In this paper, I will investigate the historical development of limited liability—widely considered the cornerstone of the business corporation. I challenge the common, linear narratives about how limited liability evolved, and argue that corporations, the stock markets, and the corporate economy enjoyed a long and prosperous history well before limited liability in its modern sense became established. This radically different historical understanding calls for the economic theory of limited liability to be revisited. It also opens up a new set of conceptual, empirical, and theoretical research questions, and points to new possibilities for viable liability regimes in the future.
Limited liability is viewed by many eminent corporation law scholars as a defining attribute of the business corporation. Notable contemporary observers, including the Presidents of Columbia and Harvard, viewed limited liability corporation as the greatest single discovery of modern times, surpassing steam and electricity. Such statements about the historic importance of limited liability as a game-changing invention were theoretically substantiated with the emergence of economic analysts of corporation law in the 1960s and beyond.