Page "Corporation" Paragraph 13

The 20th century saw a proliferation of enabling law across the world, which helped to drive economic booms in many countries before and after World War I.

Starting in the 1980s, many countries with large state-owned corporations moved toward privatization, the selling of publicly owned services and enterprises to corporations.

Deregulation ( reducing the regulation of corporate activity ) often accompanied privatization as part of a laissez-faire policy.

Another major postwar shift was toward the development of conglomerates, in which large corporations purchased smaller corporations to expand their industrial base.

Japanese firms developed a horizontal conglomeration model, the keiretsu, which was later duplicated in other countries as well.