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"Classic Big Push industrialization envisions state planners coordinating economic activity to internalize a range of externalities that otherwise lock in a low-income equilibrium, but runs afoul of well-known government failure problems. Successful Big Push coordination may occur instead when a large business group, acting in its controlling shareholder's self-interest, coordinates the establishment and expansion of businesses in diverse sectors. Where business groups play this role, many basic axioms of Anglo-American corporate governance, including the advocacy of shareholder value maximization and contestable corporate control, must be qualified"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"Economics and history both strive to understand causation: economics using instrumental variables econometrics and history by weighing the plausibility of alternative narratives. Instrumental variables can lose value with repeated use because of an econometric tragedy of the commons bias: each successful use of an instrument potentially creates an additional latent variable bias problem for all other uses of that instrument - past and future. Economists should therefore consider historians' approach to inferring causality from detailed context, the plausibility of alternative narratives, external consistency, and recognition that free will makes human decisions intrinsically exogenous"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"The federal government stands poised to exercise its constitutional right to regulate financial markets, an area traditionally left to competing provincial securities commissions. The current state of securities regulation renders impotent US-style takeover defences, such as poison pills and staggered boards, but allows voting caps and pyramiding in their stead. Various federal securities regulation models are weighted in light of the current state of their needed complementary institutions. One option, for which Canada is relatively well prepared, is the British model of activist independent institutional investors and mandatory takeover bids"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"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 occasional dramatic change in response to a severe crisis. Legal origin, language, culture, religion, accidents of history (path dependence), and other factors affect these changes because they affect how people and societies solve problems"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"Agency problems in economics virtually always entail self-interested agency exhibiting "insufficient" loyalty to principal. Social psychology also has a literature, mainly derived from work by Stanley Milgram, on issues of agency, but this emphasizes excessive loyalty -- people undergoing a so-called "agentic shift" and forsaking rationality for loyalty to a legitimate principal, as when "loyal" soldiers obey orders to commit atrocities. This literature posit that individuals experience a deep inner satisfaction from acts of loyalty -- essentially a "utility of loyalty" -- and that this both buttresses institutions organized as hierarchies and explains much human misery. Agency problems of excessive loyalty, as when boards kowtow to errant CEOs and controlling shareholders, may be as economically important in corporate finance as the more familiar problems of insufficient loyalty of corporate insiders to shareholders. Overt conflict between rival authorities is shown to reverse the "agentic shift" -- justifying institutions that formalize argumentation such as the adversary system in Common Law courts; the Official Opposition in Westminster democracies; discussants and referees in academia; and independent directors, non-executive chairs, and proxy contests in corporate governance"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Rosenstein-Rodan (1943) and others posit that rapid development requires a 'big push' -- the coordinated rapid growth of diverse complementary industries, and suggests a role for government in providing such coordination. We argue that Japan's zaibatsu, or pyramidal business groups, provided this coordination after the Meiji government failed at the task. We propose that pyramidal business groups are private sector mechanisms for coordinating and financing 'big push' growth, and that unique historical circumstances aided their success in prewar Japan. Specifically, Japan uniquely marginalized its feudal elite; withdrew its hand with a propitious mass privatization that rallied the private sector; marginalized an otherwise entrenched first generation of wealthy industrialists; and remained open to foreign trade and capital.

AbstractManuscript TypePerspectiveResearch Question/IssueCan maximizing shareholder value maximize social value?Research Findings/InsightsIf good corporate governance is defined as maximizing a firm's contribution to overall social welfare, shareholder valuation maximization can achieve this only if capital markets are functionally efficient, a concept quite distinct from the definitions of market efficiency usually found in finance textbooks. Functional efficient capital markets allocate capital to its highest value uses subject to achieving tolerable success toward other social goals, such as equality or environmental standards.Theoretical/Academic ImplicationsPressing top managers to maximize shareholder valuation is of questionable social value if share prices are either informationally inefficient (noisy) or informationally efficient but functionally inefficient (share prices faithfully reflect fundamental values, which depend on political lobbying, gaming complex regulations, etc., more than genuine productivity growth).Practitioner/Policy ImplicationsShareholder valuation, if surrounded by institutions that foster functional efficiency, is a readily observable, legally useful, and socially defensible barometer of corporate governance. The efficacy of corporate governance institutions associated with shareholder value thus depends on the bundle of political economy institutions that promote functional efficiency.