"Legal and economic historians now emphasize the centrality of organizational law in determining the contractual boundaries of the firm. Nineteenth-century US law recognized a small set of firm types - proprietorship, partnership and corporation - and enforced the creditor rights and priorities...

"The authors examine how well several institutional and firm-level factors and their interactions explain firms' perceptions of property rights protection. Their sample includes private and public firms that vary in size from very small to large in 62 countries. Together, the institutional...

Corporation as common constitution -- The political economy of Sir Thomas Smith -- Richard Hooker's corporate Christians -- The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques, and discoveries of the English corporation -- Dekker and Company -- Shakespeare's thing of nothing -- Francis Bacon's...