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...

Limited liability is a key attribute of the corporate form and one of the most important institutional innovations of the nineteenth century. However, when the owner of a corporation is another corporation as in many corporate groups, an important justification for limited liability—to protect...

The modern multiunit enterprise has been touted by historians and economic historians as a major and important phase of organizational change and a significant source of growth. However, no systematic record of the prevalence and patterns of multiunit activity has yet been established. This...

In this paper we study the effect of market structure on the trade performance of South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. We center our analysis on Korea and Taiwan, countries which have very different market structures: Korea has many large, vertically-integrated business groups known as chaebol,...

This paper presents a framework for analyzing the costs and benefits of internal vs. external capital allocation. We focus primarily on comparing an internal capital market to bank lending. While both represent centralized forms of financing, in the former case the financing is owner-provided,...

Most listed firms are freestanding in the U.S, while listed firms in other countries often belong to business groups: lasting structures in which listed firms control other listed firms. Hand-collected historical data illuminate how the present ownership structure of the United States arose: (1)...

We analyze the impact of market structure on the trade performance of South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Korea has many large, vertically-integrated business groups known as chaebol, whereas business groups in Taiwan are smaller and more specialized in the production of intermediate inputs. We test...

Using data on the operations of U.S. parent firms and their foreign affiliates between 1982 and 1994, this paper examines the extent to which tax minimizing behavior influences intrafirm trade. The results indicate that taxes have a substantial influence on intrafirm trade flows between U.S....

We propose an economic model of business groups that allows for the cooperative behavior of groups of firms, where the number and size of each group is determined endogenously. In this framework, more than one configuration of groups can arise in equilibrium: several different types of business...

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...