young British householders in the stock market. We show it is important to acknowledge the dual role of housing - providing both wealth and consumption services - in understanding wealth accumulation differences between the US and the UK. Institutional differences, particularly in housing markets, that affect the demand and supply of housing services, turn out to be important in generating portfolio differences between the two countries. In particular, these differences in housing price risk imply steeper life-cycle accumulations in housing and less steep accumulation in stock equity over the life cycle in the UK

House Price Volatility and Housing Ownership over the Lifecycle

We develop and test a model on the effects of spatial housing price risk on housing choice. Housing price risk can be substantial but, unlike other risky assets which people can avoid, most people want to eventually own their home thereby creating an insurance demand for housing ownership early in life. With increasing demographic needs over the life cycle, our model predicts that people living in places with higher housing price risk should own their first home at a younger age, should live in larger homes, and should be less likely to refinance. These predictions are shown to hold using comparable panel data from the United States and United Kingdom. (JEL D12, D91

Women leadership in business based on customary land: The concept of wanbel

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