The advantages of the corporate form—an impossibility theorem on persons and things
用博弈论证明，只有公司形式能组织需要外部融资且易受供应商敲竹杠的资本密集型业务，其他类型企业则失败，这源于公司兼具法律人格和可转让资产集合的双重属性。
Abstract The literature tends to view the firm either as a person or as a thing. Due to this dichotomy, it struggles with the proposition that the corporate form brings about efficiency gains that cannot be accomplished by other types of profit-seeking firms. This study supplies game-theoretic proof for this proposition. It identifies a capital-intensive business that requires external financing and is vulnerable to a holdup by a supplier. It shows that only the corporate form can organise the business while other types of firms fail. This advantage of the corporate form over other types of firms is due to its Janus-faced nature as both person, that is endowed with legal capacity, and thing, such as a transferable bundle of assets. A long-held tradition of strictly separating persons and things fails to account for this advantage.