We analyze 114 NYSE- or AMEX-listed corporations with majority shareholders. Majority shareholders are approximately equally divided between corporations and individuals and are typically both directors and officers. When majority blocks trade, stock prices increase and there is substantial management turnover. Although majority shareholders are typically paid larger salaries than officers in diffusely held firms, the difference is small and of marginal significance. Investment policies, the frequency of corporate-control transactions, accounting return, and Tobin's Q are similar for majority-owned and diffusely held firms. Differences in these dimensions do emerge, however, between firms with corporate and individual majority shareholders.

Social experiments are characterized by their high cost. A tempting alternative to the establishment of a contemporaneous statistical control group is preexempt observat ion of the treatment group. In this paper, the authors analyze the tr ade-off between these two types of "con-trol" as functions of their relative cost and information content in a multiperiod error compone nts framework, where the allocation of observations across the two gr oups is always done in an optimal manner. Solutions for the optimal p roportion of the sample to be devoted to the contemporaneous control group are presented and their behavior as a function of relevant para meters is studied.

The pricing of audit services is a complex function of many variables. Prior research in this area has proposed various approaches and models to identify some of these factors. This paper includes a description of one such model. Studies based on this model, or modifications of it, have been performed in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. This paper reports the findings of a similar study conducted in Canada. The analysis indicates that an approximately linear relationship exists between audit fee and a company's total assets or sales. In addition, the number of subsidiaries and the level of inventory are statistically significant determinants of audit fee in the Canadian setting. The extent of foreign assets was also a significant determinant of audit fee for large companies, while the amount of receivables was found to be a significant determinant of audit fee for small companies. The findings are compared with those reported previously for different countries and the result of a test for price competition in the Canadian audit market is also discussed. Résumé. L'établissement du prix des services de vérification est une fonction complexe faisant intervenir de nombreuses variables. Les travaux de recherche précédents dans ce domaine ont débouché sur diverses méthodes et divers modèles destinés à cerner certains de ces facteurs. Les auteurs s'en tiennent à l'un de ces modèles qu'ils prennent soin de décrire. Des études fondées sur ce modèle, ou sur une version adaptée du modèle, ont été effectuées aux États‐Unis, en Australie, en Nouvelle‐Zélande et au Royaume‐Uni. Les auteurs font état des résultats d'une étude semblable menée au Canada. L'analyse révèle qu'une relation à peu près linéaire existe entre les honoraires de vérification et l'actif total ou le chiffre d'affaires d'une société. De plus, le nombre de filiales et le niveau des stocks sont des déterminants statistiquement significatifs des honoraires de vérification dans le contexte canadien. L'importance de l'actif à l'étranger est également un déterminant significatif des honoraires de vérification pour les grandes entreprises, tandis que le montant des comptes clients est un déterminant significatif des hororaires de vérification pour les petites entreprises. Les auteurs comparent ces résultats aux résultats précédemment obtenus pour différents pays et traitent du résultat d'un contrôle relatif à la concurrence sur les prix dans le marché canadien de la vérification.

We present a theory of involuntary unemployment which explains why the unemployed workers ("outsiders") are unable or unwilling to find jobs even though they are prepared to work for less than the prevailing wages of incumbent workers ("insiders"). The outsiders do not underbid the insiders since, were they to do so, the insiders would withdraw cooperation from them and make their work unpleasant (that is, "harass" them), thereby reducing the productivity and increasing the reservation wages of the underbidders. The resulting labor turnover costs create economic rent which the insiders tap in wage setting and, as a result, involuntary unemployment may arise.

This paper develops a measure of execution costs (market impact) of transactions on the NYSE. The measure is the volume-weighted average price over the trading day. It yields results that are less biased than measures that use single prices, such as closes. The paper then applies this measure to a data set containing more than 14,000 actual trades. We show that total transaction costs, commission plus market impact costs, average twenty-three basis points of principal value for our sample. Commission costs, averaging eighteen basis points, are considerably higher than execution costs, which average five basis points. They vary slightly across brokers and significantly across money managers. Though brokers do not incur consistently high or low transaction costs, money managers experience persistently high or lost costs. Finally, the paper explores the possible tradeoff between commission expenditures and market impact costs. Paying higher commissions does not yield commensurately lower execution costs, even after adjusting for trade difficulty. We cannot determine whether other valuable brokerage services are being purchased with higher commission payments or whether some money managers really are inefficient consumers of brokerage trading services.

This paper develops a measure of execution costs (market impact) of transactions on the NYSE. The measure is the volume‐weighted average price over the trading day. It yields results that are less biased than measures that use single prices, such as closes. The paper then applies this measure to a data set containing more than 14,000 actual trades. We show that total transaction costs, commission plus market impact costs, average twenty‐three basis points of principal value for our sample. Commission costs, averaging eighteen basis points, are considerably higher than execution costs, which average five basis points. They vary slightly across brokers and significantly across money managers. Though brokers do not incur consistently high or low transaction costs, money managers experience persistently high or lost costs. Finally, the paper explores the possible tradeoff between commission expenditures and market impact costs. Paying higher commissions does not yield commensurately lower execution costs, even after adjusting for trade difficulty. We cannot determine whether other valuable brokerage services are being purchased with higher commission payments or whether some money managers really are inefficient consumers of brokerage trading services.