First published in 1976, this much acclaimed book looks at the story of how today's large corporations have superseded the small competing firms of the nineteenth century. The long-run analysis confirms that the crucial periods in the formulation of the modern corporate system were the 1920's and 1960's. The merger wave of these decades was associated with a desire to improve the efficiency of Britains industrial organization, and the author shows that it was in a large measure responsible for the trend improvement (by historical if not international standards) in Britain's growth...