Wolfenzon教程.pdf

A Theory of Family Business Groups and Pyramidal Ownership* Heitor Almeida New York University halmeida@stern.nyu.edu Daniel Wolfenzon New York University dwolfenz@stern.nyu.edu (This Draft: August 18, 2003) Abstract Existing theories of pyramidal business groups cannot explain recent empirical findings about the prevalence of these groups and their characteristics. In this paper, we propose a simple theory of pyramids that helps us understand the empirical evidence. Our theory explicitly recognizes that a full understanding of pyramidal business groups necessitates answering two different questions in an integrated framework: why business groups arise, and what determines their ownership structure, that is, why firms are owned through pyramidal chains. In our model business groups arise to substitute for missing financial markets, and families choose pyramidal ownership structures when the benefit of using retained earnings that belong to existing firms in the group is large. Our model makes a number of empirical predictions that are consistent with available evidence and suggests other implications that can be tested in future research. Key words: pyramids, business groups, investor protection, ownership structure. JEL classification:... * We thank... for valuable comments. 1 Introduction Many firms in the world have a controlling shareholder, usually a family or the State (La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes and Shleifer, 1999). In fact, in several countries a few wealthy families control a large num