100 Years of Rising Corporate Concentration
Spencer Y. Kwon, Yueran Ma, Kaspar Zimmermann
American Economic Review · 2024 · Volume 114 · Issue 7
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.
Keywords
Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis, Employment, Unemployment, Wages, Intergenerational Income Distribution, Aggregate Human Capital, Aggregate Labor Productivity, Production, Pricing, and Market Structure, Size Distribution of Firms, Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope, Economic History: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics, Industrial Structure, Growth, Fluctuations: U.S., Canada: 1913-
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