Why are corporations terminated? A century of evidence from the Netherlands

This is a replication package for:<br><br>Why are corporations
terminated? A century of evidence from the Netherlands<br><br>Published in Business History.<br><br>We identify all 196 Dutch exchange-listed corporations that halted their
operations and ceased to exist between 1903 and 1996. We then explain these terminations
using unique hand-collected accounting and governance data and regression techniques
that allow us to conduct long-run comparative analysis. Despite bankruptcy laws
remaining unchanged, corporate termination patterns shifted across the century:
shareholder-induced voluntary liquidations dominated before WWII, while
creditor-driven bankruptcies prevailed thereafter. Our analyses suggest this
shift reflected a broader transformation in corporate purpose, from a liberal
shareholder-centric model that prevailed before WWII, to a stakeholder-focused
paradigm that emerged among Dutch business elites in the post-war period. We
find that the Dutch government’s 1970s industrial policy experimentation failed
to curb bankruptcies. Our results highlight how shifts in corporate purpose can
reshape business outcomes, even without legal changes.<br>