Economic rents have grown as a share of corporate net earnings

Average and 90th percentile firm-level Tobin's Q values by year, 1975–2015

Source: Center for American Progress analysis of data from Ryan H. Peters and Lucian A. Taylor, “Intangible capital and the investment-q relation,” Journal of Financial Economics 123 (2) (2017): 251–272, available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X16301969.
Chart: Center for American Progress