Corporate ownership and profit concentrate in a tiny number of firms

Evidence

The largest one tenth of one percent of all corporations owned 60% of all corporate assets; the smallest 94% of all corporations owned less than 8% of all corporate assets. In 1973, the largest one hundred manufacturing corporations (less than one-fifth of 1 percent of this category) owned over 43 percent of manufacturing assets and captured 49 percent of the profits in the manufacturing sector. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 623

Categorization

• XREF: Schumpeterian and monopoly-capital concentration data; useful contrast with churn-based ‘small business dynamism’ narratives. — connects to: A sliver of giant firms dominates total sales volume — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 622; Common ownership of competing firms suppresses competition and inflates prices; Share-price-oriented firms grow without investments in physical assets or employment — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 72 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Common ownership of competing firms suppresses competition and inflates prices #expands (0.95)
• Three index-fund firms now dominate US corporate equity ownership #exemplifies (0.95) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 124
• Share-price-oriented firms grow without investments in physical assets or employment #qualifies (0.75) — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 72