The Golden Rule of Capital Accumulation and Global Recession. Aggregate Production Function and the Cambridge Capital Controversy.

A new macroeconomic model is presented, which makes it possible to take a fresh look both at the long-term equilibrium growth process and at short-term deviations from it. Its key hypothesis is investment-to-profits equality. This hypothesis has classical roots and corresponds to the Ricardian and Marx approach and coincides with Phelps’ Golden Rule of capital accumulation as well as with Uzawa’s classical hypothesis. Under this assumption the long-term output growth rate is determined by the rate of capital accumulation, which in turn is equal to the net profit rate. The profit rate value is the result of a trade-off between workers and proprietors. The relationship between aggregate output and inputs is analytically derived in this paper where the variable values are measured not in physical units, but in the current monetary cost. It has the Cobb-Douglas functional form but is neither neoclassical production function nor technical relationship, which could specify the maximum output obtainable from a given set of inputs. The exponent of capital in the resulting function is equal to the investment rate, whose current value is not constant in time. So the output is no longer an unalterable function of inputs, and its shape can vary. The ‘production function’ shift parameter, which is commonly associated with the level of technology, may be expressed in terms of the wage level. The reasons for the 2007–2008 global recession have been clarified.