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To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2009.04.016 Byline: Ron Harris Keywords: Comparative institutional analysis; Institutional transplants; China; India; Middle East; Europe; Business organization Abstract: The focus of this article is on legal-economic institutions that organized early-modern Eurasian trade. It identifies two such institutions that had divergent dispersion patterns, the corporation and the commenda. The corporation ended up as a uniquely European institution that did not migrate until the era of European colonization. The commenda that originated in Arabia migrated all the way to Western Europe and to China. The article explains their divergent dispersion based on differences in their institutional and geographical environments and on dynamic factors, claiming that institutional analysis errs when it ignores migration of institutions and providing building blocks for the modeling of institutional migration. Author Affiliation: School of Law, Tel Aviv University, Address: Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel Article History: Received 29 August 2007; Revised 17 April 2009; Accepted 17 April 2009

By surveying contemporary sources this article reveals direct evidence for the involvement of the South Sea Company in the passage of the Bubble Act. The dominant position of the Company and of its national debt conversion scheme in the affairs of England in 1720 support the conclusion that the act was in fact a piece of special-interest legislation for the Company. The short-term interest that motivated the enactment, together with the limited legal and economic effects of the act, minimized its significance as a turning point in the long-term development of the English joint-stock company.