The practice of adopting adults, even if one has biological children, makes Japanese family firms unusually competitive. Our nearly population-wide panel of postwar listed nonfinancial firms shows inherited family firms more important in postwar Japan than generally realized, and also performing...

Family firms depend on a succession of capable heirs to stay afloat. If talent and IQ are inherited, this problem is mitigated. If, however, progeny talent and IQ display mean reversion (or worse), family firms are eventually doomed. This is the essence of the critique of family firms in...

Family-controlled pyramidal business groups were important in Canada early in the 20th century, amid rapid catch-up industrialization, but largely gave way to widely held free-standing firms by mid- century. In the 1970s and early 1980s – an era of high inflation, financial reversal,...

In modern knowledge driven economies, firms are increasingly aware that individual and collective knowledge is a major factor of economic performance. The larger the firms and the stronger their connection with technology intensive industries, the more are they likely to set up knowledge...

This paper analyzes the relationship between output, employment, and physical and R&D capital, for a sample of 133 large U.S. firms covering the years 1966 through 197. In the cross sectional dimension, there is a strong relationship between firm productivity and the level of its R&D...

We investigate the relation between management ownership and corporate performance, as measured by Tobin's Q. In a cross-section of Fortune 500 firms, Tobin's Q first increases and then declines as board of directors holdings rise. For older firms there is weak evidence that Q is lower when a...

This paper studies the impact of process and product innovations introduced by firms on employment growth in these firms. A simple model that relates employment growth to process innovations and to the growth of sales separately due to innovative and unchanged products is developed and estimated...

Where legal systems and market forces enforce contracts inadequately, vertical integration can circumvent these transaction difficulties. But, such environments often also feature highly interventionist government, and even corruption. Vertical integration might then enhance returns to political...