In the first half of the twentieth century, the UK capital markets were marked by an absence of investor protection; by the end of the century, there was more extensive protection there than virtually anywhere else in the world. The UK therefore provides an exceptional laboratory for evaluating...

Public ownership is viewed as a restriction on the portfolio of equities held by investors. Three conditions are required to justify such restrictions. First, monitoring and coordination create concentration in supply or demand. Second, complete contracts must be infeasible or undesirable....

This paper evaluates relations between industrial activity and the structure of countries' financial, ownership and legal systems. Using data on 27 industries in 14 OECD countries over the period 1970 to 1995, we evaluate whether the structure of countries' systems is associated with different...

Flow of funds data are used to compare methods of financing the corporate sector in five countries over the period 1970-85. Many of the problems associated with previous studies of corporate finance are avoided by defining financing proportions in net terms. The degree of consolidation of...

In a study of the ownership of German corporations, we find a strong relation between board turnover and corporate performance, little association between concentrations of ownership with managerial disciplining and only limited evidence that pyramid structures can be used for control purposes....

This paper compares corporate financing in the German bank-based and UK market-based systems. Large German firms pay out a lower proportion of their profits as dividends and finance a larger proportion of their investments from retentions. German banks extend more long-term finance to...