The German government introduced compulsory accident insurance for industrial firms in 1884. This insurance scheme was one of the main pillars of Bismarck's famous social insurance system. The accident-insurance system achieved only one of its intended goals: it successfully compensated workers...

Economists have long argued that introducing social insurance will reduce fertility. The hypothesis relies on standard models: if children are desirable in part because they provide security in case of disability or old age, then state programs that provide insurance against these events should...

The most common business enterprise form in Germany today is the Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbH). The GmbH offers entrepreneurs the partnership's flexibility combined with limited liability, capital lock-in, and other traits associated with corporations. Earlier enterprise forms...

An extensive literature uses anthropometric measures, typically heights, to draw inferences about living standards in the past. This literature's influence reaches beyond economic history; the results of historical heights research appear as crucial components in development economics and...

A considerable theoretical and empirical literature studies the corporation's capital structure. Economists have paid less attention to capital structure in other enterprise forms such as partnerships, which typically operate under different legal constraints and appeal to smaller enterprises....

The relationship between legal forms of firm organization and economic development remains poorly understood. Recent research disputes the view that the joint-stock corporation played a crucial role in historical economic development, but retains the view that the costless firm dissolution...

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,...