Home > Authors > Naomi R. Lamoreaux > Corporate governance and the plight of minority shareholders in the United States before the Great Depression
Corporate governance and the plight of minority shareholders in the United States before the Great Depression
"Legal records indicate that conflicts of interest--that is, situations in which officers and directors were in a position to benefit themselves at the expense of minority shareholders--were endemic to corporations in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century U.S. Yet investors nonetheless continued to buy stock in the ever increasing numbers of corporations that business people formed during this period. We attempt to understand this puzzling situation by examining the evolution of the legal rules governing both corporations and the main organizational alternative, partnerships. Because partnerships existed only at the will of their members, disputes among partners had the potential to lead to an untimely (and costly) dissolution of the enterprise. We find that the courts quite consciously differentiated the corporate form from the partnership so as to prevent disputes from...
