The corporate saving glut

摘要

Since the 2000s, the non-financial corporate sector moved from net borrower to net lender in many advanced economies - what has been labelled the corporate saving glut. Using data on U.S. listed firms, I document that the firms behind this widespread pattern are the largest corporations. The glut is the consequence of a constant profit share, relative to total corporate assets, which is larger than the sum of a decreasing investment share and a small and constant dividend share. In addition, I find no explanation able to empirically account for this pervasive phenomenon: neither deleveraging, nor increased uncertainty, nor increased market power are meaningfully correlated with the emergence of the glut at the firm-level.