This book examines the limited liability business forms that have recently emerged, and seeks to identify the forces that have led to the emergence of new business forms for small and medium-sized businesses. Focusing on the US, UK, and continental Europe, the contributors analyse the Limited Liability Company, the Limited Liability Partnership, and the new business forms proposed in Europe.

Studies of corporate governance traditionally focus on the governance problems of large publicly held firms, and policymakers' recommendations often focus on such firms. However most small firms, and in many countries, even many large companies, are closely held. This book provides a comprehensive account of closely held businesses and their particular governance problems. It explores current discussions and reforms in Europe, the United States, and Asia providing a state of the art account of the law and the economics.
Closely held firms encompass a vast range, from corporations with...

The evolution of partnership forms is stimulated by powerful economic forces that can lead to widespread prosperity and wealth creation for a society. Given the importance of closely held firms in the United States and Europe, The Evolution of Legal Business Forms in Europe and the United States argues that partnership law should trouble itself less with historical and descriptive arguments about the legal rules and structure of the partnership form and focus much more on the new analytical apparatus of the economics of organizational form as well the fundamental economic learning that...