Measuring value creation and appropriation in firms: The VCA model

Firms create value not only for shareholders, but also for other stakeholders, including employees, customers and suppliers. This article applies a method to quantify the “new” economic value created by a firm over an interval of time; the method also reveals the distribution of that value among the stakeholders. The proposed method gives managers some means to assess changes in the economic value created and distributed. We find that the creation and distribution of value has varied greatly among major U.S. airlines and global automakers in recent decades. Moreover, returns to shareholders typically accounted for only a small proportion of firms’ total value creation and often had little relation to broader changes in the magnitude and distribution of value .