The pivotal role played by non-banking institutions in supporting the expansion of international trade after the Napoleonic Wars and before first globalization c. 1870 - 1913 has long been recognised. Merchant-bankers in particular played a crucial role by advancing monies to consignors of...

The paper analyses the relationship between entrepreneurial philanthropy and the competitive process. In doing so, it constructs a typology of entrepreneurial philanthropic behaviour. Such behaviour is conditioned by a combination of ideology and business strategy variables. Ideological...

Underpinning the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain was the ability by which businesses could raise funds because of the benefits of limited company status. When it became freely available, limited liability gained immensely popular. However, the crash of, and revelations of fraud at, the...

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...

This chapter offers a twofold shift in the application of the ‘credible commitment' concept laid down by North and Weingast in their classic 1989 article. It examines the concept in the context of charter-granting, rather than in that of the national debt and the government bond market, and...

Sustained economic growth in England can be traced back to the early seventeenth century. That earlier growth, albeit modest, both generated and was sustained by a demographic regime that entailed relatively high wages, and by an increasing endowment of human capital in the form of a relatively...