Credit Markets and the Control of Capital
讨论资本市场除了配置资本外的另一功能：控制资本。作者指出，在所有权与经营权分离的大型公司中，资本市场如何通过信贷机制实现对资本的控制，对理解现代公司治理和金融体系有启发。
Traditional discussions of the role of capital markets have identified a numher of distinct functions which they perfonn; they allocate scarce capital among competing users and uses,' and they provide signals to guide managers in making their investment decisions.^In this lecture, I wish to focus on a rather different function of the capital market: what I shall refer to as the control of capital.Ĉonventional theory treats the typical firm in an anthropomorphic manner: it acts as a single, rational, individual dokig what it is supposed to be doing, maximizing stock market value.That may bave been well and good in those nostalgic bygone days of small firms, each ran tightly by their owners who were single-mindedly pursuing their lust for wealth.But today a majority of production occurs in large corporations, in which no shareholder owns more than a small fraction of the shares, in which the separation of ownership and control that Frank Knight was so concerned with in bis writings some sixty-five years ago has become a reality.Those