Description
This work contains primary research texts regarding two centuries of the development of corporate finance in the US and Great Britain. It is designed to help scholars, financial managers, and public policymakers to investigate the historical background of issues in contemporary corporate finance, including: corporate structure and governance; securities issuance; direct and indirect finance; and fraud detection. Key texts in the set include detailed securities market primers like thomas Fortune’s “Epitome of the Stocks and Publick Funds” and Charles Fenn’s “Compendium of the English and Foreign Funds”. There are extended discussions of policy issues contained in “Observations on Unlimited and Limited Liability”, by William Hawes; two early, specialized treatises on corporate financial law; descriptions of everyday corporate financial practices, from George Rae’s “The Internal Management of a Country Bank”; and early theoretical treatments of corporate finance, including excerpts from Thorstein Veblen’s “Theory of Business Enterprise” and Alfred Marshall’s “Industry and Trade”.




