History of Corporate Ownership: The Rise and Fall of Great Business Families.

• Position: Conferences - National Bureau of Economic Research

The NBER held a conference on "The History of Corporate Ownership: The Rise and Fall of Great Business Families" in Alberta, Canada on June 21-22. NBER Research Associate Randall Morck, University of Alberta, organized this program:

Randall Morck; Michael Percy and Gloria Tian, University of Alberta; and Bernard Yeung, New York University, "The Rise and Fall of the Widely Held Firm in Canada"

Discussant: Jordan Siegel, MIT

William N. Goetzmann, NBER and Yale University, and Elisabeth Koll, Case Western Reserve University, "The History of Corporate Ownership in China"

Discussant: Dwight Perkins, Harvard University

Tarun Khanna and Krishna Palepu, Harvard University, Decision or Serendipity. The Rise of India's Software Industry"

Discussant: Ashoka Mody, International Monetary Fund

Antoin E. Murphy, Trinity College Dublin, "The History of Corporate Ownership in France"

Discussant: Daniel Raft, NBER and University of Pennsylvania

Caroline Fohlin, California Institute of Technology, "Ownership and Control in German Corporations: A Long-Run Perspective on the Role of Banks"

Discussant: Alexander Dyck, Harvard University

Julian Franks and Stefano Rossi, London Business School, and Colin Mayer, University of Oxford, "The Origination and Evolution of Ownership and Control"

Discussant: Barry Eichengreen, NBER and University of California, Berkeley

Alexander Aganin, Cornerstone Research, and Paolo Volpin, London Business School, "The History of Corporate Ownership in Italy"

Discussant: Daniel Wolfenzon, New York University

Randall Morck, and Masao Nakamura, University of British Columbia, "The History of Corporate Ownership in Japan"

Discussant: Sheldon Garon, Princeton University

Peter Hogfeldt, Stockholm School of Economics, "The History and Politics of Corporate Ownership in Sweden"

Discussant: Ailsa Roell, Princeton University

Marco Becht, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, and J. Bradford DeLong, NBER and University of California, Berkeley, "Why has there been so Little Blockholding in America?"

Discussant: Richard Sylla, NBER and New York University

Along panel of corporate ownership data, stretching back to 1910, shows that the Canadian corporate sector began the century with a predominance of large pyramidal corporate groups controlled by wealthy families or individuals, and relatively few widely held firms. By the middle of the century, widely held firms had become predominant. However, from the 1970s on, there has been a marked resurgence of pyramidal groups con trolled by wealthy families and individuals, corresponding to a large decline in the prevalence of widely held firms. Morck, Percy, Tian, and Yeung note that improvements in the general institutional environment and high taxes or inherited income accompany the rise of widely held firms. A sharp abatement in taxes on large states and a rise in the likely returns to political rent seeking accompany the resurgence of pyramidal groups.

Goetzmann and Koll examine the emergence of corporate ownership in China from the final decades of the Qing empire in the late 19th century to the early Republican period in the 1910s and 1920s. By analyzing the actual process of incorporation, the development of the legal and financial...