Scope, Scale and Concentration: The 21st Century Firm

Gerard Hoberg and Gordon Phillips

No 30672, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We provide evidence that over the past 30 years, U.S. firms have expanded their scope of operations. Increases in scope and scale were achieved largely without increasing traditional operating segments. Scope expansion significantly increases valuation and is primarily realized through acquisitions and investment in R&D, but not through capital expenditures. We show that traditional concentration ratios do not capture this expansion of scope. Our findings point to a new type of firm that increases scope through related expansion, which is highly valued by the market.

JEL-codes: D20 D43 G30 O31 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-his
Note: CF
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30672.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30672

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30672

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().