The remote inland province of Shanxi was late Qing dynasty China’s paramount banking center. Itsremoteness and China’s almost complete isolation from foreign influence at the time lead historiansto posit a Chinese invention of modern banking. However, Shanxi merchants ran a tea trade...

A panel of corporate ownership data, stretching back to 1902, shows that the Canadian corporate sector began the century with a predominance of large pyramidal corporate groups controlled by wealthy families or individuals. By mid-century, widely held firms predominated. But, from the 1970s on,...

This paper presents a synopsis of recent NBER studies of the history of corporate governance in Canada,China, France, Germany, Japan, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Together, the studies underscore the importance of path dependence, often as far...

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...

A literature review demonstrates credible evidence linking higher firm-specific stock return volatility to a more efficient stock market on one hand; and to higher firm-specific fundamentals volatility on the other. These results are reconciled if (1) market efficiency is interpreted as...

Classic Big Push industrialization envisions state planners coordinating economic activity to internalize a range of externalities that otherwise lock in a low-income equilibrium, but runs afoul of well-known government failure problems. Successful Big Push coordination may occur instead when a...

Economic models routinely assume firms maximize shareholder wealth; however common law legal systems only require that officers and directors pursue the interests of the corporation, leaving this ill-defined. Economic arguments for shareholder wealth maximization derived from shareholders'...

Economic models routinely assume firms maximize shareholder wealth; however common law legal systems only require that officers and directors pursue the interests of the corporation, leaving this ill-defined. Economic arguments for shareholder wealth maximization derived from shareholders'...

Aggregate credit and investment growth correlate with prior money growth more strongly in economies whose banking systems are more fully state-run. Within countries, individual state-run banks' lending correlates with prior money growth, while otherwise similar private-sector banks' lending does...

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 freestanding firms by mid-century. In the 1970s and early 1980s – an era of high inflation, financial reversal,...