Special Issue:
Special Issue: Corporate Accountability and Legal Liability
Corporate Limited Liability is restored to its rightful place as one of the most controversial parts of the global political economy in this unique analysis from economic, legal and historical perspectives.
“A Company Limited? What may that be? […] No, nobody can know, to a million or so, to what extent your capital's committed! […] But the Liquidators say, "Never mind - you needn't pay," So you start another Company tomorrow! [...]”
…sang the chorus in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Utopia Ltd or the Flowers of Progress, written at the height of the Victorian Great Depression in 1893. Gilbert wrote with a politically penetrating wit that is lacking in the present dumbed-down century. Yet, today, the problem of irresponsible rentier investors that he and Sullivan lampooned has grown into the dominant problem of the global economy.
This Special Issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics returns to this core aspect of the political economy of corporate capitalism, highlighting its importance for understanding the evolution of transnational corporations and their current role in shaping 21st century globalisation.
Bringing to bear legal as well as economic expertise on the transformation of the capitalist corporation from a powerhouse of national mass industrialisation in core economies to that of complex lead organisations of contemporary globalisation, the contributors to this Special Issue offer ideas for the constructive reform of corporate power along with a penetrating analysis of the historical roots and economic impact of corporate limited liability.
Read the special issue: Corporate Accountability and Legal Liability
Freely available topical articles:
Limited liability and the modern corporation in theory and in practice - freely available
Stephanie Blankenburg, Dan Plesch, and Frank Wilkinson
Limited liability, shareholder rights and the problem of corporate irresponsibility- freely available
Paddy Ireland
P. Ireland penetrates the core of legalised irresponsibility in the present global economic system with the power of 200 years of historical analysis.
Governance, regulation and financial market instability: the implications for policy- freely available
Sue Konzelmann, Frank Wilkinson, Marc Fovargue-Davies, and Duncan Sankey
Konzelmann et al illuminates the development of corporate governance since the 1930s pointing to the need for more far-reaching reform