The focus of this article is on legal-economic institutions that organized early-modern Eurasian trade. It identifies two such institutions that had divergent dispersion patterns, the corporation and the commenda. The corporation ended up as a uniquely European institution that did not migrate...

During the last quarter of the twentieth century, the humanities and social sciences have turned toward history, something that culminated in the 1990s, and this phenomenon was evident in law as well. However, until recently, law and economics, the most influential post-World War II...

British general incorporation law granted companies an extraordinary degree of contractual freedom to craft their own governance rules. It provided companies with a default set of articles of association, but incorporators were free to reject any part or all of the model and write their own...

The debate on the nature of the legal personality of groups emerged in Germany in the last third of the 19th century and intensified with the controversies over the drafting of the German Civil Code. This discourse was well-rooted in German jurisprudential traditions, German historical...

Many US states mandate only non-recourse mortgages for dwellings, thus limiting choice and raising prices. Given the perceived benefit of such mortgages, it is a puzzling fact that no lenders currently offer them in "choice" states. We simulate a housing market with a spectrum of borrowers with...

This article recalls the fact that in Britain (and elsewhere), until the mid-19th century, neither company legislation, nor jurists or economists, envisioned companies to be private or small. Nevertheless, once freedom of incorporation and general limited liability were enacted, a new practice...

The focus of this article is on legal-economic institutions that organized early-modern Eurasian trade. It identifies two such institutions that had divergent dispersion patterns, the corporation and the commenda. The corporation ended up as a uniquely European institution that did not migrate...