In the last few years law and finance scholars have 'discovered' the usefulness of comparative law. Their studies look at the quantifiable effect that legal rules and their enforcement have on financial development in different countries. Moreover, they link their results with the long- standing...

Following the 1900 congress in Paris, the beginning of the 20th century saw comparative law emerge as a significant discipline. This paper suggests that the early 21st century is seeing the decline, or maybe even the 'end', of comparative law. In contrast to other claims which see the 21st...

From the mid-1820s, banks became the first business sector in Great Britain and Ireland to be granted the right to form freely on an unlimited liability joint stock basis. Walter Bagehot, the renowned contemporary banking expert, warned that shares in such banks would ultimately be owned by...

In the wake of the financial crisis, shareholders are increasingly relied upon to monitor directors. But while much has been written about directors' flawed judgments, remarkably little is known about shareholders' ability to make accurate judgments. What determines whether shareholders make the...

We present two linked, longitudinal case studies of the use of quasi markets in UK broadcasting over the past decade: one looks at the regulated outsourcing of programme making to independent producers, the other at the development of an internal market system within the BBC. New network forms...

The corporate governance environment in the UK and US is generally thought to be hostile to the emergence of cooperative employment relations of the kind exemplified by labour-management partnerships. We discuss case study evidence from the UK which suggests that, contrary to this widespread...

Most large UK private-sector organisations are listed companies that are subject to intense pressures to enhance shareholder value. The question arises of whether this constrains the ability of UK managers to pursue genuine partnership arrangements with long-term stakeholders, including...

The limited liability partnership has been heralded as a cost-effective way of doing business for professional firms that seek to reduce the personal liability risk of partners who are not directly involved in negligent acts or wrongdoing. The LLP business form has been adopted by all US states...

Cross-national regulatory differences in safety, price and intellectual property protection are an inherent feature of the operating environment of the global pharmaceutical firm. Institutional, transaction cost and more recent ‘race to the bottom’ theories assume that regulation represents...

Prior to the industrial revolution, the predominant form of economic organization in western Europe and north America was the guild. Guilds were network forms, loose associations of independent producers, with strong local and regional identities, in which cooperation and competition were...