Corporations and the Corporate Elite

the role of business. In this review, attention is generally restricted to the largest corporations and their corporate elite. At present there are more than two million business enterprises in the US, and nearly all are very small; in 1973, for instance, nine out often companies commanded assets of 1 million or less. Despite their large numbers, however, even in the aggregate these small companies are dwarfed in economic significance by the several thousand largest corporations. This dominance can be ex­ pressed in many ways; one index is the proportion of resources com­ manded by the approximately two thousand firms whose stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. These large companies accounte d in 1971 for 40% of all corporate assets, 60% of all corporate revenue, and 88% of all corporate income. 1973, the 1, 000 largest industrial firms