The past decades witnessed a broad trend towards flatter organizations with lesshierarchical layers. A reduction of the number of management levels in a corporationcan have both positive and negative effects on firm performance with the neteffect being theoretically unclear ex ante. The present...

Since the mid-1990s, major Japanese banks have sold off a significant portion of their holdings of corporate equity. Using information on the identity of Japanese firms' top 10 shareholders, this paper explores the process of banks' equity disposal. There is some evidence that, after FY2001,...