Business Cycle Theory

See our accompanying surveys of Old Business Cycle Theory and Keynesian Business Cycle Theory.

Business Cycle Empiricists

• Joseph Kitchin
  • "Cycles and Trends in Economic Factors", 1923, REStat.
  • Identified the three-to-five year inventory cycle.

• Nikolai D. Kondratiev, 1892-1931?- (1), (2), (3)
  • The World Economy and its Condition During and After the War, 1922
  • "The Long Waves in Economic Life", 1926, Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (transl. 1935, REStat)
  • The Long Wave Cycle, 1928.
  • Russian economist, founder of the Moscow Institute for Business Conditions, Kondratieff identified the half-century "long wave" in his famous 1922 tract and 1926 article. One of the architechts of the first Soviet Five Year Plan, he was rewarded by Stalin with imprisonment in one of his Siberian camps, in which he died sometime in the 1930s.

• Wesley Clair Mitchell and the American Institutionalists

• The Harvard Barometer Group (Bullock, Persons, Crum)

• Moses Abramovitz, 1912-

Climate Theories of Cycles

• William Stanley Jevons, 1835-1882.

• Henry Ludwell Moore, 1869-1958.

• Johan Henryk Åkerman, 1896-1982

Continental Tradition: Overinvestment Theorists

• Clèment Juglar, 1819-1905.

• Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky, 1865-1919.

• Arthur Spiethoff, 1873-1957.

• Gustav Cassel, 1866-1946.

• Dennis H. Robertson, 1890-1963.

• Joseph A. Schumpeter, 1883-1950.

• Jean Lescure, 1882-1947.

• Marco Fanno, 1878-1965

• Adolph Lowe and the Kiel School

Monetary Overinvestment Theorists

• Ralph G. Hawtrey, 1879-1971.

• Friedrich A. Hayek, 1889-1992.

• Gottfried von Haberler, 1900-

Anglo-American Tradition: Expectational and Lead/Lag Theorists

• Alfred Marshall, 1842-1924.

• Irving Fisher, 1867-1947.

• William H. Beveridge, 1879-1963.

• Wesley C. Mitchell, 1874-1948.

• Albert Aftalion, 1874-1956.

• Arthur C. Pigou, 1877-1959.

• John Maurice Clark, 1884-1963.

• George L.S. Shackle, 1903-1992.

Underconsumption Theorists

• John A.Hobson, 1858-1940.

• William T. Foster, 1879-1950.

• Waddill Catchings, 1879-1969

• John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946.

Keynesian Multiplier-Accelerator Theories

• Roy F. Harrod, 1900-78.

• Paul A. Samuelson, 1915-

• Lloyd A. Metzler,

• Sir John R.Hicks, 1904-1989.

• James S. Duesenberry, 1918-

• Luigi Pasinetti, 1930-

• Dale W. Jorgensen, 1933-

• Arthur Smithies

Keynesian Endogenous Cycle Theory

• Erik F.Lundberg, 1907-1987.

• Michal Kalecki, 1899-1970.

• Nicholas Kaldor, 1908-1986.

• Richard M. Goodwin, 1913-1996.

• Hyman P. Minsky, 1919-1997.

• Hugh Rose, 1920-

• Jean-Michel Grandmont, 1939-

Shock-Dependent Theories

• Ragnar A.K. Frisch, 1895-1973.

• Eugene Slutsky, 1880-1948.

• Robert E. Lucas, Jr., 1937-

• Real Business Cycle Theory

Resources on Business Cycle Theory

• HET Pages: Old Business Cycle Theory, Keynesian Business Cycle Theory.
• The National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER)
• NBER business cycle dates table
• The Quantitative Macroeconomics and Real Business Cycle Home Page
• "The Development of Business-Cycle Theory in the German Language Area, 1900-1930" by Harald Hagemann, 1999, SdPE