We use the history of private limited liability companies (PLLCs) to challenge two pervasive assumptions in the literature: (1) Anglo-American legal institutions were better for economic development than continental Europe’s civil-law institutions; and (2) the corporation was the superior form...

We use the history of private limited liability companies (PLLCs) to challenge two pervasive assumptions in the literature: (1) Anglo-American legal institutions were better for economic development than continental Europe's civil-law institutions; and (2) the corporation was the superior form...

This article challenges the idea that the corporation is a globally superior form of business organization and that the Anglo-American common-law is more conducive to economic development than the code-based legal systems characteristic of continental Europe. Although the corporation had...

This working paper presents Chapter 7 of a book to be published for the National Bureau of Economic Research by the University of Chicago Press. The point of the book is to compare taxes on income from capital in four countries,accounting for corporate, personal, and property taxes, and...

In a recent series of articles, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert W. Vishny have argued that countries whose legal systems are based on civil law (especially of French origin) have systematically weaker environments for business than those whose legal...

Today the vast majority of multi-owner firms in the United States are corporations, but that was not the case in the past. Before the advent of the income tax, tort litigation, and significant federal regulation, entrepreneurs more often than not chose to organize as partnerships, a form that...

This working paper presents Chapter 7 of a book to be published for the National Bureau of Economic Research by the University of Chicago Press. The point of the book is to compare taxes on income from capital in four countries,accounting for corporate, personal, and property taxes, and...

This working paper presents Chapter 2 of a book that has been submitted to the University of Chicago Press for publication consideration. The point of the book is to compare taxes on income from capital infour countries,accounting for corporate, personal, and property taxes, and including...

Today the vast majority of multi-owner firms in the United States are corporations, but that was not the case in the past. Before the advent of the income tax, tort litigation, and significant federal regulation, entrepreneurs more often than not chose to organize as partnerships, a form that...