Are there too Few Publicly Listed Firms in the US?

Craig Doidge; G. Andrew Karolyi; Kris Shen; René M. Stulz

doi:10.3386/w33556

Are there too Few Publicly Listed Firms in the US?

Craig Doidge, G. Andrew Karolyi, Kris Shen & René M. Stulz

Working Paper 33556

DOI 10.3386/w33556

Issue Date March 2025

Doidge, Karolyi, and Stulz (2017) show that from 1999 to 2012 the US develops a listing gap relative to other countries, meaning that it has abnormally few publicly listed firms. In this paper, we update their evidence to 2023 and find that the listing gap increases, but at a low rate. By 2023, the US has about half as many listed firms per capita as other developed countries. We discuss some of the important questions raised by the existence and increase of the listing gap to which we hope researchers will find answers.

Doidge is from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Karolyi is from the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University, Shen is from the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, and Stulz is from the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, NBER, and ECGI. Prepared for the Financial Review’s series on Future Directions in Finance. We are grateful to Michael Pagano and Tianxia Yang for comments. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

G. Andrew Karolyi
Karolyi has served as an ad hoc consultant to Avantis Investors during the years when this paper was written.

René M. Stulz
René Stulz has a consulting practice where he is at times retained by financial institutions or their attorneys.
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Craig Doidge, G. Andrew Karolyi, Kris Shen, and René M. Stulz, "Are there too Few Publicly Listed Firms in the US?," NBER Working Paper 33556 (2025), https://doi.org/10.3386/w33556.

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Are there too Few Publicly Listed Firms in the US?

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