  A common assumption of political economy is that profit rates across firms or
sectors tend to uniformity, and often models are formulated in which this
tendency is assumed to have been realised. But in reality this tendency is
never realised and the distribution of firm profits is not degenerate but
skewed to the right. The mode is less than the mean and super-profits are
present. To understand the distribution of firm profits a general probabilistic
argument is sketched that yields a candidate functional form. The overall
properties of the derived distribution are qualitatively consistent with
empirical measures, although there is more work to be done.
