A Geography of Institutional Stock Ownership in the United States

The 1980 US. Interinstitutional stock ownership patterns are described by firm and place. Using managerial and bank control theories as a basis for description, the network-based analyses show a hierarchical urban system dominated by a few core urban centers, in particular New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. A review of industrial network theory emphasizes the importance of analyses by interfirm and interplace connections. The strength of interplace connections defines six classes of urban centers. Analyses by industrial class show financial, insurance, and real estate firms (FIRE) are the dominant institutional stockholders. Simple gravity models show weak or no distance-decay effects for firm and place-based stock ownership networks. Public pension plans show considerable leakage of funds from their home regions. Maps and tables describe investment patterns of selected individual cities and firms. A 50-percent random sample of Fortune 500 and the population of large FIRE firms provides the data for analyses.