文档介绍：1
Information, Contingency and the Evolution of
US Corporate Monitoring
by
Paul J. Miranti, Jr.
School of Business
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
and
Mary Ellen O'Grady
Ramapo College
Mahwah, NJ 07430-1680
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Information, Contingency and the Evolution of US Corporate
Monitoring
Synopsis
This essay evaluates the evolution of four models of US corporate governance and the ways
that they used information
from 1840 to the contemporary era. Drawing on the work of Louis Galambos, the study
explains how each model was responsive to changing patterns in technology, polticial economy and
professional knowledge. It concludes with a brief consideration of the implications for corporate
governance both of the growing internationalization of business and the drive for accounting
harmonization and of the munication capacities of the .
Keywords
accounting history; agency; asymmetric information; corporate governance; transparency;
securities regulation
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1. Introduction
In explaining the development of contemporary corporate monitoring structures, US historians
have understandably concentrated on the factors that contributed to the rise of the contemporary dual
governmental-professional system first launched during the New Deal era which sought to reduce
investor risk perceptions by enhancing the transparency of corporate affairs through financial reporting
[Carey, 1969-1970; Edwards, 1960; McCraw, 1984; Miranti, 1990; Parrish, 1970; Previts and Merino,
1979; Seligman, 1995]. mon focus of scholarship, however, has overlooked three alternative
models of governance which played significant, albeit transitional, roles in the evolution of US
corporate finance since the latter half of the 19th century. The first such alternative was private
communities of economic interest that centered control over a circle of related business entities in the
hands of dominant financial institutions in the manner of modern German Hausba