PRIVATE PRODUCTIVE INVESTMENT IN SPAIN AND THE UNITED STATES

Resumen

Private productive investment is, or should be, the key variable of any macroeconomic and growth models. Surprisingly enough, after a two-century of long discussions, economists are far from reaching any theoretical agreement, while empirical studies do not confirm or indeed support any particular model. It is true, though, that the most promising results are generally associated with those based on the acceleration principle. In this paper we estimate a model of capital accumulation whose independent variables are: (a) the expected rate of growth of the economy proxied by its past rate; (b) deviations of capacity utilization from its ‘normal’ level; (c) the long-term real interest rate, i.e. the cost of external finance; (d) deviations between the current profit share and its ‘conventional’ rate; and (e) deviations of confidence from its ‘conventional’ level. We examine the empirical evidence in Spain and the USA during the period 1964-2009. Econometric results support our ‘flexible accelerator’ model of investment.