Opening up to global trade and investment is often thought to trigger institutional improvement by raising the expected benefits of institutional reform and reducing incumbents' incentives and ability to preserve the status quo. However, recent experience is not entirely consistent with this...

What is good for a country may not be good for its big businesses, at least recently. More turnover in top businesses correlates with faster per capita gross domestic product, productivity, and capital growth; supporting Schumpeter's [1942. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, third ed., Harper...

Control of corporate assets by wealthy families in economies lacking institutional integrity is common. It has negative implications on corporate governance and adverse macroeconomic effects when it extends across a sufficiently large part of the country's corporate sector. The authors consider...

We examine relationships between firm performance and changes in international presence in five medical sector industries between 1978 and 1989, conditioned on the international status of the industries and the market position of the firms. International expansion was necessary for survival when...

In 2003, the United States enacted a tax reform that reduced, but did not eliminate, individual dividend income taxes. Cutting the dividend tax deprives corporate insiders of a justification for retaining earnings to build unprofitable corporate empires. But not eliminating it entirely preserves...

Trade protection in a declining industry can cause damages beyond those revealed in the usual trade diagram analysis. Using data on the U.S. steel firms, the authors show that trade protection in that industry rewards poor performance, reduces incentives to innovate, and frustrates the normal...

Different economies at different times use different institutional arrangements to constrain the people entrusted with allocating the economy's capital and other resources. Comparative financial histories show these corporate governance regimes to be largely stable through time, but capable of...