The ownership of German corporations is quite different today from that of Anglo-American firms. How did this come about? To what extent is it attributable to regulation? A specially constructed data set on financing and ownership of German corporations from the end of the 19th century reveals...

Twentieth century Japan provides a remarkable laboratory for examining how an externally imposed institutional and regulatory intervention affects the ownership of corporations. In the first half of the century, Japan had weak legal protection but strong institutional arrangements. The...