We present a theory in which the corporate governance structure in a country is determined by a political majority and show how this decision is related to the distribution of financial wealth. The main argument is that labor claims are exposed to undiversifiable risk, so voters with small...

This paper develops a continuous-time model of liquidity provision by banks, in which customers can deposit and withdraw their funds strategically. The strategic withdrawal option introduces an incentive-compatibility problem that turns the problem of designing deposit contracts into a...

The paper develops a theory of ownership structure based on the notion that corporate control and secondary market liquidity are not perfectly compatible with each other. We analyse the tradeoff between these two objectives for two different ownership structures: the privately held firm, which...

The paper surveys theories of the intertemporal allocation of funds through demand deposits and anonymous markets, first separately and then in an integrated model. It reviews some work on the role of market frictions and asset characteristics, and suggests that the interplay between these two...

The paper develops a simple model of corporate ownership structure in which costs and benefits of ownership concentration are analyzed. The model compares the liquidity benefits obtained through dispersed corporate ownership with the benefits from efficient management control achieved by some...