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Bibliographie

Cette bibliographie annotée sur l’investissement socialement responsable des caisses de retraite se veut la plus complète à ce sujet. Nous prévoyons très bientôt l'ajout à ce site d'une bibliographie de sources académiques francophones internationales.

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naviguer une bibliographie d’un projet : 1: Shareholder and Corporate Engagement 2: Social Accounting for Pension Fund Investments 3: Assessing the Impact of Economically Targeted Investments by Pension Funds 4: Impact of Human Capital Based Investment Criteria on Total Shareholder Returns 4a: Global Standards and Pension Funds 5: Legal Barriers to Socially Responsible Investment 6: Role Conflict by Union Trustees of Pension Funds 7: Developing Education for Labour Trustees of Pension Funds 8: Evaluation of Trustee Education 9: Online Learning Community for Labour Trustees 10: A Gender Analysis of Pensions and Social Investment

This paper critically evaluates an attempt by the American sociologist Bruyn to develop a conceptual foundation for social investment policy and research. Major reservations expressed centre on the employment of a definition of social investment in terms congruent with the tenets of market ideology. Attention is also drawn to the naive apolitical stance adopted and a discerned tendency to resort to unjustified assertion in place of rigorous analysis. Aspects of the framework advanced are nevertheless considered to merit further attention by researchers, notably the emphasis on the local community as the ultimate focus for decision making and the need to investigate more fully pension fund investment strategy and information needs.

This article discusses relations between capacity to contribute and incentive to contribute to Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs). It analyzes the findings released in Retirement Savings Through RPPs and RRSPs, 1999 (Statistics Canada). Using date originated from the PA/RRSP file (a longitudinal file on the retirement savings behaviour of each tax filer since 1991), this paper demonstrates that how factors, such as gender, age, and pension coverage influenced RRSP participation rates. In order to more meaningfully assess the effects of these factors, the effects of income must be controlled. Sum up, men participate with higher rates than women, older people have higher participation rates, and people with Pension Adjustment (PA) have higher participation rates. However, income differences are contributed to these differences. Controlling income tax among the groups and comparing at equal income levels, women, young people, and people without Pas had the higher participation rates in most cases.

This book stresses the totality of Canadian working-class experience - political, cultural, institutional and economic, across different regions and over time by bringing together diverse regional experiences and drawing on many levels of working-class life. It presents the significance of regional disparity and validity of examining the sparsely documented area of working-class experience. This book is not simply a presentation of facts, but provides insight into how working-class has been made and remade over the last two centuries. It demonstrates that the rise and reconstitution of Canadian labor lies an interpretation of a part of our past and suggestion of what must be attempted if the working-class is again to reach toward its potential.

Commonwealth jurisdictions on investment by trustees have statutory limitations over a century. In New Zealand this has taken the form of a list of authorised investments which owes its origins to the rules developed in England where trustee investment legislation was first implete. In November 1984, the Property Law and Equity Reform Committee submitted its report on Trustees' Statutory Powers of Investment. Growing concern about the inadequacies of the legal list approach encouraged the New Zealand Government to establish a Joint Working Party to examine the relative merits of the legal list approach. This article is a report on a research undertaken by the Joint Working Party for reforming the law relating to trustee investment. It contains a detailed examination and analysis of the law as it applies in New Zealand and has developed in oversea jurisdictions. It considers the purpose of trustee investment law, and the various forms that a change in the law might take. The Joint Working Party made some recommendations, which are significant and important to changes to trustee law.

In this article, the author presents an overview of what participatory research and aims to accomplish. In doing so, the author describes and articulates of key moments in the process which gives a vivid picture of how a participatory research project is carried out in principle. The author’s presentation of kinds of knowledge, such as instrumental knowledge, interactive, and critical knowledge, allows readers to see the efficacy of participatory research more broadly than in terms of the natural science framework. More importantly, it might help raise researchers’ awareness of multiple ways that people learn and present their knowledge in social interactions. This article is thought-provoking. It not only challenges traditional ways of doing research, but also presents a way to bring research, education, and social action as a whole. It is a must-read for people who are interested in doing participatory research.

In this acclaimed new work the author argues that it should be the function of company law to promote the public interest. Examining a number of topical and controversial issues from that perspective, including the adequacy of corporate governance arrangements, the `Nexus of Contracts' theory of the company, and the role of markets, the author explains why the theory of company law has to be understood in order for the day-to-day practice of company lawyers to be fully appreciated. The book explores in some depth the protection of interests largely ignored by company law, such as those of employees and the local community, and the safeguarding of the environment from corporate abuse.

This paper suggests that few institutional investors have the expertise necessary to intervention in the management of firms whose shares they own. They argue that the governance problems within pension funds must be resolved before pension funds can be expected to improved the governance of corporations. They contend that the current provision in the Income Tax Act that restricts pension funds to investing no more than 20 percent of their portfolios abroad probably does not contribute to better corporate governance. They also consider mandatory indexing, a flip tax on capital gains, greater legal liability for pension-fund managers, professional monitors, relational investing, and better disclosure of pension-fund mangers' compensation, and of pension funds' risk and comparative performance in detail with these proposals' pros and cons.

It is generally assumed that common stock investors are exclusively interested in earning the highest level of future cash-flow for a given amount of risk. This view suggests that investors select a well-diversified portfolio of securities to achieve this goal. Accordingly, it is often assumed that investors are unwilling to pay a premium for corporate behavior which can be described as "socially-responsible". Recently, this view has been under increasing attack. According to the Social Investment Forum, at least 538 institutional investors now allocate funds using social screens or criteria. In addition, Alice Tepper Marlin, president of the New York-based Council on Economic Priorities has recently estimated that about $600 billion of invested funds are socially-screened (1992).

This study investigates the information content of two alternative accounting earnings measures constructed under U.K. and U.S. GAAP. The analysis is based on the 20-F SEC filings by U.K. domiciled companies having ADRs listed in the U.S. The research design involves testing the association between U.K. stock returns and alternative accounting numbers. The evidence suggests that, for the sample examined, U.K. GAAP earnings changes have incremental information content after controlling for U.S. GAAP earnings changes, but that earnings levels measured under U.S. GAAP have some independent incremental information content after controlling for U.K. GAAP earnings. The results are consistent with GAAP adjustments having a significant transitory component. The empirical results display explanatory power which is broadly consistent with previous work and the GAAP earnings adjustments add marginally to the ability of earnings to explain returns.

The distance between small firms and their lenders is increasing, and they are communicating in more impersonal ways. After documenting these systematic changes, the authors demonstrate they do not arise from small firms locating differently, consolidation in the banking industry, or biases in the sample. Instead, improvements in lender productivity appear to explain our findings. The authors also find distant firms no longer have to be the highest quality credits, indicating they have greater access to credit. The evidence indicates there has been substantial development of the financial sector, even in areas such as small business lending.

Philip Pettit has drawn together here a series of interconnected essays on three subjects to which he has made notable contributions. The first part of the book deals with the rule-following character of thought. The second discusses the many factors to which choice is rationally responsive - and by reference to which choice can be explained - consistently with being under the control of thought. The third examines the implications of this multiple sensitivity for the normative regulation of social affairs. Thus the volume covers a large swathe of territory, ranging from metaphysics to philosophical psychology to the theory of rational regulation. The connections that Pettit makes between these areas are original and illuminating. Each part of the book develops a key theme. The first is that thought succeeds in following rules - and overcomes Wittgenstein's rule-following problem - so far as it is response-dependent; it is a sort of enterprise that is accessible only to creatures like us for whom certain responses are primitive and shared. The second is that while human choice may be sensitive to discursive reasons, as we would expect in a thinking subject, it can at the same time life.

Focusing on mutual funds and pension funds, this paper explores how institutional investors can be more active partners. The authors review the role and informational structure of financial contracts. After examining how the exit and voice mechanisms function to control managerial behavior, the authors outline the importance of institutional investors. The authors examine the governance and internal organization of mutual funds and pension funds and analyze their consequences on the level of monitoring and influence on activities. Based on reviewing and analyzing, the authors offer a critical assessment of some of the propositions designed to improve the governance of Canadian firms.

In this chapter, “the principle of public responsibility”, the author draws together the main elements of the analysis on market, society, and the public policies process, summarizes a statement of the central theme: “the principle of public responsibility” and discusses its implication. The author chose “public” rather than “social” to stress the importance of the public policy process, rather than individual opinion and conscience, as the source of goals and appraisal criteria. The recapitulation in this chapter not only integrates the analysis in the previous chapters and but also provides a framework for the discussion of implementation techniques in scanning the social environment and process responses to social involvement.

The purpose of the book is to set up a framework for discussions on social and technical issues of online communities. Designing usability and supporting sociability lays a solid foundation on which online communities can grow and thrive. Intended for both students and computer professionals, the book addresses the development of new online communities as well as the improvement of existing ones. It contains 12 chapters which are divided into two parts - Getting Acquainted with Online Communities and Developing Online Communities. The author illustrates the application of proposed community-centred guidelines with two case studies. The book explores the future of online communities and identifies areas for further research, such as communities and culture, consideration of ethical issues, adaptive interfaces, multilingual and interlingual support, security, scalability as well as human-computer interfaces capable of revealing behavior and representing content and emotion. This book provides a good balance between theory and practice. It is well-organized, comprehensive, and high-quality guidelines of community-centred development of online communities. It is highly recommended for students, community developers and organizers, investigators, and moderators and researchers in the field.

Canada’s 21st annual survey of the country's Top 100 Pension Funds is a story of outperforming equity markets. Pension asset managers enjoyed a double-digit average investment return in 1999. Top 100 pension funds report assets of $480.2 billion for the year ending Dec. 31, 1999. That represents a 10.1% gain over the previous year. The average rate of return on investments for 1999 was 13.2%. Total market value of the Top 100 Canadian equity holdings as of Dec. 31, 1999 is $127.3 billion, up $21.3 billion from 1998. That's a strong rebound after last year's drop of $7.7 billion (for the year ended Dec. 31, 1998). U.S. equities grew much more slowly than in past years. The Top 100 report total market value of U.S. equity holdings of $39.9 billion, up just $1 billion over 1998. EAFE equities rose strongly--to a total $43.1 billion among the Top 100 funds. In 1998, that number was $37.1 billion. International bonds dropped slightly to $4.2 billion, from $4.9 billion last year. Total number of plan members--among the 78 funds that reported this information--is 2.2 million Canadian workers, and more than 989,000 retired (or deferred) plan members. Most respondents spent less than three-quarters of their time working on pension issues. Of those who answered the question, 17.4% report spending less than 25% of their time; 30.4% say between 25% and 50%; 8.7% say between 51% and 75%; and 43.5% say more than 75%. Among our Top 100, 78 reported their defined benefit (DB)/defined contribution (DC) breakdown--64 are DB, four are DC and 10 are a mix of the two. Of our Top 100, 55 are public sector pension funds. New pension fund contributions in 1999 totaled $6 billion. The average total cost of running a pension fund was 23.5 basis points. The Toronto Stock Exchange 300 composite index rose 29.7%, the Morgan Stanley Capital International EAFE total return index rose 25.3%, and the Standard & Poor's 500 total return index rose 21% and the Scotia Capital Markets Universe Bond Index dropped 1.1% during the year ended Dec. 31, 1999.

Opacity is the lack of clear, accurate, formal, easily discernible, and widely accepted practices in the world’s capital markets. Is it possible to measure opacity and its costs? PricewaterhouseCoopers assembled a team of senior economists, survey professionals, analysts, and distinguished advisors to explore the development of a world-wide Opacity Index. While the topic of opacity has ethical, political, and cultural aspects, this inquiry focus on a new question: how much do certain behaviours cost? This first report on the Opacity Index provides estimates of the adverse effects of opacity on the cost and availability of capital in 35 countries. It offers a composite “O-Factor” score for each country, based on opacity data in five different areas that affect capital markets: a) corruption, b) legal system, c) government macroeconomic and fiscal policies, d) accounting standards and practices (including corporate governance and information release), and e) regulatory regime. The report presents three related data streams: 1) the O-Factor scores, 2) measurements of the effects of opacity as if it levied a surtax on foreign direct investment (FDI), and 3) measurements of the risk premium attributable to opacity when countries borrow through sovereign bond issuances.

In this article, the author examines the structure of corporate ownership in a sample of Japanese firms in the 1980s. He discusses the relationship between ownership concentration in independent Japanese firms and the returns from exerting greater control over management. He also talks about the independence of ownership concentration and the accounting profit rate.

In this article, the researchers present their study that explores the extent of social investment by labor-based pension funds and labor-sponsored investment funds in Canada. The data are a national sample of 189 pension funds with assets of at least $50 million (Canadian) drawn from the Canadian Pension Fund Investment Directory and 10 labor-sponsored investment funds. In addition, their analyses are based on the data derived from the survey that assesses all fund’s managers’ social investment practices, background characteristics, barriers to social investment, attitude to social investment, and rate of return. The findings show that there is little social investment among pension funds in Canada. The finding that labor-sponsored investment funds are more likely to engage in social investment suggests a significant correlation between the percentage of a pension fund's members that are unionized and the degree of social investment. However, the finding of the study also indicates importance of other social factors involving pension funds. In this end, the researchers draw attention to the necessity of having a supportive framework that determines whether or not an organization engages in social investment.

In order to understand the extent of social investment among union-based pension funds as well as labour-sponsored investment funds in Canada and to understand the factors that affect social investment strategies among such funds, this study draws a national sample of 189 pension funds with assets of at least $50 million was drawn from the Canadian Pension Fund Investment Directory (Toronto: Maclean Hunter). The sample also included 10 labour-sponsored investment funds, half the number of such funds in Canada. The study finds that pension funds in Canada have minimal social investment. There is somewhat higher social investment among labour-sponsored investment funds, and particularly labour-sponsored investment funds with genuine union sponsorship. The study also explores factors related to social investment by funds.

This paper is one chapter of the book "Money on the Line" (Carmichael & Quarter, 2002). It provides the results of a study to understand the dynamics that lead pension funds in the direction of social investment. It builds on an earlier study, which found that pension fund in Canada have minimal social investment initiatives. Through an organizational analysis, this paper identifies leadership as a critical factor in the adoption of social investment strategies.

This book raises an important issue: many important contributions by nonprofit organizations have been overlooked in social accounting. It analyzes how to access social impact and the importance of volunteers' contributions. This book outlines the concept of social economy and its underlying dimensions, discusses the common features of nonprofits and cooperatives and reviews socio accounting theories. It introduces different approaches and makes comparisons. It introduces a social accounting toolkit and four modals of volunteers'contributions. Further, through seven cases studies the book explains the four modals of voluntary work's contributions: (1) the socioeconomic impact, (2) the socioeconomic resources, (3) the expanded value added, and (4) the community social return.

The papers collected in this book predominantly on Canadian and focused around funds that have union sponsorship; that is, union-based pension funds and labour-sponsored investment funds. This book consists of eight chapters with different emphasis, including political analysis of damaging consequences fro workers and communities of the prevailing international investment practices of pension funds, challenging conventional interpretation of fiduciary responsibility through examining the leading cases in North America and Britain. The book also gives practical legal guidance to trustee on the SIPS and several empirical case studies on union-based pension funds.

This is the first book describing how labor has moved into the domain reserved for capital through presenting three kinds of circumstances: worker buyouts resulted form plant closing, employee ownership, and labor investment funds. These changes lead to crossing the line of management and labor in Canada. This book present cases of employee (e.g., Algoma Steel, CETAM, Nelco Mechanical, Pioneer Chainsaw, and Mainroad Contracting) taking on an ownership roles when their companies being financial difficulties, and the roles of unions play in these changes. This book examines the effects of union-based and government subsidized investment funds. It also examines labor investment funds as another approach for workers to "buy into" the workplace.

More often than ever before, workers are becoming owners of the companies that employ them. The book, Crossing the Line, is a groundbreaking describes this phenomenon of workers taking ownership, often when the companies they work for are in financial difficulty. Union-based and government subsidized investment funds have rapidly growing resources to finance these takeovers. The author looks at cases of employee ownership across Canada, including Algoma Steel, Nelco Mechanical, Pioneer Chainsaw and others. He also examines labour investment funds, such as Quebec's Solidarity Fund and the CFL's Working Ventures, as other ways for workers to "buy into" their workplace. The book should be of great interest to trade unionists and those who reflect on issues of job loss facing workers (and organized labour) today. The author’s case studies provide both inspiring and sobering local insights into the challenges facing those who espouse worker ownership as a way of contesting economic inequality and community degradation, or achieving workplace democratization. The book is highly recommended to anyone interested in understanding the current range of worker ownership schemes in Canada.

In this book the author gives readers an up-to-date and comprehensive description of the "thrid sector" of the Canadian economoy. The author describes the major components of this sector focusing on new approaches to ownesrhip and management which go beyond the ideas of traditional business management. The author also discusses new ways of managing the provision of social services like childcare and healthcare.

In this article, the authors hypothesize that local knowledge and contacts lead to superior returns for local mutual fund managers relative to foreign managers. To test this hypothesis, the authors study the performance of mutual funds in two countries: the US and UK. They examine the effectiveness of UK open end fund managers (foreigners) investing in the US relative to US open end fund managers (locals) investing in the US. Controlling for differential tax treatment, fund expenses, fund objectives, and currency risk, and they find that UK mutual funds investing in the US perform worse than US domestic funds. The authors also conclude that information/relationship disadvantages and fund size contribute to this poor performance.

This short article touches briefly upon the general trend of the investment management in continental Europe. It agrees with the Greenwich Associates’ report which concludes that, for institutional assets exceeding E125m in total, the percentage of funds passively managed will rise across the board over the same period. It also claims that this trend seems reiterated by those responding to the survey and, of the 19 offering passive management, 15 felt it was a growth area.

The book displays the power of economics to organize and illuminate diverse fields in the study of nonmarket behavior and institutions. A central theme is the importance of uncertainty to an understanding of social and legal institutions. Another major theme is that the logic of the law, in many ways but not all, appears to be an economic one: that judges, for example, in interpreting the common law, act as if they were trying to maximize economic welfare. Part I examines the deficiencies of utilitarianism as both a positive and a normative basis of understanding law, ethics, and social institutions, and suggests in its place the economist's concept of "wealth maximization." Part II, argues that economic analysis holds the key to understanding diverse features of certain societies as reciprocal gift-giving, blood guilt, marriage customs, liability rules, and the prestige accorded to generosity. Part III is an economic analysis of privacy and the statutory and common law rules that protect privacy and related interests-rules that include the tort law of privacy, assault and battery, and defamation. Finally, Part IV examines, again from an economic standpoint, the controversial areas of racial and sexual discrimination, with special reference to affirmative action.

Is local economic development a "zero-sum game"? How do we know that "but for the incentives" the development would not have occurred? How important is "quality of life" in location decisions and local economic development? Is industry targeting a viable economic development strategy? This book tackles these and many other significant questions from various perspectives. Each chapter addresses a particularly pertinent issue in economic development. Following each chapter are commentaries written by an academic addressing research methodology and the other by a practitioner addressing both the question and the evidence. The chapters are concluded with the author of each chapter responding directly to the issues raised by the commentators. The result is a productive dialogue between academics, practitioners, and citizens concerned with economic development.

In this paper, the authors explore a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross-border equity flows between 14 countries, 1989-96. They show that a "gravity" model explains international transactions in financial assets at least as well as goods trade transactions. Gross transaction flows depend on market size in both source and destination country as well as trading costs, in which both information and the transaction technology play a role. Distance proxies some information costs, and other variables explicitly represent information transmission, an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors, and the efficiency of transactions. The remarkably good results have strong implications for theories of asset trade. The authors find that the geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions, while there is weak support in our data for the diversification motive, once we control for the informational friction. The authors strengthen their conclusions by investigating - in another data set - the ability of our information variables to explain transactions in classes of assets with different informational content (corporate bonds, equities and government bonds). Finally, the authors broaden the scope of the results by presenting some evidence linking the results on equity transactions to equity holdings.

This study presents a theoretical and practical social audit model for assessing a nonprofit organizations participation in the social economy of its community. The author examines nonprofit organizations as part of a social economy that also includes cooperative and mutual benefit organization, emphasizing their social and economic foundations. Exploring the classical separation of market and social value, this study adopts a labor theory of value to suggest how nonprofits create social products and add to social capitals.

In this article, the author argues that while many contemporary American corporations continue to exemplify high levels of corporate social responsibility, virtually all publicly held firms are finding themselves under growing pressure from the investment community to maximize shareholder value. As a result, the interests of the firm's non-shareholder constituencies are being neglected. The author claims that the government must step in and function as arbiter, enacting rules and regulations that define what we expect of corporations in the way of such things as working conditions, environmental protection, and job training. As well, the author points out that it is inappropriate for corporate managers to also participate in shaping public policy.

This book provides a general introduction to mutual funds & portfolio management of stock funds. It discusses the marketing & servicing of mutual funds & delves into more specialized topics such as the financial dynamics of mutual funds, specifically designed for MBA & undergraduate business courses. This book is a true teaching textbook that also can be easily read and understood by serious investors. From portfolio manager strategies to fund performance measures to servicing fund shareholders, this is a comprehensive introduction to mutual funds.

This article presents information on the stocks and securities and its uncertainties. The author argues that the concept of a speculative bubble requires that some form of investor credulity or foolishness be at work. He also states that business organizations, bureaucracies and are fundamentally ill equipped to make judgments about uncertain futures.

In this volume, Dr. Shiller describes six fundamental ideas for using modern information technology and advanced financial theory to temper basic risks that have been ignored by risk management institutions - risks to the value of our jobs and our homes and to the very stability of our national economies.

This work proposes an innovative theory, backed by substantial statistical evidence, on the causes of price fluctuations in speculative markets. It challenges the standard efficient-markets model for explaining asset prices by emphasizing the significant role that popular opinion or psychology can play in price volatility. Offering detailed analyses of the stock, the bond, and the real estate markets, the author discusses the relations of these speculative prices and extends the analysis of speculative markets to macroeconomic activity in general.

This article provides evidence that substantial differences in asset returns and volatilities of returns are associated with Federal Reserve policy. The authors argue that traditional strategies are not conducive to the majority of investors, as the methods are complex and require an almost constant monitoring of money supply, interest rates, bank reserves, and other monetary variables. In turn, such strategies prompt constant investment decisions, increasing transaction costs. Thus, the authors indicate that all asset classes are not the only financial matters that are influenced by monetary policy, they are associated with Federal Reserve policy. Based on this idea, they propose the asset allocation strategy that is simple and unambiguous, and does not require frequent allocation changes. Drawing on all asset classes over the 1957-1996 time period, the authors analyze the effectiveness of this strategy. The findings show that all asset classes performed markedly better in expansive monetary policy periods and exhibited higher volatility in restrictive monetary policy periods. These findings provide strong evidence, indicating that a portfolio manager needs to consider Federal Reserve policy when making asset allocation decisions.

This paper reviews the corporate finance literature on institutional investors’ activities in corporate governance and also empirically investigates the effect of confidential voting proposals on voting outcomes. It then uses the findings of the empirical literature to inform normative recommendations for the proxy process. In brief, there is an apparent paradox: Notwithstanding the development of shareholder activism and commentators' generally positive assessments of it, the empirical research indicates that such activism has little or no effect on targeted firms' performance. This implies that activist institutions ought to reassess their agenda, in order to use their resources more effectively.

Confidential voting in corporate proxies is a principal recommendation in activist institutional investors' corporate governance guidelines because they believe that it mitigates conflicts of interest that prevent private-sector institutions from voting against management even though to do so would maximize share value. This article examines the impact of the adoption of confidential voting through a panel data set of shareholder and management proposals at firms that adopted the practice. It finds, contrary to confidential voting advocates' expectations, that the adoption of confidential voting has no significant effect on voting outcomes. It also does not affect firms' stock performance. The results are not a function of selection bias in confidential voting firms' ownership: those firms have higher ownership levels of investors with supposed conflicts (banks and insurance companies) than firms at which confidential voting was proposed but not adopted.

This short article points out that Continental European pension funds are poised to shrink their domestic allocations still further in favour of European assets over the next three years. , according to new research we have carried out. These results are based on replies from 184 pension funds in 11 countries, including the UK, with assets under management amounting to e712bn.

High levels of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) were a characteristic of the global economy in the 1990s. The authors argue that the overall effects of M&As on economic welfare and their spatial implications remain a profoundly neglected topic. Using three standardised indices representing the relative quantity of take-overs in each German Regierungsbezirk, the paper demonstrates that the recent wave of M&As has resulted in a major concentration of firms and economic activity in the main German metropoli. The paper then turns to a study of the flows of M&A transactions. By means of regression analysis, it identifies the main drivers of the geographical concentration of firms to be indicators of the general level of agglomeration (i.e. regional GDP and population) and the concentration of political power in the region.

This article explores the reasons why buying and selling on the stock exchange of the public corporation is the dominant form of enterprise in the United States. The author argues that the public corporation is as much a political adaptation as an economic or technological necessity. According to the author, the classic story about large enterprises’ balance of managerial control, risk sharing, and capital needs cannot completely explain the corporate patterns; it is law prohibits or raises the cost institutional influence in industrial companies. In the article, the author also examines the politics of corporate financial structure.

The author points out that public pension fund trustees risk violating the duty owed to beneficiaries to invest trust property prudently and profitably when they allow their investment decisions to be influenced by state politics. The conflict between maximizing profits and appeasing state regulators' requests that funds be invested to benefit local economies needs to be resolved in favor of the beneficiaries. Applying private fund laws, amending state constitutions and guaranteeing greater beneficiary control over trustee selection are three alternative remedies to the more radical one of changing defined benefit plans to defined contribution, employee controlled, plans.

Corporate governance in Canada is changing in response to institutional investors and pressures for greater social responsibility of the board of directors. The effects on the traditional conduct of business are far-reaching and complex. These changes are disruptive of competition and create fears of personal liability in corporate directors. Oversight functions of institutional investors are preferable to legislative or court-ordered sanctions for personal liability.

In this article, the authors consider the impact of the institutional and market environment in which Canadian business operates on the structure of corporate and securities law. The authors argue that the linkages between markets and law have been neglected by scholars, judges, and regulators concerned with Canadian corporate and securities law, resulting in the adoption of approaches that are ill-suited to the Canadian environment. Canadian capital markets, for instance, are characterized by high levels of share ownership concentration, thin trading problems, intensive inter-corporate linkages, and possibly lower levels of efficiency. In sum, these factors make the problems occasioned by separated ownership and control much less acute in Canada than the problems of majority shareholder opportunism. These factors also suggest that regulatory initiatives should be structured in a way that distinguishes between the problems of large, intensively traded companies and smaller, thinly traded companies populated by retail investors. The authors consider these issues in the context of three case studies: the private agreement exception, poison pills, and a self-interested transaction.