Waves in Long-term Economic Development

Among the long-term economic changes of Western industrialised nations one can readily discern between long periods of above average economic impetus with rapid growth and periods of little or no economic growth at all. In the attempt to explain this alternating behaviour a wide range of theories have evolved about the so-called ‘long waves’. Most theories reach back to the initial ideas of Kondratieff (1926) who actually only became well known through the further developments in the work of Schumpeter (1961). Because of an overall faint development of world commerce in the late 1970s and early 1980s the long-wave theories have experienced a rebirth.2 The majority of these theories describe four ‘Kondratieff waves’ since the onset of industrialisation, each wave having an approximate duration of fifty years. The fourth Kondratieff cycle started accordingly with the upward trend at the end of the Second World War. Today, we consider ourselves as being near the end of this cycle.