The Relationship between Firm Births and Job Creation

This paper examines the relationship between firm births and job creation in Great Britain. We use a new data set for 60 British regions, covering the whole of Great Britain, between 1980 and 1998. The central theme of the paper is that, with the exception of a recent paper by Audretsch and Fritsch for Germany, the relationship between new-firm startups and employment growth has previously been examined either with no time-lag or with only a short period lag. The current paper examines short-run as well as long-run relationships and provides results for Great Britain similar to those for Germany. We find that the short-run employment impact of new-firm startups in British regions has been bigger in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. Concerning long-run effects, we find that the employment impact of new-firm startups is strongest after about five years, but the effect disappears after a decade

Enterprise and entrepreneurship in the Caribbean region: introduction to the special issue

Entrepreneurship as a pseudo-discipline has matured to the point where it has begun to question the myths which have developed around it. As a panacea for the development ills of capitalism, studies have spanned various ideological and methodological viewpoints. Spatially, entrepreneurship studies have grown to include countries of the Global South and emerging economies, particularly those of Eastern Europe. This special issue extends this reach to the small developing states of the Caribbean and particularly those with a British colonial legacy rooted in the remnants of the plantation economy. The commencement of political independence in the 1960s has not resulted in any significant economic independence for the region as it remains dependent on foreign investment, whilst its key sectors remain subject to the volatility of the economies of the global north. The papers in this special issue identify domestic and enterprise level constraints to the development of entrepreneurship in the region. This Introduction places these, mostly micro-level studies, in a wider context, concluding that policy-makers need to better understand the concept of entrepreneurship and its role in achieving developmental goals. Our challenging recommendation is that those formulating and delivering these policies and practices should do so with an entrepreneurial mind-set

Bistability in a simple fluid network due to viscosity contrast

We study the existence of multiple equilibrium states in a simple fluid network using Newtonian fluids and laminar flow. We demonstrate theoretically the presence of hysteresis and bistability, and we confirm these predictions in an experiment using two miscible fluids of different viscosity--sucrose solution and water. Possible applications include bloodflow, microfluidics, and other network flows governed by similar principles

From nascent to actual entrepreneurship: the effect of entry barriers

This exploratory study focuses on the conversion from nascent to actual entrepreneurship and the role of entry barriers in this process. Using data for a sample of countries participating in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor between 2002 and 2004, we estimate a twoequation model explaining the nascent entrepreneurship rate and the young business entrepreneurship rate, while taking into account the interrelationship between the two variables (i.e. the conversion). Furthermore various determinants of entrepreneurship reflecting the demand and supply side of entrepreneurship as well as government intervention are incorporated in the model. We find evidence for a strong conversion effect from nascent to actual entrepreneurship. We also find positive effects on entrepreneurial activity rates of labour flexibility and tertiary enrollment and a negative effect of social security expenditure. Concerning the effect of entry regulations we find mixed results. Using one set of entry regulation measures we find no effects whereas using data from a second source we find a weak negative effect of more burdensome entry regulations on the rate of entrepreneurship

Cellular Models of Aggregation-Dependent Template-Directed Proteolysis to Characterize Tau Aggregation Inhibitors for Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease

Copyright © 2015, The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Acknowledgements-We thank Drs Timo Rager and Rolf Hilfiker (Solvias, Switzerland) for polymorph analyses.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The New Deal: jeopardised by the geography of unemployment?

The New Deal is the Labour government's flagship programme to "end the tragic waste of youth and long-term unemployment" by getting people off welfare benefits and into work. This paper argues that the principal weakness of the New Deal is that it seeks to influence the character of labour supply (i.e. the motivation and skills of the unemployed) while neglecting the state of labour demand, which varies greatly between places. The uneven geography of unemployment in the UK is likely to have a crucial bearing on the programme's impact and effectiveness, but this has been largely ignored in its development. The paper outlines some of the practical consequences of this imbalance and suggests how it could be rectified for the programme to be more effective

Spitzer IRS Observations of the Galactic Center: Shocked Gas in the Radio Arc Bubble

We present Spitzer IRS spectra (R ~600, 10 - 38 micron) of 38 positions in the Galactic Center (GC), all at the same Galactic longitude and spanning plus/minus 0.3 degrees in latitude. Our positions include the Arches Cluster, the Arched Filaments, regions near the Quintuplet Cluster, the ``Bubble'' lying along the same line-of-sight as the molecular cloud G0.11-0.11, and the diffuse interstellar gas along the line-of-sight at higher Galactic latitudes. From measurements of the [O IV], [Ne II], [Ne III], [Si II], [S III], [S IV], [Fe II], [Fe III], and H_2 S(0), S(1), and S(2) lines we determine the gas excitation and ionic abundance ratios. The Ne/H and S/H abundance ratios are ~ 1.6 times that of the Orion Nebula. The main source of excitation is photoionization, with the Arches Cluster ionizing the Arched Filaments and the Quintuplet Cluster ionizing the gas nearby and at lower Galactic latitudes including the far side of the Bubble. In addition, strong shocks ionize gas to O^{+3} and destroy dust grains, releasing iron into the gas phase (Fe/H ~ 1.3 times 10^{-6} in the Arched Filaments and Fe/H ~ 8.8 times 10^{-6} in the Bubble). The shock effects are particularly noticeable in the center of the Bubble, but O$^{+3}$ is present in all positions. We suggest that the shocks are due to the winds from the Quintuplet Cluster Wolf-Rayet stars. On the other hand, the H_2 line ratios can be explained with multi-component models of warm molecular gas in photodissociation regions without the need for H_2 production in shocks.Comment: 51 pages, 17 figures To be published in the Astrophysical Journa

Dynamic instability of a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate

We consider a Bose-Einstein condensate subject to a rotating harmonic potential, in connection with recent experiments leading to the formation of vortices. We use the classical hydrodynamic approximation to the non-linear Schr\"odinger equation to determine almost analytically the evolution of the condensate. We predict that this evolution can exhibit dynamical instabilities, for the stirring procedure previously demonstrated at ENS and for a new stirring procedure that we put forward. These instabilities take place within the range of stirring frequency and amplitude for which vortices are produced experimentally. They provide therefore an initiating mechanism for vortex nucleation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, last version including comparison with experiment