Schumpeterian Profits in the American Economy: Theory and MeasurementWilliam D. Nordhaus
NBER Working Paper No. 10433 The present study examines the importance of Schumpeterian profits in the United States economy. Schumpeterian profits are defined as those profits that arise when firms are able to appropriate the returns from innovative activity. We first show the underlying equations for Schumpeterian profits. We then estimate the value of these profits for the non-farm business economy. We conclude that only a minuscule fraction of the social returns from technological advances over the 1948-2001 period was captured by producers, indicating that most of the benefits of technological change are passed on to consumers rather than captured by producers.
An NBER digest for this paper is available. This paper is available as PDF (312 K) or via email.
|
Contact Us
People
James Poterba, presidentJames Poterba is President of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also the Mitsui Professor of Economics at M.I.T. |
NBER ResearchersResearchers by NBER ProgramComplete NBER Research Family List |
 |
Other People LinksStaffBoard of Directors |