We consider some of the implications of a proposed reform of the voting system of the IMF in which EU countries cease to be separately represented and are replaced by a single combined representative of the European bloc. The voting weight of the EU bloc is reduced accordingly. We analyse two...

Berle and Means' classic study of the separation of ownership and control remains authoritative and influential despite having been criticised on various grounds by a number of authors. This paper argues that, firstly, the Berle and Means approach to determining company control implicitly...

Capital market constraints on the firm are traditionally described as working through two mutually reinforcing mechanisms. Firct, a direct limitation on management discretion operates through accountability to shareholders. Larger shareholders are assumed continuously to monitor company...

An increasing trend in functional MRI experiments involves discriminating between experimental conditions on the basis of fine-grained spatial patterns extending across many voxels. Typically, these approaches have used randomized resampling to derive inferences. Here, we introduce an analytical...

A priori voting power analysis can be useful in helping to design a weighted voting system that has certain intended properties. Power indices can help determine how many weighted votes each member should be allocated and what the decision rule should be. These choices can be made in the light...

In his well known 1971 paper the mathematical sociologist James S. Coleman, proposed three measures of voting power : (1) "the power of a collectivity to act", (2) "the power to prevent action" and (3) "the power to initiate action". (1) is a measure of the overall decisiveness of a voting body...

An exercise in the empirical use of voting power indices from cooperative game theory applied to ownership data for large companies, this paper contributes in two areas : (1) the analysis of company control based on shareholder voting power, and (2) the empirical use of power indices and...

This paper considers the incentives faced by investors (financial institutions) to become actively involved in the direction of their under-performing portfolio companies as proposed by recent policy reports on corporate governance. It proposes a metric by which to measure the returns to...

The relationship between shareholding concentration and shareholder voting power and the question of corporate control has long been recognised as being of central importance in the economies of the firm and has given rise to a large literature. Despite this, however, and the fact that quite...

This paper argues that the voting power approach is much more general than is portrayed by Albert (“The Voting Power Approach: Measurement without Theory”, European Union Politics, 4:3, 2003) and is therefore capable of generating important insights about voting systems, such as qualified...