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."

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.

Chaos Theory in the Social Sciences: Foundations and Applications offers the most recent thinking in applying the chaos paradigm to the social sciences. The book explores the methodological techniques--and their difficulties--for determining whether chaotic processes may in fact exist in a particular instance and examines implications of chaos theory when applied specifically to political science, economics, and sociology. The contributors to the book show that no single technique can be used to diagnose and describe all chaotic processes and identify the strengths and limitations of a variety of approaches. The essays in this volume consider the application of chaos theory to such diverse phenomena as public opinion, the behavior of states in the international arena, the development of rational economic expectations, and long waves. Contributors include Brian J. L. Berry, Thad Brown, Kenyon B. DeGreene, Dimitrios Dendrinos, Euel Elliott, David Harvey, L. Ted Jaditz, Douglas Kiel, Heja Kim, Michael McBurnett, Michael Reed, Diana Richards, J. Barkley Rosser, Jr., and Alvin M. Saperstein. L. Douglas Kiel and Euel W. Elliott are both Associate Professors of Government, Politics, and Political Economy, University of Texas at Dallas.

This fifth issue of the Yearbook ‘Kondratieff Waves’ has the subtitle ‘Historical and Theoretical Aspects’, as its papers cover some interesting aspects of long-wave dynamics both in historical trends and in theoretical researches. The Yearbook consists of three sections. The first section (Theoretical Aspects) includes two articles devoted to the correlation between the long waves and much longer cycles, i.e. the Industrial and the Cybernetic revolutions. The second section (Historical Aspects) presents three contributions which consider the history of the USA, technological activity since the Middle Ages and some little-known aspects of the history of long-wave dynamics research. The final section (Reviews, Notes, and Reflections) includes two reviews. 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.

This title was first published in 2000: Steven Nivin analyzes a process vital to economic development - technological change. He furthers understanding of the processes driving innovation, so that we may gain a deeper insight into the development of economies. Specifically, the study explores the concept of innovation potential and the factors that result in variations in innovation potential across metropolitan areas, using the US machine tool industry as a case study. To provide a comparison, the same models are also estimated for the semiconductor industry. The findings indicate that urbanisation economies, localization economies, human capital, universities, and invention-derived knowledge are significant factors. The study assesses the contributions of three different skill levels of human capital; college-educated, graduate degree, and locally produced PhD’s in mechanical and electrical engineering. Only the graduate and PhD degree measures are found to be significant, indicating the importance of having a highly skilled pool of labour within the region. The influences of the factors appear to be similar across industries, with some slight differences. The transfer of knowledge through patents is also studied. It is found that the transmission of this knowledge is slower between different industries, relative to the transmission within the same industry.

The majority of people around the world are experiencing oppressive and destructive forces which manifest themselves in starvation, income polarisation, joblessness, stress, violence, and so on. What is the nature of these forces? If we call them "globalisation", can there be good globalisation as well as bad globalisation? Is this a new phenomenon or just a continuation of history as it has always been? This book brings together a wide range of expertise addressing these problems from a world-systems perspective.

Political protest and social movementstheir history; their cyclical development; their organization, strategies, and tacticsconstitute what Charles Euchner calls extraordinary politics, an antidote to the breakdown of politics-as-usual and a necessary, if not sufficient, condition of democracy. Activists have set the pace on every conceivable issue, including the environment, gay rights, feminism, abortion, states rights, religion, and multiculturalism. The president and Congress can barely keep up, but extraordinary politics keeps evolving. With style and grace, the author weaves together hundreds of examples drawn from movements spanning the ideological spectrum to offer both a practical and intellectual guidebook to political activism in a reputedly apathetic age, embracing with abandon the art of making a difference. }When dissidents and activists toppled powerful regimes across the globe in the 1980s and 1990sfrom the Soviet Union to South Africa, from Nicaragua to the Philippineshow did Americans respond to challenges in their own country? The conventional wisdom is that Americans sullenly withdrew from all manner of political action. But in fact, activists of all backgrounds took to the streets to challenge ordinary structures of politics.These movementstheir history; their cyclical development; their organization, strategies, and tacticsconstitute what the author calls extraordinary politics. Activists have set the pace on every conceivable issue, including the environment, gay rights, feminism, abortion, states rights, religion, and multiculturalism. The president and Congress can barely keep up, but extraordinary politics keeps evolving.With style and grace, Charles Euchner weaves together hundreds of examples drawn from movements spanning the ideological spectrum to offer both a practical and intellectual guidebook to political activism in a reputedly apathetic age, embracing with abandon the art of making a difference. }

This new monograph provides a stimulating new take on hotly contested topics in world modernization and the globalizing economy. It begins by situating what is called the Great Divergence--the social/technological revolution that led European nations to outpace the early dominance of Asia--in historical context over centuries. This is contrasted with an equally powerful Great Convergence, the recent economic and technological expansion taking place in Third World nations and characterized by narrowing inequity among nations. They are seen here as two phases of an inevitable global process, centuries in the making, with the potential for both positive and negative results. This sophisticated presentation examines: Why the developing world is growing more rapidly than the developed world. How this development began occurring under the Western world's radar. How former colonies of major powers grew to drive the world's economy. Why so many Western economists have been slow to recognize the Great Convergence. The increasing risk of geopolitical instability. Why the world is likely to find itself without an absolute leader after the end of the American hegemony A work of rare scope, Great Divergence and Great Convergence gives sociologists, global economists, demographers, and global historians a deeper understanding of the broader movement of social and economic history, combined with a long view of history as it is currently being made; it also offers some thrilling forecasts for global development in the forthcoming decades.

In fifteen insightful new essays noted scholars in geography, economics, and public policy provide a comparative examination of the problems and prospects for development in frontier areas. Blending theory with case studies, the essays challenge the widely held notion that peripheral areas are marginal or backward.