| Capitalism is a historical institution. Its development and recession depend on capital accumulation. Profit rate is a core indicator to reflect and determine the status of capital accumulation. Moreover, it's also an important factor to determine whether the macroeconomic is stable or not. In fact, profit rate is the best benchmark to divide capitalism into various stages for further study. Therefore, profit rate has become the core problem of the research of capitalist institution. Profit rate is also one of the core problems of Marxist Economics, in which one of the most famous research results is the law of the falling tendency of the profit rate. Since its emergence, the law of the falling tendency of the profit rate has met much criticism. This paper brings together some criticism and also some opposition to this criticism. However even there are many Marxist scholars who agree on the law of the falling tendency of profit rate, among them exists disagreements on the reason why the profit rate would fall.Since the 20th Century, many economists have tended to calculate profit rate and study it. But their results are different mainly due to their different ways of calculating the fixed capital and the distortion of profit provided by companies and governments. However there are very few researches about the long term changes of the profit rate. Based on and inspired by the previous studies, this paper studies the long term changes of profit rate in the post war United States.First of all, this paper re-calculates the profit rate of the post war US. Due to the data availability and the two world wars, the data is from 1948-2006.I have improved the method of the calculation, extending the interval of the profit rate and using the latest research data. By calculating the profit rate of the private sector and corporate sector, I have found that the profit rates in these two sectors have very similar trend of fluctuation in the long term.Secondly, this paper divides the profit rate into profit share and output-capital ratio, which reflect income distribution institution and technological changes. When the utilization of capacity is sufficient, the output-capital ratio reflects the pure changes in technology. But because of the changes in demand, the utilization of capacity and output-capital ratio will change. Moreover because the change rate of employment is slower than that of production, the profit share will change. This will lead to the changes of labor productivity, which will in turn cause the profit rate to change. The utilization of capacity indirectly affects the profit rate through profit share and output-capital ratio. So in fact, the profit rate is affected by these three factors. Besides the impact of the utilization of capacity, the rest impact on profit rate comes from the output-capital ratio and the profit share. Every impact factor represents a kind of opinion on the law of the falling tendency of the profit rate. The output-capital ratio represents the opinions of technical composition of capital, profit share represents the opinions of the wage squeeze and the utilization of capacity represents the opinions of the lack of consuming.Thirdly, this paper studies the profit rate of the post war US by the latest statistical software and research the impact of the three factors in various stages. Through this study I have found that there is a falling tendency of the profit rate in the post war US and the output to capital ratio is the most important factor. That is to say, the technical composition of capital has an improving tendency. At least Marx's law of the falling tendency of the profit rate still works in the post war US. There are four stages of the profit rate change in the post war US: The profit rate rose from 1948-1966, during which the main factor to influence the rate were output-capital ratio and profit share. From 1966-1979 the profit rate fell and the main impact came from the falling of the output-capital ratio and profit share. From 1979-1997, the profit rate were at a rising stage and the main impact came from the rising of the output-capital ratio and profit share. From 1997-2006 there was a falling tendency in profit rate. At this period the falling of the output-capital ratio and the lack of utilization of capacity played the most important role. And then I explore the reason why the profit rate fluctuated from the aspect of institution and technology respectively.Finally, with the research of the profit rate and the economic fluctuation I find that sometimes they changed simultaniously, while some other time, profit rate changed before the economic fluctuation. So the profit rate can be used as the leading indicators of economic fluctuations. In the three long-wave theories, favorable institutional environment, technological revolution and the changes in profit rate have the main impact on the economic fluctuation. Favorable institutional environment and technological revolution can affect the profit rate and the expectation of the profit rate. And higher profit rate and the optimistic expectations of profit rate will lead to substantial investment in the economy and made the economy step into a booming period. On the contrary lower profit margins or pessimistic expectations will reduce the motivation to invest and the economy would enter a recession stage. Therefore, although the three existing long-wave theories have different focuses, they are not contradictive but complement to each other. The change in profit rate is related to technology and institution. Therefore, the analysis of the internal mechanism for long-wave can not be attributed to a single factor, but should be combined with the main changes of the technical and the institution. On the basis of the research above and the changes of technology and institution at the neoliberalism time of US, I analyse the internal reasons why US economy changed at the neoliberalism time and explain the current position of US economy, which is at the decline stage in the long-wave cycle. |
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