IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cambje/v27y2003i4p479-499.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What's behind the rise in profitability in the US in the 1980s and 1990s?

Author

Listed:
  • Edward N. Wolff

Abstract

Profitability in the US has been rising since the early 1980s and by 1997 was at its highest level since its post-World War II peak in the mid-1960s, and the profit share, by one definition, 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--labour growth at the industry level, and employment shifts to relatively labour-intensive industries. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Edward N. Wolff, 2003. "What's behind the rise in profitability in the US in the 1980s and 1990s?," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 27(4), pages 479-499, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:27:y:2003:i:4:p:479-499
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    RePEc Biblio mentions

    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Political Economy > The Political Economy of the US

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Konstantakis, Konstantinos N. & Michaelides, Panayotis G. & Mariolis, Theodore, 2018. "A non-linear post-Keynesian Goodwin-type endogenous model of the cycle for the USA," MPRA Paper 90036, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Leila Davis & Joao de Souza, 2022. "Stylized facts on the evolution of profit rates in the US: Evidence from firm-level data," Working Papers 2022-01, University of Massachusetts Boston, Economics Department.
    3. Satya Prasad Padhi, 2021. "Employment dynamics, increasing returns and Marx's falling rate of profit," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 74(298), pages 219-245.
    4. Jackson, William A., 2014. "The Factor-Shares Cycle and its Relation to the Business Cycle," EconStor Open Access Book Chapters, in: Business Cycles in Economics: Types, Challenges and Impacts on Monetary Policies, pages 11-26, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    5. Wang, Cong & Lu, Yifan, 2020. "Can economic structural change and transition explain cross-country differences in innovative activity?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    6. Vaona, Andrea, 2011. "Profit rate dynamics, income distribution, structural and technical change in Denmark, Finland and Italy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 247-268, September.
    7. Silvia Domeneghetti & Andrea Vaona, 2015. "Regional aspects of aggregate profitability dynamics in Italy," Working Papers 04/2015, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    8. Tânia Pinto & Aurora Teixeira, 2023. "Does scientific research output matter for Portugal’s economic growth?," GEE Papers 0174, Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia, revised Jul 2023.
    9. Trofimov, Ivan D., 2022. "Determinants of the profit rates in the OECD economies: A panel data analysis of the Kalecki's profit equation," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 380-397.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:27:y:2003:i:4:p:479-499. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/cje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.