Incentives in corporations
Subtitle: evidence from the American whaling industry
By: Eric Hilt.
Contributors: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series ;; working paper 10403; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;; working paper no. 10403.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Whaling -- Economic aspects -- History -- 19th century.
Description: "In the 1830s, when whaling was a prosperous American industry, a number of whaling corporations were chartered.  All of them were short-lived.  This paper analyzes the failure of corporations in American whaling, and argues that the corporate form was unable to create the incentives requisite for success in the industry.  Most nineteenth-century whaling ventures were owned by a small number of local investors, and were configured to provide powerful incentives for their managers.  The effect of the corporate form on productivity is analyzed using a newly-collected panel dataset of 874 whaling voyages.  Many whaling corporations were managed by individuals who had previously (or would subsequently) manage ventures with the usual ownership structure.  Using an individual-fixed-effects framework, a strong negative effect of the corporate form on productivity is identified"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Also available in print.
Includes bibliographical references.
Title from PDF file as viewed on 1/13/2005.
System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.