>At 6:28 PM -0500 28/12/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>By my measure (dividing NIPA profits by the Fed's estimates of the
>>capital stock, from the flow of funds accounts), which purists
>>dismiss as vulgar, profitability peaked in 1997 and declined into
>>2001. It's since recovered strongly, though I'll be interested to
>>see what it looks like when the new FoF numbers come out in early
>>Jan.
>
>Can you break down into the broad NIPA categories of financial and
>non-financial?
I use nonfinancial.
>Meanwhile, connecting back (?) to the earlier discussion, profits
>from rest of the world now amount to over 1/5 (peaking at 1/4 in
>2000) of total profits, having trended upwards over the last 15
>years. Do you have the breakdowns by region, industry? Your p.156
>has multinational investments seeing lowered rates of return -- is
>that only FDI you are referring to?
Yes.
>Finally, on productivity, I came across the following from a paper
>by Martin Feldstein: "Before going further, I should stress the need
>for caution in interpreting such productivity statistics. Much of
>the measured change in productivity reflects estimated improvements
>in product quality rather than increases in the number of physical
>units of output."
>
>Is that last sentence true -- i.e. much of it is est improvements in quality?
In durable manufacturing, yes, probably - e.g., tinier, faster processors, etc.
Doug