KONDRATIEFF WAVES Juglar – Kuznet s – Kondratieff

In the period from the 1920s to 1930s the theory of economic cycles underwent dramatic
changes. Due to the research of such famous economists as Nikolay Kondratieff, Joseph
Kitchin, Wesley Mitchell, Simon Kuznets, and Joseph Schumpeter the idea of a whole system
of economic cycles (with characteristic periods between two and sixty years) was developed.
The idea of a system of intertwined economic cycles is nowadays paramount to
the school of evolutionary economics and its development promises rather interesting future
outcomes. That is why this issue of our ‘Kondratieff Waves’ Yearbook is devoted to
the interconnections between various economic cycles.
As to the subtitle of this volume, one should note that many of the contributors refer to the
system of cycles and the fact that real economic cycles make up a system, whereas among
different types of cycles, the Juglar, Kuznets, and Kondratieff cycles are the most important
ones for the present-day economic dynamics.
Although Kondratieff himself considered long waves as above all an economic phenomenon,
the theory of the long waves became, however, very actively developed in connection
with their political and geopolitical aspects. In this Yearbook, the political aspect of Kondratieff
waves is the subject of several articles in the second section.
The last section of this Yearbook is devoted to the heritage of Kondratieff and other prominent
economists. The year 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the outstanding Russian
economist, one of the most prominent researchers of medium-term economic cycles, Mikhail
Tugan-Baranovsky, and the volume is concluded with Kondratieff's article about
him. Concerning 2015, we should mention another anniversary, namely, 30 years since the
death of Simon Kuznets (1901–1985).
This edition 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.