NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - If U.S. corporate profits are on the rebound, as many analysts think they are, then corporate spending -- which Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has called critical to economic recovery -- should follow soon after, according to a recent study.

Banc One Investment Advisors chief economist Anthony Chan, in a research report released Monday, pointed out a chicken-and-egg dilemma characteristic of the latest U.S. recession, which was triggered when businesses stopped spending on new equipment in 2000, leading to a long manufacturing recession and more than a million job cuts.

"Capital spending has weakened in large part as a response to tumbling corporate profit growth," he said. "Corporate profit growth, in turn, has remained underwater largely because of the capital spending recession."

So which came first, the profits or the spending?

In the most recent recession, both actually turned sour at the same time. Profits at S&P 500 companies fell 6.1 percent in the first quarter of 2001, while non-residential private investment -- a key gauge of capital spending in the gross domestic product (GDP) report -- dropped 0.5 percent. Both numbers have fallen together for five straight quarters.

But Chan compared historical data for S&P 500 profits and capital spending and found that spending follows profits about 70 percent of the time, meaning it's likely that future profit gains will lead, within a quarter or two, to gains in spending.

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"This is strong evidence that corporate profits do indeed serve as a good leading indicator of capital spending," he said. "The opposite, however, does not appear to be true."

Earnings tracker First Call has predicted that S&P 500 profits will recover in the second quarter, however meekly. They could also get a boost from continuing productivity growth, which has only gotten stronger at the end of a recession that likely began in March 2001 and allows companies to produce goods at lower cost.

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And corporate profits as a portion of total national income -- possibly a more realistic picture of profits than the S&P 500 measure -- jumped 18 percent in the fourth quarter of 2001 to $822 billion, its first gain since the third quarter of 2000, according to the Commerce Department. The department hasn't yet released data for the first quarter.

"We may very well be in the early stages of a profits recovery that will eventually pave the way for healthier capital spending growth," Chan said.