Tag: Profits

Must-Read: James Bessen: Lobbyists Are Behind the Rise in Corporate Profits

Posted on by Brad DeLong

Must-Read: James Bessen: Lobbyists Are Behind the Rise in Corporate Profits: “I tease apart the factors associated with the growth in corporate valuations relative to assets (Tobin’s Q) and the growth in operating margins…

…the roles of R&D, spending on advertising and marketing, and on administrative costs, including IT. I also consider investments in lobbying, political campaign spending, and regulation; and I look for links between rising profits and industry concentration and stock volatility. I find that investments in conventional capital assets like machinery and spending on R&D together account for a substantial part of the rise in valuations and profits, especially during the 1990s. However, since 2000, political activity and regulation account for a surprisingly large share of the increase…. Lobbying and political campaign spending can result in favorable regulatory changes, and several studies find the returns to these investments can be quite large. For example, one study finds that for each dollar spent lobbying for a tax break, firms received returns in excess of $220.

It is less obvious, however, that regulation in general should be associated with higher profits. Indeed, critics of the regulatory state regularly decry the costs imposed by regulations. Yet even regulations that impose costs might raise profits indirectly, since costs to incumbents are also entry barriers for prospective entrants…. The pattern around the 1992 Cable Act is representative: I find that firms experiencing major regulatory change see their valuations rise 12% compared to closely matched control groups. Smaller regulatory changes are also associated with a subsequent rise in firm market values and profits. This research supports the view that political rent seeking is responsible for a significant portion of the rise in profits….

Two characteristics make these changes particularly worrisome. First, the link between regulation and profits is highly concentrated in a small number of politically influential industries. Among non-financial corporations, most of the effect is accounted for by just five industries: pharmaceuticals/chemicals, petroleum refining, transportation equipment/defense, utilities, and communications. These industries comprise, in effect, a ‘rent seeking sector.’… Those firms may skew policy for the entire economy. For example, the pharmaceutical industry has actively stymied efforts to address problems of patent trolls that affect many other industries. Second, while political rent seeking is nothing new, the outsize effect of political rent seeking on profits and firm values is a recent development, largely occurring since 2000…

Must-Read: Laura Tyson and James Manyika: Putting Profits in Perspective

Posted on by Brad DeLong

Must-Read: Laura Tyson and James Manyika: Putting Profits in Perspective: “Corporate profits may be near all-time highs…

but their variance among firms and industries has also increased significantly. The most profitable firms in the US are… in sectors that capitalize on research and development, brands, software, and algorithms. Companies in sectors like pharmaceuticals, media, finance, information technology, and business services have the highest profit margins… excluding finance, these sectors’ share of US corporate profits has increased significantly, from 25% in 1999 to 35% in 2013…. In the most digitally advanced sectors of the economy, margins have grown 2-3 times faster than average. And even within these sectors, there are enormous spreads between the top-performing companies and the rest of the pack. The ‘winner-take-most’ dynamic of the digital economy is not only producing record profits for leading firms; it may be accelerating the pace of innovation and broadening the areas in which companies can enter and quickly establish market power…

Must-read: Paul Krugman: “Robber Baron Recessions” (Competition Policy)

Posted on by Brad DeLong

Must-Read: A few words on judicial doctrine, economic thinking, and political economy…

Back when Robert Bork in his The Antitrust Paradox proposed large-scale rewriting of laws from the bench to privilege “economic efficiency” above all of the other somewhat-conflicting goals of our competition policy and so bring order to a disordered piece of the law, I saw it as neutral-to-good. But the default judicial judgment of any merger then became:

  1. It must reduce costs via economies of scale
  2. It is not inefficient unless it reduces the quantity supplied–and companies these days are so clever at price discrimination that they can still find a way to serve those low-value consumers whose willingness-to-pay is only a little bit larger than monopoly cost.

And the government faced a very steep Sisyphean uphill boulder-rolling to rebut those presumptive judgments and block, well, block much of anything.

And it has turned out that, in practice, both (1) and (2) have been largely wrong…

Paul Krugman: Robber Baron Recessions: “Profits are at near-record highs…

…Suppose that those high corporate profits don’t represent returns on investment, but instead mainly reflect growing monopoly power… [with] corporations… able to milk their businesses for cash, but with little reason to spend money on expanding capacity or improving service…. Such an economy… would also tend to have trouble achieving or sustaining full employment. Why? Because when investment is weak despite low interest rates, the Federal Reserve will too often find its efforts to fight recessions coming up short….

Do we have direct evidence that such a decline in competition has actually happened? Yes, say a number of recent studies, including one just released by the White House…. The obvious next question is why competition has declined. The answer can be summed up in two words: Ronald Reagan… [who] didn’t just cut taxes and deregulate banks; his administration also turned sharply away from the longstanding U.S. tradition of reining in companies that become too dominant in their industries. A new doctrine, emphasizing the supposed efficiency gains from corporate consolidation, led to what those who have studied the issue often describe as the virtual end of antitrust enforcement….

Still, better late than never. On Friday the White House issued an executive order directing federal agencies to use whatever authority they have to ‘promote competition.’… For we aren’t just living in a second Gilded Age, we’re also living in a second robber baron era. And only one party seems bothered by either of those observations.