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.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
10403.
Length: Date of creation: Apr 2004 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10403
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Find related papers by JEL classification: N5 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior
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