Overcoming the Impasse in Modern Economics

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Francesca Gagliardi, and David Gindis, 'Overcoming the Impasse in Modern Economics', Competition and Change, Vol. 15 (4): 336-42, November 2011, doi: 10.1179/102452911X13135903675732. Published by SAGE.Peer reviewe

Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law

Gindis, David, Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law (October 27, 2017). Journal of Institutional Economics, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2905547, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2905547The rise of large business corporations in the late 19th century compelled many American observers to admit that the nature of the corporation had yet to be understood. Published in this context, Ernst Freund's little-known The Legal Nature of Corporations (1897) was an original attempt to come to terms with a new legal and economic reality. But it can also be described, to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, as the earliest example of the rational study of corporate law. The paper shows that Freund had the intuitions of an institutional economist, and engaged in what today would be called comparative institutional analysis. Remarkably, his argument that the corporate form secures property against insider defection and against outsiders anticipated recent work on entity shielding and capital lock-in, and can be read as an early contribution to what today would be called the theory of the firm.Peer reviewe

FINDING HYPOPHOSPHASIA. LOW LEVEL OF ALKALINE PHOSPHATASE PATIENTS SCREENING

Study objectives: To conduct screening of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) levels; compare the frequency of detection of low ALP levels using different diagnostic systems; evaluate the possibility of introducing a single «cut-off point». Materials and methods: We analyzed 5472 ALP tests were from 01.08.2013 to 30.04.2017 (672 tests been done with diagnostic system Synchron (Beckman Coulter), 4800 tests been done with system ADVIA 1800 (Siemens Vista)). Results: Identified 67 (1.2%) tests (55 patients) with low values of ALP: among them 35 patients been treated with glucocorticoids; 4 with cytostatics; the rest patients without therapy (6 were in the debut of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (3), acute leukemia (1), Kawasaki syndrome (1), erythema nodosum (1), 4 with chronic gastrointestinal diseases, and 3 with mild bronchial asthma , 2 – with infantile cerebral palsy, 1 – with premature sexual development). Low ALP values were detected more often in cases of Beckman Coulter system using (26, 3.87%) than Siemens Vista (45, 0.94%). The sensitivity of the «cut-off point» 150 U/l was 100%, specificity 75.18%; in case of «cut-off point» 100 U/l figures are 56.52% and 88.12%, respectively. Conclusion: low level of alkaline phosphatase is the main biochemical marker of hypophosphatasia; in the study, most cases of ALP reduction were associated with drug administration. Analyzing ALP level it is necessary to use ALP reference values specified by age and gender, as unified «cut-off points» have low specificity and/or sensitivity