IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fcr/wpaper/201701.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Villains or Heroes? Private Banks and Railroads after the Sherman Act

Author

Listed:
  • Miguel Cantillo Simon

    (Universidad de Costa Rica)

Abstract

This paper analyzes and measures the value that American private banks added as directors of non financial companies. Using data between 1874 and 1913, and an event study from 1906, I find that bank directors added about 20% of a firm’s market capitalization. Collusive practices encouraged by private banks accounted for 65% of this value, and were the equivalent of creating a three player market among railroads. About 35% of the value added by banks came from better governance. I argue that although policymakers were partly right in sidelining private banks as activist investors, this helped entrench managers.

Suggested Citation

  • Miguel Cantillo Simon, 2017. "Villains or Heroes? Private Banks and Railroads after the Sherman Act," Working Papers 201701, Universidad de Costa Rica, revised Jan 2017.
    • Handle: RePEc:fcr:wpaper:201701
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economia.ucr.ac.cr/sites/default/files/2021-10/EE%20UCR%20SDT%2017-01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1997. "Financial Intermediation, Loanable Funds, and The Real Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 663-691.
    2. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1986. "Large Shareholders and Corporate Control," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(3), pages 461-488, June.
    3. Peter Temin, 1991. "Inside the Business Enterprise: Historical Perspectives on the Use of Information," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number temi91-1, March.
    4. Marco Becht & Julian Franks & Colin Mayer & Stefano Rossi, 2010. "Returns to Shareholder Activism: Evidence from a Clinical Study of the Hermes UK Focus Fund," NBER Chapters, in: Corporate Governance, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Daggett, Stuart, 1908. "Railroad Reorganization," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number daggett1908.
    6. Robert H. Porter, 1983. "A Study of Cartel Stability: The Joint Executive Committee, 1880-1886," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 301-314, Autumn.
    7. Philip M. Parker & Lars-Hendrik Roller, 1997. "Collusive Conduct in Duopolies: Multimarket Contact and Cross-Ownership in the Mobile Telephone Industry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(2), pages 304-322, Summer.
    8. William N. Evans & Ioannis N. Kessides, 1994. "Living by the "Golden Rule": Multimarket Contact in the U. S. Airline Industry," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 341-366.
    9. Glenn Ellison, 1994. "Theories of Cartel Stability and the Joint Executive Committee," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(1), pages 37-57, Spring.
    10. James, John A., 1983. "Structural Change in American Manufacturing, 1850–1890," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(2), pages 433-459, June.
    11. B. Douglas Bernheim & Michael D. Whinston, 1990. "Multimarket Contact and Collusive Behavior," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(1), pages 1-26, Spring.
    12. Fernandez, Nerea & Marin, Pedro L, 1998. "Market Power and Multimarket Contact: Some Evidence from the Spanish Hotel Industry," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 301-315, September.
    13. Harley, C. Knick, 1982. "Oligopoly Agreement and the Timing of American Railroad Construction," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(4), pages 797-823, December.
    14. David M. Kreps & Jose A. Scheinkman, 1983. "Quantity Precommitment and Bertrand Competition Yield Cournot Outcomes," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 326-337, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cantillo, Miguel, 2016. "Villains or Heroes? Private Banks and Railroads after the Sherman Act," MPRA Paper 79354, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Ciliberto, Federico & Williams, Jonathan, 2010. "Does Multimarket Contact Facilitate Tacit Collusion? Inference on Conjectural Parameters in the Airline Industry," MPRA Paper 24888, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Arie, Guy & Markovich, Sarit & Varela, Mauricio, 2017. "On the competitive effects of multimarket contact," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 116-142.
    4. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, January.
    5. Ciliberto, Federico & Watkins, Eddie & Williams, Jonathan W., 2019. "Collusive pricing patterns in the US airline industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 136-157.
    6. Federico Ciliberto & Jonathan W. Williams, 2014. "Does multimarket contact facilitate tacit collusion? Inference on conduct parameters in the airline industry," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 45(4), pages 764-791, December.
    7. Faouzi Bensebaa, 2003. "La dynamique concurrentielle:défis analytiques et méthodologiques," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 6(1), pages 5-37, March.
    8. Iwan Bos & Ronald Peeters, 2023. "Price Competition in a Vertizontally Differentiated Duopoly," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 62(3), pages 219-239, May.
    9. Pankaj Ghemawat & Catherine Thomas, 2008. "Strategic Interaction Across Countries and Multinational Agglomeration: An Application to the Cement Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(12), pages 1980-1996, December.
    10. Zhang, Yahua & Round, David K., 2011. "Price wars and price collusion in China's airline markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 361-372, July.
    11. Fu, W. Wayne, 2003. "Multimarket contact of US newspaper chains: circulation competition and market coordination," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 501-519, December.
    12. Leola B. Ross, "undated". "When Will an Airline Stand Its Ground? An Analysis of Fare Wars," Working Papers 9703, East Carolina University, Department of Economics.
    13. Ari Hyytinen & Frode Steen & Otto Toivanen, 2018. "Cartels Uncovered," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 190-222, November.
    14. Peran van Reeven & Enrico Pennings, 2016. "On the relation between multimarket contact and service quality: Mutual forbearance or network coordination?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(10), pages 2121-2134, October.
    15. Coccorese, Paolo & Pellecchia, Alfonso, 2013. "Multimarket contact, competition and pricing in banking," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 187-214.
    16. Leola Ross, 1997. "When Will an Airline Stand Its Ground? An Analysis of Fare Wars," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 109-127.
    17. Eric Darmon & Thomas Le Texier & Zhiwen Li & Thierry Pénard, 2019. "Multimarket Contact and Platform Competition: Reassessing the Mutual Forbearance Hypothesis," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes 1 & University of Caen) 2019-07, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes 1, University of Caen and CNRS.
    18. Daniel Cracau & Abdolkarim Sadrieh, 2014. "The Divergent Effects of Long-Term and Short-Term Entry Investments on Home Market Cartels," FEMM Working Papers 140003, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    19. Werner Güth & Kirsten Häger & Oliver Kirchkamp & Joachim Schwalbach, 2016. "Testing Forbearance Experimentally: Duopolistic Competition of Conglomerate Firms," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 63-86, February.
    20. Saadet Kasman & Adnan Kasman, 2016. "Multimarket contact, market power and financial stability in the Turkish banking industry," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 361-382, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Antitrust; Collusion; Corporate Governance; Financial History;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fcr:wpaper:201701. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Juan Manuel Castro (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feucrcr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.