Amenorrhea Due to Defects in Steroid Biosynthesis

Amenorrhea as the first manifestation of a steroid biosynthetic defect is rather unusual. The common forms of congenital adrenal hyperplasia are classic examples of steroid biosynthetic defects. Yet in genotypic females, this disorder is usually evident from birth because of virilization. Effective treatment usually ensues and amenorrhea is only a problem when control is inadequate. However, there are individuals whose disorder will be manifest for the first time in the postnatal or adult period. In addition, multiple other steroid defects have now been clearly delineated. Many of these individuals will have amenorrhea, virilization, or sexual ambiguities as part of the clinical picture. The paper will describe some of the more clearly delineated steroidal biosynthetic defects. Also the clinical management of patients with postnatal onset of 21-hydroxylase deficiency form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia will be discussed

Vertical integration and firm boundaries : the evidence

Since Ronald H. Coase's (1937) seminal paper, a rich set of theories has been developed that deal with firm boundaries in vertical or input–output structures. In the last twenty-five years, empirical evidence that can shed light on those theories also has been accumulating. We review the findings of empirical studies that have addressed two main interrelated questions: First, what types of transactions are best brought within the firm and, second, what are the consequences of vertical integration decisions for economic outcomes such as prices, quantities, investment, and profits. Throughout, we highlight areas of potential cross-fertilization and promising areas for future work

The Budget Constraint in the Governance of Organizations

The paper suggests a partial solution to the disjunction between the institutional environment and the institutions of governance by considering the budget constraint. This approach is put in the perspective of the comparative analysis of economic organizations as discrete structural alternatives. The budget constraint presents a whole range of alternative values that are distinct by different transaction costs that organizations meet. Following different values of budget constraint, bounded rationality and opportunism are allocated to alternative uses and asset specificity takes different forms. This approach requires that the discriminating alignment solution considers the prevailing value of the budget constraint, which opens the need for a comparative perspective on efficacious organizational governance. A second level of governance is corporate governance. The debate over corporate governance is centered around decision-making power and the existence of quasi-rents that organizations produce. Given different values of the budget constraint, the definition of what are efficacious systems of decision-making power and appropriation of quasi-rents are distinct in the shareholder value and the stakeholder interest paradigms

The theory of the firm and its critics: a stocktaking and assessment

Includes bibliographical references."Prepared for Jean-Michel Glachant and Eric Brousseau, eds. New Institutional Economics: A Textbook, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.""This version: August 22, 2005."Since its emergence in the 1970s the modern economic or Coasian theory of the firm has been discussed and challenged by sociologists, heterodox economists, management scholars, and other critics. This chapter reviews and assesses these critiques, focusing on behavioral issues (bounded rationality and motivation), process (including path dependence and the selection argument), entrepreneurship, and the challenge from knowledge-based theories of the firm

Regulation and the Evolution of Corporate Boards: Monitoring, Advising or Window Dressing?

An earlier version of this paper was entitled “Deregulation and Board Composition: Evidence on the Value of the Revolving Door.”It is generally agreed that boards are endogenously determined institutions that serve both oversight and advisory roles in a firm. While the oversight role of boards has been extensively studied, relatively few studies have examined the advisory role of corporate boards. We examine the participation of political directors on the boards of natural gas companies between 1930 and 1998. We focus on the expansion of federal regulation of the natural gas industry in 1938 and 1954 and subsequent partial deregulation in 1986. Using data sets covering the periods from 1930 to 1990 and 1978 to 1998, we test whether regulation and deregulation altered the composition of companies' boards as the firms' environment changed. In particular, did regulation cause an increase and deregulation a decrease in the number of political directors on corporate boards? We find evidence that the number of political directors increases as firms shift from market to political competition. Specifically, the regulation of natural gas is associated with an increase in the number of political directors and deregulation is associated with a decrease in the number of political directors on boards