IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v114y2024i7p2111-40.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

100 Years of Rising Corporate Concentration

Author

Listed:
  • Spencer Y. Kwon
  • Yueran Ma
  • Kaspar Zimmermann

Abstract

We collect data on the size distribution of US businesses for 100 years, and use these data to estimate the concentration of production (e.g., asset share or sales share of top businesses). The data show that concentration has increased persistently over the past century. Rising concentration was stronger in manufacturing and mining before the 1970s, and stronger in services, retail, and wholesale after the 1970s. The results are robust to different measurement methods and consistent across different historical sources. Our findings suggest that large firms have become more important in the US economy for a long period of time.

Suggested Citation

  • Spencer Y. Kwon & Yueran Ma & Kaspar Zimmermann, 2024. "100 Years of Rising Corporate Concentration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(7), pages 2111-2140, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:114:y:2024:i:7:p:2111-40
    DOI: 10.1257/aer.20220621
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20220621
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E197985V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20220621.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20220621.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aer.20220621?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schott, Peter & Yang, Natalie & Eckert, Fabian & Fort, Teresa, 2020. "Imputing Missing Values in the US Census Bureau's County Business Patterns," CEPR Discussion Papers 14352, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Thomas Blanchet & Juliette Fournier & Thomas Piketty, 2022. "Generalized Pareto Curves: Theory and Applications," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(1), pages 263-288, March.
    3. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2003. "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 1-41.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Huang, Hanwei & Manova, Kalina & Perelló, Oscar & Pisch, Frank, 2024. "Firm Heterogeneity and Imperfect Competition in Global Production Networks," CEPR Discussion Papers 19408, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Huang, Hanwei & Manova, Kalina & Perelló, Oscar & Pisch, Frank, 2024. "Firm Heterogeneity and Imperfect Competition in Global Production Networks," CEPR Discussion Papers 19408, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lucas Chancel & Thomas Piketty, 2019. "Indian Income Inequality, 1922‐2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(S1), pages 33-62, November.
    2. Thomas Blanchet & Bertrand Garbinti & Jonathan Goupille-Lebret & Clara Martínez-Toledano, 2018. "Applying Generalized Pareto Curves to Inequality Analysis," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 114-118, May.
    3. Thomas Blanchet & Ignacio Flores & Marc Morgan, 2022. "The weight of the rich: improving surveys using tax data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 119-150, March.
    4. Fabian Eckert & Sharat Ganapati & Conor Walsh, 2020. "Urban-Biased Growth: A Macroeconomic Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 8705, CESifo.
    5. Vladimir Hlasny, 2021. "Parametric representation of the top of income distributions: Options, historical evidence, and model selection," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1217-1256, September.
    6. Thomas Blanchet & Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman, 2022. "Real-Time Inequality," NBER Working Papers 30229, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Clara Martínez Toledano, 2017. "House Price Cycles, Wealth Inequality and Portfolio Reshuffling," Working Papers halshs-02797549, HAL.
    8. Felix Koenig, 2023. "Technical Change and Superstar Effects: Evidence from the Rollout of Television," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 207-223, June.
    9. Pawel Bukowski & Filip Novokmet, 2019. "Between Communism and Capitalism: Long-Term Inequality in Poland, 1892- 2015," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02876995, HAL.
    10. Nak-Nyeon Kim, 2018. "Top Incomes in Korea: Update, 1933-2016"," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02878150, HAL.
    11. Matthew Fisher-Post, 2020. "Examining the Great Leveling: New Evidence on Midcentury American Inequality," PSE Working Papers hal-02876981, HAL.
    12. Matthew Fisher-Post, 2020. "Examining the Great Leveling: New Evidence on Midcentury American Inequality," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02876981, HAL.
    13. Garbinti, Bertrand & Goupille-Lebret, Jonathan & Piketty, Thomas, 2018. "Income inequality in France, 1900–2014: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts (DINA)," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 63-77.
    14. Nak-Nyeon Kim, 2018. "Top Incomes in Korea: Update, 1933-2016"," Working Papers hal-02878150, HAL.
    15. Piketty, Thomas & Chancel, Lucas, 2017. "Indian income inequality, 1922-2014: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj ?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12409, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Lee, Ji Hyung & Sasaki, Yuya & Toda, Alexis Akira & Wang, Yulong, 2024. "Tuning parameter-free nonparametric density estimation from tabulated summary data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 238(1).
    17. Jing Yuan & Xiaomin Liu & Yinghui Wang & Zongwu Cai, 2024. "Impact of Minimum Wage Standard on Occupational Income Inequality and Common Prosperity in China," WORKING PAPERS SERIES IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ECONOMICS 202404, University of Kansas, Department of Economics, revised Feb 2024.
    18. Bukowski, Pawel & Novokmet, Filip, 2019. "Between communism and capitalism: long-term inequality in Poland, 1892-2015," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102834, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Paweł Bukowski & Filip Novokmet, 2021. "Between communism and capitalism: long-term inequality in Poland, 1892–2015," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 187-239, June.
    20. Sara Torregrosa-Hetland & Oriol Sabaté, 2022. "Income tax progressivity and inflation during the world wars [War finance and inflation in Britain and Germany, 1914–1918]," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 26(3), pages 311-339.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • N12 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:114:y:2024:i:7:p:2111-40. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.