This paper investigates the profit rate in Brazil between 1953 and 2003. There was a tendency for the profit rate to fall during the period under study determined mainly by the declining productivity of capital. There were three phases in the behavior of the profit rate. In the first phase, between 1953 and 1973, it slowly declined; in the second, from 1973 to late 1980s, it fell sharply; in the third, from late 1989 to 2003, it increased moderately. These phases correspond to the institutional arrangements of the Brazilian economy, respectively, to the import substitution industrialization (ISI) during the golden age of capitalism, to the crisis and rupture of ISI, and to neoliberalism.
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