MARC Record from Library of Congress

LEADER: 02756nam a22003017a 4500
001 2007615697
003 DLC
005 20070319105632.0
007 cr |||||||||||
008 070319s2006 mau sb 000 0 eng
010 $a 2007615697
040 $aDLC$cDLC
050 00 $aK487.E3
100 1 $aHansmann, Henry.
245 10 $aLaw and the rise of the firm$h[electronic resource] /$cHenry Hansmann, Reinier Kraakman, & Richard Squire.
260 $aCambridge, MA :$bHarvard Law School,$c[2006]
490 1 $aDiscussion paper,$x1045-6333;$vno. 546
538 $aSystem requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
538 $aMode of access: World Wide Web.
500 $aTitle from PDF file as viewed on 3/19/2007.
530 $aAlso available in print.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references.
520 3 $a"Organizational law empowers firms to hold assets and enter contracts as entities that are legally distinct from their owners and managers. Legal scholars and economists have commented extensively on one form of this partitioning between firms and owners: namely, the rule of limited liability that insulates firm owners from business debts. But a less-noticed form of legal partitioning, which we call “entity shielding,” is both economically and historically more significant than limited liability. While limited liability shields owners' personal assets from a firm's creditors, entity shielding protects firm assets from the owners' personal creditors (and from creditors of other business ventures), thus reserving those assets for the firm's creditors. Entity shielding creates important economic benefits,, including a lower cost of credit for firm owners, reduced bankruptcy administration costs, enhanced stability, and the possibility of a market in shares. But entity shielding also imposes costs by requiring specialized legal and business institutions and inviting opportunism vis-à-vis both personal and business creditors. The changing balance of these benefits and costs helps explain the evolution of legal entities across time and societies. To both illustrate and test this proposition, we describe the development of entity shielding in four historical epochs: ancient Rome, the Italian Middle Ages, England of the 17th -- 19th centuries, and the United States from the 19th century to the present"--John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business web site.
700 1 $aKraakman, Reinier.
700 1 $aSquire, Richard.
710 2 $aJohn M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business.
830 0 $aDiscussion paper (John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business : Online) ;$vno. 546.
856 40 $uhttp://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/546_Kraakman_et%20al.php