American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
100 Years of Rising Corporate Concentration
American Economic Review
vol. 114,
no. 7, July 2024
(pp. 2111–40)
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.Citation
Kwon, Spencer Y., Yueran Ma, and Kaspar Zimmermann. 2024. "100 Years of Rising Corporate Concentration." American Economic Review, 114 (7): 2111–40. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20220621Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D22 Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
- E24 Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
- L11 Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
- L25 Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope
- N12 Economic History: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations: U.S.; Canada: 1913-