Title: Incentives in corporations
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.
Subjects: Economic aspects of Whaling, History, Whaling
Time periods: 19th century