ABSTRACT
The profit rate began to fall in Europe at the end of the 1950s. The US decline followed the peak in the mid-1960s, whereas in Japan the fall after 1970 was sharp and concentrated but still left profitability at a comparatively high level until the second collapse in the early 1990s. Outside Japan the profit rate shows some upward trend after the early 1980s most sharply the UK under Thatcher. The rise of the US profit rate, before and during the boom of the later 1990s, was mild and profitability slipped before the end of the boom as Brenner (2002) has emphasized.
