Thinking in a Macro Way

To understand aggregate behavior, it is necessary to start at the aggregate or macro level of analysis rather than the individual or micro level. This is because there are certain relationships that must hold, by definition, at the aggregate level. These relationships are specified in macroeconomic accounting identities.

Reasoning at the individual or micro level is also necessary to understand many aspects of the economy, including the aggregate economy, but the micro reasoning must be consistent with relationships holding at the macro level. In considering the aggregate economy, macro reasoning takes precedence over micro reasoning. If a micro argument violates known macro relationships, it is the micro argument that must be rejected.

None of this is to suggest that there is only one valid theory of the aggregate economy. There is more than one way to conceive of economic behavior that is consistent with the macroeconomic accounting identities. However, if a theory is not macro consistent, it cannot be a valid theory of the aggregate economy.

Having said this, starting at the aggregate level is actually very revealing in terms of the types of behavioral assumptions we might want to make. In the remainder of this post, I want to provide an example of reasoning in a macro way. The approach begins with incontestable macroeconomic relationships and then employs contestable behavioral assumptions in an effort to go beyond what follows immediately from the macro identities. As a consequence, the arguments presented here are to a large degree contestable, but they are consistent with the macro relationships. In other words, I am giving one example of macro consistent reasoning.

One of my favorite examples of the insights possible with macro reasoning is due to Kalecki. For simplicity, we can begin by considering a pure closed private-sector economy. Government and external sectors will be included shortly.

Kalecki starts with two accounting identities that must hold for the period under consideration:

(1) Y = C + I

(2) Y = W + P

Here, Y is real output or income, C is private consumption, I is gross private investment, W is aggregate wages, and P is aggregate profit for the period.

In Marxian fashion, Kalecki then divides consumption into capitalist consumption, CP, and worker consumption, CW, and assumes that workers, in aggregate, consume all they earn: CW = W (this assumption can be relaxed without altering the basic insights). The first identity becomes:

(1′) Y = W + CP + I

Setting (1′) equal to (2) and rearranging gives:

P = CP + I

I find this expression very interesting. It may seem strange at first glance, but the expression tells us that capitalists’ own spending decisions as a class (CP + I) must equal their total profit (P). The reason for this is that workers’ wages return to the capitalists as a class when workers spend on consumption items, whereas capitalists’ expenditures go to other capitalists, and so to the capitalist class as a whole. Kalecki expresses this as “capitalists get what they spend and workers spend what they get”.

Now consider causation. Does profit determine the amount of capitalist expenditure, or do capitalist expenditures determine aggregate profit? Kalecki observes that capitalists can choose what they spend in the current period but not what they earn, implying that causation runs from capitalist expenditures to aggregate profit.

Rearranging the expression gives:

P – CP = I

Since workers have been assumed to spend all they earn in aggregate, the left-hand side of this expression represents private saving, S. It is that part of aggregate profit not consumed by capitalists. So:

S = I

Since Kalecki has already observed that capitalists choose what they spend, not what they earn, this implies that causation runs from investment to saving. That is, capitalist investment determines private saving. Keynes, of course, in a similar analysis argued that income is determined by investment, and that saving is a function of income.

Kalecki’s analysis can be extended to gain insight into some of the factors influencing the average (economy-wide) realized rate of profit, r, which roughly speaking can be represented as aggregate profit divided by the amount of fixed capital, K, tied up in production. That is, r = P/K. (For Marx, the denominator should also include outlays on raw materials and wages, but if the turnover period for these items is short relative to the accounting period under consideration – e.g. a year – the impact on the economy-wide rate of profit is small, and doesn’t alter the basic issues under discussion.)

Drawing on Kalecki’s analysis, we have:

r = (CP + I) / K

In this expression, gross private investment, I, will add not only to profit in the numerator, but also to the amount of fixed capital, K, in the denominator to the extent that gross investment exceeds depreciation of fixed capital. Here, ΔK = I – δ, where δ is depreciation. So investment adds to aggregate profit and aggregate fixed capital.

To see the significance of this, consider an extreme example in which CP = 0, I = 100 each year and there is zero depreciation. If K = 1000 initially, the rate of profit in successive years will be 100/1000, 100/1100, 100/1200, … . That is, there will be a tendency for the rate of profit to decline as capital intensity increases. (The tendency will be mitigated to the extent that depreciation occurs.) This is similar to Marx’s tendency for the rate of profit to fall, except expressed in price rather than value terms and applied to realized profit rather than produced surplus value. In the case where all surplus value produced is realized, the two measures — produced surplus value and realized profit — coincide. For Marx, this tendency for the rate of profit to decline will continue until a crisis causes the value of K to collapse. Once prices of the components of fixed capital fall, the value of K in the denominator will be reduced, and the rate of profit revived.

It is interesting to note that, technically, there is something of an “out” which could help capitalists avoid a fall in the realized rate of profit, at least up to a point. The “out” is capitalist consumption, Cp. Provided there is excess capacity, which is the normal condition in a capitalist economy, capitalists could increase their consumption relative to their investment. To the extent that they did this, profit (the numerator) would increase without causing the capital stock (the denominator) to expand. The decline in the rate of profit would be attenuated to some extent. The limit to this avenue is full capacity utilization. At that point, no additional boost could be given to the rate of profit in this manner. Instead, something would need to be done either about distribution (a redistribution of income to capitalists props up the rate of profit) or K needs to devalue.

From Marx’s (contestable) perspective, there is another obstacle to this method of attenuating the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Competition compels capitalists to reinvest some of the previous period’s profit in the current period in an effort to improve productivity (compete on cost) and increase productive capacity (maintain market share). This makes it unlikely that they will lift their consumption, relative to investment, to a degree sufficient to maintain the rate of profit. A similar obstacle could be identified from a Kaleckian or Keynesian (contestable) perspective. Since capitalists typically have a lower propensity to consume than workers, and in any case are a tiny cohort of society, the rate of profit is unlikely to be maintained on the strength of capitalist consumption.

Once government is included, Kalecki’s analysis suggests that, up to full capacity utilization, fiscal policy can be used to attenuate any tendency for the realized rate of profit to fall. In a commodity-backed monetary system or common currency arrangement, this can run into financing difficulties, but currency-issuing governments have such a capacity if they choose to use it.

To see this, we can introduce the government and external sectors into Kalecki’s analysis. The basic identities become:

(1”) Y = C + I + G + NX

(2′) Y = W + P + T

where Y is income, G is government expenditure, T is tax revenue, and NX is net exports.

Following the same procedure as we did in the case of a pure private-sector economy but allowing now for worker saving and the additional sectors gives:

P = CP + I + BD + NX – SW

where BD = fiscal deficit = G – T and SW is worker saving.

Finally, the average rate of profit becomes:

r = (CP + I + BD + NX – SW) / K

With the extra sectors included, there are now other possible “outs” that give support to the rate of profit up to the point of full capacity utilization. The most significant “out” is the government’s capacity to run deficits. In fact, for the world economy as a whole, NX = 0, and the most reliable “out” at the global level would appear to be the government’s capacity to net spend.

Again, the limit to this, so far as the rate of profit is concerned, is full capacity utilization. Beyond that, attempts to maintain the rate of profit would have to resort to policies that added to productive capacity without increasing K (the value of the privately accumulated capital stock) or that even reduced the value of K. Public investment in science and technology enables improvements in productivity and hence reductions in prices of the elements of privately owned fixed capital. Public investment in infrastructure expands productive capacity without adding to the value invested in K by capitalists.

Needless to say, there are better policy aims than propping up the rate of profit. An economy geared towards not-for-profit activity would have no need for such class-interested policies. A currency-issuing government could facilitate such a reconfiguration of the socioeconomic landscape. It would, of course, entail a transcending of capitalism.

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