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Limited Liability Company

How some legal creativity has created vast wealth down the centuries

Nicholas Murray Butler was one of the great thinkers of his age: philosopher; Nobel Peace Prize-winner; president of Columbia University. When in 1911 Butler was asked to name the most important innovation of the industrial era, his answer was somewhat surprising. 鈥淭he greatest single discovery of modern times,鈥� he said, 鈥渋s the limited liability corporation鈥�. Tim Harford explains why Nicholas Murray Butler might well have been right.

Producer: Ben Crighton
Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon

(Image: LLC. Credit: Getty Images)

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9 minutes

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Mon 24 Jul 2017 03:50GMT
成人快手 World Service Online & UK DAB/Freeview only

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See all episodes from 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

Sources and related links

David A. Moss - When all else fails: Government as the ultimate risk manager, Harvard University Press, 2002

Adam Smith - An inquiry in to the nature and causes of the wealth of the nations, 1776

Randal Morck - 'Corporations' in New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2008 Vol 2, pp265 - 268

Joel Bakan - The Corporation: The pathological pursuit of profit and power, Penguin Books Canada, 2004

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