Quartz cited a paper from the Journal of Economic Perspectives on the evolution of the modern corporation. In the paper, researchers Kathleen Kahle and René Stulz highlight how the landscape of public companies has changed over the past few decades. They found that the number of U.S. public companies declined by more than a fifth since 1975, and the top 200 firms now earn as much in profits as all other public firms combined. The authors offer several explanations for this phenomenon, including consolidation through mergers, globalization, and technological change.