Consumer Preferences for Less Packaging: A Stated Preference Study

This study estimates the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for packaging with less material by using contingent valuation. We found that people who care about the environmental friendliness of a product, who have a positive perception of less packaging, and who live in a municipality implementing unit-based pricing of waste have a higher WTP. Use of economic instruments potentially affects the purchase of products with reduced packaging. However, when unit-based pricing is combined with plastic separation for recycling, it reduces the WTP. This suggests the possibility that the effect of economic instruments on source reduction of waste is weakened by the recycling policy.Less packaging, Contingent valuation, Unit-based pricing

Warped Leptogenesis with Dirac Neutrino Masses

We show how leptogenesis can occur at the TeV scale with neutrinos that possess almost purely Dirac masses and negligible Majorana mass contributions as a consequence of the small wavefunction overlap in a warped fifth dimension. Lepton number violation at the Planck scale is introduced via a Majorana mass term on the Planck brane. Such a Majorana mass operator leads to the small mass splitting of otherwise degenerate Kaluza-Klein excited states on the TeV brane. This tiny mass splitting can compensate for the small Yukawa couplings to give a CP asymmetry large enough to produce the sufficient baryon asymmetry from the decay of the nearly degenerate neutrino Kaluza-Klein states. In this way the standard baryogenesis via leptogenesis scenario can naturally occur at the TeV scale without the need for a high mass scale.Comment: Typos correcte

Are SRI Funds More Resilient towards the Global Financial Crisis?

This paper compares the resilience of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) funds with that of conventional funds towards the global financial crisis by using an event study methodology. Taking the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers as the particular event, we estimated the average cumulative abnormal returns of both SRI funds and conventional funds. Our results show that SRI funds are more resilient to such a shock. Similar results are obtained by an estimation with a market model that accounts for ARCH effects.SRI, Event study, Financial crisis

D-term chaotic inflation in supergravity

Even though the chaotic inflation is one of the most popular inflation models for its simple dynamics and compelling resolutions to the initial condition problems, its realization in supergravity has been considered a challenging task. We discuss how the chaotic inflation dominated by the D-term can be induced in supergravity, which would give a new perspective on the inflation model building in supergravity.Comment: 5 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev.

企業のグローバル化と人材開発・キャリアデザイン ―グローバル時代に生き残る戦略―

本稿の目的は、今われわれが直面している国際化、グローバル化の意味をあらたに考え、そこでの人材開発、キャリアデザインへの戦略を見出そうとするものである。われわれはつい、社会変化の大きな波を表層的に捉え、表層的に対応してしまいがちである。現代のグローバル化の波も、個別企業のレベルでは従来の国際化の延長線上にある。その国際化への対応において、英語のスキル向上こそが重要と声高に叫ばれる現状がある。しかしそれが正しくないことは明らかである。そうした中で、人材開発やキャリアデザインの戦略には、次の３つの代替案が見出せる。代替案１．グローバル化する経済社会で求められる語学力、専門性やリーダーシップ等の能力を開発する。代替案２．経済社会のグローバル化を視野に入れつつ、それに振り回されることなく自身の強みや、自身にしかできない能力を開発する。代替案３．経済社会のグローバル化はわれわれの世界観を拡げるので、発展途上国での非営利活動など経済以外の価値観を重視しキャリアを見つける