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This chapter provides an overview of the general rules for incorporation and operation of business organizations in Mexico. It focuses on the most common form of business corporation in Mexico, the sociedad anónima, or registered stock corporation. It also explores the main characteristics of the sociedad de responsabilidad limitada (S. de R.L.), or ‘limited liability company’, which a growing number of foreign investors use to conduct business in Mexico. Finally, it discusses the formation of partnerships, which may be used as alternatives to the sociedad anónima in carrying out commercial activities.

This chapter first analyses whether the corporation is merely a profit-maximizing entity or performs a more inclusive, social function. It then discusses some basic economic concepts that are important to understand the underlying conflicts that corporate governance regulation seeks to address, such as efficiency, incomplete contracts, and agency costs. Next, it examines the goals that corporate governance regulation in the United States, the UK, Germany, and France pursues, and gives an overview of the evolution of the corporate governance movement, which started in the United States in the 1970s. The chapter then introduces the most important corporate actors—officers, directors, and shareholders—and explores whether the ownership structure of public stock corporations has changed over time and continues to differ between countries. The final section analyses how corporate boards are designed, and how best practice standards contained in corporate governance codes shape the composition of boards.

This chapter addresses a wide set of research questions on the organization of trade as a whole and then zooms in on research questions that focus on the development of the joint-stock business corporation. It explains why the European business corporation wasn't mimicked by other Eurasian regions for another three hundred years and why institutions that had some corporate-like features did not further evolve to compete successfully with the corporate-based European mercantile enterprises. The chapter closely examines the role played by organizational forms in the transformation of Eurasian trade roughly between 1400 and 1700. It also compares the organizational forms that were used in four major regions: China, India, the Middle East, and Western Europe. All four regions were involved in the same kind of business activity, such as long-distance trade, within the greater Indian Ocean.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the development of organizations in insurance worldwide from the origins of the industry to the present day and summarizes the relevant theoretical and empirical literature on this topic. It describes the research project that underpins this book, outlines the content of the contributing chapters and points to some conclusions about organizational choice that have a wider relevance for modern theory.

This chapter offers the first historical comparison of organizational choice in two of the world’s leading insurance nations, the United States and Germany, as they industrialized before 1914. It provides an overview of the context in which insurance developed in both countries. It describes this development, outlines the organizational trends in the industry, and examines the factors behind these trends. These factors include agency and governance issues, the state of capital markets, inherited cultural and social norms, the intervention of regulators and legislators, the impact of state insurance schemes, and the changing character of risk and the challenge of insuring new and uncertain technologies.

Set in turn-of-the-20^th century Washington, DC, the chapter shows how racial segregation and black economic exploitation became features of summer leisure enterprises, and tells the story of enterprising African Americans who attempted to capitalize on blacks’ demand for outdoor leisure by acquiring waterfront properties and investing in excursion steamboats. Fledgling black-owned steamboat companies and resorts appealed to African Americans’ racial pride and loyalty to generate investors and customers. They did so in competition with larger, white-owned companies, which also recognized the profitability of black leisure and operated their own “colored” steamboats and resorts. Black excursion boats and pleasure resorts, the chapter shows, faced incessant harassment and attacks on patrons and property from white officials, newspapers, law enforcement, and competing businesses. In addition, the undercapitalization of black enterprises forced them into risky business arrangements. As a result, these ventures often ended in colossal failure and significant financial loss for investors. The chapter profiles two of Washington, DC’s most prominent African American businessmen during this era, John W. Patterson and Lewis Jefferson, and examines their efforts to build fortunes through “colored” leisure enterprises.