Profits, Variability of Profits and Firm Size

This paper is based on data for a cross-section of United Kingdom companies for the period 1954 to 1963. The data are described in Section I. Sections TI and III examine, respectively, the behaviour of profit rates and the variability of profit rates in relation to the size of firms. The relation between industrial concentration and the variability of profit rates is considered in Section IV. The main conclusions of the paper are summarized in Section V.