This article examines the impact of law on corporate governance by means of a case study of joint-stock enterprise in England and Scotland before 1850. Based on a dataset of over 450 company constitutions together with qualitative information on governance practice, it finds little evidence to...

Recent studies of the innovation process have viewed it as the outcome of organizational dynamics rather than as the product of technological developments exogenous to the governance of firms. We apply this approach to our examination of British coastal shipping companies during the early...