cafeconomics

Data Courtesy: Professor Damodaran's website References: Prof's Blog Here are a few insights from industry data.  1. Economic Value Added: Economic Value Added(EVA) is the excess of return on capital over the cost of capital or the excess of return on equity over cost of equity.  The following chart displays the best performing industries in the USA as of Jan 2021 based on past 12 months data.  As you can see Software, Computer Hardware, Financial Services, Healthcare, Pharma, Banks, Consumer Goods, General Retail are among the best performing industries. Let us look at the laggards in terms of EVA in the chart below. Remember Return on Equity can be very high but what is the point if the Cost of Equity is even higher.  Oil and Gas, Air Transport, Hotels, Entertainment, Biotech, Speciality Retail are among the worst performing industries. Let us go to Europe and look at the best and worst performers. The following chart shows the list of best industries in terms of Economic Va

 Economies transition over time - from agricultural to industrial to services based  - the single most important factor that determines the growth trajectory and sector composition of an economy is its expenditure on research and development.  Many billion-dollar industries of today can trace their origins back to humble beginnings in a research lab funded by some government or philanthropist or university grant. For example, the role played by Stanford University Research in the origin and growth of the mighty Silicon Valley is well known today.  Thomas Edison's Menlo Park is the birth place of many inventions/innovations like incandescent bulb, phonograph motion picture, alkaline batteries, telephony  - each of these inventions has changed our lives forever apart from kick-starting industries that churn out billions of dollars of revenues every year and providing employment to millions of people. In this context, given below is the list of countries sorted by R & D expenditur