Cyclical Dynamics in Economics and Politics in the Past and in the Future
Abstract
Nikolay Kondratieff is known primarily for his theory of long cycles. However,
it is worth recalling that he was among the first who started to investigate the
nature of different economic cycles and their systematic interaction. Actually
the primary classification of cycles into short, medium and long belongs to
Kondratieff.
In 1922, in his book The World Economy and its Conjunctures during and
after the War Nikolay Kondratieff formulated for the first time the basic tenets
of the theory of long cycles (Kondratieff 1922 [2002]). As until that time the
economic literature hardly knew any other cycles than the ones with a characteristic
period between 7 and 11 years (which were called industrial, commercial,
and so on), Kondratieff quite logically called them ‘short cycles’ (Ibid.:
323). However, already in 1925, in the Long Cycles of Conjuncture (Kondratieff
1925 [1993]: 25–26), he began to call the same cycles as ‘medium cycles’.
1 Why? The fact is that in those years Kitchin (1923) discovered some
cycles (with a characteristic period between 3 and 4 years) manifested in fluctuations
in inventories that could be denoted as truly ‘short cycles’. Later, they
became known as ‘Kitchin cycles’. Due to the fact that the medium-term cycles
often have internal ups and downs, a group of scientists in the Harvard School
headed by Wesley Mitchell started to consider cycles statistically (not by their
logic, but by the presence of recessions, from a recession to another recession,
regardless of the point that different recessions may be significantly different as
regards their strength and nature). As a result, they also detected some cycles
with a period between 3 and 4 years (which to a certain extent coincided with
Kitchin cycles).
Origin : Explicit agreement for this submission
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