The Business Cycle and Kondratieff Waves

The Business Cycle and Kondratieff Waves

Kondratieff Waves are also know as grand supercycles or surges or long waves. They are (or used to be) fifty to sixty years in length. They match the high growth and slow growth or recessions of a Capitalist economy.

Kondratieff theorized that the period was the span of human economic memory and that people would repeat the same economic mistakes of the past. One of the possibilities of the lengthening of the Kondratieff wave is the lengthening of the human life-span.

Another possibility is the interference in the cycle by the intervention of governments and central banks. It is not clear if this intervention will eliminate the slow growth or recession periods or rather delay the day of reckoning and cause the subsequent recession to be longer and deeper, a full blow depression.