The Great Recession’s effect on entrepreneurship

Though the recent recession was the worst downturn since the Great Depression, some observers argue that one silver lining is an upswing in entrepreneurship. Recessions, they claim, provide laid-off workers with the motivation to start their own businesses, and a recent study suggests that in 2009 the number people becoming self employed spiked to its highest level in more than a decade. Unfortunately, a careful look at multiple sources of data shows that the Great Recession was actually a time of considerable decline in entrepreneurial activity in the United States.>Recessions ; Small business ; Self-employed

Dynamics of warped accretion discs

Accretion discs are present around both stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries and supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. A wide variety of circumstantial evidence implies that many of these discs are warped. The standard Bardeen--Petterson model attributes the shape of the warp to the competition between Lense--Thirring torque from the central black hole and viscous angular-momentum transport within the disc. We show that this description is incomplete, and that torques from the companion star (for X-ray binaries) or the self-gravity of the disc (for active galactic nuclei) can play a major role in determining the properties of the warped disc. Including these effects leads to a rich set of new phenomena. For example, (i) when a companion star is present and the warp arises from a misalignment between the companion's orbital axis and the black hole's spin axis, there is no steady-state solution of the Pringle--Ogilvie equations for a thin warped disc when the viscosity falls below a critical value; (ii) in AGN accretion discs, the warp can excite short-wavelength bending waves that propagate inward with growing amplitude until they are damped by the disc viscosity. We show that both phenomena can occur for plausible values of the black hole and disc parameters, and briefly discuss their observational implications.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figure

Eight unique basal bodies in the multi-flagellated diplomonad Giardia lamblia.

Giardia lamblia is an intestinal parasitic protist that causes significant acute and chronic diarrheal disease worldwide. Giardia belongs to the diplomonads, a group of protists in the supergroup Excavata. Diplomonads are characterized by eight motile flagella organized into four bilaterally symmetric pairs. Each of the eight Giardia axonemes has a long cytoplasmic region that extends from the centrally located basal body before exiting the cell body as a membrane-bound flagellum. Each basal body is thus unique in its cytological position and its association with different cytoskeletal features, including the ventral disc, axonemes, and extra-axonemal structures. Inheritance of these unique and complex cytoskeletal elements is maintained through basal body migration, duplication, maturation, and their subsequent association with specific spindle poles during cell division. Due to the complex composition and inheritance of specific basal bodies and their associated structures, Giardia may require novel basal body-associated proteins. Thus, protists such as Giardia may represent an undiscovered source of novel basal body-associated proteins. The development of new tools that make Giardia genetically tractable will enable the composition, structure, and function of the eight basal bodies to be more thoroughly explored

Economic policy uncertainty and small business expansion

Is uncertainty causing small business owners to behave in ways that are hindering the recovery? That question is at the center of an intense public debate. Though reasonable arguments have been presented on both sides, there is not much empirical evidence to draw on. To contribute some to the discussion, we investigated the statistical association between data on small business plans to hire and make capital expenditures and a measure of policy uncertainty. Our analysis suggests that uncertainty is adversely affecting small business owners’ expansion plans.Small business ; Economic conditions - United States

The effect of falling home prices on small business borrowing

Small businesses continue to report problems in obtaining the financing they need. Because small business owners may rely heavily on the value of their homes to finance their businesses (through mortgages or home equity lines), the fall in housing prices might be one of the causes of their difficulty. We analyze information from a variety of sources and find that homes do constitute an important source of capital for small business owners and that the impact of the recent decline in housing prices is significant enough to be a real constraint on small business finances.Housing - Prices ; Small business - Finance

Why do some societies invent more than others?

This study provides a cultural explanation for why some societies invent and innovate more than others. It shows that there are significant positive spearman rank correlations between per capita number of patent applications filed by nationals of 33 countries, measured in 1967, 1971, 1976, and 1980, and Hofstede's (1980) indices of individualism and lack of power distance. It also shows that these relationships hold over time and when per capita inventiveness is adjusted for the wealth of a society

A subcultural study of freestyle BMX : the effects of commodification and rationalization on edgework.

Edgework is the practice of voluntarily placing oneself in a high-risk situation as means to escape the increasingly constraining and mundane conditions of everyday living (Lyng 1990). Commodification (Adorno 2001) and rationalization (Ritzer 2004) are two of the capitalist most effective tools when exploiting an activity in order create a large profit. Freestyle BMX (bicycle motocross) and \u27extreme sports\u27 in general are considered edgework (Milovanovic 2005). Freestyle BMX is experiencing the consequences of rationalization and commodification. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with fifteen male BMX riders, this study explores the motivations of BMX riders, along with how they react to and deal with the increasing commodification and rationalization of freestyle BMX. The results suggest that BMX riders continue to ride BMX in their own way, as a form of resistance, even as the processes commodification and rationalization alter their sport

Individualism, Opportunism, and the preference for direct foreign investment across cultures

This article argues that differences in the preference for direct foreign investment across countries is explained by differences in the degree of individualism of the members of these societies. Individualism increases perceptions of opportunism and the transaction costs of exporting. These perceptions are projected by investors on their counterparts because of false consensus, leadinr,i squared individualism ratings to determine the preference for foreign direct investment. Squared individualism scores are found to explain 46.1 % of the variance in the tendency to engage in foreign direct investment across 25 countries. Adding economic factors - technology and wealth - improves the equation so that it explains 62.5% of the variance

Workshop on entrepreneurial finance: a summary

This Policy Discussion Paper summarizes papers that were presented at the Workshop on Entrepreneurial Finance, which was held March 12?13, 2009, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Researchers presented new empirical research that exploits data sets on entrepreneurial activity that are based on broad and representative data samples. Papers in the workshop focused primarily on analyses of the sources and structure of start-up finance, including the importance of bank lending, venture capital, angel investors, and owner equity.Small business - Finance