Why 'financialisation' hasn't depressed US productive investment
通过数据和理论分析，反驳了金融化导致美国生产性投资下降的观点，指出借贷资金使股息支付和投资组合增长与生产性投资不冲突，而利润率下降才是资本积累率下降的主因。
The rate of capital accumulation in the USA has fallen markedly in recent decades. Works in the financialisation literature have tried to explain this phenomenon by arguing that rising financial payments and purchases have come at the expense of productive investment. This article shows that such arguments are not supported by the data. It also explains theoretically why rising dividend payments and the growth of corporations’ portfolio investment are compatible with the fact that corporations’ productive investment did not decline during the first two decades of ‘neoliberalism’ in the USA. There would necessarily be a trade-off between these uses of funds if they were all funded out of current profits, but there is no necessary trade-off because borrowed funds are an additional source. Finally, the article shows that the fall in US corporations’ rate of profit (rate of return on investment in fixed assets) fully accounts for the fall in their rate of capital accumulation.