IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/55894.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The historical transience of capital: the downward trend in the rate of profit since XIX century

Author

Listed:
  • Maito, Esteban Ezequiel

Abstract

This paper presents estimates of the rate of profit on fourteen countries in the long run. The performance shows a clear downward trend, although there are periods of partial recovery in both core and peripheral countries. The behavior of the profit rate confirms the predictions made by Marx, about the historical trend of the mode of production. Finally, an estimate of the global rate of profit for the last six decades is done, also highlighting the particular role of China in systemic profitability.

Suggested Citation

  • Maito, Esteban Ezequiel, 2014. "The historical transience of capital: the downward trend in the rate of profit since XIX century," MPRA Paper 55894, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:55894
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/55894/1/MPRA_paper_55894.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adalmir Marquetti & Eduardo Maldonado Filho & Vladimir Lautert, 2010. "The Profit Rate in Brazil, 1953-2003," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 42(4), pages 485-504, December.
    2. Thomas Piketty & Gabriel Zucman, 2014. "Capital is Back: Wealth-Income Ratios in Rich Countries 1700–2010," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(3), pages 1255-1310.
    3. repec:dgr:rugggd:199625 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Freeman, Alan, 2009. "What makes the US Profit Rate Fall?," MPRA Paper 14147, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Fumio Hayashi & Edward C. Prescott, 2008. "The Depressing Effect of Agricultural Institutions on the Prewar Japanese Economy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(4), pages 573-632, August.
    6. Collins, William J. & Williamson, Jeffrey G., 2001. "Capital-Goods Prices And Investment, 1870–1950," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(1), pages 59-94, March.
    7. Weisskopf, Thomas E, 1979. "Marxian Crisis Theory and the Rate of Profit in the Postwar U.S. Economy," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 3(4), pages 341-378, December.
    8. Chiaki Moriguchi & Emmanuel Saez, 2008. "The Evolution of Income Concentration in Japan, 1886-2005: Evidence from Income Tax Statistics," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(4), pages 713-734, November.
    9. Chong-En Bai & Chang-Tai Hsieh & Yingyi Qian, 2006. "The Return to Capital in China," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 37(2), pages 61-102.
    10. Smits, Jan-Pieter & Horlings, Edwin & Zanden, Jan Luiten van, "undated". "Dutch GNP and its components, 1800-1913," GGDC Research Memorandum No.5, Groningen Growth and Development Centre, University of Groningen.
    11. James H. Chan-Lee & Helen Sutch, 1985. "Profits and Rates of Return in OECD Countries," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 20, OECD Publishing.
    12. repec:dgr:rugggd:no.5 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Ximena Aguilar & María Paz Collinao, 2001. "Cálculo del Stock de Capital para Chile 1985-2000," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 133, Central Bank of Chile.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Kabeer Bora, 2023. "The Drain Gain: An investigation into how colonial drain helped keep British economy buoyant," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2023_01, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    2. Gheorghe Savoiu & Vasile Dinu, 2015. "Economic paradoxism and meson economics," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 17(39), pages 776-776, May.
    3. José A. Tenreiro Machado & Maria Eugénia Mata & António M. Lopes, 2020. "Fractional Dynamics and Pseudo-Phase Space of Country Economic Processes," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-17, January.
    4. Samaha, Amal, 2020. "Innovators, Bullshitters or Aristocrats: Towards an Explanation of Unproductive Work," MPRA Paper 107169, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Maito, Esteban Ezequiel, 2014. "And yet it moves (down)," MPRA Paper 58007, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Trofimov, Ivan D., 2018. "The secular decline in profit rates: time series analysis of a classical hypothesis," MPRA Paper 88248, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maito, Esteban Ezequiel, 2013. "La transitoriedad histórica del capital: La tendencia descendente de la tasa de ganancia desde el siglo XIX [The historical transience of capital: The downward trend in the rate of profit since XIX," MPRA Paper 59285, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Maito, Esteban Ezequiel, 2014. "Income distribution, turnover speed and profit rate in Japan, Chile, Netherlands and United States," MPRA Paper 59283, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Maito, Esteban Ezequiel, 2014. "Auge y estancamiento de Japón (1955-2008). Una explicación marxista [Rise and standstill of Japan (1955-2008). A Marxist explanation]," MPRA Paper 53102, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Cao, Kang Hua & Birchenall, Javier A., 2013. "Agricultural productivity, structural change, and economic growth in post-reform China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 165-180.
    5. Bengtsson, Erik & Waldenström, Daniel, 2018. "Capital Shares and Income Inequality: Evidence from the Long Run," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 78(3), pages 712-743, September.
    6. Alexiou, Constantinos, 2022. "Evaluating the falling rate of profit in the context of the UK economy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 84-94.
    7. Alexei Izyumov & John Vahaly, 2015. "Income Shares Revisited," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(1), pages 179-188, March.
    8. 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.
    9. WANG, Sophie Xuefei & Yu Benjamin, FU, 2019. "Labor mobility barriers and rural-urban migration in transitional China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 211-224.
    10. Guilherme Klein Martins & Fernando Rugitsky, 2021. "The Long Expansion and the Profit Squeeze: Output and Profit Cycles in Brazil (1996–2016)," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 53(3), pages 373-397, September.
    11. Ikeda, Daisuke & Morita, Yasuko, 2020. "The effects of barriers to technology adoption on japanese prewar and postwar economic growth," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    12. Basu, Deepankar, 2015. "A Selective Review of Recent Quantitative Empirical Research in Marxist Political Economy," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2015-05, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    13. Charlotte Bartels & Felix Kersting & Nikolaus Wolf, 2021. "Testing Marx. Income inequality, concentration, and socialism in late 19th century Germany," Working Papers 0211, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    14. Duque Garcia, Carlos Alberto, 2021. "Economic Growth and the Rate of Profit in Colombia 1967-2019: A VAR Time-Series Analysis," MPRA Paper 109890, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Zhang, Shangfeng & Liu, Yaoxin & Huang, Duen-Huang, 2021. "Understanding the mystery of continued rapid economic growth," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 529-537.
    16. Roberto Veneziani & Luca Zamparelli & Deepankar Basu, 2017. "Quantitative Empirical Research In Marxist Political Economy: A Selective Review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(5), pages 1359-1386, December.
    17. Basu, Deepankar & Das, Debarshi, 2015. "Profitability in India’s Organized Manufacturing Sector: The Role of Technology, Distribution, and Demand," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2015-04, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    18. Basu, Deepankar & Das, Debarshi, 2015. "Profitability and Investment: Evidence from India's Organized Manufacturing Sector," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2015-14, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    19. Guilherme Klein Martins & Fernando Rugitsky, 2018. "The commodities boom and the profit squeeze: output and profit cycles in Brazil (1996-2016)," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2018_09, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    20. Kota Ogasawara & Mizuki Komura, 2022. "Consequences of war: Japan’s demographic transition and the marriage market," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(3), pages 1037-1069, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    rate of profit - Marx - mode of production – core/periphery – world rate of profit;

    JEL classification:

    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements
    • N0 - Economic History - - General
    • P10 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - General
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:55894. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.