In 1892 Germany introduced a new legal form for enterprise, the Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung or GmbH. This form was aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises that did not want to be partnerships but did not want to incorporate, either. To understand the value of this innovation we...

British general incorporation law granted companies an extraordinary degree of contractual freedom to craft their own governance rules. It provided companies with a default set of articles of association, but incorporators were free to reject any part or all of the model and write their own...

In early 1862, the United States government began issuing Greenbacks, a legal tender currency that was not convertible into gold. The government promised to redeem the Greenbacks in gold eventually, but speculators understood that the probability of redemption depended on Union Army military...

A long tradition in the economics, corporate law, and corporate finance literatures presumes the general superiority of the corporation as a form of business organization. A more recent tradition claims that countries with Anglo-American legal systems afford investors greater protection than...

Modern developed nations are rich and politically stable in part because their citizens are free to form organizations and have access to the relevant legal resources. Yet in spite of the advantages of open access to civil organizations, it is estimated that eighty percent of people live in...