University of Warwick

About: University of Warwick is a education organization based out in Coventry, Warwickshire, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 26212 authors who have published 77127 publications receiving 2666552 citations. The organization is also known as: Warwick University & The University of Warwick.

Ownership Structure, Control Type Classifications and the Performance of Large British Companies

Abstract: Ownership structure among 470 U.K. listed companies is described by concentration indices and by "control type," the latter defined using both a fixed percentage shareholding and the "degree of control." The authors also test for possible controlling coalitions among groups of shareholders. Control-type effects on performance are tested using reduced-form equations for valuation ratio, profit margin, return on capital, growth rates, and directors' pay. There is no clear evidence to support managerial theories. Ownership structure is analyzed with the results that greater size and capital cost (beta) imply greater shareholding dispersion. A probit model of control type gives weak results. Copyright 1991 by Royal Economic Society.

Distributive Politics and the Costs of Centralization

Abstract: This paper studies the choice between centralization and decentralization of fiscal policy in a political economy setting. With centralization, regional delegates vote over agendas comprising sets of region-specific projects. The outcome is inefficient because the choice of projects is insufficiently sensitive to within-region benefits. The number of projects funded may be non-monotonic in the strength of project externalities. The efficiency gains from decentralization, and the performance of "constitutional rules" (such as majority voting) which may be used to choose between decentralization and centralization, are then discussed in this framework. Weaker externalities and more heterogeneity between regions need not increase the efficiency gain from decentralization.

The "metabolic memory": is more than just tight glucose control necessary to prevent diabetic complications?

Abstract: Context: The concept of a "metabolic memory," that is of diabetic vascular stresses persisting after glucose normalization, has been supported both in the laboratory and in the clinic and in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Evidence Acquisition: Using PubMed, we searched for publications on diabetic micro- and macrovascular complications using terms such as persistence, prolongation, sustained, and "memory" and focusing on the mechanistic basis behind this metabolic memory. Evidence Synthesis: We found that as early as the mid-1980s this memory phenomenon was described in diabetic animals and isolated cells exposed to high glucose followed by normalized glucose and then, beginning around 2002, in results from large clinical trials such as the Diabetes Complications and Control Trial-Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications and the United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study. Furthermore, mechanisms for propagating this memory appear focused on the nonenzymatic glycation of cellular proteins and lipids and on an excess of cellular reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, in particular originating at the level of glycated mitochondrial proteins and perhaps acting in concert with one another to maintain stress signaling independent of glucose levels. Conclusions: The emergence of this metabolic memory suggests the need for early aggressive treatment aiming to "normalize" metabolic control together perhaps with the addition of agents which reduce cellular reactive species and glycation in order to minimize long-term diabetic complications. (J Clin Endocrinol Metab 94: 410-415, 2009)