Ownership and Control in Joint Ventures: Theory and Evidence

Joint ventures, a particularly popular form of corporate cooperation, exhibit ownership patterns that are concentrated at 50-50 or ‘50 plus one share’ equity allocations for a wide variety of parent firms. In this Paper, we argue that private control benefits create a discontinuity in contribution incentives around equal shareholdings that explains these two cluster points. Using data from US joint ventures, we empirically analyse the determinants of their ownership allocations and find that, consistent with our predictions, parents with similar contribution costs or a high potential for private benefits extraction prefer equal shareholdings and joint control. Similarly, parent-level spillovers make 50-50 ownership more attractive to the detriment of one-sided control while complementarities in parent contributions have the opposite effect. We also find evidence that contingent ownership arrangements such as explicit options and buyout or termination mechanisms serve to mitigate regime-specific contractual inefficiencies.