SOSC 4043 Chapter Notes -Joint-Stock Company, Corporate Law, General Partnership
13 Dec 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The neglected benefits of the corporate form: entity status and the separation of asset ownership from control. Corporate law helps accomplish these things because a corporate charter creates a separate legal entity. The separate entity status of corporations transforms the relationships among corporate participants in ways that cannot be replicated through a collection of contracts. Shareholders as a class are better-off because they have, in the corporate form, a mechanism for committing capital to an enterprise and yielding control rights to directors almost irrevocably. From 1800 to 1860, however, the us underwent a massive transformation in technology, transportation, and communications that greatly increased productive capabilities in agriculture, mining, and manufacturing, and massively expanded access to markets. This industrial revolution brought new opportunities to business people to undertake productive ventures, such as building and operating roads, bridges, railroads, or factories, that had the potential to continue in operation for decades.
