Schumpeterian Profits in the American Economy: Theory and Measurement

William Nordhaus

No 1457, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: 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 miniscule 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.

Keywords: Schumpeter; profits; innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O30 O31 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2004-04
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d14/d1457.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Working Paper: Schumpeterian Profits in the American Economy: Theory and Measurement (2004)
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:cwl:cwldpp:1457

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Cowles Foundation, Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA
The price is None.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Brittany Ladd ().