DAVIS, Gerald F <br/><br/>
The money center cannot hold :  commercial banks in the U.S. System of corporate governance 

 - Ithaca :  Johnson Graduate School of Management,  June 1999 
<br/><br/> mhis paper examines how the lace of banks in he intrcorporate network has changed as a reult of their decreasin role as financial intermediareis in the U.S. economy. An analysis of comprehensive data on the boards of the fifty largest banks and their connections with the several hundred largest nonbank corporations from 1982 to 1994 shows that the centrality of banks has significantly declined as executives of major corporations, particularly those representing central firms, joined bank boards at a substantially lower rate. Declining centrality reflects a strategic choice on the part of the banks: as the returns available from lending to major corporations have declined, hte largest banks have moved into other forms of business and reduced their recruiting of centrally located directors. We conclude with a discussion of the role of ifnancila intermediation in shaping the social organization of the economy