David Gindis

I work primarily in the area of legal institutionalism, which is concerned with the role played by law in the constitution of economic actors and the regulation of economic activites. More specifically, my research has focused on the nexus between legal and socioeconomic features of business firms, as expressed in different ways in the theory of the firm, the economics of corporate law, the corporate governance debate, the old corporate personality controversy (which has recently made something of a comeback), and related discussions in business ethics, political philosophy, and social ontology. My attempt to bring these themes together is tentatively titled The Nexus and the Mask: A Legal Institutionalist Theory of the Firm (Edward Elgar), which will also also explore what Ostromian (or Bloomington School) institutionalism can add to the mix. From this perspective, I am interested in how corporate and other organisational forms both rely on and function as knowledge commons. An edited volume, Governing Corporate Knowledge Commons (Cambridge University Press), is in the works.

The other major focus of my research is historical. I am especially interested in the how economic conceptions of the business firm and economic categories more generally spread in academia, legal discourse, and the public sphere. One of my current business history projects looks at the early history of the American corporate governance debate, emphasising how shareholder social activism at the turn of the 1970s led the business establishment to invest in various efforts to educate the public about the virtues of free enterprise and the profit motive. In a related large project that relies on archival sources, I focus on the history of law & economics movement and trace how Henry Manne's entrepreneurial efforts from the mid-1960s onwards helped spread and legitimise economic reasoning in American legal education. In the near future, I intend to turn my attention to the UK, in an effort to explain why law & economics never really took hold here (except in corporate law).