According to prevailing theory, firms diversify in response to excess capacity of factors that are subject to market failure. By probing into the heterogeneity of these factors, we develop the corollary that firms that elect to diversify most widely should expect the lowest average rents. An...

Business Portfolio Planning techniques often suggest that firms should invest in industries with high profitability, high growth, or other attractive characteristics. Critiquing this view, we suggest that the same factors which lead to high profitability in an industry may cause its inefficient...

Using financial measures of performance we investigate the sources of value creation in the U.S. brewing industry between 1969 and 1979. We find that market share gains in this industry at this time are not correlated with changes in value and that the performance of individual leading firms is...

This paper documents the significant presence of diversified firms in the U.S. economy and presents three views on why firms diversify. The market power view argues that firms diversify to wield conglomerate power across markets. The agency view argues that diversification is undertaken by...