TY - JOUR AU - Doidge,Craig AU - Karolyi,G. Andrew AU - Lins,Karl V. AU - Miller,Darius P. AU - Stulz,Rene M. TI - Private Benefits of Control, Ownership, and the Cross-Listing Decision JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 11162 PY - 2005 Y2 - March 2005 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11162 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11162.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Craig Doidge University of Toronto 105 St. George St. Toronto, Ontario M5S 3E6 Canada E-Mail: craig.doidge@rotman.utoronto.ca Andrew Karolyi Johnson Graduate School of Management Cornell University 348 Sage Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Tel: (607) 255-2153 E-Mail: gak56@cornell.edu Karl Lins University of Utah E-Mail: finkvl@business.utah.edu Darius P. Miller Southern Methodist University E-Mail: damiller@indiana.edu Rene M. Stulz The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business 806A Fisher Hall Columbus, OH 43210-1144 Tel: 614/292-1970 Fax: 614/292-2359 E-Mail: stulz_1@cob.osu.edu AB - This paper investigates how a foreign firm's decision to cross-list its shares in the U.S. is related to the concentration of the ownership of its cash flow rights and of its control rights. Theory has proposed that when private benefits are high, controlling shareholders are less likely to choose to list their firm's shares in the U.S. because the higher standards for transparency and disclosure, as well as the increased monitoring associated with such listings, limit their ability to extract private benefits. We offer evidence that confirms this hypothesis using data on more than 4,000 firms from 31 countries. Using logistic regression analysis, we show that the control rights held by controlling shareholders, as well as the difference between their control rights and their cash flow rights are significantly and negatively related to the existence of a U.S. listing. In addition, we employ duration analysis using a Cox proportional-hazard model to show that the probability of listing in a given year from 1995 to 2001, conditional on not yet having listed, is significantly lower for firms whose managers have high levels of control and for firms whose controlling shareholder owns more control rights than cash flow rights. ER -