"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...

This paper answers fundamental questions that have preoccupied modern economic thought since the 18th century. What is the aggregate real rate of return in the economy? Is it higher than the growth rate of the economy and, if so, by how much? Is there a tendency for returns to fall in the...