Fecha: septiembre 2026
Vicente Salas Fumás
Corporations EU27, balance sheet and income statement data, economic growth, comparisons with corporate USA.
Abstract
This study examines the economic performance of non-financial corporations (NFCs) in the EU27 over the period 2000–2025 using sectoral National Accounts data on balance sheets, revenues and costs, capital accumulation, production costs and productivity. The evidence is interpreted within a benchmark model of price-taking, profitmaximizing firms. We find that the long-run evolution of output, factor productivity, factor-income shares and capital investment is broadly consistent with firms responding in a profit maximizing way to changes in relative factor prices under moderate technical progress and otherwise relatively stable aggregate production technology. Financial assets have grown to a size comparable to operating assets, although the evidence suggests that this development may partly reflect outward foreign direct investment in addition to a possible reallocation away from productive activity. Comparison with US NFCs points to a European disadvantage in unit labor costs driven primarily by weaker labor-productivity growth rather than faster wage growth. This productivity gap coincides with increasingly divergent capital-investment dynamics, particularly since the pandemic. The simultaneous weakening of EU capital accumulation and acceleration of US investment raises the question of whether the recent divergence represents a temporary adjustment or the emergence of a more persistent technological gap.