Experiments in Financial Democracy

Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-1-107-51478-2
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 326 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 531 g

Reihe: Studies in Macroeconomic History

This book provides a detailed historical description of the evolution of corporate governance and stock markets in Brazil in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The analysis details the practices of corporate governance, in particular the rights that shareholders have to restrict the actions of managers, and how that shaped different approaches to corporate finance over time. In the case of Brazil, even if the protections for investors included in national laws were relatively weak before 1940, corporate charters contained a series of provisions that protected minority shareholders against the abuses of large shareholders, managers, or other corporate insiders. The investigation uses the Brazilian case to challenge some of the key findings of a recent literature that argues that legal systems (e.g., common vs. civil law) shape the extent of development of stock and bond markets in different nations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Musacchio, Aldo

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Finanzsektor & Finanzdienstleistungen Finanzsektor & Finanzdienstleistungen: Allgemeines
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Geschichte der VWL

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction; 2. Financial development in Brazil in the nineteenth century; 3. The stock exchange and the early industrialization of Brazil, 1882–1930; 4. The foundations of financial democracy: disclosure laws and shareholder protections in corporate bylaws; 5. Voting rights, government guarantees, and ownership concentration, 1890–1950; 6. Directors, corporate governance, and executive compensation in Brazil, c.1909; 7. Bond markets and creditor rights in Brazil, 1850–1945; 8. Were bankers acting as market makers?; 9. What went wrong after World War I?; 10. The rise of concentrated ownership in the twentieth century; 11. Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

Musacchio, Aldo
Aldo Musacchio is an assistant professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit of Harvard Business School and a Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before joining Harvard in 2004, Professor Musacchio was a Fellow of the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University and a Fellow of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. His primary fields of expertise are the business and economic history of Latin America, corporate governance, the political economy of development, and new institutional economics. Professor Musacchio's current research explores the role of property rights and the legal environment for long-run economic development, including the ways in which firms adapt to adverse economic conditions. His paper 'Can Civil Law Countries Get Good Institutions? Lessons from the History of Creditor Rights and Bond Markets in Brazil' won the Arthur H. Cole Prize for best paper in the Journal of Economic History, 2007–8. Professor Musacchio received his Ph.D. in the economic history of Latin America from Stanford University.