The Financing of Large Corporations in the Postwar Period

Francis John O'Reilly, Fordham University

Abstract

PREFACE This thesis is an attempt to evaluate the importance of the sources and uses of funds for large corporations over the ten year period from 1946 to 1955. It is based on the Federal Reserve Board’s annual survey of three hundred of the country’s largest corporations. The corporations fall into fourteen industry groups, as follows: Manufactaring Industries: Food (30 corporations) Tobacco (4 corporations) Rubber (4 corporations) Petroleum (24 corporations) Chemicals (32 corporations) Iron and Steel (18 corporations) Monferrous Metals (14 corporations) Machinery, including Electrical, (46 corporations ) Automobile (9 corporations) Other Transportation Equipment (19 corporations) Retail Trade (42 corporations) Railroads (20 corporations) Electric Utilities (35 corporations) Communications (1 corporation) The method adopted to analyze this subject has been to consider the period as a unit. This method has the advantage of putting the sources and uses in their proper prospective since unusual occurrences are minimized in the totaling process. This facilitates evaluation of their importance. The disadvantage of this procedure lies in the fact that it tells nothing about the reaction of large corporations to varying economic conditions. By and large, this desirable analysis had to be foregone in order to restrict the paper to reasonable bounds. To offset this disadvantage, however, complete tables embodying the information required for such an analysis are offered in Appendix B.

Subject Area

Economics

Recommended Citation

O'Reilly, Francis John, "The Financing of Large Corporations in the Postwar Period" (1958). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI28673327.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI28673327

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