Colleen A. Dunlavy

Colleen A. Dunlavy, associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will prepare a book on shareholder democracy in nineteenth-century Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. Although democratic corporate governance was originally the norm in all four nations, American firms responded to the organizational challenges of advanced industrialism by centralizing control, leading to the "great merger movement", while European firms favored cartel formation. Dunlavy assesses the economic, legal, and political factors that fostered divergent patterns of incorporation and consolidation in each country. Her work sheds light on why today so many large corporations exist in the U.S. and so few in Europe.