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Rising Corporate Concentration and Economic Share

It is not unusual for people to fail to notice a global corporation creating headlines with enormous fame and fortune. Companies’ rise in recent years has produced remarkable outcomes, which has caused some skepticism. They not only produce enormous profits, but they also have a high economic share. Since they are in a position of dominance, they have a larger portion of the economy. This, however, is not a recent phenomenon. This article on the website of the Chicago Booth Review sheds light on the statistical analysis of data provided by firms, with the goal of finding solutions to concerns such as how to divide excess, allowing employees to bargain with companies, and enhancing democratic institutions.

The research conducted by Harvard Ph.D. student Spencer Yongwook Kwon, Chicago Booth’s Yueran Ma, and Leibniz Institute for Financial Research’s Kaspar Zimmermann is cited in the article. According to the article, experiencing and observing an immediate increase in a company’s profitability has been a tendency for a long time. This is supported by statistics in the article. According to the report, the top one percent of firms now control 90 percent of the US economic share, up from 70 percent in the 1930s. Meanwhile, the top 0.1 percent of corporations’ asset share has climbed to 88 percent, up from 47 percent. For a long time, this has been justified by claiming that increased concentration is a component of industrial progress and that technical advancement increases economies of scale, which are reflected in the size of enterprises. To get further information, researchers used yearly Statistics of Income releases from the Internal Revenue Service and continued review from 1918 to 2018. According to the researchers, the percentage of economic activity accounted for by the largest corporations has expanded steadily over the last century in all three metrics of sales, assets, and income. The researchers discovered that increased concentration in a sector coincides with R&D and IT accounting for a larger share of overall spending. Researchers discovered that technology-driven economies of scale outperform globalization and changing rules in tracking the overarching trend of increased concentration. Finally, the article indicates that the timing of increased concentration in various industries may explain why large corporations’ growing dominance is receiving attention today. These are heavily reliant on the economy’s social infrastructure.

Given the significant expansion of MNCs, identifying the underlying causes is critical. The article discusses the circumstances under which the enterprises grew and the impact it had on their economic share.

The economy plays a huge role to expand leadership insights. Learn deeper and more effective leadership insights with the Chicago Booth Accelerated Development Program (Chicago Booth ADP) offered by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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