Suspended in 2025/26
EH463 Half Unit
The Long-Run Analysis of Firms and Industries
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Dr Gerben Bakker
Availability
This course is available on the MRes in Accounting (AOI) (Accounting, Organisations and Institutions Track), MSc in Accounting, Organisations and Institutions, MSc in Economic History, MSc in Economic History (Research), MSc in Financial History, MSc in Global Economic History and MSc in Political Economy of Late Development. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
How to apply: All Economic History courses are controlled access and capped. Priority will be given to students for whom the course is within their programme regulations.
All course choices submitted before the deadline will be considered. It is advisable that students submit a statement in support of their course choices as these will be used to allocate places where a course is oversubscribed.
Deadline for application: First round offers will be sent on Monday 29 September 2025. Students who submit their course choices after the deadline and students wishing to take an Economic History course as an outside option will be waitlisted initially and informed by Wednesday 1 October 2025 whether they have been successful.
Once an offer has been sent, you have 48 hours to accept it before it times out. Once an offer has timed out, it will be re-allocated to someone on the waitlist. In all cases, it is strongly advised that you have an alternative course choice as a back-up in case you are unable to secure your first choice.
For queries contact: If you have any questions, please contact the MSc Programmes Officer (o.harrison1@lse.ac.uk) A list of all taught master's courses in this Department are listed on LSE's course guide webpages. Guidance on how to apply to individual controlled access courses can also be found on LSE for You.
This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access) and demand is typically high. This may mean that you are not able to get a place on this course.
Course content
This course comparatively explores the history of strategies, business organisations and industries since the nineteenth century. Different approaches to analyse this evolution are discussed, as well as the history of thinking about management and organisational structure and how this affected history itself. Introductory lecture(s) set the scene, discuss key concepts and various economic approaches to analyse the evolution of organisations. Subsequently the course looks at the origins of legal forms of organisation - such as the corporation, the private limited liability company and the cooperative - at the development of organisational structures, at the history of thinking about them, and at evolution of the industries.
Teaching
20 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.
Formative assessment
Students are expected to write two essays or equivalent pieces of written work.
Indicative reading
- G. Boyce and S. Ville, The Development of Modern Business (2002);
- C. J. Schmitz, , The growth of big business in the United States and Western Europe, 1850-1939 (1993);
- S. Douma and H. Schreuder, Economic Approaches to Organizations (2002);
- A. Huczynksi and D. Buchanan, 'Organizational Structures', part 4 in Organizational Behaviour (2001 or later edition);
- G. Bakker, "The Making of a Music Multinational: Polygram's International Business, 1945-1998", Business History Review 80 (2006), 81-123;
- O. E. Williamson, The economic institutions of capitalism. Firms, markets, relational contracting (1985);
- A. D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise (1962);
- J. Sutton, Technology and Market Structure: Theory and History (1998);
- F. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921);
- J. A. Schumpeter, "Can Capitalism Survive?" in his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942);
- L. Hannah, 'Marshall's "Trees" and the Global "Forest" in N. Lamoreaux, D. Raff and P. Temin, Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms and Nations (1999);
- J. M. Karpoff, "Public versus Private Initiative in Arctic Exploration: The Effects of Incentives and Organizational Structure," Journal of Political Economy 109 (2001);
- E. Hilt, "Incentives in Corporations: Evidence from the American Whaling Industry," Journal of Law and Economics 49 (2006);
- G. Bakker, Nicholas Crafts and Pieter Woltjer, "The Sources of Growth in a Technologically Progressive Economy: The United States, 1899-1941", Economic Journal 129 (2017), 2267-94;
- R. W. Crandal and Thomas W. Hazlett, "Antitrust in the Information Economy: Digital Platform Mergers", Journal of Law and Economics (2022);
- G. Dari-Mattiacci, Oscar Gelderbloom, and Joost Jonker, "The Emergence of the Corporate Form", Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Vol. 33 (2017), No. 2, 193-236
- N. R. Lamoreaux, "The Problem of Bigness: From Standard Oil to Google", Journal of Economic Perspectives 33 (2019), 94-117
Assessment
Exam (100%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period
Key facts
Department: Economic History
Course Study Period: Winter Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 47
Average class size 2024/25: 24
Controlled access 2024/25: YesCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.