Institutional investors and corporate governance

The growing dominance of equity holdings by institutional investors, both domestic and international, is casting a sharp focus on their activities and owners and monitors of firms. It is suggested that whereas some general considerations arise in all cases, it is useful to separate discussion of the developments in the Anglo Saxon countries and continental Europe/Japan. The former is showing an increase in direct influence of institutions in place of the previous reliance on the takeover mechanism to discipline managers. This has arguably led to improved corporate performance. The latter remain more firmly in the bank-relationship based governance paradigm. On the other hand, such differences should not be exaggerated, and some convergence is discernible on a modified form of the Anglo Saxon paradigm where institutions are the primary actors in corporate governance generally. In Europe, EMU will provide a major spur to such convergence

Compact, electromagnetic multiple-stream multiple-stream pump for liquid metals - Design concept

Pump provides independent liquid-metal streams at a uniform flow rate. The toroidal magnet structure can accomodate any reasonable number of pump circuits. The power requirement is suited to the output voltage of the basic thermionic diode output

TAMING THE TECHNOLOGICAL TYGERTHE REGULATION OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS -A SURVEY OF SOME CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES--PART TWO

This article reviews the significance placed on environmental factors in nuclear plant licensing during -the 1960s, first considering the effect of recent legislation and the status of current controversies, and then briefly discussing proposals for legislation and developments that can be expected in the near future

Hearing Emergence: Towards Sound-Based Self-Organisation

A fascination for models derived from natural organisation of organisms has a long history of influence in the arts. This paper discusses emergence as a complex behaviour and its manifestations in the sonic domain. We address issues inherent in the use of visual/spatial metaphors for sonic representation and propose an approach based on sound interaction within biological complex systems

Natural Selection: A Stethoscopic Amphibious Installation.

This paper discusses emergence as a complex behaviour in the sound domain and presents a design strategy that was used in the creation of the sound installation Natural Selection to encourage the perception of sonic emergence. The interactions in Natural Selection are based on an algorithm derived from an innately sonic emergent ecological system found in nature, that of mating choices by female frogs within a calling male frog chorus. This paper outlines the design and implementation of the installation and describes the research behind its design, most notably the notion of embodiment within a sonic environment and its importance to the perception of sonic emergence

Some evidence on financial factors in the determination of aggregate business investment

Standard theories of investment behaviour have concentrated on the neoclassical and Tobin’s Q approaches, with most empirical work on aggregate data focusing on the former. In contrast, a separate literature on monetary transmission, centred on the credit channel and financial accelerator effects, has highlighted the potential impact of credit market imperfections in constraining the investment behaviour of firms. In this paper we present evidence at a macro level for the G7 countries that a broad range of financial variables, consistent with the valuation ratio, financial accelerator and credit channel approaches, are relevant determinants of business fixed investment above those variables normally included in traditional macroeconomic investment functions. The results indicate a wider incidence of these financial effects on investment than the existing literature, focused as it is on the US, would otherwise indicate