IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/93313.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why do firms incorporate and what difference does it make?

Author

Listed:
  • holmes, james

Abstract

Economic history suggests that technological innovations with long productivity delays contributed to the emergence of corporations. We develop a theory, with supporting evidence, explaining why in a competitive economy proprietors chose to incorporate, because of the difference in the contracts each can make. Corporations, because their equity is transferable, are not restricted to pay factors their marginal product, and therefore can use advanced technologies with long lags more efficiently, and distribute the resulting output as income optimally. Hence, corporations cause economic growth, eliminate competitive market failures, reduce income inequality, and can be viewed as “social organizations” similar to non-coercive “mini-Governments”.

Suggested Citation

  • holmes, james, 2019. "Why do firms incorporate and what difference does it make?," MPRA Paper 93313, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:93313
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/93313/1/MPRA_paper_93313.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven J. Davis & John Haltiwanger & Ron Jarmin & Javier Miranda, 2007. "Volatility and Dispersion in Business Growth Rates: Publicly Traded versus Privately Held Firms," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2006, Volume 21, pages 107-180, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Raphael Bergoeing & Norman V. Loayza & Facundo Piguillem, 2016. "The Whole is Greater than the Sum of Its Parts: Complementary Reforms to Address Microeconomic Distortions," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(2), pages 268-305.
    3. Paul A. Samuelson, 1958. "An Exact Consumption-Loan Model of Interest with or without the Social Contrivance of Money," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(6), pages 467-467.
    4. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Robinson, James A., 2005. "Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 6, pages 385-472, Elsevier.
    5. Gibbons, Robert, 2005. "Four forma(lizable) theories of the firm?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 200-245, October.
    6. Markus Poschke, 2018. "The Firm Size Distribution across Countries and Skill-Biased Change in Entrepreneurial Technology," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 1-41, July.
    7. Michael Fritsch & Florian Noseleit, 2013. "Investigating the anatomy of the employment effect of new business formation," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 37(2), pages 349-377.
    8. Michael Magill & Martine Quinzii, 2002. "Theory of Incomplete Markets, Volume 1," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262632543, December.
    9. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson, 2015. "The Rise and Decline of General Laws of Capitalism," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(1), pages 3-28, Winter.
    10. Diego Comin & Martí Mestieri, 2018. "If Technology Has Arrived Everywhere, Why Has Income Diverged?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 137-178, July.
    11. Ross Levine, 1997. "Financial Development and Economic Growth: Views and Agenda," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 688-726, June.
    12. Gollin, Douglas, 2008. "Nobody's business but my own: Self-employment and small enterprise in economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 219-233, March.
    13. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    14. Richard Sylla & Robert E. Wright, 2013. "Corporation formation in the antebellum United States in comparative context," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(4), pages 653-669, June.
    15. Erol Taymaz, 2009. "Informality and Productivity: Productivity Differentials between Formal and Informal Firms in Turkey," ERC Working Papers 0901, ERC - Economic Research Center, Middle East Technical University, revised Mar 2009.
    16. Hannah, Leslie, 2015. "A global corporate census: publicly traded and close companies in 1910," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 59414, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Baldwin, John R. Leung, Danny Rispoli, Luke, 2011. "Labour Productivity of Unincorporated Sole Proprietorships and Partnerships: Impact on the Canada-United States Productivity Gap," Economic Analysis (EA) Research Paper Series 2011071e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    18. Leslie Hannah, 2015. "A global corporate census: publicly traded and close companies in 1910," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(2), pages 548-573, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Morck, Randall & Deniz Yavuz, M. & Yeung, Bernard, 2011. "Banking system control, capital allocation, and economy performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 264-283, May.
    2. Young Eun Kim & Norman V. Loayza, 2019. "Productivity Growth: Patterns and Determinants across the World," Revista Economía, Fondo Editorial - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, vol. 42(84), pages 36-93.
    3. Xiao Ma & Alejandro Nakab & Daniela Vidart, 2024. "Human Capital Investment and Development: The Role of On-the-Job Training," Journal of Political Economy Macroeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(1), pages 107-148.
    4. Xiao Ma & Alejandro Nakab & Daniela Vidart, 2022. "How do Workers Learn? Theory and Evidence on the Roots of Lifecycle Human Capital Accumulation," Working papers 2022-11, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Dec 2024.
    5. Timothy Guinnane & Jakob Schneebacher, 2018. "Capital Structure and the Choice of Enterprise Form: theory and history," Working Papers 1061, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    6. Guinnane, Timothy W. & Schneebacher, Jakob, 2020. "Enterprise form: Theory and history," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    7. Fang, Mingyue & Nie, Huihua & Shen, Xinyi, 2023. "Can enterprise digitization improve ESG performance?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    8. Chandan Sharma, 2021. "Does Corruption Sand The Wheels Of Financial Sector Development? Evidence From Global Panel Data," Journal of Financial Management, Markets and Institutions (JFMMI), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(02), pages 1-32, December.
    9. Suman Banerjee & Saul Estrin & Sarmistha Pal, 2022. "Corporate disclosure, compliance and consequences: evidence from Russia," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(17), pages 1770-1802, November.
    10. Móczár, József, 2017. "Ergodic Versus Uncertain Financial Processes – Part II: Neoclassical and Institutional Economics," Public Finance Quarterly, Corvinus University of Budapest, vol. 62(4), pages 478-501.
    11. Valérie Revest & Alessandro Sapio, 2012. "Financing technology-based small firms in Europe: what do we know?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 179-205, July.
    12. Åsa Johansson, 2016. "Public Finance, Economic Growth and Inequality: A Survey of the Evidence," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1346, OECD Publishing.
    13. Patibandla, Murali, 2006. "Equity pattern, corporate governance and performance: A study of India's corporate sector," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 29-44, January.
    14. Akisik, Orhan & Gal, Graham, 2023. "IFRS, financial development and income inequality: An empirical study using mediation analysis," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 47(2).
    15. Jiang, Tianjiao & Levine, Ross & Lin, Chen & Wei, Lai, 2020. "Bank deregulation and corporate risk," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    16. Parmendra Sharma & Eduardo Roca, 2011. "Reâ Designing Financial Systems: A Review of the Role of Stock Markets in Developing Economies," Discussion Papers in Finance finance:201120, Griffith University, Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics.
    17. Boudreaux, Christopher, 2019. "Do private enterprises outperform state enterprises in an emerging market? The importance of institutional context in entrepreneurship," MPRA Paper 93039, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Arping, Stefan, 2005. "Protective interests and creative destruction," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 401-431, October.
    19. Al-Jarhi, Mabid, 2016. "An economic theory of Islamic finance," MPRA Paper 72698, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Christopher Boudreaux, 2019. "When does privatization spur entrepreneurial performance? The moderating effect of institutional quality in an emerging market," Papers 1901.03356, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    firm type; contracting; production delays;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D2 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations
    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:93313. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.