Leech, Dennis (1999) Minority control: an analysis of British companies using voting power indices. Working Paper. University of Warwick, Department of Economics, Coventry.

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Abstract

An exercise in the empirical use of voting power indices from cooperative game theory to applied ownership data for large companies, this paper contributes in two areas: (1) the analysis of company control based on shareholding voting power, and (2) the empirical use of power indices and understanding of the comparative properties of different indices. New algorithms for calculating power indices, which quantify voting power in weighted voting bodies like company meetings, are applied to detailed data on beneficial ownership of 444 large UK companies without majority control. The results show that the Banzhaf index is, and the Shapley-Shubik index is not, useful for this analysis and a control classification of the firms is obtained.

Item Type:	Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HF Commerce
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Cooperation, Power (Social sciences), Voting research, Game theory, Stock ownership
Series Name:	Warwick economic research papers
Publisher:	University of Warwick, Department of Economics
Place of Publication:	Coventry
Date:	March 1999
Number:	No.529
Number of Pages:	59
Status:	Not Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
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URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/1649

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