TY  - JOUR
AU  - Nordhaus, William D
TI  - Schumpeterian Profits in the American Economy: Theory and Measurement
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10433
PY  - 2004
Y2  - April 2004
DO  - 10.3386/w10433
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10433
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10433.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
William D. Nordhaus
Yale University, Department of Economics
28 Hillhouse Avenue
Box 208264
New Haven, CT  06520-8264
Tel: 203/432-3598
Fax: 203/432-5779
E-Mail: william.nordhaus@yale.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2011-11-18
AB  - 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.
ER  -