The Bureau of Corporations, predecessor to the Federal Trade Commission was created as an investigatory agency within the Department of Commerce and Labor in the United States. The Bureau and the Department were created by Congress February 14, 1903.

The main role of the Bureau was to study and report on industry, looking especially for monopolistic practices. Its 1906 report on petroleum transportation made recommendations that became part of the Hepburn Act of 1906, and was used when the Justice Department successfully prosecuted and broke up Standard Oil. The Bureau also conducted studies of tobacco, steel, lumber and other industries.

The Bureau became part of the new Federal Trade Commission in 1915. The new Commission took over both staff and ongoing investigations from the Bureau. Commissioner of Corporations, Joseph E. Davies, became the FTC's first Chairman and Davies' deputy Francis Walker became the chief economist of the FTC

• Murphey, William, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporation: Executive-Corporate Cooperation and the Advancement of the Regulatory State,” American Nineteenth Century History 14 (March 2013), 73–111.