Randall Morck
Biographic Data
| ID | 1470747 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Randall Morck |
| GIVEN NAMES | Randall |
| FAMILY NAME | Morck |
| SIGNATURE | MORCK R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7412-0222 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 53 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Economics: More than a Science
Business groups and the study of international business: A Coasean synthesis and extension
This paper harmonizes the business group literature in international business and across relevant fields within a unified theoretical framework. Business groups (firms under common control but with different, if overlapping, owners) are economically important in much of the world. Business groups’ economic significance co-evolves with their economies' institutions and market environments, patterns of particular interest to international business …
East Asian Financial and Economic Development
Japan, an isolated, backward country in the 1860s, industrialized rapidly to become a major industrial power by the 1930s. South Korea, among the world's poorest countries in the 1960s, joined the ranks of First World economies in little over a single generation. China now seems poised to follow a similar trajectory. All three cases highlight the importance of marginalized traditional elites, intensive early investment in education, a degree of e…
The Great Pyramids of America: A Revised History of US Business Groups, Corporate Ownership and Regulation, 1930-1950
Capitalizing China
China's economic boom over the last two decades has taken many analysts by surprise, given the ongoing role of central government planning. Its current growth trajectory suggests that the size of its economy could soon surpass that of the United States. Some argue that continued growth and the expanding middle class will ultimately exert pressure on the government to bring about greater openness of the financial market. To better understand China…
Varying Heterogeneity among U.S. Firms: Facts and Implications
U.S. firms' stock return volatility rose fivefold from 1971 through 2000 and then reverted to near 1971 levels by 2006. This was driven mainly by a rise and fall in the firm-specific, rather than systematic, component of volatility. Firm-level total factor productivity growth volatility exhibited a similar pattern. We hypothesize that firm heterogeneity, reflected in firm-specific volatility, rises as a new general purpose technology (GPT) propag…
Economics, History, and Causation
Economics and history both strive to understand causation: economics by using instrumental variables econometrics, and history by weighing the plausibility of alternative narratives. Instrumental variables can lose value with repeated use because of an econometric tragedy of the commons: each successful use of an instrument creates an additional latent variable problem for all other uses of that instrument. Economists should therefore consider hi…
Monetary and Fiscal Stimuli, Ownership Structure, and China's Housing Market
In the recent financial crisis, macroeconomic stimuli produced mixed results across developed economies.In contrast, China's stimulus boosted real GDP growth from an annualized 6.2% in the first quarter of 2009 trough to 11.9% in the first quarter of 2010.Amidst this phenomenal response, land auction and house prices in major cities soared.We argue that the speed and efficacy of China's stimulus derives from state control over its banking system …
Corporatism and the Ghost of the Third Way
An economic system called corporatism arose in the late 19th century, promoted by Anti-Cartesian French intellectuals dismayed with the "disenchantment of the world" Weber attributed to capitalism, and by a Roman Catholic church equally dismayed with both liberalism and socialism. Corporatism recognizes the innate inequality of human beings and their need for secure places in a legitimate hierarchy and thus puts the police power of the state behi…
Institutions and Foreign Direct Investment: China versus the Rest of the World
Comment on "Family Values or Crony Capitalism?" (Harold James)
This paper is a comment on Family Values or Crony Capitalism? by Harold James which can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2209143.
Business Groups and the Big Push: Meiji Japan's Mass Privatization and Subsequent Growth
Paul Rosenstein-Rodan argues that economic development requires coordinated investment in many interdependent industries, and prescribes a flood of state-controlled investment across all sectors—a so-called big push. Widespread government failure defeated twentieth-century ‘big push’ schemes. But spillovers across firms and industries, and from public goods, hold-up problems, and capital market limitations are real, and justify coordinated growth…
A History of Corporate Governance around the World: Family Business Groups to Professional Managers
For many Americans, capitalism is a dynamic engine of prosperity that rewards the bold, the daring, and the hardworking. But to many outside the United States, capitalism seems like an initiative that serves only to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few hereditary oligarchies. As A History of Corporate Governance around the World shows, neither conception is wrong. In this volume, some of the brightest minds in the field of economics…
Corporate Governance, Economic Entrenchment, and Growth
Outside the United States and the United Kingdom, large corporations usually have controlling owners, who are usually very wealthy families. Pyramidal control structures, cross shareholding, and super-voting rights let such families control corporations without making a commensurate capital investment. In many countries, a few such families end up controlling considerable proportions of their countries' economies. Three points emerge. First, at t…
When Labor Has a Voice in Corporate Governance
Equity ownership gives labor both a fractional stake in the firm's residual cash flows and a voice in corporate governance. Relative to other firms, labor-controlled publicly-traded firms deviate more from value maximization, invest less in long-term assets, take fewer risks, grow more slowly, create fewer new jobs, and exhibit lower labor and total factor productivity. We therefore propose that labor uses its corporate governance voice to maximi…
Firm-Specific Variation and Openness in Emerging Markets
This paper compares the comovement of individual stock returns across emerging markets. Campbell et al. and Morck et al. have shown that the United States saw rising firm-specific stock return variations, and thus declining comovement, over the second half of the twentieth century. We detect a similar, albeit weaker, pattern in most, but not all, emerging markets. We further find that higher firm-specific variation is associated with greater capi…
The Rise and Fall of the Widely Held Firm - A History of Corporate Ownership in Canada
A panel of corporate ownership data, stretching back to 1902, shows that the Canadian corporate sector began the century with a predominance of large pyramidal corporate groups controlled by wealthy families or individuals.By mid-century, widely held firms predominated.But, from the 1970s on, pyramidal groups controlled by wealthy families and individuals resurge, restoring a situation similar to that a century earlier.Institutional factors under…
The Internationalization of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Policy Perspective
Rent Seeking, Protectionism and Innovation in the American Steel Industry
Trade protection in a declining industry can cause damages beyond those revealed in the usual trade diagram analysis. Using data on the US steel firms, we show that trade protection in that industry rewards poor performance, reduces incentives to innovate, and frustrates the normal Schumpeterian process of creative destruction
Management ownership and market valuation
Economics, History, and Causation
Economics and history both strive to understand causation: economics by using instrumental variables econometrics, and history by weighing the plausibility of alternative narratives. Instrumental variables can lose value with repeated use because of an econometric tragedy of the commons: each successful use of an instrument creates an additional latent variable problem for all other uses of that instrument. Economists should therefore consider hi…
Monetary and Fiscal Stimuli, Ownership Structure, and China's Housing Market
In the recent financial crisis, macroeconomic stimuli produced mixed results across developed economies.In contrast, China's stimulus boosted real GDP growth from an annualized 6.2% in the first quarter of 2009 trough to 11.9% in the first quarter of 2010.Amidst this phenomenal response, land auction and house prices in major cities soared.We argue that the speed and efficacy of China's stimulus derives from state control over its banking system …
Rent Seeking, Protectionism and Innovation in the American Steel Industry
Trade protection in a declining industry can cause damages beyond those revealed in the usual trade diagram analysis. Using data on the US steel firms, we show that trade protection in that industry rewards poor performance, reduces incentives to innovate, and frustrates the normal Schumpeterian process of creative destruction
Business Groups and the Big Push: Meiji Japan's Mass Privatization and Subsequent Growth
Paul Rosenstein-Rodan argues that economic development requires coordinated investment in many interdependent industries, and prescribes a flood of state-controlled investment across all sectors—a so-called big push. Widespread government failure defeated twentieth-century ‘big push’ schemes. But spillovers across firms and industries, and from public goods, hold-up problems, and capital market limitations are real, and justify coordinated growth…
Corporatism and the Ghost of the Third Way
An economic system called corporatism arose in the late 19th century, promoted by Anti-Cartesian French intellectuals dismayed with the "disenchantment of the world" Weber attributed to capitalism, and by a Roman Catholic church equally dismayed with both liberalism and socialism. Corporatism recognizes the innate inequality of human beings and their need for secure places in a legitimate hierarchy and thus puts the police power of the state behi…
Institutions and Foreign Direct Investment: China versus the Rest of the World
The Great Pyramids of America: A Revised History of US Business Groups, Corporate Ownership and Regulation, 1930-1950
The Rise and Fall of the Widely Held Firm - A History of Corporate Ownership in Canada
A panel of corporate ownership data, stretching back to 1902, shows that the Canadian corporate sector began the century with a predominance of large pyramidal corporate groups controlled by wealthy families or individuals.By mid-century, widely held firms predominated.But, from the 1970s on, pyramidal groups controlled by wealthy families and individuals resurge, restoring a situation similar to that a century earlier.Institutional factors under…
Management ownership and market valuation
Rent Seeking, Protectionism and Innovation in the American Steel Industry
Trade protection in a declining industry can cause damages beyond those revealed in the usual trade diagram analysis. Using data on the US steel firms, we show that trade protection in that industry rewards poor performance, reduces incentives to innovate, and frustrates the normal Schumpeterian process of creative destruction
The Internationalization of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Policy Perspective
Firm-Specific Variation and Openness in Emerging Markets
This paper compares the comovement of individual stock returns across emerging markets. Campbell et al. and Morck et al. have shown that the United States saw rising firm-specific stock return variations, and thus declining comovement, over the second half of the twentieth century. We detect a similar, albeit weaker, pattern in most, but not all, emerging markets. We further find that higher firm-specific variation is associated with greater capi…
The Rise and Fall of the Widely Held Firm - A History of Corporate Ownership in Canada
A panel of corporate ownership data, stretching back to 1902, shows that the Canadian corporate sector began the century with a predominance of large pyramidal corporate groups controlled by wealthy families or individuals.By mid-century, widely held firms predominated.But, from the 1970s on, pyramidal groups controlled by wealthy families and individuals resurge, restoring a situation similar to that a century earlier.Institutional factors under…
A History of Corporate Governance around the World: Family Business Groups to Professional Managers
For many Americans, capitalism is a dynamic engine of prosperity that rewards the bold, the daring, and the hardworking. But to many outside the United States, capitalism seems like an initiative that serves only to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few hereditary oligarchies. As A History of Corporate Governance around the World shows, neither conception is wrong. In this volume, some of the brightest minds in the field of economics…
Corporate Governance, Economic Entrenchment, and Growth
Outside the United States and the United Kingdom, large corporations usually have controlling owners, who are usually very wealthy families. Pyramidal control structures, cross shareholding, and super-voting rights let such families control corporations without making a commensurate capital investment. In many countries, a few such families end up controlling considerable proportions of their countries' economies. Three points emerge. First, at t…
When Labor Has a Voice in Corporate Governance
Equity ownership gives labor both a fractional stake in the firm's residual cash flows and a voice in corporate governance. Relative to other firms, labor-controlled publicly-traded firms deviate more from value maximization, invest less in long-term assets, take fewer risks, grow more slowly, create fewer new jobs, and exhibit lower labor and total factor productivity. We therefore propose that labor uses its corporate governance voice to maximi…
Business Groups and the Big Push: Meiji Japan's Mass Privatization and Subsequent Growth
Paul Rosenstein-Rodan argues that economic development requires coordinated investment in many interdependent industries, and prescribes a flood of state-controlled investment across all sectors—a so-called big push. Widespread government failure defeated twentieth-century ‘big push’ schemes. But spillovers across firms and industries, and from public goods, hold-up problems, and capital market limitations are real, and justify coordinated growth…
Comment on "Family Values or Crony Capitalism?" (Harold James)
This paper is a comment on Family Values or Crony Capitalism? by Harold James which can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2209143.
Institutions and Foreign Direct Investment: China versus the Rest of the World
Corporatism and the Ghost of the Third Way
An economic system called corporatism arose in the late 19th century, promoted by Anti-Cartesian French intellectuals dismayed with the "disenchantment of the world" Weber attributed to capitalism, and by a Roman Catholic church equally dismayed with both liberalism and socialism. Corporatism recognizes the innate inequality of human beings and their need for secure places in a legitimate hierarchy and thus puts the police power of the state behi…
Varying Heterogeneity among U.S. Firms: Facts and Implications
U.S. firms' stock return volatility rose fivefold from 1971 through 2000 and then reverted to near 1971 levels by 2006. This was driven mainly by a rise and fall in the firm-specific, rather than systematic, component of volatility. Firm-level total factor productivity growth volatility exhibited a similar pattern. We hypothesize that firm heterogeneity, reflected in firm-specific volatility, rises as a new general purpose technology (GPT) propag…
Economics, History, and Causation
Economics and history both strive to understand causation: economics by using instrumental variables econometrics, and history by weighing the plausibility of alternative narratives. Instrumental variables can lose value with repeated use because of an econometric tragedy of the commons: each successful use of an instrument creates an additional latent variable problem for all other uses of that instrument. Economists should therefore consider hi…
Monetary and Fiscal Stimuli, Ownership Structure, and China's Housing Market
In the recent financial crisis, macroeconomic stimuli produced mixed results across developed economies.In contrast, China's stimulus boosted real GDP growth from an annualized 6.2% in the first quarter of 2009 trough to 11.9% in the first quarter of 2010.Amidst this phenomenal response, land auction and house prices in major cities soared.We argue that the speed and efficacy of China's stimulus derives from state control over its banking system …
Capitalizing China
China's economic boom over the last two decades has taken many analysts by surprise, given the ongoing role of central government planning. Its current growth trajectory suggests that the size of its economy could soon surpass that of the United States. Some argue that continued growth and the expanding middle class will ultimately exert pressure on the government to bring about greater openness of the financial market. To better understand China…
The Great Pyramids of America: A Revised History of US Business Groups, Corporate Ownership and Regulation, 1930-1950
East Asian Financial and Economic Development
Japan, an isolated, backward country in the 1860s, industrialized rapidly to become a major industrial power by the 1930s. South Korea, among the world's poorest countries in the 1960s, joined the ranks of First World economies in little over a single generation. China now seems poised to follow a similar trajectory. All three cases highlight the importance of marginalized traditional elites, intensive early investment in education, a degree of e…
Business groups and the study of international business: A Coasean synthesis and extension
This paper harmonizes the business group literature in international business and across relevant fields within a unified theoretical framework. Business groups (firms under common control but with different, if overlapping, owners) are economically important in much of the world. Business groups’ economic significance co-evolves with their economies' institutions and market environments, patterns of particular interest to international business …
Economics: More than a Science
Economics (15 works) · Business (12 works) · Corporate Finance and Governance (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Finance (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Corporate governance (5 works) · Market economy (5 works) · Monetary economics (5 works) · Finance (4 works)