In this article, I briefly review the history of corporate law, and then describe current legal distinctions among organizational forms in order to argue that one of the characteristics that distinguishes corporations from partnership-type forms is the set of default rules that help organizers to lock in capital, without locking in the investors. I argue that such lock-in is probably attractive because it allows business organizers to precommit not to withdraw capital from the venture prematurely or capriciously.
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