How Universal is the Corporate Form? Reflections on the Dwindling of Corporate Attributes in Brazil

58 Pages Posted: 1 Mar 2018 Last revised: 9 Mar 2018

See all articles by Mariana Pargendler

Mariana Pargendler

Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School at São Paulo; New York University School of Law; European Corporate Governance Institute

Date Written: February 20, 2018

Abstract

The business corporation, a central pillar of modern capitalism, is deemed to have a set of defining features that are universal across different jurisdictions and ever more widely available. However, a close examination of legal developments in Brazil, one of the world’s largest economies, shows a surprisingly different picture. In the past decades, Brazil has significantly watered down all of the canonical elements of the corporate form, including limited liability and capital lock-in. After describing this phenomenon, I analyze it in view of efficiency and distributional considerations. In particular, I put forward the possibility that the blurring of the corporate attributes may be a second-best response to a weak institutional environment, which, among other things, fails to protect minority investors and curb externalities through regulation. The Article concludes by examining how the erosion of the corporate attributes in Brazil subverts our conventional understanding about the evolution of corporate law and the immutability of the corporate form.

Keywords: corporate law, limited liability, lock-in, comparative corporate governance

JEL Classification: K1, K22, G32, G38, N26, 016

Suggested Citation

Pargendler, Mariana, How Universal is the Corporate Form? Reflections on the Dwindling of Corporate Attributes in Brazil (February 20, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3126838 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3126838

Mariana Pargendler (Contact Author)

Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School at São Paulo ( email )

R. Rocha, 233, Bela Vista
São Paulo, 01330-000
Brazil

New York University School of Law ( email )

40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012-1099
United States

European Corporate Governance Institute ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
389
Abstract Views
1,809
Rank
118,266
PlumX Metrics