To create this dataset we collected information of the 100 largest non-financial corporations, according to their share capital at four benchmark years (1923, 1937, 1944, and 1954) and to their annual sales at other three-benchmark years (1970, 1990 and 2000). The choice of these seven benchmark years primarily reflects the different stages in Argentina’s economic history, but it also factored in data availability, in that board membership information is not readily or systematically available for most of the century.
The final sample included 100 non-financial firms for all benchmark years with the exceptions of 1970 and 1990. In 1970, the sample included 95 firms; we used 102 companies in 1990. We also included the 25 biggest banks per year, though in 1970 we had 28. Total deposits were the main criterion for selecting the banks. We lack information about insurance companies, which were not among the biggest firms. We included other financial companies that were not banks in the main top-100 firm rankings (six in 1923, five in 1937, nine in 1944, eight in 1954, and four in 2000). The total sample for each year thus included 125 companies, except for 1970 and 1990, which contained 123 and 127 companies, respectively.
We collected data on board composition using various resources.
