Empirical studies support both hypotheses, however. The empirical evidence on the non-linear relationship between ownership by top management and performance can be explained by combining the convergence of incentives and the entrenchment hypotheses Morck et al., 1988; Short and Keasey, 1999 . That is, at low levels of ownership, management has the incentive to pursue the firm’s value maximization activities. At intermediate levels of ownership, management has enough control and is wealthy enough to exploit the firm to generate private benefits that are not available to outside shareholders Shleifer and Vishny, 1997 . However, at high levels of ownership, self-serving behavior detrimental to the firm’s value declines as management owns a higher fraction of the firm’s equity, and hence cannot externalize the costs of their moral hazard.