In economics, Kondratiev waves - also called grand supercycles, surges, long waves, or K-waves - are regular S-shaped cycles in the modern (Capitalist) world economy. Fifty to sixty years in length, the cycles consist of alternating periods between high sectoral growth and periods of slower growth. This business cycle is more visible in international production data than in individual national economies and concerns output rather than prices. Some economists divide the Kondratiev wave into two 'seasons', namely, the Kondratiev Fall and the later part, the Kondratiev Winter. A bull market is associated with 'fall' and a bear market with 'winter'. More common today is the division into four periods with a turning point (collapse) between the first and second two. This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... // Definition In Elliott wave theory (or the Elliott Wave Principle), the Grand Supercycle is the largest degree of the Elliott Wave Fractal that was proposed by Ralph Nelson Elliott. ... // [edit] Introduction [edit] Definition If we were to take snapshots of an economy at different points in time, no two photos would look alike. ... A bull market is a prolonged period of time when prices are rising in a financial market faster than their historical average. ... A bear market is a prolonged period of time when prices are falling in a financial market. ...

The Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev (1892-1938) was the first to bring these observations international attention in his book "The Major Economic Cycles" (1925) alongside other works written in the same decade. Two Dutchmen, J. van Gelderen (1891-1940) and Samuel de Wolff previously argued for the existence of 50- to 60-year cycles in 1913. However, only recently has the work of Wolff and Gelderen been translated from Dutch to reach a wider audience. Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratiev (1892-1938) was a Russian economist. ...

Early on four schools of thought emerged as to why capitalist economies have these long waves. These schools of thought revolved around innovations, capital investment, war and capitalist crisis. According to the innovation theory, these waves arise from the bunching of basic innovations that launch technological revolutions that in turn create leading industrial or commercial sectors. Kondratiev's ideas were taken up by Joseph Schumpeter in the 1930s. The theory hypothesized the existence of very long-run macroeconomic and price cycles, originally estimated to last 50-54 years. Joseph Schumpeter Joseph Alois Schumpeter (February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an economist from Austria and an influential political scientist. ...

Since the inception of the theories, various studies have expanded the range of possible cycles, finding longer or shorter cycles in the data. The Marxist scholar Ernest Mandel revived interest in long wave theory with his 1964 essay predicting the end of the long boom after five years and in his Alfred Marshall lectures in 1979. However, in Mandel's theory, there are no long "cycles", only distinct epochs of faster and slower growth spanning 20-25 years. Image File history File links Kondratieff_Wave. ... Image File history File links Kondratieff_Wave. ... Ernest Mandel Ernest Ezra Mandel, also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter etc. ...

Long wave theory is not accepted by most academic economists, but it is one of the bases of innovation-based, development, and evolutionary economics, i.e. the main heterodox stream in economics. Among economists who accept it, there has been no universal agreement about the start and the end years of particular waves. This points to another criticism of the theory: that it amounts to seeing patterns in a mass of statistics that aren't really there. Moreover, there is a lack of agreement over the cause of this phenomenon.

Most cycle theorists agree, however, with the "Schumpeter-Freeman-Perez" paradigm of five waves so far since the industrial revolution, and the sixth one to come. These five cycles are

• The Industrial Revolution--1771
• The Age of Steam and Railways--1829
• The Age of Steel, Electricity and Heavy Engineering--1875
• The Age of Oil, the Automobile and Mass Production--1908
• The Age of Information and Telecommunications--1971

According to this theory, we are currently at the turning-point of the 5th Kondratiev. Some scholars, particularly Immanuel Wallerstein, argue that cycles of global war are tied to Capitalist Long Waves. Major, highly-destructive wars tend to begin just prior to an output upswing. Other theorists such as Manuel Delanda maintain Kondratiev waves are examples of oscillatory social behavior; for example, with the emergence of abstract machines and artificial life. Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (born 28 September 1930, New York City) is a U.S. sociologist by credentials, but a historical social scientist, or world-systems analyst by trade. ...

References

• Vincent Barnett, Kondratiev and the Dynamics of Economic Development. London: Macmillan, 1998.
• Edward Cheung, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Social Cycles. Toronto: Longwave Press, 1994.
• Ernest Mandel, "The Economics of Neocapitalism", in The Socialist Register, 1964.
• Ernest Mandel, Long waves of capitalist development: the Marxist interpretation (Alfred Marshall Lectures, 1979).
• Chris Freeman and Francisco Louca, As Time Goes By. From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution. Oxford: OUP, 2001. ISBN 978-0199251056
• Solomos Solomou, Phases of Economic Growth, 1850–1973: Kondratieff Waves and Kuznets Swings (1990).
• Joshua Goldstein, Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988.
• Murray Rothbard, "The Kondratieff Cycle: Real or Fabricated?". Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1984.
• Turchin, P., et al., eds. (2007). History & Mathematics: Historical Dynamics and Development of Complex Societies. Moscow: KomKniga. ISBN 5484010020

Murray Newton Rothbard (March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was a highly influential American economist, historian and natural law theorist belonging to the Austrian School of Economics who helped define modern libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism. ... Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, Auburn, Alabama The Ludwig von Mises Institute (LvMI), based in Auburn, Alabama, is a libertarian academic organisation engaged in research and scholarship in the fields of economics, philosophy and political economy. ... Peter Turchin, is a world known specialist in population dynamics and mathematical modeling of historical dynamics. ...

See also

• Business cycle
• Market trends

// [edit] Introduction [edit] Definition If we were to take snapshots of an economy at different points in time, no two photos would look alike. ... Market trends reflect the general direction of prices or rates in financial markets. ...

External links

• Smith, Marx, Kondratieff and Keynes; R. L. Norman, Jr.
• Cause of the Kondratieff Cycle
• Theories of the Great Depression, R. L. Norman, Jr.