What's Behind the Recent Rise in Profitability?

Abstract: Profitability in the United States has been rising since the early 1980s and by 1997 was at its highest level since its postwar peak in the mid 1960s, and the profit share, by one definition, was at its highest point. In this paper I examine the role of the change in the profit share and capital intensity, as well as structural change, on movements in the rate of profit between 1947 and 1997. Its recent recovery is traced to a rise in the profit share in national income, a slowdown in capital-labor growth on the industry level, and employment shifts to relatively labor-intensive industries.

JEL-codes: E (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: Written 2000-10-23
Note: Type of Document - Adobe Acrobat PDF; prepared on IBM PC; to print on PostScript; pages: 37; figures: included
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://129.3.20.41/eps/mac/papers/0004/0004044.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: What's Behind the Recent Rise in Profitablity? (2000)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Macroeconomics from EconWPA
Series data maintained by EconWPA ().