Economists have long neglected study of an important contractual decision, a firm's choice of legal form. Enterprise form shapes the relations among a firm's owners as well as many features of a firm's interactions with the rest of the economy. Using unusual firm-level data on Spain 1886-1936,...

1. Corporate governance : theory and evidence -- 2. Private benefits of control -- 3. The law and economics of control powers : a theoretical framework -- 4. Legal distribution of corporate powers -- 5. How to cope with self-dealing -- 6. Regulation of related-party transactions : a comparative...

One of the least explained phenomena in American corporate law is the puzzling circularity of director and officer liability insurance and indemnification. Under the auspices of state corporate law, virtually all public corporations use internal and external insurance to protect their boards and...

In the aftermath following the Asian financial crisis, the World Bank prescribed regulatory reforms as a remedy for weak financial fundamentals. These reforms reflect the claims of the strong form legal origins hypothesis that countries with common law legal traditions have stronger investor...