价格-成本加成、固定成本与超额利润

中文摘要

本文提供了一种在存在生产固定成本的情况下估计价格-成本加成的新方法。通过利用基于销售额与基于成本的原始和对偶索洛残差的性质，我们能够同时估计价格-成本加成以及每种投入的固定成本在总成本中所占的份额。忽略生产中的固定成本会低估价格-成本加成并高估超额利润份额。利用比利时企业三十年的面板数据，我们估计出价格-成本加成占销售额的比重平均为25.4%，该比重可分解为22.9%的固定成本与2.5%的超额利润。过去三十年间，比利时的价格-成本加成下降了（−5.9%），这是固定成本下降（−4.0%）与超额利润减少（−1.9%）共同作用的结果，表明产出市场随时间推移变得更具竞争性。尽管大企业的利润份额高于小企业，但其固定成本份额以及价格-成本加成均较低。

Abstract

Abstract This paper provides a new method to estimate price-cost margins in the presence of fixed costs of production. By exploiting properties of the primal and dual sales-based and cost-based Solow residuals, we are able to simultaneously estimate price-cost margins and the share of fixed costs in total costs for each input. Ignoring fixed costs in production underestimates price-cost margins and overestimates excess profit shares. Using a thirty-year panel of Belgian firms, we estimate price-cost margins, as a fraction of sales, of 25.4% on average, which can be decomposed between fixed costs of 22.9% and excess profits of 2.5%. Belgian price-cost margins have declined (−5.9%) in the past three decades due to a combination of falling fixed costs (−4.0%) and decreasing excess profits (−1.9%), suggesting that output markets have become even more competitive over time. While large firms have higher profit shares than small firms, they have lower fixed cost shares as well as lower price-cost margins.