Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2009
In previous chapters, I surveyed the emergence of two models of business organization during the eighteenth century, the joint-stock business corporation and the unincorporated company. I demonstrated the entrepreneurs' preference for the corporation over the unincorporated company and showed the growing advantages of the corporation toward the end of the century, due to its personality, transferability, and liability features. In addition, I claimed that the unincorporated company could not, due to legal deficiencies, serve as a surrogate form of organization. But these three assertions taken together do not say much about the position of these forms of joint-stock organization in the economy as a whole. Was joint stock a marginal or a central phenomenon in eighteenth-century England? Did eighteenth-century joint-stock organizations have any significant impact on the contemporary economy, or is their study worthwhile only because they were precursors to the late nineteenth-century corporate economy? These questions were initially touched on in Chapter 4, which dealt with transportation and insurance, two significant sectors. The present chapter aims to broaden the perspective by dealing with the following questions: Was the development of the joint-stock undertaking during the eighteenth century confined to these two major sectors? Did other sectors pursue the paths of either transport or insurance, or did they follow other models of organization? What, if any, were the effects of the Bubble Act on the spread of the joint-stock form of association after 1720?
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