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Neoclassicism And The Separation Of Ownership And Control, Herbert Hovenkamp

Herbert Hovenkamp

NEOCLASSICISM AND THE SEPARATION OF OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL Herbert Hovenkamp ABSTRACT The separation of ownership and control is a phrase that will forever be associated with Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), as well as with Institutionalist economics, Legal Realism, and the New Deal. Neoclassical economists have generally been sharply critical, both of the historical facts that Berle and Means purported to describe and of the conclusions that they drew. In fact, however, the separation of ownership and control had already been an essential element of the neoclassical theory of corporate governance …