Abstract for: The Structural Crisis of Capital Accumulation in the USA and Its Causa Prima

This paper re-defines three hypothetical laws of capital accumulation including endogenous rate of accumulation and capital-output ratio as state variables. An original non-linear relationship relates their growth rates. Other state variables are output per worker, employment ratio and relative labour compensation. A comprehensive Phillips equation, governing real labour compensation, is an element of the initial law (HL-1). HL-2 substitutes the former equation by a new one that reflects a long-term tendency of relative labour compensation to fall. A capital strive to maximal profit alters HL-2 in 2008. Extended Kalman filtering is applied for identifying unobserved parameters of these laws. An alternative control law (HL-3) determines a growth rate of surplus value by a gap between target and current employment ratios while an integral absolute divergence of relative labour compensation from the average one for 1979-2008 is minimised. HL-3 could alleviate severity of the current crisis in the restructured US economy compared to evolution based on altered HL-2. The recovery from the present structural crisis of capital accumulation, worst after the World War II, will last until 2011–2013 when the pre-crisis maximum of net output is restored and until 2014–2017 when the pre-crisis maximum of employment is reached again.