Abstract
This paper presents a comparative analysis of capital accumulation in the US, Spain, and Brazil from 1990 to 2014, in order to analyze the peculiarities of the main contemporary economy (US), a developed one with a peripheral integration into the Eurozone (Spain), and a semiperipheral economy within a backward region (Brazil). This period is highlighted, especially for Spain and Brazil, by a neoliberal turn and certain monetary stability. Taking the US economy as a reference, Brazil achieved a higher average gDP and investment growth, but its capital-output ratio shows a relative high level. This economy also suffers from less capacity to produce a surplus in US dollars, and its productivity gap widens. In the case of Spain, its real-estate speculative boom has driven down both the profit rate and the productive efficiency of capital stock. Thus, while lacking an outstanding performance, the USA has kept its productive superiority in relation to Spain and Brazil.
Highlights
This paper presents a comparative analysis of the process of capital accumulation in three economies, United States (US), Spain (SPA), and Brazil (BRA), between 1990 and 2014, a period of worldwide economic restructuring, and in which a neoliberal program was introduced in the last two countries
It was not intended that the results could be extensible to all advanced and backward economies, the study aimed at least to promote a comparative analysis of the particularities of center–(semi)periphery capital accumulation dynamics
The main statistical issues for both Spain and Brazil were as follows: (i) Spain: the only homogeneous series of the System of National Accounts (SNA) was the NSI (National Statistics Institute) (NSI 2019) from 1995, which was taken as a reference, and linked with EU KLEMS15 (EU KLEMS 2011) in order to distinguish the unproductive activities of income and labor since 1990, while depreciation was calculated from AMECO (AMECO 2019) as well as GDP before 1995
Summary
This paper presents a comparative analysis of the process of capital accumulation in three economies, United States (US), Spain (SPA), and Brazil (BRA), between 1990 and 2014, a period of worldwide economic restructuring, and in which a neoliberal program was introduced in the last two countries.. After the 1990s, in Brazil, there was a phase of certain monetary instability linked to the implementation of the neoliberal “Real Plan”; whereas in Spain, the period started with the end of the expansionary cycle (1985–1991), leading to the crisis of 1992–1993 and the subsequent implementation of a neoliberal program in order to later join the European Monetary Union (EMU) This period was interesting as well because less developed economies led to economic growth (see IMF 2019a). Empirical results are exposed: first, from a short-term perspective, taking the different phases of growth, slowdown and crisis and the dynamics of economic variables; and second, considering the whole period 1990–2014 for the comparative evolution of the composition of capital and profitability
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