The Sraffian Supermultiplier demand-led growth model posits that economic growth is led by autonomous expenditures that do not create productive capacity, while private capacity creating investment is supposed to be an induced expenditure. On fully adjusted positions, capacity tends to adjust to demand, and utilization converges to its normal level. For this adjustment to take place, the propensity to invest is required to be endogenously determined, playing the role of the adjusting variable that accommodates different growth rates (Serrano, 1995).
Resumo O objetivo desse artigo é contribuir para o debate sobre o desempenho da economia brasileira no século XXI, com ênfase nos anos entre 2011 e 2019 marcados pelo baixo crescimento. Para isso, é realizada uma decomposição do crescimento a partir do modelo do Supermultiplicador Sraffiano, tomando como base a metodologia utilizada por Freitas e Dweck (2013) e utilizando dados do Sistema de Contas Nacionais para o período de 2000 a 2019. Embora essa decomposição do crescimento não constitua um teste da validade do modelo do Supermultiplicador Sraffiano, os resultados sugerem que os fatos estilizados da economia brasileira estão de acordo com o previsto por este modelo teórico. Apresento também algumas explicações existentes no campo da heterodoxia sobre o desempenho econômico brasileiro na última década, mostrando como cada uma delas pode se encaixar dentro da ótica do modelo do Supermultiplicador e analiso quais destas tiveram maior relevância para explicar o desempenho econômico brasileiro durante o período analisado.
It is a well-established result of Kaleckian models in which output growth is led by investment expenditures that capacity utilization is endogenous and positively related to the growth rate of output, and that attempts by capitalists to adjust productive capacity to demand might trigger Harrodian instability. This motivated several theoretical proposals by some Kaleckian authors in order to deal with the issue of convergence to normal utilization. Our purpose in this article is to rescue the concepts of competition, the determinants of normal capacity utilization, and the relation between normal prices, normal utilization, and normal profits, according to the classical surplus approach – and more specifically the ideas presented by Ciccone (1986; 1987; 2011) – in order to discuss critically the proposals developed by the Kaleckians in the light of this theoretical background. Our main point is that most of these proposals seem to have ignored some of these concepts from the classical surplus approach, adopting (explicitly or implicitly) some hypotheses that are in contradiction to the concepts of competition and to the determinants of normal utilization presented here – and in some cases have even modified the concept of normal utilization itself.
The purpose of this paper is to show that the Sraffian Supermultiplier demand-led growth model with an exogenous normal degree of capacity utilisation can be used to analyse the long-lasting reduction in the average actual degree of capacity utilisation in the US economy since the early 2000s. We follow the concept of normal degree of utilisation proposed by Ciccone and we use a simple version of the Supermultiplier model in which the adjustment of capacity to demand is slow. We show this in two steps. First, we examined the data for the industrial sector for the US economy and found no relevant change in the average-to-peak indicators, which could indicate a general reduction in the normal degree of capacity utilisation. Second, we made two simulations based on our simple Sraffian Supermultiplier model to demonstrate that (i) the process of convergence of actual utilisation to its given normal degree is slow and the model is compatible with long and lasting deviations between actual and normal utilisation after large shocks, and (ii) that successive decreases in output growth rates in the US economy since the begin of the 2000s, combined with a flexible accelerator mechanism, could explain the decrease in average utilisation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.