IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/126673.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Intangibles and industry concentration: a cross-country analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Bajgar, Matej
  • Criscuolo, Chiara
  • Timmis, Jonathan

Abstract

This paper presents new evidence on the growing scale of large businesses in the United States, Japan and 11 European countries. It documents a broad increase in industry concentration across the majority of countries and sectors over the period 2002–2017. The rising concentration is strongly linked to investment in intangibles—particularly innovative assets; and software and data—and this relationship is magnified in more globalised industries. The results are consistent with intangibles disproportionately benefiting large firms, enabling them to scale up and increase their market shares by leveraging intangibles across multiple markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Bajgar, Matej & Criscuolo, Chiara & Timmis, Jonathan, 2025. "Intangibles and industry concentration: a cross-country analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 126673, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:126673
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/126673/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lewis Alexander & Janice Eberly, 2018. "Investment Hollowing Out," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 66(1), pages 5-30, March.
    2. Mariela Dal Borgo & Peter Goodridge & Jonathan Haskel & Annarosa Pesole, 2013. "Productivity and Growth in UK Industries: An Intangible Investment Approach," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(6), pages 806-834, December.
    3. Yuji Honjo & Noriyuki Doi & Yasushi Kudo, 2018. "The Turnover of Market Leaders in Growing and Declining Industries: Evidence from Japan," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 121-138, June.
    4. Steven Berry & Martin Gaynor & Fiona Scott Morton, 2019. "Do Increasing Markups Matter? Lessons from Empirical Industrial Organization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(3), pages 44-68, Summer.
    5. Matthieu Bussière & Laurent Ferrara & Juliana Milovich, 2017. "Explaining the recent slump in investment: the role of expected demand and uncertainty," Rue de la Banque, Banque de France, issue 44, may..
    6. Brent Neiman, 2014. "The Global Decline of the Labor Share," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 61-103.
    7. Bronwyn H. Hall & Adam Jaffe & Manuel Trajtenberg, 2005. "Market Value and Patent Citations," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(1), pages 16-38, Spring.
    8. Bond, Steve & Hashemi, Arshia & Kaplan, Greg & Zoch, Piotr, 2021. "Some unpleasant markup arithmetic: Production function elasticities and their estimation from production data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 1-14.
    9. Maarten De Ridder, 2024. "Market Power and Innovation in the Intangible Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(1), pages 199-251, January.
    10. Isabelle Desnoyers-James & Sara Calligaris & Flavio Calvino, 2019. "DynEmp and MultiProd: Metadata," OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers 2019/03, OECD Publishing.
    11. Jan De Loecker & Frederic Warzynski, 2012. "Markups and Firm-Level Export Status," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2437-2471, October.
    12. Masatoshi Kato & Yuji Honjo, 2006. "Market Share Instability and the Dynamics of Competition: a Panel Data Analysis of Japanese Manufacturing Industries," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 28(2), pages 165-182, March.
    13. Decker, Ryan A. & Haltiwanger, John & Jarmin, Ron S. & Miranda, Javier, 2016. "Where has all the skewness gone? The decline in high-growth (young) firms in the U.S," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 4-23.
    14. Nicholas Bloom & Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen, 2012. "Americans Do IT Better: US Multinationals and the Productivity Miracle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(1), pages 167-201, February.
    15. Wolfhard Kaus & Viktor Slavtchev & Markus Zimmermann, 2024. "Intangible capital and productivity: Firm-level evidence from German manufacturing," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 76(4), pages 970-996.
    16. Matias Covarrubias & Germán Gutiérrez & Thomas Philippon, 2019. "From Good to Bad Concentration? US Industries over the Past 30 Years," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2019, volume 34, pages 1-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Carol A. Corrado & Charles R. Hulten, 2010. "How Do You Measure a "Technological Revolution"?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 99-104, May.
    18. repec:oup:qjecon:v:129:y:2013:i:1:p:61-103 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Sharat Ganapati, 2021. "Growing Oligopolies, Prices, Output, and Productivity," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 309-327, August.
    20. Maarten De Ridder & Basile Grassi & Giovanni Morzenti, 2021. "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Markup Estimation," Working Papers 677, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    21. Paula Bustos, 2011. "Trade Liberalization, Exports, and Technology Upgrading: Evidence on the Impact of MERCOSUR on Argentinian Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 304-340, February.
    22. Dave Byrne & Carol Corrado, 2017. "ICT Prices and ICT Services: What Do They Tell Us About Productivity and Technology," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 33, pages 150-181, Fall.
    23. Mariko Sakakibara & Michael E. Porter, 2001. "Competing At Home To Win Abroad: Evidence From Japanese Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(2), pages 310-322, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bajgar, Matej & Berlingieri, Giuseppe & Calligaris, Sara & Criscuolo, Chiara & Timmis, Jonathan, 2019. "Industry concentration in Europe and North America," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103427, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Ian Goldin & Pantelis Koutroumpis & François Lafond & Julian Winkler, 2024. "Why Is Productivity Slowing Down?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(1), pages 196-268, March.
    3. Thomas Hasenzagl & Luis Perez, 2023. "The Micro-Aggregated Profit Share," Papers 2309.12945, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    4. Maarten De Ridder, 2024. "Market Power and Innovation in the Intangible Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(1), pages 199-251, January.
    5. Shanks, Olga, 2024. "Increasing returns to scale and markups," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 257-267.
    6. Siying Ding & Ahmad Lashkaripour & Volodymyr Lugovskyy, 2024. "A Global Perspective on the Incidence of Monopoly Distortions," CESifo Working Paper Series 11211, CESifo.
    7. Matias Covarrubias & Germán Gutiérrez & Thomas Philippon, 2019. "From Good to Bad Concentration? US Industries over the Past 30 Years," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2019, volume 34, pages 1-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Panon, Ludovic, 2022. "Labor share, foreign demand and superstar exporters," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    9. Germán Gutiérrez & Thomas Philippon, 2017. "Declining Competition and Investment in the U.S," NBER Working Papers 23583, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Shuichiro Nishioka & Mari Tanaka, 2022. "The Scope of Variable Inputs and Markup Estimates," Working Papers 23-01, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    11. Anderton, Robert & Jarvis, Valerie & Labhard, Vincent & Morgan, Julian & Petroulakis, Filippos & Vivian, Lara, 2020. "Virtually everywhere? Digitalisation and the euro area and EU economies," Occasional Paper Series 244, European Central Bank.
    12. Christian Reiner & Christian Bellak, 2023. "Hat die ökonomische Macht von Unternehmen in Österreich zugenommen? Teil 2," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 49(2), pages 17-76.
    13. Marie Le Mouel & Alexander Schiersch, 2020. "Knowledge-Based Capital and Productivity Divergence," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1868, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    14. Ricardo Marto, 2023. "Structural Change and the Rise in Markups," Working Papers 2024-002, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    15. Akin A. Cilekoglu, 2023. ""Labor Market Monopsony and Firm Behavior: Evidence from Spanish Exporters"," IREA Working Papers 202307, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Jul 2023.
    16. Sandström, Maria, 2020. "Intangible Capital, Markups and Pro fits," Working Paper Series 2020:4, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    17. Geoffrey Barrows & Hélène Ollivier & Ariell Reshef, 2023. "Production Function Estimation with Multi-Destination Firms," CESifo Working Paper Series 10716, CESifo.
    18. Ufuk Akcigit & Sina T. Ates, 2023. "What Happened to US Business Dynamism?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(8), pages 2059-2124.
    19. Kosuke Aoki & Yoshihiko Hogen & Kosuke Takatomi, 2023. "Price Markups and Wage Setting Behavior of Japanese Firms," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 23-E-5, Bank of Japan.
    20. Filippo Biondi & Sergio Inferrera & Matthias Mertens & Javier Miranda, 2023. "Declining Business Dynamism in Europe: The Role of Shocks, Market Power, and Technology," Jena Economics Research Papers 2023-011, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    intangible investment; business groups; concentration;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:126673. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.