US Fiscal Policy, Manufacturing Stagnation, and the Shift to Financialization in the Era of Globalization: An Econometric Analysis, 1973–2015

Abstract

Financialization can be partially attributed to the decline in the US manufacturing profit rate since the 1970s. However, scholars have not reached a consensus regarding the factors responsible for stagnation in manufacturing. This paper employs an Auto-regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to test the impact of both national defense and government consumption expenditure on manufacturing profitability in the United States from 1973, the onset of stagnation, to 2015. Its goal is two-fold: to determine whether stagnation is associated with a decline in Keynesian policies, and to examine the potential for state fiscal programs to reverse this trend and facilitate a shift of private investment away from the financial sector and into manufacturing. The paper finds that the impact of government consumption expenditure on the manufacturing profit rate is positive and significant in both the short-term and long-term (from 1973–2015 and 1973–1993), while the long-term impact becomes negative from 1983 to 2015, when the financial sector profit rate began its upward trend. This casts doubt on whether Keynesian fiscal policies could be employed to restore a healthy profit rate in the manufacturing sector and lower unemployment.

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