Corporate managers who own a majority of the common stock in their company or who represent another firm owning such an interest appear to be less constrained than managers of diffusely held firms, yet their power to harm minority shareholders must be circumscribed by some organizational or...

We document that ownership by officers and directors of publicly traded firms is on average higher today than earlier in the century. Managerial ownership has risen from 13 percent for the universe of exchange-listed corporations in 1935, the earliest year for which such data exist, to 21...