Finance

Machine learning

Oligopoly

Profitability index

Business

Gross margin

Market share

Economics

Cash flow

Cournot competition

Microeconomics

Profit (economics)

Ecology

Value (mathematics)

Profit rate

Industrial organization

Computer science

Biology

Competition (biology)

Gross profit

Review of Financial Studies

This paper proposes a novel quantitative framework with endogenous strategic competition in heterogeneous concentrated industries. Oligopolies compete strategically for profit margins in repeated games, trading off the benefits of future cooperation against those of reaping higher short-run profits by undercutting their rivals. Cross-industry dispersions in market leadership persistence and cash flow loadings on expected growth, as primitive characteristics, simultaneously determine the relationships among profitability, book-to-market ratios, and systematic risk exposures, thereby quantitatively rationalizing the gross profitability and value premium across industries and, importantly, their interactions. Controlling for the book-to-market ratio (gross profitability) makes the gross profitability (value) premium more pronounced. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

The Oligopoly Lucas Tree