14 
Seeing what an enormous role the take-over movement has 
played in the past decades especially in Great Britain and U.S. 
we may guess that it has contributed very much to weaking the 
link between profits and investment, and thereby causing the 
(long-term) weakening of investment in most industrial 
countries (though this has come in Italy earlier than in other 
countries like Germany where it started around 1970). 
The enormous change involved in the character of industry may 
be imagined if we try to compare the interests and attitudes 
of entrepreneurs a la Boulton and Watt with those of a modern 
manager juggling with his take-over bids. 
It is natural now to ask what relation if any the post-war 
process of concentration has had with the big change which 
overtook the economy since 1974. 
First of all, it may be surmised that any effects of distribution 
(shift to profits) which the concentration might have had was 
counteracted and offset by the wage drift as described earlier 
on. It agrees with this that the lead in the growth process 
passed from investment to consumption in various countries 
in the later stage of the post-war prosperity era. The break 
in the trend (in 1974/75) required, in my opinion, other 
reasons than the concentration process. There was the excess 
of depreciation over replacement arising from the high growth,