Rentiership and Intellectual Monopoly in Contemporary Capitalism: Conceptual Challenges and Empirical Possibilities

Baines, Joseph; Hager, Sandy Brian

Rentiership and Intellectual Monopoly in Contemporary Capitalism: Conceptual Challenges and Empirical Possibilities

dc.contributor.author	Baines, Joseph
dc.contributor.author	Hager, Sandy Brian
dc.date.accessioned	2024-12-05T22:29:30Z
dc.date.available	2024-12-05T22:29:30Z
dc.date.issued	2024
dc.description.abstract	The concepts of rentiership and intellectual monopoly have gained increased prominence in discussions about the transformation of global capitalism in recent years. However, there have been few if any attempts to construct measures for rentiership and intellectual monopoly using firm-level financial data. The absence of such work, we argue, is symptomatic of conceptual challenges in delineating what precisely qualifies as rent, intellectual or otherwise. In place of static conceptions of rent and intellectual monopoly, we develop a dynamic framework for analyzing the processes of rentierization and intellectual monopolization and apply this framework to the analysis of the transformation of non-financial firms in the United States since the 1950s. We find that the timing and intensity of rentierization and intellectual monopolization differs significantly across sector and firm size and is heavily mediated by the uneven ramifications of government policy across companies and industries. Overall, our framework illuminates the variegated landscape of corporate power in the US, and offers a useful guide for critically interrogating rentierization and intellectual monopolization in other contexts.
dc.identifier.citation	Rentiership and Intellectual Monopoly in Contemporary Capitalism: Conceptual Challenges and Empirical Possibilities. Baines, Joseph and Hager, Sandy Brian. (2024). Socio-Economic Review. OnlineFirst. December. pp. 1-29. (Article - Journal; English).
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10315/42554
dc.language.iso	en
dc.rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subject	capital accumulation
dc.subject	competition
dc.subject	degree of monopoly
dc.subject	financialization
dc.subject	intangible intellectual property
dc.subject	productivity
dc.subject	profit
dc.subject	United States
dc.subject	rent
dc.subject	scarcity
dc.title	Rentiership and Intellectual Monopoly in Contemporary Capitalism: Conceptual Challenges and Empirical Possibilities
dc.type	Article