BESSEMBINDER 2026 · 1926—2025 — The Power-Law Frontier: 3.72% of Public Companies Created All Net Wealth
Century Wealth Creation Waterfall — Bessembinder's hundred-year CRSP study: proving that all net lifetime equity wealth was generated by just 4% of companies.
Sorting companies from most value-destroying to most value-creating: 59.13% destroyed $10.67T, 37.15% offset that destruction exactly, leaving 96.28% of all listings at net-zero wealth creation, while the remaining 3.72% generated the entire $90.96T.
What this page answers
This static page is built to answer searches for BESSEMBINDER 2026 · 1926—2025. It summarizes the live dataset behind the The Power-Law Frontier: 3.72% of Public Companies Created All Net Wealth panel and links to the full interactive chart.
Sorting companies from most value-destroying to most value-creating: 59.13% destroyed $10.67T, 37.15% offset that destruction exactly, leaving 96.28% of all listings at net-zero wealth creation, while the remaining 3.72% generated the entire $90.96T. The data is refreshed by the History of Market pipeline and published as a stable JSON endpoint for research, citation, and AI-agent use.
The plate
Data & Source
GET /api/static/bessembinder-2026.json — Canonical dataset endpoint.
Exchange closing prices · Company filings · Robert Shiller · FRED · NBER.
FAQ
Where does this data come from?
History of Market combines public market and macro datasets — exchange closing prices, company filings, Robert Shiller, FRED, NBER, and the UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook (Dimson–Marsh–Staunton). The exact endpoint for this panel is linked below.
How often is it updated?
Daily-tier datasets refresh after the U.S. market close, with a broader weekly refresh on Sunday. The timestamp shown on this page comes from the JSON payload.
Can I use the data?
Yes, for research and education with attribution to History of Market. Upstream data sources retain their own terms.