The Government as a Shareholder: A Case from the United States1

We study a sample of U.S. corporations in which the federal government held 35–100 percent of the outstanding common stock for between 1 and 23 years during and following World War II. We find that although the firms experienced abnormally high turnover among corporate board members, the tenure of senior management was relatively stable. Moreover, the performance of the government‐owned companies was not significantly different than that of private‐sector firms in the same industry. Hence, the interim government custodianship of the firms in our case does not have the effects normally attributed to government ownership.

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