The Next Best Thing to Getting Married: Partnerships among the Jewelry Manufacturers in the Providence/Attleboro Area during the Nineteenth Century
研究了19世纪美国珠宝制造中心的企业为何选择合伙制，发现地理分散和产品差异化促使企业家通过合伙来缓解信息不对称、筹集资本以实现销售和生产的规模经济。
This study aims at enhancing our understanding of how industrial conditions affect the choice of a firm's ownership structure. The Providence/Attleboro area was a center of jewelry production during the nineteenth century. Because of the differentiated nature of the product, the Providence/Attleboro jewelers needed to promote their products among the wholesalers in distant markets. These geographical and industrial conditions motivated the entrepreneurs to organize partnerships for ameliorating informational asymmetries and for mobilizing the capital required to achieve economies of scale in sales and production.