economic rent
See Also
Definition
What firms earn over and above the cost of capital employed in their business (Kay, 1999)
...""rents"" are returns that are in excess of the minimum needed to attract a resource to a particular use in the first place. (Roberts, 2004, p 116).
Growing economic rent it the objective of strategic management.
Source of the term --
The term economic rent comes from David Ricardo's Law of Rent formulated around 1809. This law explains economic advantage of using a resource for its most productive use. In his day the chief resource was land, thus the term 'rent' was applied to the resource. The principle though, pertains to all resources of the firm. This principle is part of the heritage of the 'resource view' of strategy, where advantage stems from the internal resources of the enterprise and not from its position in a market or industry, the 'positional view.'