, we constructed a unique data set of family trees and business groups for nearly 100 of the largest business families in … Thailand. We find a strong positive association between family size and family involvement in the ownership and control of the … family business. The sons of the founders play a central role in both ownership and board membership, especially when the …

A self-enforcing constitution creates a political process that provides an alternative to civil conflict for resolving … possible to design such a self-enforcing constitution. The paper is also concerned with discovering generic features of a self …-enforcing constitution. The analysis yields the following theoretical propositions: If and only if (1) none of the parties to a dispute …

electoral rules and forms of government for fiscal policy and rent extraction, even when non-random constitution selection is …

The monetary powers embedded in the U.S. Constitution were revolutionary and led to a watershed transformation in the …

Family-controlled pyramidal business groups were important in Canada early in the 20th century, amid rapid catch …

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 … outperform non-family firms. Using family structure variables as instruments, we find adopted heirs "causing" elevated …

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 Burkart, Panunzi and Shleifer (2003). Since family firms persist, solutions to this …

, pyramidally) as the family uses well-established group firms ("central firms") to set up and acquire younger firms that have low … profitability and high capital requirements. Chaebols grow horizontally (that is, using direct family ownership) when the family …) lower profitability of pyramidal firms is partly due to a selection effect (e.g., the family optimally places low …