The Next Best Thing to Getting Married: Partnerships among the Jewelry Manufacturers in the Providence/Attleboro Area during the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

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.