Is economic development a "random walk" or do underlying rhythms and cycles make it possible to anticipate long-term trends? Many social scientists have rejected the notion of long-term periodicity in economic trends. Now, after extensive analysis of economic data, distinguished scholar Brian J. L. Berry has found new evidence for the reliability—and the value—of "long-wave" theory. In Long-Wave Rhythms in Economic Development and Political Bahavior, Berry argues that the synchronization of long waves and growth cycles is "more than a figment of some overactive imagination". Presenting his findings graphically, he argues that there is persuasive evidence of the existence of "deterministic chaos". Applying his analysis of rates of change to the economic phenomena of prices (Kondratiev cycles) and growth (Kuznets cycles), he discovers that pairs of 25-year growth cycles are embedded within 55-year long waves. As a result, Berry concludes, two different kinds of growth cycles— one inflationary and the other deflationary—form a complementary pattern of alternating crises with stagflation and depression. Berry also explores the "shifting sand" of cyclical phenomena in the stock market, voting behavior, the incidence of wars, the rise and fall of great powers, and mass psychologies. While avoiding dogmatic conclusions, he offers a provocative discussion of the long-wave context of social phenomena. As he examines the American economy in long-wave context, Berry optimistically asserts that the "bust" is not inevitable. Technological advances in information transfer enable leaders and organizations to anticipate and alleviate the adverse effects of economic cycles. "Like it or not," he writes, "our lives appear to be embedded in a higher order of complexity: collectively, we are a societal organism that displays self-regulating fluctuations around a path of growth."

Proposes that for the past 200 years, alternations of conservatism, liberalism, competitive politics, and progressivism in the US have moved in lockstep with the long-wave economic rhythms that are driven by bursts of new technology every 50-60 years and bring quarter- century-long alternations of deflationary downwaves and inflationary upwaves that are separated by turning points occurring in inflationary spirals and deflationary troughs. Argues that those patterns provide more insight into what lies ahead both politically and economically than does the investor jubilation of the past six years. The treatment is historical rather than mathematical. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Of all fluctuations in economic activity, the long wave or Kondratieff cycle is easily the most puzzling and least understood one. Does it really exist, and if so, is it only a cycle in prices or a cycle in economic activity at large? What causes it, and has it been confined to Europe or does it affect the world economy as a whole? These questions, which seemed of little relevance in the prosperous years of the postwar growth era, have gained new importance since 1973. With the downturn of the long wave, interest in it has enjoyed a revival, as it did in the 1930s. A great number of publications on the long wave have appeared since 1973, many of which have added to our insight of what causes the recurrent alternations of growth acceleration and retardation. This book is the first in the English language in which all important long wave theories, old as well as recent, are brought together. It focuses on the long wave as an international phenomenon, affecting all industrialised countries. It contains new theory as well as empirical evidence and in the final section suggests a number of policy recommendations to generate innovation. This book offers an interpretation of long-term economic development different from those commonly found in the literature. It will be of interest to students and scholars of the economics of growth and change, as well as to economic historians and policy-makers. This book was first published in 1983.

Like so many of us, Margret Kopala lost a significant portion of her life savings in the stock market crash of 2008. Unlike us, however, she went on a long and intense financial odyssey to find out what caused the losses and what she could do to protect herself in the future. Armed with her skills as a journalist and public policy analyst, fueled by equal measures of fear and determination, and mentored by successful investment strategist and financial broadcaster John Budden, Kopala researched and wrote this magisterial analysis of how Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff’s long-wave theory is playing out in what many today describe as a financial Winter. Along the way, she is introduced to financial experts familiar with Kondratieff scholarship. John Budden’s interviews in the book with Dean LeBaron, J. Anthony Boeckh, Ian Gordon, Larry Jeddeloh, Don Lindsey, the late Lord William Rees-Mogg, Jim Rogers, Eric Sprott, and Ronald-Peter Stöferle show how investors must put a new spin on asset allocation and security of their assets: like a dog that buries bones in different places, we would be advised to allocate our assets to different parts of the world – and to ensure that a good portion of those assets include gold, the only continuous basis of wealth across history and around the world. Kopala explores the global, national, and personal effects of: overconsumption; underproduction; energy and innovation; the printing of money to "save" the economy; competitive devaluations; deflation, reflation, and inflation; and war (the ultimate economic crisis). She documents those technologies that seeded previous New Economy Spring seasons -- from the era of canals to those of railroads, automobiles, and infotech -- and probes today’s innovations most likely to seed the Next New Economy that we desperately need if we are to escape the doldrums of the current financial Winter. With trenchant explanations of how individuals can achieve portfolio strength by first preserving capital then being vigilant about the financial effects of politics, economic theory, culture, and our own choices, The Dog Bone Portfolio is a gift to investors, policy-makers, and, ultimately, nations everywhere.

Since the end of the Cold War, analysts of international politics have given much greater attention to issues of change. It has become increasingly clear to specialists from many fields that any understanding of large-scale political change must encompass far longer timescales than has been usual in the study of world politics, and must incorporate multi-disciplinary perspectives. This book evaluates and draws on relevant theoretical approaches from other disciplines such as sociology, economics, geography, history, anthropology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary theory and the mathematical study of complexity. Using an epistemological framework, Dark sets out a theory of long-term world political change: the theory of 'Macrodynamics'. This is then applied to historical, anthropological and archaeological data to explain the changing forms of political organization, from the earliest human societies to the late twentieth century. The resulting analysis is a reinterpretation of the processes of global political change in the past and present. This, in turn, opens new areas of enquiry in the study of international relations and has profound implications for how we understand the changing world of today.

Presenting the history of long wave analysis from its origins to the present day and stressing its intimate relationship with the development of business cycle theory, this acclaimed study offers a thorough critique of conventional long wave analysis.

This fourth issue of the Yearbook ‘Kondratieff Waves’ has the subtitle ‘The Spectrum of Opinions’, as its papers cover a whole range of problems. The Yearbook consists of three sections. The Introduction of this issue is dedicated to Nikolai Kondratieff's ideas which still are important to an analysis of the world economic situation. The first section (Long Waves in the Context of World Economy and Politics) includes five contributions devoted to the study of different spheres from economy to jihadism. The speeches of Kondratieff medal laureates are published in the second section (Kondratieff Medal: Winners' Speeches). It presents a very impressive collection of different views of well-known and young researchers. The last section (Reviews and Notes) includes Antony Harper's re view of Leonid Grinin, Andrey Korotayev and Arno Tausch's monograph ‘Economic Cycles, Crises, and the Global Periphery’ published by Springer International Publishing. This issue will be useful for economists, social scientists, as well as for a wide range of those interested in the problems of the past, present, and future of global economy and globalization.