In this chapter the authors consider the governance of firms in the UK, Canada and the U.S. The authors outline the Anglo-Saxon agency model of ownership and control which has been the bedrock of much finance analysis since the classic Berle and Means insight.
The authors show that the model is not homogenous and there are important differences between these economies that seem to broadly follow this model. In addition, the authors consider a ‘small-world’ model of ownership and control, which documents the degree of connectedness between actors and the distance between them.
The new empirical results show the pattern of ownership and control in U.K., Canada and the U.S. can be considered a small-world: path-lengths are short and clustering is high. However, there are significant differences in the small-world measures across these countries supporting our thesis for the distinctiveness of their corporate governance models.
Faculty
Professor of Strategy
