Commodity Profile Series #1: Crude Oil in the Delaware Valley

This brochure has been developed by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) as part of a series of commodity profiles that seek to illustrate the supply chain of select commodities. This series is meant to help municipalities and the general public better understand a specific commodity's: history in the region; impact on economic development and employment; key facilities and modal distribution; and trends and transportation planning implications. The first part in this series explores crude oil, historically one of the highest-volume commodities to be imported into the region. Crude oil was identified by regional private-sector partners participating in the Delaware Valley Goods Movement Task Force, DVRPC's freight advisory committee, as a key commodity to consider in planning due to recent changes in the regional supply chain

Some geometric groups with rapid decay

We explain some simple methods to establish the property of Rapid Decay for a number of groups arising geometrically. We also give new examples of groups with the property of Rapid Decay. In particular we establish the property of Rapid Decay for all lattices in rank one Lie groups.Comment: 30 pages, 0 figures. There is a change in the content of the paper. The statement of Theorem 0.5 involving cube complexes in the original version fo the paper was incorrect. There is a change in the content of the paper. The proof of Lemma 2.10 needed the use of a result in Drutu-Sapir. This was pointed out to us by D. Groves. The paper has been accepted by GAFA for publicatio

Hierarchies and semistability of relatively hyperbolic groups

A finitely presented group is semistable if all proper rays in the Cayley 2-complex are properly homotopic. A long standing open question asks whether all finitely presented groups are semistable. In this article, we prove semistability of groups that are hyperbolic relative to polycyclic subgroups. Key tools in the proof are a result of Mihalik-Swenson on semistability of `atomic' relatively hyperbolic groups, a combination theorem of Mihalik-Tschantz, and a hierarchical accessibility theorem of Louder-Touikan. We analyze an example that illustrates why an understanding of hierarchies is necessary for the proof of semistability in this context.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Location Choices of the Pharmaceutical Industry in Europe after 1992

Differences in regulations,technical standards and national medical cultures across EU member states created a highly segmented pharmaceutical market in Europe prior to the implementation of the Single Market Programme. The subsequent reduction in non-tariff barriers to trade would be expected to have an impact on where pharmaceutical multinationals locate production within the EU.Using discrete choice models, we study separately the determinants of multinational location choices in terms of expanded production at existing facilities and location of start-up firms.Our results support the findings of models which predict reduced rather than increased agglomeration in the face of trade-cost reductions.

The Regional Dimension of Industrial Policy and Performance in the Republic of Ireland

From its inception in the late 1940s, Irish industrial policy has attempted to disperse industrial plants across regions, thereby avoiding the problem of rural-urban migration experienced by many developing countries. Analysing a large sample of companies which established in Ireland in the early 1980s, we examine whether the survival rates of companies and jobs are lower in peripheral compared with core regions, and whether indigenous and foreign companies differ in this regard. We find higher (lower) company and job survival rates for indigenous (foreign) companies at the core than at the periphery.

Labour Productivity and Foreign Direct Investment in Irish Manufacturing Industry - A Decomposition Analysis

Overall labour productivity in the Irish manufacturing sector increased by 158 per cent between 1991 and 1999. This paper examines the components of this labour productivity growth in the period 1991-1999, using a decomposition analysis based on plant level data. In order to account for the large presence of foreign plants we carry out our analysis separately for foreign and domestic plants, as well as for four ownership subgroups, four sectoral subgroups, and two time sub-periods. Our results show that although the main drivers of average labour productivity growth in all groups arise within plant and from plant entry, there are marked differences in the relative sizes of these effects across ownership/sector/time-period.