Why is the Rate of Profit Still So Low?

Thomas Michl

Chapter 4 in Profits, Deficits and Instability, 1992, pp 40-59 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The general concept of a wage-profit frontier provides a theoretical framework for studying the issues of technical change and income distribution. It can also be given empirical content as a vehicle for understanding movements in the rate of profit over time. This chapter first links up the more familiar wage-rate profit-rate frontier to the more empirically tractable wage-share profit-rate frontier in the context of a discussion of technical change and the rate of profit. The theory of technical change developed motivates an empirical model of the wage-share profit-rate frontier which is used to analyse movements in the rate of profit in US manufacturing industries from 1949 to 1987. Recent movements since about 1970 provide support for an old thesis that capital-using, labour-saving technical changes can, under some circumstances, reduce the rate of profit.

Keywords: Capital Stock; Technical Change; Real Wage; Capital Ratio; Profit Rate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-11786-4_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349117864

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-11786-4_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().