This paper examines the evolution of firm mark-ups across 26 countries for the period 2001-14. It also discusses and investigates empirically how this can be related to the degree of digital transformation in sectors. Four main facts emerge: i) mark-ups are increasing over the period, on average...

Can an increasing importance of intangible capital explain increases in markups and profits? I use a heterogeneous firm model to show how intangible capital, characterized by fixed costs and uncertainty, is related to markups and profits at the industry level. The scalability and uncertainty...

I document the evolution of market power in the U.S. airline industry for the period 1990:Q1-2019:Q4. I recover estimates of markups, defined as the ratio of price to marginal cost, at the airline-time level. Dominant carriers in the industry have substantially increased their markups in the...

Contrary to some of the leading critiques of neoclassical theory, I argue that this theoretical framework can incorporate the moral dimension into the modeling of economic agents when the consequences of their choices are not answerable to market forces. Neoclassical theory, broadly defined,...

In the context of increasing returns markets, the conventional argument is that a slender market share advantage may entrain a firm on a trajectory bound for monopoly in the long run. We revisit this with the linear urn model representation of history dependence, and a probabilistic...

This paper presents a range of policies to enhance adoption of digital technologies and firm productivity. It quantifies illustratively the effect of policy changes by combining the results of two recent OECD analyses on the drivers of adoption and their productivity benefits. Increasing access...