Experiments in Financial Democracy: Corporate Governance and Financial Development in Brazil, 1882–1950 (Studies in Macroeconomic History) - Softcover

Musacchio, Aldo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1107514789 ISBN 13: 9781107514782

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2015

Synopsis

This book is 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. The book argues that companies are not necessarily constrained by the institutional framework in which they operate. 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. These provisions ranged from limits on the number of votes a single shareholder could have to restrictions on the number of family members who could act as directors simultaneously. 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. The book argues that legal systems alone cannot determine the course of stock and bond markets over time, because corporate governance practices and the size of these markets vary significantly over time, while the basic principles of legal systems are stable.

About this title

Book Description:

This book is 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 had to restrict the actions of managers, and how that shaped different approaches to corporate finance over time.

About the Author:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1107514789
• ISBN 13: 9781107514782
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 326