Libros

Resumen 

We explore the role of historical elites for development and in particular for the spread of cooperative creameries in Denmark after 1882, which is often cited as a major factor behind that country’s rapid economic catch-up. We demonstrate empirically that the location of early proto-modern dairies, so-called hollænderier, introduced onto traditional landed estates by German-speaking elites from the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein in the eighteenth century, can explain the location of cooperative creameries in 1890, more than a century later, after controlling for other relevant determinants of cooperation. We interpret this as evidence that areas close to a hollænderi witnessed a gradual spread of modern ideas from the estates to the peasantry. Moreover, we identify a causal relationship by utilizing the nature of the spread of hollænderier around Denmark, and the distance to the first hollænderi. These results are supported by evidence from a wealth of contemporary sources. 

Resumen 

Instrumental Variable methods play an important role in regression analysis when one or more predictors are endogenous. A variable qualifies as an instrument when certain assumptions are met. In particular, it must be uncorrelated with the error term of the structural equation, correlated with the endogenous variable and should not influence directly over the response variable. We evaluate a classical approach by increasing the number of instruments. Furthermore, a simple alternative to recover the endogenous parameter is proposed based on a two step optimization process using a modified version of the Anderson-Rubin test and the variance of the estimated errors. Finally, a new sensitivity analysis approach is proposed when the exclusion restriction assumption is suspected not to hold. The proposed method is based upon a Nonparametric Bayesian Approach.

Resumen

Family firms are the most prevalent type of firm in the world and account for a large proportion of the economic activity and employment, especially in developing countries. We consider firms to be “family controlled” when the founding family owns over 25% of shares and the CEO is a family member. In this paper we investigate the relationship between family control and firm organization and performance in the manufacturing sector of primarily emerging economies. To do this we collect a new detailed dataset of the succession history in terms of ownership (who owns the shares) as well as control (who is the CEO) for over 800 firms in Latin America, and Southern Europe. We merge this with a unique dataset on firm performance and organizational structures, including on quality of managerial practices. We exploit exogenous variation in the composition of the family CEO’s children, and use it as an instrumental variable for family ownership and control. Our results suggest that family-owned-and-controlled firms are worse managed, with coefficients being over twice larger under 2SLS than OLS. In general the negative link seems to stem from the family vs non-family control rather than simply family or non-family ownership. Firms owned by families but with non-family CEOs do not suffer from the deficit in management quality.