Long cycles : with particular reference to Kondratieffs

Abstract

This thesis examines and evaluates long cycles, particularly those referred to as Kondratieffs, 47/48-60 year cycles named after the Russian economist, Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondrat'ev. The earliest long cycle theorists: the Trail-Blazers are reviewed and evaluated. Kondratieff's characteristics of long cycles are appraised, particularly the feature he identified as inventions which continues to capture long cycle researchers' interest in the 1980s-90s. The literature findings were inconclusive regarding the existence of Kondratieffs: Forrester (1978) was supportive, van Duijn (1983) found the cycles varied much in length, Kleinknecht (1987) referred to them as alleged cycles, Kindleberger (1989) called them dubious and elusive. Solomou (1987) dismissed their existence completely but Reijnders (1990) did not regard Kondratieffs as being illusory.

Given the contradictions in the literature, the hypothesis of this thesis is that Kondratieffs do not exist. Also because of the inconsistencies, careful consideration has been given to the modelling to be used to investigate for long cycles. The approach has been to construct a framework drawing on various research methodologies, allowing for 'scientific-seeing' to take place, adopting a heuristic approach and allowing for periodicity. The heuristic approach provides a model with a negative heuristic, assumptions which are core to the model, and a positive heuristic of auxiliary assumptions to allow flexibility only insofar as to facilitate the working of the model. Spectral modelling over a frequency domain was adopted as the most suitable method to allow for periodicity in the data, an approach which has not predisposition to any particular cycle length, rather than an autoregressive framework coloured by filters.

The study differs from other long cycle studies by using much longer series of empirical data, at least covering 10 potential long cycles, should Kondratieffs exist. The time series cover periods from almost 500 to 837 years. Also, the study differs by using data other than Kondratieff's, particularly non-price time series. The data selected represents general socio-economic changes and longevity: tin production especially has undergone changes in use and exploitation, the other series are population and battle fatalities. The study finds that the hypothesis that Kondratieffs do not exist cannot be fully accepted. There are some weak findings of long cycles across the data within the broad band of 48-60 years. It however finds stronger evidence of long-intermediate cycles centred at 26 years, ranging 23-29 years and very weak evidence of medium-term cycles 11-13 years.(DX192,695)

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