This title was first published in 1968. Economic development and the system of the functioning of socialist economies have become the subject matter of an increasing number of works by economists throughout the world. Indeed, the experiences of socialist countries on different levels of social and economic development already offer a good deal of empirical material for theoretical analysis. An attempt at such an analysis has been made in this book, where the authors have concentrated on the investigation of a specific phenomenon in the motion of the economy — so-called investment cycles.

by Peter J. D. Wiles Professor Emeritus University of London There are two sorts of writers of prefaces: the obliging and the disobliging. Surely Peter MiMlyi knows where to place me in this taxonomy. For the most part I write my own irrelevant opinions, but there was one act of gross interference: my insistence on a point he had already quietly made, the greater stability of the production of consumer goods under Communism even of food, if we exclude bad harvests. The many Marxist and some other scholars who wrote about Dr. Mih

Pan Am, Gimbel’s, Pullman, Douglas Aircraft, Digital Equipment Corporation, British Leyland—all once as strong as dinosaurs, all now just as extinct. Destruction of businesses, fortunes, products, and careers is the price of progress toward a better material life. No one understood this bedrock economic principle better than Joseph A. Schumpeter. “Creative destruction,” he said, is the driving force of capitalism. Described by John Kenneth Galbraith as “the most sophisticated conservative” of the twentieth century, Schumpeter made his mark as the prophet of incessant change. His vision was stark: Nearly all businesses fail, victims of innovation by their competitors. Businesspeople ignore this lesson at their peril—to survive, they must be entrepreneurial and think strategically. Yet in Schumpeter’s view, the general prosperity produced by the “capitalist engine” far outweighs the wreckage it leaves behind. During a tumultuous life spanning two world wars, the Great Depression, and the early Cold War, Schumpeter reinvented himself many times. From boy wonder in turn-of-the-century Vienna to captivating Harvard professor, he was stalked by tragedy and haunted by the specter of his rival, John Maynard Keynes. By 1983—the centennial of the birth of both men—Forbes christened Schumpeter, not Keynes, the best navigator through the turbulent seas of globalization. Time has proved that assessment accurate. Prophet of Innovation is also the private story of a man rescued repeatedly by women who loved him and put his well-being above their own. Without them, he would likely have perished, so fierce were the conflicts between his reason and his emotions. Drawing on all of Schumpeter’s writings, including many intimate diaries and letters never before used, this biography paints the full portrait of a magnetic figure who aspired to become the world’s greatest economist, lover, and horseman—and admitted to failure only with the horses.

This title was first published in 1968. Economic development and the system of the functioning of socialist economies have become the subject matter of an increasing number of works by economists throughout the world. Indeed, the experiences of socialist countries on different levels of social and economic development already offer a good deal of empirical material for theoretical analysis. An attempt at such an analysis has been made in this book, where the authors have concentrated on the investigation of a specific phenomenon in the motion of the economy — so-called investment cycles.

Are the recurring recessions of the capitalist world merely short-term adjustments to changing economic circumstances in a system that tends, in general, toward equilibrium? In this accessible study of the business cycle, Howard Sherman makes a powerful case that recessions and painful involuntary unemployment are endogenous to capitalism. Drawing especially on the work of Wesley Clair Mitchell, Karl Marx, and John M. Keynes, Sherman explains why the nature of the business cycle produces serious economic loss and misery during its contraction phase, just as it produces growth in its expansion phase. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.