We examine the separation of ownership and control for 2,980 corporations in nine East Asian countries. In all countries, voting rights frequently exceed cash-flow rights via pyramid structures and cross-holdings. The separation of ownership and control is most pronounced among family-controlled firms and small firms. More than two-thirds of firms are controlled by a single shareholder. Managers of closely held firms tend to be relatives of the controlling shareholder's family. Older firms are generally family-controlled, dispelling the notion that ownership becomes dispersed over time. Finally, significant corporate wealth in East Asia is concentrated among a few families.

We study the determinants of bank growth in a two-stage logistic regression model. We first compare banks that branch, Bank Acquire, or Product Expand with banks that do not grow externally. Banks that are federally chartered, in states with higher income growth, and with higher labor prices are less likely to grow externally. Larger banks are more likely to grow externally. In the second stage, we study determinants of growth activity for banks that expand products, branch, or acquire other banks. Depending on the time period, bank structure, regulatory environment, performance, and balance sheet characteristics determine bank growth choices.

This paper examines the effect of recent market reforms on the competitive structure of the Nasdaq. Our results show that changes in inventory and information costs cannot explain the post‐reform decrease in bid‐ask spreads. We interpret this as evidence that the reforms have reduced Nasdaq dealers' rents. Additionally, we find that the difference between NYSE and Nasdaq spreads have been greatly diminished with the new rules. Further, the reforms have resulted in an exit, ceteris paribus , from the industry for market making. Overall, our results provide strong evidence that the reforms have improved competition on the Nasdaq.

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the long- and short-run correlations among saving, investment, and growth rates for 123 countries over the period 1961-94. Three results are robust across data sets and estimation methods: i) lagges saving rates are positively related to investment rates; ii) investment rates Granger cause growth rates with a negative sign; iii) growth rates Granger-cause investment with a positive sign.

Restricted government spending along with universal health insurance has led to longer queues for surgical procedures in Canada versus the United States. Yet it is unclear whether these treatment delays affect health outcomes. This paper tests this hypothesis by comparing the determinants of wait time for hip-fracture surgery and its impact on postsurgery length of stay and inpatient mortality in Canada and the United States. Hazards for surgery/no surgery and discharge alive versus dead are modeled using a competing-risks model. Day of the week of admission is used to help identify the surgery wait-time distribution. We control for unobserved (to the econometrician) health status which may affect wait times and outcomes by assuming a semiparametric distribution for unobserved heterogeneity. We find that predicted hazards for inpatient mortality are virtually identical in Canada and the United States. Yet wait times for surgery are longer in Canada, and surgery delay has a significant impact on postsurgery length of stay in both countries. However, the magnitude of this effect is small relative to other patient and hospital-specific factors. Focusing attention on treatment delays as a weakness in the Canadian health care system may be misleading policymakers from hospital-specific inefficiencies that may have more-important implications for health care costs and patient welfare. © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology