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Legal persons: the evolution of fictitious species

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2010

UGO PAGANO
UGO PAGANO*
Affiliation:
University of Siena, Siena, Italy and Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
*
*Email: [email protected].
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Abstract:

Posner considers purposeful organisations. Legal persons are fictitious non-mortal species whose evolution has played a major role in economic development. In what sense can they be said to have a purpose? Thanks to several important mutations, the status of legal persons was transferred from public bodies to business corporations. This evolutionary journey is complementary to the Coasian view, which, moving in the opposite direction, explains the firm as a centralization of market transactions. If the corporation emerged also from a process of decentralization of public attributes, some features of public legal persons, are lacking in its business mutation. Also some ways of motivating people are only available to the original species.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 117 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © The JOIE Foundation 2010

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