On Sat, 23 Apr 1994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote inquiring
>
> 1. where to find reliable and current information on the [average] rate of
> profit in the US and elsewhere
>
> 2. what trends in the [average] rate of profit in the US have looked like
> in the 1945-1972 and 1972-1994 periods
>
> 3. how meaningful a statistic the rate of profit is.
>
> I have a similar question regarding the rate of exploitation. Does anyone
> calculate that these days?
On the US economy, I recommend Fred Moseley, The Falling Rate of Profit
in the Postwar US Economy (London: Macmillan, 1991). On Britain, try
Paul Dunne (ed.), Quantitative Marxism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
Paul Cockshott, Greg Michaelson and I have a paper, "Testing Marx: Some
New Results from UK Data" which may be forthcoming in Capital and Class.
I plan to post a copy to my directory at the pkt archive at csf.colorado.
edu, from where it will be available by ftp.
All of these sources have measures of both the rate of profit and the
rate of exploitation.
Figures on the total $ amount of corporate profits are readily avilable,
on a quarterly basis (for instance, among the BCI - Business Cycle
Indicator - files which are available in electronic form from the
University of Michigan library. Rate of profit figures are harder to
come by. The rate of profit is, of course, the amount of profit
divided by the stock of capital. To be fair to the official statisticians,
it should be pointed out that the theoretical problems in measuring the
capital stock are more severe than those involved in measuring the
flow of profit income.
==========================
Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(910) 759-5762
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