A number of recent papers have argued that US firms exert increasing market power, as measured by their markups of price over marginal cost. I review three of the main approaches to estimating economy-wide markups and show that all are based on the hypothesis of firm cost-minimization. Yet different assumptions and methods of implementation lead to quite different conclusions regarding the levels and trends of markups. I survey the literature critically, and argue that some of the startling findings of steeply-rising markups are difficult to reconcile with other evidence and with aggregate data. Existing methods cannot determine whether markups have been stable or whether they have risen modestly over the past several decades. Even relatively small increases in markups are consistent with significant changes in aggregate outcomes, such as the observed decline in labor’s share of national income.

中文翻译：

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美国的价格成本加价上涨了吗？证据的讨论

最近的许多论文认为，以价格相对于边际成本的加价幅度衡量，美国公司发挥着越来越大的市场力量。我回顾了估计整个经济范围内加价的三种主要方法，并表明它们均基于企业成本最小化的假设。然而，不同的假设和实施方法会导致有关加价幅度和趋势的结论截然不同。我对文献进行了批判性的调查，并认为，急剧上升的标记的一些惊人发现很难与其他证据和汇总数据相吻合。现有方法无法确定标记在过去几十年中是否稳定或是否温和上升。即使加价幅度相对较小，也与总体结果的重大变化相一致，